Outreach Ideas for Reaching Unchurched Young Adults
This week we’re answering the following question raised at last year’s Connect Conference:
What outreach ideas do you have for reaching unchurched young adults?
This is one of the most popular questions we hear from church leaders, so I will give it my best shot based on what I am seeing from churches effectively doing young adult ministry.
I am going to cut right to the ideas, but keep in mind that anything you come up with should have one or more of Threads’ four markers of ministry—Community, Depth, Responsibility, and Connection—at its core.
Hold a community sports event.
Since it’s March Madness time, I feel obliged to start with the idea of creating a basketball tournament in your community. It’s a great way to impact our sports-oriented culture and attract young men and women. If you do it right—making sure your church really bonds with the idea of putting on a great tournament and building strong relationships with the participants—you’ll have a great experience.
You don’t have to limit it to basketball, though. Create and sponsor a flag football or softball league just for this purpose. Whatever your community resonates with, create it. Connect 3 on 3 Ministries is one group that does a great job helping churches create weekend basketball tournaments for the unchurched.
Find a problem in your community and solve it.
Is there a family in your community who has been victimized by cancer? Does a park in your city need cleaning up? Is there a poverty crisis your church can solve through a food distribution center or by rehabilitating or building new homes?
If your church decides to rally around any of these ideas or others like them, you have a wonderful blueprint for a young adult outreach idea. Many young adults are drawn to making a difference in the lives of others, and when your church steps up and helps solve problems like these, young adults will show up to help. You just have to let them know you need their help to make the impact.
This is not a new idea. It’s called missions. Show me a missions-minded church that makes an impact in its community, and I will show you a church that reaches young adults.
Start a young adult Bible study in your community.
I know this isn’t an earth-shattering idea, but it’s one that works. The majority of the time, when you start a new Bible study and your existing group of young adults takes seriously the idea of inviting their unchurched friends, it works. Meet in a café, a home, a community center, a gym, your church, or wherever you believe is the most welcoming place for a study. Lost and Found, a new book by Ed Stetzer, our own Jason Hayes, and Richie Stanley, recounts research showing that 89 percent of young adults are willing to talk about Christianity if someone asked them to do so. So ask them. They will show up.
Skeptical? My wife and are about to start a new unchurched young adult group in our home, and we have strong reason to believe we’re going to have more than 20 people show up. We’re not even working hard to make it happen. There is a spiritual hunger that God has placed in the lives of young adults. You just have to approach them.
So, what do you study? That’s the easy part. All of Threads’ short-term studies fit the bill, but there are tons of great options from LifeWay and other great Christian publishers. I just finished reading Tim Keller’s book, The Reason for God. I would also recommend it as a great start for a small group aimed at the unchurched.
Start a community young adult worship gathering.
OK, this may be the most difficult of these ideas to implement, but that doesn’t mean your church can’t do it. Make sure you have plenty of relational, loving people on your team to welcome and befriend the people who come. Make sure you have great music. Make sure you have a speaker who can speak from God’s Word clearly and relate to today’s young adults.
Need help? Read In Real Time, a brand new book by Mike Glenn, the pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. This book relates Brentwood’s journey of starting a young adult worship gathering, called Kairos, and watching it grow to attract more than 1,200 young adults each week.
About the Author
Jim is the director of Young Adult Ministry at LifeWay Christian Resources. He has worked for the past 11 years in a variety of roles, ranging from marketing to publishing to Internet development. Before being called to full-time ministry, he worked as a reporter and editor at Alabama’s capital city daily newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, for 10 years. Prior to coming to LifeWay, he also worked as an adult-in-missions editor at the Brotherhood Commission in Memphis. Jim and his wife Tammy have been married for 23 years and have two sons, Spenser, 17, and Ethan, 10.
There have been 14 replies so far
Just an encouragement to be really, really careful with that last one. You’re right about it being difficult, but it’s often a go-to method for churches… and often makes a complete bust.
When “city-wide” worship services grow organically OR fit a true need in the city… good times. When they don’t, they end up being really ineffective and a big waste of energy & money (at best) or really harming other ministry in that town.
Honestly, based on what I’ve seen & heard around the U.S., building a city-wide to jump-start a young adult ministry, college ministry, or both is only rarely a good idea for a particular group.
But, like you were saying, when it IS a good idea, it can be really powerful. So it’s one to approach with fear, trepidation, and humility.
When in doubt, go for any of those other three ideas. Those can be really powerful, too!
1 | Benson Hines
Friday, March 27, 2009, at 1:26am
Benson,
Strongly agreed.
For most churches, it’s not step 1.
For many churches, it’s easier to blow yourself up on this effort than any other.
Step 1 is normally starting small groups for the purposes of studying the Bible and building community.
Brentwood Baptist Church’s Kairos Tuesday experience and McLean Bible Church’s Frontline Sunday night experience are two wonderful notable exceptions to what you are saying, but there are a good many more failures than successes.
Frankly, I think it’s all about prayer and the buy-in of the entire church when it comes to making these work.
Great points. Thanks for posting.
2 | Jim Johnston
Friday, March 27, 2009, at 9:53am
My suggestion is to give some thought about what you will label your groups/events. At 20, I was a married, working, non-student. There are plenty of young adults, married or not, who are not in college. When the term, “young adults” is used, rather than “college students,” you are welcoming and including them as well.
3 | Aubree Gentry
Friday, March 27, 2009, at 10:02am
Aubree, Thank you for posting this.
In the research we have done on young adult ministry, labels matter. Words mean stuff.
Singles ministry means “meat market” to many young adults we have interviewed.
If you have Bible study groups/events for both young adults and college students, great.
If you’re just starting out, using the young adult tag is definitely the inclusive and welcoming way to go.
4 | Jim Johnston
Friday, March 27, 2009, at 10:13am
We called our young adult group “College and Career”; focusing on 18-30; married or not. But do you think the moniker excludes or is not friendly to some. I open to changing it.
5 | Larry
Friday, March 27, 2009, at 10:28am
Larry,
Hopefully, we will have others comment on “college and career.”
Here is my two cents. There is a group of people out there in young adult world who have chosen not to attend college and have instead become computer technicians, plumbers, cable installers, etc. Some marketers call them “gold collar” young adults because they don’t have student loan debt. So they have money, and corporate America wants to sell them their products.
Some don’t regard plumbing as a “professional” career. I do. They make WAY more money than I do. (GRIN)
The church is usually friendly to college students. They don’t have the same track record with “gold collar” young adults.
So with all this in mind, I might ditch “college and career” in favor of “young adult.” It covers everyone in this age group neatly and doesn’t have any baggage of value judgments on education and professions.
Just one person’s opinion.
6 | Jim Johnston
Friday, March 27, 2009, at 10:46am
Here’s my few cents. I’m 30 years old, not a student, single and have no children. As a woman, i found that from 24 - 29 I fell into a gap that most churches just aren’t servicing. The truth is that myself and my friends include were (and some young-30 year olds still are!)at a point where we had graduated college ministry but still truly didn’t see things in the often black and white way that the adults in the main service did. So what do we do? Where do we go?
Singles ministry has a certain stigma - created and upheld by the church itself. One that says ‘there was/is something wrong with you. That’s why nobody wants you and you are in the singles group’. As awful as this sounds, every time I have tried a singles group, I’ve wound up with single parents , people on their 2nd divorce, widows or men and women in their late 50’s or 60’s. Help!
For the most part, churches would say; Welcome to women’s ministry! But when you look around and see only 45, 55 and 70 year old women - it can be extremely uncomfortable! In my experience, women’s ministries are AGAIN targeted to married women or women with children - but if you happen to be unwed and childless - you just don’t fit in.
With statistics confirming that this generations women are marrying and having children at later ages, I really don’t understand why the church has been so slow in finding a solution. Namely small groups/social gatherings for women who perhaps by the churches standards are ‘late-bloomers’ but absolutely need ministry to meet them where they are at!
Me? Like I said, I consider myself a young 30 - i have a heart for social justice, missions and any type of outreach. Because my church doesn’t really have a fit for me I have decided to become a ‘big sister’ to the young adults group. This means I am serving on both the prayer and food ministries and mentor two girls within the group. It helps me to stay connected, still experience vibrant worship times - and hope that maybe, somehow, i am helping my mentees from falling into the same gap in the future as me.
7 | Anna Marie Hopewell
Monday, March 30, 2009, at 5:34pm
Um, in case you’re confused by what I wrote above - lol - all that just to say - be careful when you are looking to service groups within churches/communities. Don’t just throw resources out there. Be prayerful. Consider the niches out there (like mine!) that may already exist and be more in need (teen mothers? refugees? tweens?). Most young adults ARE being reached but other groups are virtually starved. Reaching to them may bea more effective ministry tool for your area rather than starting a young adults ministry to rival the one 5miles away! And if you decide to go for it (which I hope you do)be certain that what you do actually caters to the needs of the people you say you are wanting to reach - and is not just about you ticking a demographic off a list! Lastly, and most importantly ask yourself, is God really in this?
8 | Anna Marie Hopewell
Monday, March 30, 2009, at 5:59pm
Anna Marie,
I am not all confused by what you posted. I get it! Also, I don’t think you’re a late bloomer, either. (GRIN) I just think it’s very difficult for boomer oriented churches to re-calibrate themselves for a younger generation. I think that’s why so much upheaval seems to be happening in the church. Thanks for your insight, especially about being prayerful and seeking where God is working and joining Him in His work.
9 | Jim Johnston
Tuesday, March 31, 2009, at 1:10pm
Good comments Jim, Now that we are the older group, I wonder if those that came before us had the same concerns about ministering to “those young kids”? I still feel VERY young at heart, and for the most part I connect with my group, but I’m concerned that I’m not meeting their deep life/spiritual needs. They are having to address worldview and life issues that I didn’t.
10 | Larry
Thursday, April 2, 2009, at 12:31pm
Thank you so much for this article and the discussion thread. My wife and I are leaders in our young adult ministry at our church and have been working with the group for about a year.
Our primary group time is in our Sunday morning Bible study. For this first year we have been content to build the relationships and fellowship of the group. Now we are beginning to try and turn the focus of our ministry outward to the campuses and community around us.
This is some great information and great ideas for outreach.
Thanks again.
11 | James Cantrell
Thursday, April 2, 2009, at 8:23pm
We must focus on young adult ministry without losing the generation just before it. If they didn’t have access to such a ministry as young adults, it is hard for them to be supportive of it. We are just beginning a new “young adult” ministry. But instead of planning it for them, we are letting them tell us what they want and need. They are more inclined to support and promote it since it is full of their ideas!
12 | Larry
Friday, April 3, 2009, at 8:51am
Great ideas! We had a praise and worship practice last night, and were discussing that very topic. Our community is huge into band related stuff. The schools don’t focus much on sports (which really surprised me) as much as they do on their bands. So we’ve decided to start inviting individuals to play in church instead of starting a choir (and I have nothing against choirs! Love a good choir! :). But this is a community-based decision which I think will bring in not only band members, but their families.
It’s all about going to the community, not expecting them to come to you.
13 | Carrie Swick
Friday, April 3, 2009, at 9:05am
Jim, thanks so much for your encouragement :O) I kinda hijacked your blog stream for a moment there, but I hope people understand that i DO have a heart for young adults. I was only trying to illustrate that there are ways to reach them and others at the same time, too. That is, in fact, why I was reading the blog…I love this discussion! There have been some more great ideas and comments. As Larry has said, asking the young adult community ‘what they really want’ has power, too. It gives them ownership.
But I really believe that if we go to the community OUTSIDE our churches, and look to meet THEIR needs, young people will be attracted to that dynamic as well.
Hopefully our reach will be ‘wide’ too; to supposedly un-trendy, un-attractive groups of people. A ministry that disciples young adults, teaches them God’s love and then unleashes them into a hurting community can never loose! The young adults will not only learn the way of Christ, but be encouraged by seeing it put into action.
For example, some of the most powerful times I experienced in bible college were our daily outreach missions to; the red light district, the homeless, prisoners, and refugees. It gave me a hunger and thirst to want to know and understand MORE of God - in order to help those hurting people. Funny, isn’t it? I served and became more hungry for God!
Today’s generation WANT to be tasked. They can see what’s going on out there and want to redress the balance and bring about equality. It’s not a coincidence that they are being increasingly drawn into ‘social justice’ movements or projects. Things like;
‘The I Heart Movement’ (http://iheartrevolution.org/) ‘Tom’s Shoes’(http://www.tomsshoes.com/) ‘Invisible Children’ (http://www.invisiblechildren.com/home.php) ‘TWOHLA’(http://www.twloha.com/)
These are all great vehicles - run with Christians at the helm -, but should not ever come at the expense of good church-based programs or be seen by young people as a replacement for them (the latter of which, which is increasingly tempting!). If we can take the time to look at the how’s and why’s these types of people are connecting with today’s youth, then seek to address the underlying issues, we should see a renewed appreciation for and growth across churches and their young adult ministries.
If you are a leader visiting this blog and haven’t heard of the above mentioned projects, please take the time to check them out and be informed. Trust me - your young people will have heard of at least one of them and have a strong opinion on how the church is/is not tackling these very same issues.
14 | Anna Marie Hopewell
Saturday, April 4, 2009, at 3:28am
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