I heard someone say recently that it is not unusual for a 20-something/college service to have a lot of transitions and a lot of change (leadership, approach, style, etc). I wondered if this was just the nature of trying to connect with young adults or if it was something deeper.

One conclusion might be that folks in the 20’s are going through a lot of change. They are leaving college, starting careers, getting married, moving from place to place. Following this thinking you might assume that since the demographic you are serving is changing a lot, maybe the way you go about serving them changes. In some ways yes, but I would imagine that there might be a consistent approach underneath unless there was something else going on.

During the conversation, it was also mentioned that these frequent transitions and changes that are characteristic of a young adult gathering is something new. Something new in that the approach used to be more stable 20-30 years ago.

My naive impression is that this characteristic is due to something deeper. That maybe it is a symptom of a larger cultural shift that young people are feeling more acutely than other demographics here in the US. There’s plenty of discussion out there about this cultural shift. I’m not really sure what to call it. It seems like a lot of the words that have been used in the last few years have become loaded.

Regardless of what it is called, it makes one wonder what do churches do with it? How does an aging church go about engaging this cultural shift and attempting to meet the spiritual needs of a generation that is steeped in the transition? Style and content changes might be good for addressing generational gaps but I suspect that they are insufficient for engaging a cultural shift.

Perhaps as a church we need to start looking at ourselves as missionaries in a foreign culture. How would we go about trying to bring the gospel to this generation in a way that connects with them? What would it look like?

I’m not really sure what it would look like. What characteristics would the approach have? This is a generation that is smart and skeptical. They are also waking up from some bad dreams. Like the dream of endless economic expansion and prosperity for all. The dream of technology and science solving all of our problems. They are skeptical. And not just of the stories they have been living under, but of the structures and leaders as well.

Maybe the approach would be less centralized and hierarchical. Perhaps it would involve conversations that are many to many instead of one to many. Would some of the participants take vows of some form or another to deepen their commitment (some might even share a common purse)? Would a meal be incorporated into the gathering? There might be more creative expression– paintings, murals, poems, sculptures, songs, stories, etc. Would it be diverse in class, age, and ethnicity? Perhaps it would welcome homosexuals. Maybe the gathering would regularly welcome older members of the community (cross generation community is a longing I often hear expressed).

Finally, I think the gathering would regularly include conversations and reflections about how our culture has captured our imaginations in ways that our creator did not intend. I often wonder if this is the place where the journey towards oneness with our creator and the discovery of our authentic self begins.

What do you think?