A pastor in his early 40s told us recently that his youngest colleagues (20s) want more inclusive leadership. “We thought we communicated well, especially compared to the older Boomers,” he said. “But we heard from our staff that they want to be included in the decision-making process much sooner. They want to know everything, not just our final decisions. They want to be heard.” The result is lots of e-mails and shared decisions.
Is this a trend?
Rob Couch
I believe younger people want authentic participation in discerning where God is leading the church. I have a team of younger people (20s and early 30s) who work together with me in implementing at our church a contemporary worship service called NewSong.
Associate Pastor Christ United Methodist Church Mobile, Alabama
Some days I come in with definite plans of what I want communicated, and how I want things to look. Increasingly, however, I will come to the team meetings with little more than a passage of Scripture. We will open up the Bible, read the text, and struggle to hear what God is saying to us, together. Suddenly it becomes about what God wants, not what I want. The services planned this way are almost always more powerfully meaningful.
When people begin to realize that God is the leader we are to follow, and that each of us has a role in discerning where he is taking us, the results are tremendous.
Ken Fong
I don’t feel that the issue of preference for a certain leadership style simply can be broken down along generational lines. At our church, with quite a mix of collegians through senior citizens, I’d say that overall, everyone first wants leadership that is clearly vision/mission/values-driven. Admittedly, I sometimes think the younger generation places more of a premium on this while older folks who grew up in church don’t expect that as much. Even in working with my ministry staff, how a church and its leadership arrive at a clear direction, purpose, and essential ethos is nearly as crucial as the elements themselves.
Pastor Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles Rosemead, California
When I assumed the senior pastor position eight years ago, I set out to work collaboratively with my paid and volunteer staff, both because this is more my natural style and because I’d been reading about the appeal of this style to young adults. However, several years into this, a number of my staff and leaders shared with me that I didn’t need to include so many of them in this visioning process. As senior pastor, they said, they believed God had called me to pursue whatever was on my heart and confirmed in his Word.
Even as I’ve operated more in this “seer” mode, I’m just as convinced that if anything is truly from the Lord, God will also impress this vision and burden on the majority of those in the church you serve and lead. And those who seem to appreciate this sensitivity most are the younger generations.
Cheryl Sanders
To be honest, this age group cannot figure out what kind of leadership it wants. While I agree younger people are less welcoming of top-down, pastor-led decision making, in my experience they do not necessarily want to participate in the process or take responsibility for it. They want to be free to seek their own interests without being burdened with institutional matters.
Pastor Third Street Church of God Washington, D.C.
I long for more effective interaction with young adults. I really feel out of touch, and I think that gap represents widely divergent values. It appears many have internalized the ethics and ethos of the consumer culture uncritically, without counting the cost of functioning as producers of culture and as guardians of countercultural religious traditions and practices of faith.
I have a better handle on this intergenerational issue in the classroom. As a professor, I am increasingly aware of different learning styles and expectations of younger students. They are easily bored and prone to taking shortcuts. So I try to make their experience interesting, engaging, and relevant. I welcome questions and I raise questions. I try to exemplify what a servant-scholar looks like, that is, a person who reads broadly and speaks intelligently on behalf of and in conversation with the people being served—a form of intercessory scholarship, if I may coin a phrase.
My task now is to bring that ministry approach to the church.
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