It can be done: Attracting young adults to your church
Sarah Drummond tells this story in this week's email from the Alban Institute:
First Church in Cambridge is, in many ways, a typical mainline congregation. The music is usually classical, the liturgy rooted in Christian history and decidedly traditional. Boards and committees make many of the church’s decisions through a conventional governance structure. The ministry staff includes a senior pastor, an interim associate pastor, and a lay minister of religious education. The community where the church is located is highly-educated and liberal, and the church’s stance on social issues reflects this environment. What makes the church truly different from many of its peers is not just that it is growing—many churches do that—but the demographic category that is growing most quickly: Post-collegiate adults in their 20s and 30s. At one New Member Sunday in early 2008, out of 30 new members, 27 were under the age of 35.What is their secret?
There is no easy answer to that question. But many religious leaders would like to have at least an inkling as to how this mainline Protestant church has been able to attract a critical mass of new members from such a fluid and complex population.
In 2007-2008, FCC designed and implemented a church-wide program on Christian “faith practices” for all of its members, offering them the opportunity to explore the ways in which they were living out their faith through Christian practices such as hospitality, keeping Sabbath, and testimony. Building on this study, in 2008-2009 they initiated a second faith practices program focusing specifically on younger adults. They deployed seminarians toward the purpose of reaching out to the younger adults who had found their way, through various means, to the church. The seminarians each designed a program, implemented the plan, and then reported back to each other and church leaders about what they did and what they learned.
I felt that the section Tension #3: Believing, But Not Dogmatic is one of the more important, though all the points made were. One of the things that drew me (a twenty-something at the time) to the Episcopal church was the liturgy and saying what we believed every Sunday. I left a church that, while it not being dogmatic was a good thing, seemed to have little theological ground that we could confess or share with others. Having nothing to confess or say we share in the faith can make going to church pointless, sadly.
Posted by E Sinkula![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 18, 2010 7:28 PM
Everything Sarah Drummond writes is valid and helpful. But as in all stories of church growth the Gorillas are sitting there unnoticed.
One does not need to be a Harvard graduate to know something about Cambridge. Community demographics and location are the real fuel of church growth. I'm still waiting after 26 years of observing churches to hear a story about a growing church in a bad location amidst population decline.
Posted by bill bonwitt![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 19, 2010 9:28 AM
Bill: check out my home parish, St Luke's in Cleveland, OH. It's an inner-city congregation in a pretty grim neighborhood, and Cleveland has been shrinking for years. St Luke's ASA has doubled in the last 5 years, with at least a quarter of the congregation under age 18 (and attending without their parents!). It is racially and socio-economically diverse, too.
Posted by Gia Hayes-Martin![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 19, 2010 10:32 AM