What Do Your Young People Think About Their Church?
Recently, I met with some of our church's college age people to see if I could get an answer to a question I had. Our church is going through a time of reevaluating our ministry and I wanted to see how they and those of their generation felt about church. We met in our temporary rented office, which I tried to make as "artsy" (my CD player playing contempo worship) as you can considering where we were meeting. I brought some pizzas, a few drinks, and a note book to record the night and for the next couple of hours we talked about the church.
With college-age you never know what you're going to get but these guys came ready to share. They were open and honest and loved to laugh. Their views were insightful and well thought through. In fact, I was really encouraged with what they had to say. They no doubt knew what they liked and didn't like about the church. For me, the best part of the evening was getting to know four individuals outside of Sunday morning.
It's important to know what younger people are thinking about their church. I always hear from older church attenders,"how can we keep our young people?" and my answer to their question is ask them what they like or don't like about their church. The key is to ask with the willingness to listen. Some of their answers I had heard from other college-age groups but some of what they shared was new to me. There are a number of churches (buildings) in our area that are up for sale and some congregations will most likely dissolve, but I have a hunch that if they would have asked this simple question to their young people, they might have avoided the final outcome of their church.
With college-age you never know what you're going to get but these guys came ready to share. They were open and honest and loved to laugh. Their views were insightful and well thought through. In fact, I was really encouraged with what they had to say. They no doubt knew what they liked and didn't like about the church. For me, the best part of the evening was getting to know four individuals outside of Sunday morning.
It's important to know what younger people are thinking about their church. I always hear from older church attenders,"how can we keep our young people?" and my answer to their question is ask them what they like or don't like about their church. The key is to ask with the willingness to listen. Some of their answers I had heard from other college-age groups but some of what they shared was new to me. There are a number of churches (buildings) in our area that are up for sale and some congregations will most likely dissolve, but I have a hunch that if they would have asked this simple question to their young people, they might have avoided the final outcome of their church.
This entry was posted
on Monday, January 4, 2010 at 3:46 PM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
» Post a Comment