a Shared Life

Ever the student, I am currently working on a project for a class on preaching in a changing culture. In particular, my focus is on churches that are reaching young adults while in so many churches young adults (variously defined as adults age 18-25, 18-30, 18-35, 20-29, etc.) are conspicuously absent. My research assignment is simple: visit churches, evaluate the preaching and interview the preacher or another staff member about the sermon development process, the preaching and its role in connecting young adults–and maybe throw in a few other questions as long as we’re there!

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.