What is the secret to a successful Young Adult Ministry?

Well, it probably is not really a secret, but one of the best ways to do young adult ministry is relationships.  Relationships are at the heart of everything that makes ministry effective.  Bible studies need relationships.  Small groups need relationships.  Accountability groups need relationships.  Fun and fellowship times need relationships.  Every part of your young adult ministry requires relationships.

So the maybe-not-so-secret secret of young adult ministry is relationships.  But that then begs the question: What is the secret to successful relationships?

Assuredly, there are a lot of things that go into having good relationships.  But one of the most important things is often the most difficult.  What do relationships need the most to succeed?  Time.

Time. Time. Time.

Relationships need time.  Relationships have to have time.  Do not think that you can have amazing relationships with the people in your young adult ministry if you are not willing to put in the time and not patient enough to take the time.  Time lets us journey through the different seasons of life with each other.  Time lets us help each other through the ups and downs.  Time lets us see who we really are and genuinely share life with each other.

Successful ministry needs relationships.

Successful relationships need time.

Commit to adding these things to your young adult ministry.

Maybe you are a youth pastor who was given the charge of doing young adult ministry, as well – and you are just struggling to find the time to do it right.
Maybe you are a young adult leader who has just started a ministry at your church, and it just does not seem like it is getting off the ground.
Maybe you are a veteran young adult leader who has been doing this forever, and it doesn’t seem like you are making any difference.

Well, whether you find yourself identifying with one of these situations or if you are in a young adult ministry that is doing great – I have a message for you today: Keep doing what you are doing.

Your young adult ministry means more than you know.  Recently, I was at a young adult retreat where one of our young adults was sharing with some high schoolers about our young adult ministry.  While I thought that the group didn’t mean too much to this individual who came sometimes and was sort of involved (but nothing too special, I thought…), he began to speak passionately about what the group meant to him.  He said how he did not connect anywhere with church after high school and just wandered around for a long time.  He didn’t feel like he had any community.  He was becoming disengaged with God.  But then he found this group that really liked him and provided him a place just to be himself.  He absolutely loved our group.  And I had no idea that it meant so much to him.

So let this serve as an encouragement.  Whether you think you are doing great or not – keep going.  Your ministry means more than you know.  Your ministry is more important than you know.  Sometimes you don’t know what is going on in the lives of those around you, and you simply need to continue serving and loving your young adults.

Because it means more than you know….

Relationships. It starts and ends with relationships. This is the most important piece of anything that we do with Church.  Whether it be church service, outreach event, youth group activity, potluck or Bible study – relationships are an important piece of everything that we do at Church.  Relationships make it easier to have good discussions, to get deeper and more honest with issues, and to keep people involved in your Bible study even if they do not feel like it some weeks.

Re-something with God. While it might seem obvious to say, surprisingly it isn’t.  A good young adult Bible study needs to include God in the purest forms.  Prayer.  Bible reading.  Theological conversation.  The content of the study must be about God.  Deep down inside, this is what people want.  Deep down inside, they crave something spiritual.  This is a perfect time to satisfy those cravings.  Let God be the “meat” of your Bible study – and make no apologies for it (although I apologize because I could not think of a good word starting with “r” for this one…).

Relevance. Here’s a big one: a good young adult Bible study has to be something that is worthwhile and relevant to people’s lives.  It has to be something that they can easily plug into their own reality and experiences.  There has to be elements of relevance in the content and context of the Bible study, or else you will lose people as quickly as you gain them.

Response. A call to action.  A challenge.  Something to do.  We need to not treat our young adults like babies or kids or teenagers.  They do not just want to be entertained. T hey want a chance to respond and put their faith into action.  So always include a way for them to respond to the content that they are hearing.

Add in some cookies, coffee, and a few well-placed ice-breaker games – and you are well on your way to having a great young adult Bible study.

God bless!

Whether your ministry is just getting off the ground, has never gotten off the ground, or is waaaay up above the ground and doing great – there are two things that your young adult ministry should always keep as a central focus.  Community with God and Community with People.

Community with God. Young adults want to connect with God.  Some young adults were able to have experiences with God in church in their younger years, but then they lost touch with God and church.  Other young adults have never had any experiences with God, but they sense that there is something more out there for them.  Young adults want to connect with something that is bigger than them.  They want to experience God in real, powerful, and authentic ways.  They want to experience a connection and community with God because they know that they are missing it in their lives.  Young adults want community with God.

Community with People. Young adults want to connect with people.  The young adult life is such a transitional phase.  Many young adults are moving around or have moved away from home.  They have been in very solid situations (high school, college, etc.) and then required to shift out of those communities to start a life on their own.  Young adults are still finding out who they are and what their lives are going to be all about.  As such, they are seeking community with people.  They want to have a group of committed people around them that care about them.  They want people to share their story and journey through this young adult life with them.  They want to connect with a community of people.

So how is your young adult ministry doing meeting these two needs?

Maybe your church is doing great on the God-side of things but not so great on the people-side of things.  Maybe your church is doing great with fellowship and community stuff, but you have not put a lot of time into helping them connect with God.  Whether you are doing great at things or not great at things – take some time today to refocus your ministry on meeting these two needs that all young adults have in their lives.

Community with God.  Community with People.

It is all about the mindset.  Think about it this way.  Many people right now view churches the way that they would view a restaurant.  The restaurant (church) is there for them.  They go to a restaurant that they believe they will like, and then people judge it accordingly.  How was the food?  How was the service?  How was the ambiance?  The restaurant (the church) and the staff (the pastors) are there to make this experience the most enjoyable thing for them.  And if it isn’t quite to their liking – then you just go to a different restaurant.

Things shouldn’t be this way.  This is a terrible mindset to have about the church; unfortunately, this is the reality for many church-goers today.  So what should our mindset be instead of this?

We should view church the way that we view a kitchen.  When you are working and making a meal in a kitchen, everything is totally up to you.  If something is going to happen – then it is up to you to make it happen.  You can always get some different ingredients and different cooking utensils, but if something is going to happen – it is your responsibility.  You make the meal what it is.  You make the experience what it is.

And that is the difference right there.  People will not go church hopping as much if they change their mindset from the “restaurant” to the “kitchen”.  When our mindset is the “restaurant”, we remain detached and in a critical mood, always judging things to see if they are up to our standards.  But when our mindset is the “kitchen”, we take ownership of our actions and our churches, always taking it upon ourselves to make things better.

Young adults, we need to have a kitchen mindset.  We cannot go into our churches with a restaurant mindset and be constantly judging and critiquing and changing.  We need to have a kitchen mindset that encourages us to get our hands dirty and make a difference in our churches.

So where is your mindset: restaurant or kitchen?

(p.s. All this talk is making me hungry… …)

Just FYI – I wrote a blog post for the new Church of the Nazarene young adult blog.  Check it out here – http://nazareneblogs.org/lhardin/2010/06/13/why-are-we-doing-this-blog/

Thanks!

I have heard the reasons, the difficulties, and the excuses.  I have witnessed the attitudes and the actions of church leaders.  I have seen firsthand the problems and challenges that come through trying to initiate and maintain a healthy young adult ministry.  But even with all those facts, there is an obvious reality: we need better young adult ministries in our local churches.

But we should never do something just to do something – so it begs an apt question.  Why do we even need young adult ministry in the first place?

The answer: a common journey.

Young adults are in such a weird time in their lives that they need to share this journey with other young adults who are going through the same things.  It is such a unique stage in life that our young adults have to have others around them who understand the journey that they are on.  But not only understand it – they need to journey with them through this.

This weekend, I was a part of a church trip to introduce graduating high school seniors to our young adult ministry.  It was honestly a beautiful and humbling thing to be able to talk to the seniors about the challenges, excitements, and situations that they will be facing in the days ahead as a young adult.  But the best part was that we were able to covenant with them that we would share this journey with them – a common journey.  It was a cool moment.

At the heart, we need young adult ministries in our local churches so that our young adults have a place to share a common journey.

Does your church have a place for your young adults to share a common journey?

But there is hope.

Church is church – no matter if it is in the children’s ministry or youth ministry or adult ministry.  Church is still church.  But there is something to be said about development, too.  You can’t just say “Well, church is church; so let’s put this Junior High kid in the Senior Adult class.  It’s all church, right?  So he’ll be fine…”.  Development plays a part in how we effectively minister to our congregations.   But we do need to balance that with the fact that it should not feel like you are going to a different church when you are done with youth group and you enter this whole new world of ‘adult ministries’.  Simply put: Our churches need to improve on our transitions and transitioning of our youth to young adult ministries and the church in general.

I truly believe this looks different for each local church congregation and context.  But here are two suggestions that I would like to offer:

1. Transitions – There need to be some landmark points in the journey of ministry to our youth where they know that they are ready for something different.  Whether this is a “graduation” ceremony or whatever it is, our young people need to know that they are now ready to take their own faith more seriously and personally.  It is theirs.  They are now ready for the next step.  And then our young people literally need to have people come around them to help them with this transition (because it needs to be viewed as an actual transition).  Youth pastors need to prepare their students and guide them with these next steps in their journey of church.  Additionally, there needs to be people on the other side who can guide them into what their church has next for them: young adult ministry, adult Sunday School class, whatever it might be.  There needs to be preparation for the transition, landmark moments to identify and validate the transition, and people on both sides to help facilitate the transition.

2. Transitioning – This is actually a lot different than ‘transitions’.  Transitioning is the process of the literal transition that is taking place.  This means that the youth pastor does not fall off the face of the earth.  This means that older adults do not automatically assume that these 18 and 19-year olds are now ready to be tithing, attending, supportive adult members of the church.  The congregation needs to help these young people through the process of transitioning.  A lot is going on in the life of a young adult as they come out of the safe cocoon of youth ministry.  Their lives, their faith, their mindset, their status, and they themselves are truly transitioning.  And they need the congregation to recognize this and help them through it.

We can do it, friends.  We can make the drop-off after youth group a lot less, well, vertical.  We can help the young people in our churches to ease into these next few years of life in the church and their crazy faith journey through youngadulthood.  Transitions and transitioning.  Let’s make it much more intentional.

Here we go.

Well, those are definitely all parts of the puzzle of young adult ministry.  But there is a better way to describe the overall nature of young adult ministry.  Just two simple words have summed up my experience thus far in my life with young adult ministry: beautiful complication.

Beautiful complication.

Is it frustrating and difficult and seemingly impossible?  Yes.  Definitely.  So where is the beauty in that?

The beauty comes in the relationships.  The beauty comes in the community.  The beauty comes through the connections with people – the young adults themselves.  It’s messy. It’s crazy.  It’s unpredictable.  And that is a-ok.

So the next time that you think about young adult ministry and you start to think of all those common descriptions for it – frustrating, difficult, hard, impossible… Don’t be discouraged by those things.  But live in the beauty of the relationships that come in the midst of young adult ministry.

Young adult ministry = beautiful complication.

I told him this: “Keep doing what works.”  If you have some great community time when you play games or eat dinner or things like that – then keep doing it.  Just keep doing that.  There is nothing in the rules that says you have to do things at church for it to count.  There is nothing in the rules that says you have to sit in a circle and do a Bible lesson for it to be an official spiritual gathering.  You can show and share the love of Christ when you are bowling, eating dinner, or playing Catch Phrase.  And that is totally okay.

I want to encourage you to keep doing what works.  Don’t be something that you are not.  Keep connecting with people in community – in any way that you can find it.  Insert the love of Christ and the Kingdom of God into everything that you do with your group – whether it is at church or not at church.

But feel the freedom to keep doing what works.  Keep doing what works.  Keep doing what works.

You can do it.