Since I use Google Docs to type up the notes each week, you can view the all of the handouts here.
(If you’re not familiar with Google Docs, it’s basically an online word processing program. Check out the Wikipedia article on Google Docs.)

We went over the basics of the purpose of Inductive Bible Study and the purpose of this class–to increase proficiency at studying Scripture using the Inductive Bible Study Method and teach how to write questions in order to take people through the process with you. It’s geared to people who want to learn to study the text in more depth or who want to lead discussion of Scripture in Small Groups or Bible Studies.

After this class, the participant should be able to:

• read Scripture with greater depth of insight,
• be skilled at using basic tools (books & online resources) for Bible study and
• be capable of writing & leading Bible studies.

Session 1 – Introduction & Observation

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).

The start of many churches contains unique elements. Mercy Hill’s genesis is perhaps the most unique church in the Penn-Del Conference of the Assemblies of God. In order to reach the population of twenty-somethings not attending State College Assembly of God (SCAG), Mercy Hill began through a staff member of SCAG, Keith Davis. With SCAG’s permission and blessing, Mercy Hill launched as an independent congregation within the same college town as SCAG. While operating independently, the two churches continue ties. In fact, SCAG serves Mercy Hill by brewing and delivering the weekly coffee for Mercy Hill’s services.

Mercy Hill meets in a movie theater in State College. Storefront churches have long been a part of American church planting. High visibility in the midst of where people already congregate allows churches easy access to potential “customers”. This merging of the marketplace and faith is attractive to younger generations, making the movie theater the new storefront.

Sermon Evaluation

Content and Delivery
Attention and interest for the sermon were generated at the very beginning by use of a video clip from a contemporary movie, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. The clip (View it here.) is a comical look at two preteen boys attempting to baptize Zachary Beaver so he can go to see his mother in Heaven when he dies. Not only is the humor disarming, but also introduces some of the modern preconceptions and misunderstandings of the nature of baptism, enabling Keith  to address these issues.

From the flow of the sermon, Keith’s preparation was evident. While it was a familiar topic to most people in churches, the cultural misunderstandings of many people outside the typical church, and present at Mercy Hill, made the topic fresh even though those of us evaluating the sermon were familiar with the passages employed and the topic addressed.

Keith dealt directly with the Scriptures on baptism–even explaining the ancient Greek use of the word baptizo and employing the account of Nicander pickling beets to explain the meaning of baptism. The message flowed logically while engaging both the heart and the mind as he introduced intellectual elements and connected them to the personal stories experienced in the baptism service of the previous year. The casual nature of the church was matched with the casual delivery style. Movements, gestures and eye contact helped engage the audience.

Application and Effectiveness
The application of this sermon advocating baptism was clear. The sermon addressed both baptism and the way to Salvation, which necessarily precedes it. The delivery, presentation and content made the sermon relevant to its intended audience. Since this is one of the Pentecostal churches evaluated, the issue on anointing must be addressed. In the traditional Pentecostal sense of anointing—loud, exuberant preaching—the sermon would not be considered anointed. If anointing is redefined as God effectively working through it, anointing was clearly evident. Overall, the sermon proved engaging and encouraging. Since the visit, I have often thought about the sermon.

Authenticity
Keith’s use of examples of baptism from within the congregation highlighted both their stories and an obvious personal connection. Since the stories came from his experience and relationships, he appeared personally influenced. At the same time, Keith managed to keep the sermon focused on the topic–not himself.

Multimedia and General Effectiveness
Multimedia use was limited to the previously mentioned video clip. However, the atmosphere of the movie theater contributed to the sense that the experience was media-driven. As a speaker, Keith is a good communicator and knows his audience.  The message’s goal and purpose were clearly communicated. Keith’s use of compelling stories woven through personal relationships communicates the Gospel and the community to which it belongs.

Interview Summary

Mercy Hill intentionally targets young adults in the State College area, which has a population of 145,000 and a median age of 28. While serving as the youth pastor at State College Assembly of God (SCAG), Keith sensed that the church by which he was employed was not effectively retaining the young adult population. In an account eerily familiar to many youth pastors, he noted that as teens graduated high school, they never assimilated into the “regular” church, thereby effectively graduating from high school and their faith. While many churches continue stratifying the church by adding a young adult ministry to the layers of age-targeted ministries, Keith made an unconventional move. With the blessing and support of the Lead Pastor of State College Assembly, Paul Grabill, Keith opened Mercy Hill, intentionally targeting younger generations with its ministry. State College Assembly financially supported Mercy Hill while it launched and tapered its financial support as the church became fully self-supporting.

As demonstrated by their recent travel together to the Penn-Del MinistrieSummit (The annual meeting for Assemblies of God ministers serving in Pennsylvania and Delaware.), the relationship between the churches continues on a personal level even though at this time, State College only supports them by providing the coffee brewed in air pots for Mercy Hill’s coffee time before the service. This symbolic act of service continues and demonstrates the connection between the two churches.

The choice to be an independent church allows Mercy Hill the freedom to develop their own church culture and outreach strategies without resistance from members of the other church. Many of the practices younger generations employ to reach young adults are difficult for older, traditional churches to embrace. In their understanding of Jesus being criticized for being with the wrong people—sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes, Mercy Hill’s members intentionally go to where young adults are, including bars. This is a stumbling block for many congregations even though the members are not getting drunk or participating in the behavior considered sinful.

Speakers
As a church plant with limited staffing, Mercy Hill’s preaching staff is Keith Davis. Keith preaches approximately forty-five of fifty-two Sundays. While open to others preaching, he is concerned that outside speakers might not fully understand or connect with his audience. The wrong person might unintentionally alienate or hurt the people that the church works hard to reach. Many of the typical things that “preach” and get a great response in churches may be unnecessarily offensive.

Many speakers assume a level of Biblical literacy no longer present in our culture. Nothing can be taken for granted in a post-Christian world. Keith relates a time that he mentioned Adam and Eve in a conversation at a small group. When Keith asked a new person in the group if he knew the story, they replied, “Well, I’ve heard the names.” Speakers can no longer assume the presence of background information needed to understand Biblical references.

Sermon Topics
To develop sermon series, Keith explains that he looks to find the questions people are asking instead of answering questions they are not asking. Whether churches specifically title a series in this way or not, two topics many preach on regularly are “how to maintain a marriage” and “how to raise kids in the context of a traditional, nuclear family.” Since Mercy Hill is made up of predominately unmarried adults and those with kids are more likely to be single parents, the topics must be approached differently. Instead of preaching on “How to Maintain Your Marriage,” it would be more appropriate to preach on “How to find a Spouse.” The assumption of many congregations is that the non-target audience will adapt the message to fit them, instead of asking the traditional, nuclear families to adapt the message to themselves. This unintentionally alienates those who do not fit the traditional model.

Extension of Ministry through Technology
When having the website designed, Keith asked for a site that looks more like a rock band than a church so it might be more attractive to non-Christians. Mercy Hill makes its sermons available online, but does not podcast at this time. From Keith’s responsiveness to his congregation, it appears simply a matter of lack of requests. As for social networking sites, such as Facebook and mySpace, Mercy Hill intentionally chooses not to cultivate online interactions among regular attendees. While using the social networking sites to reach out and connect to prospects, they choose direct, face-to-face contact for social interactions among themselves in order to meet the need for real, personal interaction.

Influences
Although Keith does not mention Mark Batterson, both are graduates of Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri and knew each other there. Similarities in the two styles are evident. When asked about influences, Keith listed Mark Driscoll, Rob Bell, Dan Kimball and Doug Pagitt. While Keith would question the theology of some of these influences, their styles connect. Keith maintains that his biggest influence has been regular guys on the street and their reactions to sermons preached by Keith and others.

Advertising
In a move reminiscent of Rob Bell, who wanted no church sign placed at the church when they launched it, Keith had to be talked into a portable church sign placed on the street outside of the theater in order to direct traffic off the street. Believing that relationships are the key to evangelism, discipleship and church growth, the church purchases no advertising. Instead, Mercy Hill relies on word of mouth advertising and personal invitations to bring people to their meeting place. This personal approach to ministry infuses all aspects of their ministry. Their slogan, and one of their core values, is simply “nobody walks alone”. As ambitious as that is, Mercy Hill can ensure that people do not walk alone. First, God is always with us even before we ask Jesus into our hearts. Second, Mercy Hill intentionally connects people in groups, so the opportunity to walk with others is always available.

God Stories
Keith offers a thirty-day, money back guarantee for the Gospel. He invites people to come, experience the community of believers and test the claims of Jesus for thirty days. If not satisfied after thirty days, they can always go back to the way things were. Recently a grandmother talked her non-churchgoing granddaughter into bringing the coffee from the parent church to Mercy Hill. The granddaughter decided to try the thirty-day challenge. At her baptism, she declared, “OK there’s something to this Jesus thing.” The former coffee courier now runs a small group. And since she already has relationships with people who need Jesus, she effectively pursues others with passion.

I love road-trips to observe and interview people doing ministry among young adults and twenty-somethings. It’s exciting to see the creativity and passion that God has given people as they connect with younger generations. Benson Hines “recently returned from a yearlong road trip researching Christian college ministry around the U.S. After 181 campuses, 44 states, and hundreds of interviews.” I stumbled upon Benson’s Facebook Group a while back and excitedly joined it. Today, he announced through his Facebook Group that his site was live and his free eBook, Reaching the Campus Tribes (An Opening Inquiry), is ready for downloading. If you’re excited about what God’s doing on college campuses, you will want to check it out.

Nobody sets out to live a life full of regrets—never fulfilling their God-given dreams. Although a life following Jesus begins with excitement, it often becomes routine for many believers. Mark Batterson identifies the “cages” that keep people from living fully and experiencing the unpredictable adventure for which they are destined. Throughout the book, he encourages believers to pursue their God-given dreams, passions and goals—while giving practical advice to finding and discerning God’s will within those dreams and goals.

Much like his preaching, Batterson has a knack for writing in a thoughtful, clear, entertaining style. He authors a narrative filled with real life examples of people chasing the Wild Goose, living dangerously and finding fulfillment as they fulfill God’s purpose for their lives—contrasting examples of those who didn’t.

Buy this book for: college students/young adults looking for direction, those going through the quarter-life crisis, people craving a life of adventure—and yourself. Leave assumptions behind, unleash the Spirit within you and become dangerous to the enemy as you recapture the adventure of a life following the Holy Spirit! As Batterson says, “chase the Wild Goose, He will take you places you never could have imagined going by paths you never knew existed.”

Check out the book’s website for more info and “Mark’s 10 Steps to Setting Life Goals” (free download after your purchase)…and, since the publisher was nice enough to send me 2 copies, be the first to leave a comment or facebook me if you want my extra copy.

Summary:
“Celtic Christians had a name for the Holy Spirit–An Geadh-Glas, or ‘the Wild Goose.’ The name hints at mystery. Much like a wild goose, the Spirit of God cannot be tracked or tamed. An element of danger, an air of unpredictability surround Him. And while the name may sound a little sacrilegious, I cannot think of a better description of what it’s like to follow the Spirit through life. I think the Celtic Christians were on to something….

Most of us will have no idea where we are going most of the time. And I know that is unsettling. But circumstantial uncertainty also goes by another name: Adventure.” –from the Introduction.

Author’s Bio:
Mark Batterson is the lead pastor of Washington, DC’s National Community Church, widely recognized as one of America’s most innovative churches. NCC meets in movie theaters at metro stops throughout the city, as well as in a church-owned coffee house near Union Station. More than seventy percent of NCC’ers are single twentysomethings who live or work on Capitol Hill. Mark is the author of the best-selling In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day and a widely read blogger (www.markbatterson.com). He lives on Capitol Hill with his wife, Lora, and their three children.

All the churches we’re interviewing are recommended by friends/colleagues that I respect. Each community has also been in around long enough to have weathered some storms and show that they’re in it for the long haul. So, Tom and I set off for State College, Pennsylvania with a camcorder and a bad, gas station coffee. The journey to State College brought us through Altoona since hotels were booked in State College. The idiosyncrasies of our GPS brought us to some loading docks at 2:30 in the morning, but we eventually made it to our hotel and after a few hours of sleep we were on our way to Mercyhill Church.

Before we visited MercyHill Church with Keith Davis, we stopped by Starbucks. Tom asked two of the 20-something baristas if they had heard about the church and we talked about the project and what we were doing. Before we left, we stopped back into the same Starbucks and both baristas asked how it went. During the process of talking about it, 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 DC for our next interview. Here is a 20-something who is interested in the kind of spiritual communities we’re visiting, but would have trouble finding them. I asked the same question to our next interviewee and he had the same answer we did–it’s a network of people who know other people. Relevant Magazine has a list of relevant churches, which is a good place to start, but in a world where 20-somethings network socially, do the churches that do the best at reaching them also need a virtual, faith community network? Is there a way to create a network of churches that have the same values and methods without being exclusive and divisive? How would such a network be moderated? Could there be a rating system like epinions? (Relevant does have a section to leave comments, but there are few left there.)

Somethings things about MercyHill…
Mercy Hill meets in a theater which seems to be fast becoming the location of choice for younger pastors and congregations. Theater churches offer a level of comfort that no church pew can hope to achieve. I loved the friendliness of the church staff and all of its people–and they had the best donuts I’ve ever had! The sermon was great–conversational and deep. We hung out with Keith and his whole family, had a great interview about what God is doing. We were having so much fun, we didn’t want to leave.

Until the project is over, I won’t be drawing any conclusions on the “preaching that connects with young adults”, but stay tuned…we’ll also be putting together some video of the whole trip and what we’re doing.