After a decade of college and young adult ministry, I am currently in the throes of planting Trinity Presbyterian Church in Annapolis. This is a word and sacrament church and will avoid "age and stage" ministries and programs, opting instead to keep the body of Christ together in worship and study. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that in doing this I am concluding that my ten years of ministry to young adults were a waste and an unbiblical mistake. On the contrary, I think those years fulfilled a biblical command to teach, guide, and admonish those who are young.
The Challenge
The significant difference in my work over the last decade versus my choice in moving forward in a different direction revolves completely around church size. Prior to my planting a church, I worked in two large Presbyterian churches (one with over a thousand people and the other over two thousand). In scenarios like these, the potential for sheep of any age to wander out of the fold or unwittingly choose malnourishment is quite high. It is easy to hide and never really commune with the body of Christ. Without proper church authority providing discipline and guidance, and without the fellowship of other believers providing encouragement, it is easy to fall away or starve because no one knows you.
Once we account for the college or young adult factor, with all of the struggles that accompany this stage of life, the tendency toward drifting away from the church and/or feeding poorly increases exponentially. Since most are on their own for the first time, away from family and home churches, the need for the shepherding of elders and the fellowship of other believers is great.
Amid larger congregations like these, how should churches seek to enfold their sheep? It is often hard in larger churches to have any kind of real connection with more than a few dozen people. The likelihood that the average congregant is even aware of new people who need enfolding is frequently (and sadly) quite low. Even when congregations work hard to offer a warm welcome to new people (something that characterized both churches I worked in), there are only so many people you can connect with on a Sunday morning.
Therefore, it is wise to create space within the congregation where newcomers (especially college students/young adults) are invited to gather. In an age where far more people begin their hunt for churches through the Internet, we found that the majority of those who joined our churches from this age group found us specifically because they noticed we had a place designated for them so they could find connection in the church right away.
But where this mentality goes wrong so easily and quickly is when churches, intentionally or not, cave in to the pressure to cater to the sinful human desire to avoid associating with people we don't like or who are not like us. The goal of these age-oriented groups must be to enfold the sheep into the life of the entire church, to commune with the whole body of Christ. It cannot be (as is most often the case) to simply provide a place for them to be together, because it's more convenient than having to interact with people who are not just like them.
The Hope
One of the gracious blessings I have enjoyed over the last ten years is watching the amazing work that the Holy Spirit has done in the lives of these young people as they matured into adults who thrive in the body of Christ. One of the key reasons this has occurred is because God providentially blessed these two churches with a mentality that sought to teach and enfold their young, rather than coddle them.
I have had the wonderful privilege of meeting these young people, watching them grow in their understanding of the gospel, seeing them (and sometimes helping them) meet their future spouses, performing their weddings, and baptizing their children. I have seen many of them become phenomenal Sunday school teachers and Bible study leaders. Several have gone on to be elected as church officers, and some are now forming the core group for the church plant mentioned above. In this short time, I have watched the Lord call nearly a dozen young men to attend seminary, several to the mission field, and multiple churches planted, all from the ranks of these young adults that he enfolded into his church through the efforts of college/young adult ministry.
Alternately exciting and sad is the fact that so many in this age group are hungry for this enfolding and feeding. It goes without saying why this is exciting, but what is sad is how much of this desire on their part is being ignored in so many scenarios where the focus remains on entertaining them and keeping them quartered off from the rest of the body so that they're never made to feel uncomfortable.
The Proposal
In both of the large churches where I worked, I assumed it would take a while to convince these groups that they needed to be fed and involved in the life of the whole church. I could not have been more wrong. They were already hungry and receptive.
At one of these churches there had never been a pastor designated specifically to minister to college/young adults. The church noticed a growing number of them in attendance, and, seeing a need to reach out to them and enfold them, they hired me. When I first arrived, I met with as many of them as I could and asked them what they needed most from their new pastor. I knew what my agenda was, but I wanted to gauge where they were. It was as if they had all memorized the same script (years later, I asked them if this was prearranged and they assured me it wasn't). They essentially gave me the same five requests:
- Don't call us (or focus on us as) "singles."
- Don't talk to us about marriage and dating, because that's all people seem to think we need or want to hear.
- Don't schedule a bunch of social activities (we do that on our own).
- Teach us the word of God.
- Help us build relationships with the elders and elders' wives.
I couldn't have written a better job description! The elders were shocked when I brought this to their attention. Several of them, having raised baby-boomer children, were the most shocked’and delighted. One of them, an 81-year-old WWII pilot and widower, said, "I don't know why they'd want to hang out with old guy like me, but I'd love to get to know some of them." He came faithfully to our Bible study every week’and you'd have thought a celebrity was in attendance. They couldn't wait to hear what he had to say, to share decades of wisdom that they (and even their pastor) lacked. And he took it upon himself to mold many of the young men for future service in the church. He nominated them as church officers and regularly met with many of them to provide the guidance they desperately needed. It was an excellent picture of how the family of God should function.
The Question
After ten years of this, why am I planting a church that will not include such a ministry? Because creating these age/stage groups in a church where everyone can already easily connect and know one another would only fracture such a body. It would add an unnecessary barrier to enfolding people. So many people simply assume that every church must have a specific ministry for men, women, college age, youth, children, empty nesters, retirees, and so on. But why? Where does Scripture ever dictate such a mind-set? Nowhere is the church ever told to give people what interests them most. Rather, God clearly calls the church to give people what they need, regardless of what they want (John 6:65-66; 2 Tim. 4:3), and he assures us that this will not be a popular option.
Because it is not natural or intuitive for us to seek these things, the Spirit graciously moves us to seek such food through the word as it is fed to us by his shepherds. And this is why it is so important that pastors and elders bend over backwards to ensure proper care and nourishment for their sheep. In large churches this can become a Herculean challenge, and yet it is never acceptable to exempt oneself from such duties by saying that there are simply too many to shepherd. It would be no different from an actual shepherd saying he simply had too many sheep to feed, so some are going to have to fend for themselves. We see this as poor care for animals, but often let the same happen spiritually to Christ's sheep even though he emphatically called us to feed them (John 21:15-17).
In order to gather your sheep for such biblically demanded care, you may indeed have to opt for a college-age or young adult group. But as long as the purpose of such a group is feeding them with Christ and bringing them into the entire body, then such groups should be productive and actually promote unity within the church. It takes great attention and vigilance, however, to resist the constant cultural and selfish urge to make such groups an end in themselves, for this can indeed fracture the body that Christ has called to live in unity together.
