More than two-thirds of churchgoing young adults drop out between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two.² Despite some contemporary practitioners devaluing the sermon as part of the worship experience, ninety percent of unchurched people choose a church based on preaching.³ Additionally, among younger generations, the pastor’s sermon still remains a significant factor in deciding to leave or remain in church as they age. In Essential Church, Thom and Sam Rainer found that only forty-eight percent of young adults who drop out of church found the sermons engaging and forty-two percent found them relevant.⁴ Of those who remain in church, sixty-five percent found the sermons engaging and sixty-three percent found them relevant.  From this data and interviews with the young generation of dropouts, the researchers drew the conclusion that preachers cannot expect teens to “grow into” messages aimed at middle-aged churchgoers. Similarly, the churches that reach young adults gear their message to young adults, whether intentionally or because the preachers are in a similar life stage. Churches must gear their message to the younger demographic of late teens and young adults if they hope to retain those age groups.

Ed Stetzer lists the ten most frequent values of a successful postmodern church: “being unashamedly spiritual, promoting incarnational ministry, engaging in service, valuing experiential praise, preaching narrative expository messages, appreciating and participating in ancient patterns, visualizing worship, connecting with technology, living community, and leading by transparency and team.”⁵ The successful churches above exhibited these values. In regards to preaching, these values were clearly relevant and exhibited by the churches visited.

Despite the claims of some critics, churches that are reaching young adults do not water down the message. The messages are direct, challenging and Biblical. Promoting incarnational ministry means being authentic and transparent. Preachers in these congregations speak with authenticity—not pretentiousness. The preaching often calls for members to serve. The churches studied tended to preach narrative expository messages at least part of the time, offering story more often that just information. Each church focused on living as community. While accomplishing this through small groups, each church preached or mentioned from the pulpit about the significance and necessity of being connected in community. I now firmly believe that while small group ministry is not always young adult ministry, young adult ministry is small group ministry, and small group ministry is at the core of every substantial young adult ministry. Effective ministries also lead with authenticity and as a team. Even Mercy Hill, with a solo pastor who preaches most weeks, obviously has a committed core of volunteers who own and shape the fulfillment of the vision.

In evaluating a worship experience, the authors of the Millennium Matrix ask the question, “How does what you did create an experience of the Gospel for digital culture?”⁶ I expected more visual use of technology during the services. Ironically, even the churches with high technology aptitudes did little to integrate them into the message. Churches tend to be either very high tech within their services or intentionally low tech in a high tech world. While the larger churches make more use of multimedia during their services, it is not clear that this is entirely an issue of resources or capabilities. Whether high tech or low tech, those reaching young adults create an experience of the Gospel. Larger venues produce an exciting, concert-like, exciting experience. The smaller size of come churches produces an intimacy difficult to duplicate in a larger setting. Although different from one another, in both settings an experience of the Gospel is created.

A Ministry in Transition
One ministry (I’m not naming it here intentionally–and please don’t post your guesses!) we visited was one of the most talked about and vibrant ministries reaching young adults in this part of the United States. The founder started the ministry to help retain old High School ministry kids from his youth group. When I first went to the ministry several years ago, there were two services to accommodate the crowd of over 1000 people, including high school and college age young adults. Since I had personally witnessed so many young adults attending during my previous visit to the ministry, we visited with the intention of including it in this project. However, it became apparent that the ministry is in transition. The senior pastor of the sponsoring church went into the mission field and the pastor in charge of the ministry left to plant a church. In the transition time, the church elders re-visioned the ministry. Under their leadership and the church’s new pastor, the ministry changed to an age-specific ministry and expressly expects young adults to attend the regular Sunday services at both the sponsoring church and the young adult ministry.  Seventy five percent of the remaining 400 to 500 attendees left during this transition. Out of this, several other ministries in the area have launched to fill the gap.  A full discussion of this ministry and its struggle within the transition lies outside of the scope of this blog. However, it appears to exhibit the classic church-within-a-church struggle defined and discussed among young adult ministry practitioners. Often, the values and forms of ministry developed by successful ministries targeting young adults conflict with the sponsoring church and ultimately result in tensions or withdrawal of support if not handled carefully.

Women in Ministry Among Younger Generations
Of all the churches that met the criteria for this project, only one woman, Heather Zempel, was a part of the interviews. Heather grew up Southern Baptist. When she came on staff at NCC to develop the small group ministry, Mark Batterson asked her to preach on small groups. She spent two years researching the Scripture to make sure it was OK. Even now, people email or leave when she speaks. While Mark replies that they “don’t know what they’re missing,” Heather understands their quandary. Growing up Southern Baptist, it is part of her background too. Reprogramming an ingrained thought pattern rarely proves easy—even in a postmodern world.

For many, it is surprising that there are so few high profile female pastors among a generation that normally accepts females as equals. When asked why she thinks there aren’t more female preachers, Heather observes that women do better in smaller, intimate settings. Women often do not feel the need for a charismatic platform and thrive in small groups with both men and women, which may account for them finding themselves in a different role of church leadership. As an example, Heather notes that Margaret Feinburg recently spoke at their services. In the smaller venue, Ebenezers, she came across differently than at their larger venue, Union Station. NCC’s popular series, An Elephant in the Church, addresses topics often avoided in the church. At the time of our interview, they were considering the topic of women in the church and ministry, aka “The Pink Elephant”, as part of the series.

Suggestions for More Research
If beginning this project today, I would change several things. First, I would love to travel more in order to evaluate churches outside of our area. A limited travel budget and vacation time restricted us to churches within a five-hour drive. The advantage of staying within close proximity of our area is that the culture is likely to be similar to our current context. However, it would be interesting to explore the commonalities of ministries outside of the area, including international churches. Second, white males primarily led the churches recommended and evaluated. Exploring female led and ethnically diverse churches and how they deal with the same issues is of interest. Third, studying churches that do not retain young adults would be a useful exercise—especially churches within the same geographic area of churches that do reach young adults. Contrasting their approach with that of churches reaching young adults would test some of the assertions in this paper.

Each ministry evaluated could use more in depth research to understand why they are effective in reaching young adults. Doing so is well outside the scope of this project, but would be useful in understanding why young adults are attracted to and remain in churches. Also, research on the attendees would better reveal quantitative data on whether they primarily reach transfers, the unchurched or dechurched (those who have stopped going to church). Another interesting project would be to monitor the anonymous, declining, ministry mentioned earlier in this blog as it navigates its transition with the inherent tensions between generations and how they do ministry.

Preaching to Young Adults
Although the current cultural changes appear significant, every generation partly redefines worship. Len Wilson comments that many of his peers do not do so as purposefully “conducting ministry according to a particular epistemological paradigm.” Rather, a shift in the way ministry is done reflects what people innately know to be true.⁷  Our experience reveals this. While many intentionally target young adults, several churches indicate that who they attract is simply a byproduct of the way they do ministry. Although many older practitioners remain relevant and adapt to a changing culture, those native to the culture producing the current young adult population take the lead and often become successful church planters. As these practitioners age, it may become necessary to become more of a student of culture as they become missionaries to a culture outside their own. Ed Stetzer observes “good missionaries uncover the deeper issues—the underlying values, thought processes, and ideas of a culture or people group. Using this information, they develop a plan to reach them based on these deeper issues.”⁸ Over time, it will be interesting to observe changes and adaptations of the churches led by younger pastors. As they age, will they attract an older crowd and become less effective with younger generations? Or will they continue to adapt to a changing culture? Those of us who are no longer young adults must constantly study emerging generations in order to remain current in our understanding of culture. At this stage, many older leaders are learning from young practitioners. In the future, a reverse mentoring⁹ relationship may become necessary for those younger leaders.

Going into this project, I never expected to find the formula for preaching to and doing church among twenty-somethings. As Stetzer observes, “in a culture that thrives on diversity and disdains uniformity, there is no right way to plant a postmodern church. There is no single answer to reaching postmoderns because there is no one, stereotypical North American postmodern.”¹⁰ While the values of the majority of the culture are similar, younger generations are drawn to different approaches. God uses a variety of churches and methods to reach people. After all the church visits, I asked those who travelled with me, “If you had to choose a new church to go to every week, which one of the churches we visited for the interview project would you choose?” There was no consensus—even as they discussed the order in which they found them to be attractive. Each of the churches appealed to different members of our informal research team.

1. Dan Kimball, They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 214-215.
2. Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger, Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples (Nashville: Broadman Press, 2006), 3.
3. Thom S. Rainer, Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 56.
4. Thom S. Rainer and Sam S. Rainer, Essential Church: Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts (Nashville: Broadman Press, 2006), 130.
5. Ed Stetzer, Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2003), 137.
6. M. Rex Miller, The Millennium Matrix: Reclaiming the Past, Reframing the Future of the Church (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), 163.
7. Len Wilson and Jason Moore, Digital Storytellers: The Art of Communicating the Gospel in Worship (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 26.
8. Ed Stetzer, Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age, 112
9. Earl G. Creps, Reverse Mentoring: How Young Leaders Can Transform the Church and Why We Should Let Them (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).
10. Ed Stetzer, Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age, 130

Although popular today for churches to open or begin new services in movie theaters, National Community Church (NCC) adopted this approach to ministry out of necessity, before  the widespread acceptance of the idea. Real estate prices in Washington D.C. caused them to open up in a theater in a subway station. However, they continued to be innovative by purchasing their first piece of property, an old rundown building, to create a creative, high quality community coffeehouse, Ebenezers. AOL City Guide recently named Ebenezers the number one coffeehouse in Washington D.C.

As mentioned before in the discussion of Mercy Hill, there is an obvious cool factor about meeting in a movie theater-especially in a subway station. There is no “churchy” feel to the building and many young adults find it less intimidating to enter a movie theater or coffeehouse than a church. For the purpose of this project, timing made it impossible to do an onsite evaluation. So, Heather Zempel‘s sermon was evaluated through their podcast. However, previous visits with young adults to both the Union Station and Ebenezers Coffeehouse venues received extremely positive feedback.

Sermon Evaluation

Content and Delivery
Heather handled a few commonly used Scriptures and examined them in a fresh and lively way. Familiar Scriptures about Jesus were tied together and connected to the idea of community, encouraging friendships as a vehicle to share the Gospel effectively. Heather’s word usage was clear. Transitional elements moved the sermon from point to point fluidly. Her energetic demeanor and gestures, coupled with a clear voice, made the message audible and easy to understand.

Application and Effectiveness
The applications of the message were unambiguous, practical and relevant to multiple audiences. Listeners were challenged to connect with others in order to share Christ with them. The title provided an effective image for befriending people in the way Jesus did and contributed to making the message memorable.

Authenticity
Even in a video podcast, Heather’s passion and enthusiasm were contagious. Personal examples and self-deprecating humor gave the message a feeling of authenticity. Heather used personal stories appropriately. These stories brought life to the message while keeping the focus on Jesus—not Heather.

Multimedia and General Effectiveness
Surprisingly little multimedia was used during the sermon.  However, the imagery of the location, Ebenezers Coffeehouse, provides an appealing backdrop for the message. Multiple sites use this video for their proclamation. The main point was tailored to life at NCC and their upcoming small group semester. Challenging members to join a group to which they can bring a friend for evangelistic purposes clearly connected the message with the current life of the church.

Interview Summary

The demographic profile of NCC makes it unique, especially among Assemblies of God churches. NCC’s location shapes its demographic composition since many people relocate to Washington D.C. for or immediately after college. Seventy three percent of its congregants are unmarried young adults under thirty-five. Approximately twenty to twenty five percent of NCC attendees are college students. While excelling at reaching those coming into Washington D.C., NCC is increasing efforts at reaching those who grew up there.

Although they have become a model in the Assemblies of God for reaching young adults, as with other churches that successfully reach young adults, NCC does not specifically target young adults. It is a byproduct of the philosophies and practices of NCC. In the early days NCC’s staff consisted of people in their twenties and thirties who were predominantly single and attracted those similar to them. Since they value and utilize technology in order to engage culture, they continue to connect with young adults as NCC connects the message of Christ with culture.
Young adults stay connected to NCC because of its sense of community, perhaps because so many are coming to the area, leaving old friends behind and looking for new relationships and a place to belong. If successful in connecting young adults to Alpha or another small group, NCC finds these young adults have a much greater likelihood of remaining connected to the church. Since Washington D.C. is a transient city and much of their population originally comes from outside the area, their forty percent turnover rate comes as no surprise. Many who move away remark that they have difficulty finding a church community when they leave. The transient nature of their demographic creates an urgency that compels NCC to give ownership to potential small group and ministry leaders. This further connects young adults while extending the ministry of NCC.

Speakers
On the speaking schedule for thirty-eight weeks this year, Mark Batterson clearly preaches a majority of the time at NCC. Joel Schmidgall and Heather Zempel each preach five or six times a year. Every semester the campus pastors for each multisite location preach once. Guest speakers, including authors and well-known speakers, fill out the rest of the schedule.

Sermon Topics
At the end of every year, the staff of NCC takes time off together to plan. At this retreat, missions, discipleship, small groups and preaching strategies are all planned. While circumstances throughout the year change the plan, starting with a plan ensures a balanced spiritual diet and aligns the proclamation to other things going on in the church. Even after the retreat, collaboration continues. Brainstorming at the “big idea” meeting on Tuesdays includes the current and upcoming series. This time allows for creativity and input from the staff. Recently, the next series was put on hold in order to do the “Elephant in the Church” based on staff feedback.

This weekly meeting includes collaboration from the teaching team, media pastor and worship pastor. As the church has grown, the meeting size increased so that now a larger creative team is included occasionally to brainstorm on a series, but not weekly. Two favorite series that are included every year are “God at the Box Office” and “God at the Billboards”. Although some might suspect these are cheap attempts at relevancy, the series are deeply theological as they engage popular culture. Using music and movies lets NCC speak to the raw emotions people feel. And, since most adults in their twenties get their theology from those two media forms, the series which engage them are therefore the hardest hitting.
With so many pastors watching NCC as a model for ministry, Heather admonishes people trying to reach young adults to be themselves—knowing who they are and who they are not. A speaker can be who they are and still be relevant. Heather also reminds pastors to listen to young adults in order to avoid using their sermons to answer questions no one is asking and give them the chance to put their faith into action by leading.

When asked what makes their sermons well received, Heather lists three virtues. First, be yourself. People can tell when you are not being authentic and are less likely to receive the message. Second, use humor. NCC’s staff is comprised of naturally funny people. When giving tough talks, using humor, the speakers successfully lower the defenses of listeners. People also respond to self-deprecating humor. People can relate to inane mishaps and failures when hearing stories where the speakers experienced less than stellar moments. NCC speakers consciously use the third person when speaking, reminding listeners that they are not above the congregation—everyone is on the same journey to becoming like Christ. Another element of the sermons is painting a picture of what is possible if the hearers put the sermon into practice—building an Andy Stanley “So What?” moment.

Extension of Ministry through Technology
Heather reports that Mark Batterson says, “If it’s worth preaching it’s worth podcasting.” NCC demonstrates this value by podcasting the audio and video of its messages. The podcasts provide an opportunity for potential attendees to evaluate the church before coming. Also, since their church attendees travel a lot making it hard to be there each week, podcasting keeps those traveling connected to the church. An unexpected result of video podcasting, NCC recently learned of a church in Africa meeting in a home and watching the NCC video podcast. In addition to podcasting, NCC’s staff maintains multiple blogs. They blog for leadership issues, announcements and song lists. Staff members use Facebook to communicate with others and maintain an official NCC Facebook group.

NCC’s use of the web extends their proclamation well beyond their local congregation. The leadership of NCC feels called to give away their resources, becoming an opensource church. Sermons, video, promotional postcards and other materials are available for free and are provided in a modifiable format. NCC leadership hopes others do not simply copy their materials; rather they desire to be a church that resources others for ministry, hoping the materials spark creativity. Many people in local congregations will benefit from these resources even if they are never aware of their source. The lead pastor of NCC, Mark Batterson, even remarks that others have done a better job with the materials than NCC.

Influences
Heather grew up under several influences that helped shape her preaching. Among them she lists her one-time pastors Fred Wolf and Larry Stockstill of Bethany World Prayer Center. As an NCC member she lists Mark Batterson as well. Growing up doing community theater, Heather always felt comfortable with platform communication. Currently, she finds herself reading a lot of books to grow as a communicator, including Craig Groeschel, Mark Driscoll and Andy Stanley. As for influences on Mark Batterson, the lead communicator, Heather reports that Mark lists his own father-in-law and pastor, Bob Schmidgall and Dick Foth.

God Stories
The results of NCC’s efforts at communicating the Gospel are far reaching. The report of a “win” begins every staff meeting, reminding staff members that their efforts are not wasted.¹  Almost every week someone brings an email that talks about how the sermons changed someone’s life. Along with making commitments to follow Christ for the first time, people have changed jobs, read the Bible for the first time, jumped into a small group and started serving after being moved to action in a sermon.

1. Andy Stanley, Reggie Joiner, and Lane Jones, 7 Practices of Effective Ministry (Sisters, Ore: Multnomah Publishers, 2004).

Located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Valley Church originally existed as Christian Life Community Church. Under Eric Miller’s leadership, the church transformed into Valley Church. Eric’s brother Craig served on staff at a large Assemblies of God church near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After leaving staff, Craig relocated to Allentown to work alongside his brother at Valley Church. When Craig relocated, a group of young adults decided to move as well. Quitting their jobs, they moved across the state to find new employment and serve as volunteers at Valley Church. While not technically a church plant, this variation of the Team Planting model demonstrates the commitment to community and mission, which affects the nature of the church.  When asked about the change in dynamics, Eric notes that the contingent from Harrisburg brings servanthood and loyalty to the table—but to others it can appear to be Craig’s posse. The addition of Craig to the staff frees Eric from being solo pastor and having to have a hand in everything. Craig’s unstructured and creative nature balances Eric’s structured and academic personality. Their chemistry and complementary relationship creates a unique dynamic that others notice and appreciate.¹

Sermon Evaluation

Content and Delivery
The feel of being a part of a community permeates Valley Church. The sermon continues this feeling of connectedness. As Eric begins to speak, his easy going but intense style captivates the audience and they hang on every spoken word. While using many contemporary examples, such as the Olympics and using Caller ID to screen calls, the text is addressed in depth. During the week we visited, the church was in the middle of the “Red” series, discussing the words and parables of Jesus. While the material was very familiar, the air of passion and creative use of examples maintained interest. Passages were explored in depth. Although the exegetical preparation beforehand was evidenced in the depth of the material, the sermon was delivered in an clear manner using familiar, understandable language. While not overly academic, the sermon engaged the mind as well as the heart. A clear voice, with hints of inflection showing concern and heartfelt emotion helped the sermon feel like one was listening to a friend over coffee.

Application and Effectiveness
The sermon series title, “Red”, successfully captured attention and focused the attention to the words of Jesus. Throughout the sermon, points for application were clear. Although a mostly younger crowd, the message is relevant for multiple audiences. The points were poignant and effective. From a Pentecostal perspective, the sermon appeared anointed and personally affected me.

Authenticity
The content of the message clearly affected the speaker. The heartfelt, passionate delivery served to draw in listeners. An appropriate amount of personal transparency gave the speaker an authentic voice to his congregation.

Multimedia and General Effectiveness
Valley Church primarily relies on images posted on the screen for its multimedia. The use of images enhances the message. While this satisfies visual learners, they provide outlines for people who learn in that way.  The message served as an encouraging reminder to evaluate one’s life and be effective in the Kingdom of God by becoming like Jesus.

Interview Summary

Driving twenty or thirty minutes to attend a church is not a hindrance to the mobile population of the Lehigh Valley. Many people drive across the valley to attend the church. The facility in which Valley Church currently meets is in Catasaqua, an area in transition. As older families move out, younger, first-time buyers move in to Catasaqua. Valley Church’s demographic does not closely parallel the community, but is attracting people from the local community. As Valley Church establishes itself in the area, some younger families from the current neighborhood have become part of the church community.

Valley Church does not specifically target young adults. Rather, young adults are attracted to the church’s style of ministry. Eric and Craig both have a young adult mindset even though neither fits in that demographic any longer. As they and their ministry teams minister from who they are, this authenticity attracts young adults.

As newer young adults have entered into the community at Valley Church, they cite authenticity and vulnerability as reasons they stay. The staff and leaders invite others to journey through life together, making relationships the essential connecting point of the church. The church intentionally avoids a lot of programming, preferring to encourage natural interactions and friendships. Creating an environment in lobby where people are intentional about fostering and initiating relationships helps remove obstacles to community and retains those who crave authentic relationships. These relationships are further developed and maintained through small groups offered throughout the week.

Speakers
Eric preaches most of the time, with Craig preaching about once every two months. Although capable of leading worship, Eric prefers to operate in his stronger gifting, preaching. While Eric and Craig brainstorm ideas together and often “bounce things off one another”, Eric remains the main communicator.

Sermon Topics
When fresh out of Bible College, Eric began pastoring and did not start working on his sermon until Tuesday or Wednesday. Currently, he plans ahead. Most comfortable with expositionally preaching through a book of the Bible, as of late, he favors doing more topical sermons. While being Pentecostal means being led by the Spirit, Eric finds that God uses ideas that might start with an idea from a book, a David Crowder album or directly from the Scriptures. After the initial idea, he immerses himself in the Scriptures. Citing Andy Stanley, Eric attempts to communicate one big idea each week in a relevant manner. Some weeks the message develops easily, other weeks, it takes hard work to develop the message.
Eric advises others trying to reach young adults to be relevant, creative, authentic, honest and vulnerable. These values resonate with young adults weary of an image-obsessed culture. Many of the contemporary systems that reached boomers effectively do not connect with successive generations. Five points that all begin with “A” does not work anymore. The style of the preacher communicates beyond the content. Young adults don’t mind a challenge. However, communicating something that sounds like “I’m better than you” creates unnecessary distance between the preacher and the hearer. All of this must be accomplished while changing things around to keep it fresh and retain interest.

Extension of Ministry through Technology
As is the trend, Valley Church podcasts their messages and includes an easily found link on their website. While Eric, Craig and key volunteers are all on Facebook and have a Valley Church Facebook group, Eric finds the church’s proclamation has been most visibly extended through his blog. Eric’s blog launched from the “text” series by using Psalm 119. With church attendance of 110 people the Sunday the series launched, seventy-five to eighty hits on the blog were recorded on Monday. Hits tapered off during the week, with thee same scenario on the following Monday. The church knew that they were reaching more people by the blog than they were with their Wednesday night service before cancelling the service. People have responded positively to the blog and keep coming back for a complement to the proclamation and as a discipleship resource.

Influences
Eric’s biggest influences as a preacher have changed through the years. In the past, he would have referenced his Bible College professors for their influences and Chuck Swindall for his verse-by-verse expositional style. Today, he lists Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschell as some of his biggest influences. He also appreciates the communication styles of Rob Bell and Erwin McManus.

God Stories
Effective preaching is judged by its results. While attracting some unchurched people making commitments to Jesus, Valley Church is attracting the dechurched people feeling burned by church. They are giving church one last try and finding an authentic expression that resonates with them. People from other traditions remark that they feel new life in their faith at Valley Church. Marriages are coming back together. Addicts are set free. People who had given up on church remark that they feel challenged and are growing in their faith.

1. Ed Stetzer, Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2003), 64-69.

“What type of preaching reaches young adults?” is a question I ask myself repeatedly as I attempt to speak and preach about faith in Christ in a way that connects with twenty-somethings.¹  With a variety of styles and values available to a speaker, how and what they choose reflects their own beliefs and values and also influences how the message is heard. The message the majority of American churches preach is not connecting with young adults. Church attendance among the youngest generations continues to decline. Reggie McNeal cites a study by Dawson McAlister, a nationally known youth specialist, on persons actively involved in high school youth groups as teenagers. Ninety percent of those actively participating as teenagers no longer attend church by their sophomore year in college. One third of those never return to church as they mature.² Using statistics by David Barrett, Stephen Lim notes that globally, the number of committed Christians continues to grow two times faster than the world population. In the United States, however, younger generations decreasingly identify themselves as Christians.³ Thom Rainer surveyed 1300 people in each of the four generational groups. Rainer found that sixty-five percent of Builders (born before 1946), thirty-five percent of Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), fifteen percent of Generation X (born between 1965 and 1976) and only four percent of Generation Y (born between 1976 and 1994) responded to survey questions in such a way as to be identified as born again.⁴  There is an obvious disconnection between the church and younger generations. This series of blogs is about a journey to observe, experience, evaluate and reflect on ministries and churches that are attracting young adults.

Initial Criteria

In order to limit biases in church and ministry selection, several well-respected people in the Penn-Del District Office of the Assemblies of God were emailed. Their recommendations of churches were sought since it is my current District and ministry context. The initial selection criteria for the paper included 1) a recommendation from someone within the District hierarchy since it might be assumed that they would have a greater knowledge of ministries in the region 2) the home church of the one making the recommendation was not considered 3) any recommendations of churches or ministries led by or staffed by family members of those making recommendations were not eligible 4) since the long term effectiveness of proclamation should be the goal of any ministry, ministries must have been in existence and reaching young adults for more than a year. Churches meeting these criteria were selected, reviewed and contacted about the possibility of interviews with a member of the preaching team.

Criteria Changes

On our first trip, we encountered two twenty-something female baristas at a Starbucks before we visited Mercy Hill Church with Keith Davis. Tom, my videographer, asked them if they had heard about the church. We talked about the project and what we were doing. Before leaving for the next interview, we stopped at the same Starbucks and both baristas asked how it went. During the process of talking about the church and the project, one of them asked one of the most profound questions of the trip, “Where do you find churches like that?” Her question haunted me all the way to our next interview. This is a perfect example of a twenty-something who is interested in the kind of spiritual communities we’re visiting, but would have trouble finding one even though she works a few miles from where one meets. At the next interview, I related this story to the interviewee and he offered the same answer we did–it’s a network of people who know other people. While no easy solution to this dilemma exists, it did cause me to rethink my criteria and include Valley Church in Allentown. Although it did not receive a recommendation from any District official surveyed, I personally know the staff and some core volunteers. Since I would recommend the church to a twenty-something, the church was included in the church list.

Methodology

The websites of the selected churches were then used to get a rough idea of how the ministry is done. An interview with either the lead pastor or another member of the preaching team was conducted after an onsite evaluation of a sermon delivered by the person to be interviewed. When possible, the interviews were filmed the day of the sermon. In some cases, it was impossible to schedule an interview on the same day as the sermon. Also, due to scheduling difficulties, one sermon evaluation, Heather Zempel of National Community Church, was performed through a video podcast instead of part of an onsite evaluation.

Roadtrips are more fun when you bring along friends. In each of the onsite interviews, I invited along one twenty-something to be the cameraperson. Additionally, I invited a small group of twenty-somethings along for the journey, asking each to do a sermon evaluation as well. Since I am no longer a twenty-something, this provides another dimension to the evaluation. Citing each person’s evaluation would be a cumbersome task. Therefore, the observations of the twenty-somethings are incorporated into the general sermon evaluation.

More than Preaching

Preaching is not done in isolation from other parts of the church. A church’s philosophy of ministry affects the preaching as well as how they “do church” in other areas. Churches that retain young adults preach a specific way that attracts or retains young adults. But their other structures complement and reinforce the message they proclaim. This interconnection requires that preaching and practice of ministry be discussed together. While the interviews were conducted to discuss the preaching, other aspects of the churches were discussed in order to get a fuller picture of what connects with young adults. This series of blogs will tell their stories as it discusses their preaching.

While there was an initial list of questions posed to the interviewees, they were encouraged to tell their story, not just quickly answer. So as to get a fuller picture of how each church approaches preaching, subsequent questions were posed after their initial answers. Although difficult to quantify, perhaps the greatest measure of the effectiveness of a ministry is the lives it changes. At the conclusion of each interview, we simply asked, “What are some God Stories? What is going on here as a result of the preaching ministry?”

1. Although variously defined, young adult normally refers to people approximately 18-35 years old. This term is often used interchangeably with twenty-somethings. However, for the purpose of this series of blogs, twenty-somethings shall refer to the subset of young adults approximately 18-29.
2. Reggie McNeal, The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 4.
3. Lim, Stephen. “Leading Missional Ministry.” Class notes for Core 2 Course at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Springfield, MO, June 11-14, 2007.
4. Reggie McNeal, The Present Future, 4