News / Education
LifeWay conference focuses on young adults
Successful adult ministry requires churches to adapt, change
Attendees of the conference – ministers and young adult leaders from across the country – gathered at the home office of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tenn., to find out ways their churches can address the impending crisis.
Bill Craig, director of LifeWay’s business and ministry development area said that boomers – the generation of Americans born between 1946 and 1964 which make up about 26 percent of the U.S. population – want their lives to matter and want to make networks and connections that will meet their needs. Churches can’t just offer a bus trip to this group and expect them to come.
Churches will have to help boomers find meaning in their relationships to the church and to each other if they want the boomers to become and stay engaged. In addition, churches must find ways to help this generation invest their lives in significant ministries.
Emerging seniors
Dan Allen, minister to Legacy Adults 55-plus at McGregor Baptist Church, Fort Myers, Fla., said that when he went on staff at the church, he discovered how complex the transition from median adult to older adults was for his people.
"At McGregor, it was so that at 55, I was suddenly in the same group as my 78-year-old mother-in-law," he said. "Now, I love my mother-in-law and we have a great relationship, but we don’t share the same interests or want to do the same things."
In ministering to this group of emerging seniors, he said there are few things to note. They are not ready to be called "senior" adults, thinking about retirement or ready to move into 55-plus communities. They are willing to commit to short-term projects, want to be involved in significant ministry and engage in celebrative worship.
Many adults in this age groups are the "sandwich generation," dealing with children still at home and aged parents who also need their care. "They need help with the family situations," Allen said. "This takes up a tremendous amount of their time and resources."
Jason Hayes, LifeWay’s young adult ministry specialist, said ministry solutions to reach young adults need to be found sooner than later.
"You think about the impact [young adults] are making in our world in every realm and it is increasingly great," he said. "But it isn’t so much happening in the church. The number of baptized younger adults in the Southern Baptist Convention is down from about 100,000 to 35,000 in a decade. The trend holds true in other denominations as well."
Hayes said there are four key distinctions that are core issues to younger adults: community, depth, responsibility and connection.
"We heard in our research from both churched and unchurched young adults who said they wanted to go beyond the normal "hellos" and congeniality of church," he said. "They wanted to go beyond the geographic location of community and connect with social geography. This generation has more interest in community than anything that could be put on any menu in any coffeeshop or restaurant. It is not the product but the experience."
LifeWay President and CEO Thom S. Rainer followed Hayes’ presentation by explaining research that shows most young adult church dropouts simply do not believe the church holds an essential place in their lives. Rainer revealed the top 10 reasons young adults drop out.
"These [reasons] are not surprising by any stretch but they do show overarching theme," he said. "The theme is that young adults are saying ‘church is not essential to my life.’ The local church is more important than any other institution, yet we’ve communicated over the last several years that church is a choice and they are choosing to drop out of church."
Rainer said it is important for churches to simplify the discipleship process by simplifying what they do, deepening the Bible study experience, raising expectations of church involvement and focusing outward through service and evangelism.
"I am pessimistic about the current state of the local church but optimistic about the future state," Rainer said. "God is waiting on us to raise the bar. As we do we will keep this younger generation instead of losing it."
According to Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research and author of the soon-to-be-released Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches that Reach Them (coauthored with Hayes and Rick Stanley), the challenge for churches is not to change what they believe in order to make Christianity more palatable to those with pluralistic viewpoints, but to more effectively communicate those beliefs with this generation of unchurched young adults.
"Too many churches choose their traditions over their children and grandchildren," he said. "I just don’t believe that the standard pick-up evangelism lines we’ve used for all these years will work with this generation. I think it’s going to require long-term conversations and relationships."
Stetzer added that the young unchurched have no problem believing that Christ arose. But they also believe that Buddha walked on water and Mohammed healed people. They believe almost anything, but it doesn’t lead to salvation through Christ.
"Don’t leave this conference thinking if you make your church and yourself cool, you’ll attract young adults," Stetzer said. "The answer is to make your church more godly and true to the Word of God. That is what will draw young adults."
Alan Raughton, LifeWay’s lead adult ministry specialist and coordinator of the AMI conference, said the event was developed by applying to the church information learned from LifeWay Research. By the end of the conference, participants were able to develop a plan to take back to their churches and use to improve their adult ministries.
"If they didn’t get to do those practical steps here, when they got home the tyranny of the urgent would take over and they might not get to plan," Raughton said. "We want them to have a plan for reaching these adults."
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