Jump directly to the Content

The X Factor

What we've learned from the rise, fall, and renewal of "Gen-X" ministries.

This article is from the Summer 2009 issue of Leadership Journal. You can read the entire article at Leadership's website.

When the willows sway in South Barrington, the evangelical world notices. So Willow Creek Community Church provoked headlines in 2006 when leaders said they would end Axis as everyone knew it. As recently as 2001, about 2,000 young adults had gathered on Saturday nights for alternative music and relevant teaching. But before temporarily closing in 2006, Axis attracted fewer than 400 twenty-somethings. How could a trend-setting ministry decline so severely in just five years?

Due in no small part to Willow's example, ministry leaders across the country once viewed separate, age-targeted services as the key to reaching a generation largely absent from the churches built by their Boomer parents. Little more than 10 years after Willow launched Axis in 1996, many of these once-prosperous twenty-something ministries have folded, spun off, or morphed. Leaders from these ministries ...

March
Support Our Work

Subscribe to CT for less than $4.25/month

Homepage Subscription Panel

Read These Next

Related
Success in Three Churches: Diversity and Originality
Success in Three Churches: Diversity and Originality
Tom Minnery reports on three churches that are radically different from one another, yet successful in light of their view of mission.
From the Magazine
I Hated ‘Church People.’ But I Knew I Needed Them.
I Hated ‘Church People.’ But I Knew I Needed Them.
As I attended my second funeral in three weeks, two Christians showed me a kindness I couldn’t explain.
Editor's Pick
What Christians Miss When They Dismiss Imagination
What Christians Miss When They Dismiss Imagination
Understanding God and our world needs more than bare reason and experience.
close