8. Growing Young in Your Context
8. Growing Young in Your Context
How to Create a Plan for Change
Our church knows we need to reach out and change, or we’ll die.
—Kristin, executive pastor
This is a changing church, and we’re part of a changing world. I’ve learned that I need to be big enough to change with it.
—Hank, age 76
St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church knows that growing young is not just optional but essential.
Founded in 1871 as the first Roman Catholic parish in Indianapolis, St. John’s has a rich history. Located in the heart of the downtown business district, its towering steeples have been a landmark of the skyline for over 140 years. The church has stood the test of time with 18 priests who have served at the helm, a handful of whom led for more than three decades.
But in the 1980s and 1990s, the future of the parish looked bleak.
St. John’s had been heavily affected over the preceding three decades by the nationwide trend of residents moving from downtown areas to the suburbs. By the 1980s, membership had declined. Most attendees were commuters who worked in the city and attended midday mass. One church leader remembered, “Thirty years ago, the doors were unlocked for mass and then locked again after mass.” There were hardly any children or younger people involved, leaving a sparse mix of senior adults and business professionals.
St. John’s, like many churches, was growing old. This was true of its buildings and physical campus. Even more disconcerting, the average age of the membership was migrating higher and higher.
One bleak year, the church almost closed its doors. For good.
Then in 2009, the parish turned a corner. Unwilling to concede that the people were too old, the road too difficult, or the timing too late, the church resolved to grow young.
In a move of support, the Catholic Archdiocese decided to prioritize young adult ministry at St. John’s. The downtown area had recently been redeveloped, making it the ideal time for a parallel revitalization of the congregation. Father Rick, a wise and gifted leader, was recruited to serve as the campus chaplain at one of Indiana University’s campuses, located just a few blocks from the church. New activities were initiated for young adults, including a Sunday evening mass and midweek gatherings designed to integrate them into the community.
Slowly, younger people started to reengage with the church. Overall attendance began to increase, average age began to decrease, and ministry grew both deeper and wider.
St. John’s was growing young.
Understandably, this movement toward growing young did not come without its trials. Several of the longtime older members felt undervalued; others found it challenging to connect with this younger population.
One older parishioner named Gladys recalled, “It felt like they were scared of me, or like they didn’t want to talk to an older person.”
Thankfully, she felt comfortable voicing these concerns to Father Rick, who helped her and others empathize with the young people and their search for identity, belonging, and purpose. Growing young was not easy; it took a significant time investment from both the young people and the older parishioners. The leadership team of the parish was steadfast, though, and mixed the age groups in membership committees, small groups, and service teams. They also started an “adopt a student” program that matched adults with college students who shared similar vocational interests or hobbies. Gladys and other parishioners continued to look for ways to reach out, and eventually cross-generational relationships grew deeper.
Too often, however, the church felt like it was split in two. Father Rick, still serving as the campus chaplain, expressed this dilemma to the church’s leadership. In response, he was appointed as the head pastor of the church and was charged with the work of merging the two communities. The church also hired a few part-time college staff members so that Father Rick could maintain his role as college chaplain while focusing the majority of his time on the congregation as a whole. It wasn’t easy, but Father Rick and his team were determined to unite their parish as one body.
Their team strategically targeted social events, such as weekly minor league baseball games, that older parishioners attended regularly. They encouraged young people to attend both the game and the traditional pregame cookout in the church’s courtyard. As a result, church attendance at the games tripled. Even more importantly, the younger and older parishioners were able to connect in nonthreatening and fun environments.
Emerging adults were especially drawn to the social justice efforts of the church, including a powerful ministry to their downtown neighbors who are homeless. The young people joined an already consistent group of volunteers who fed dozens of hungry people daily.
The church’s dynamic young adult community soon evolved into a mixture of singles and married couples, many of whom met at St. John’s. As the couples began having children, the congregation responded over time by developing training and small groups to help young families adapt to this new life stage.
A few years into these incremental changes, an arsonist broke into the church and set it ablaze. While the fire was miraculously extinguished quickly, the flames still consumed the church entryway, and the suffocating smoke that filled the sanctuary caused over $400,000 in damage.
It was a defining moment for St. John’s.
Rather than express hatred and anger toward the arsonist, as a twenty-something remembered, “the leaders of the parish called us not to be mad but to pray for that person and to demonstrate the gospel.” The church came together to host a “Tested by Fire” fundraiser to refocus on its mission and rebuild its damaged building. As the members weathered this tragedy, their shared passion to restore the church transcended generational differences and further united the church as a family.
Today St. John’s is a thriving parish that exemplifies what it looks like for a church to grow young. Like every church, it has its share of ongoing obstacles and bumpy patches. However, as one national Roman Catholic representative commented, “St. John’s is one of the most vibrant parishes I’ve ever seen.” Indeed, there are over 1,500 members, nearly 1,000 of whom are teenagers or young adults.
Not bad for a church that was close to shutting its doors.
The Six Core Commitments Fleshed Out in St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church
Throughout the previous chapters, you’ve received an in-depth treatment of the six core commitments common to churches growing young. Notice how each was embodied in St. John’s, catalyzing the church to grow young:
Unlock keychain leadership. Father Rick was a capable leader but not controlling. He empowered people in his church to use their gifts to fulfill the vision of the congregation.
Empathize with today’s young people. At first, Gladys and others in the congregation did not connect with young people. However, they eventually developed relationships by listening carefully and appreciating the challenges navigated by today’s teenagers and emerging adults.
Take Jesus’ message seriously. St. John’s talked about Jesus’ message consistently and applied faith to the here and now. Rather than respond to the arsonist with anger and condemnation, the leadership preached and modeled grace and restoration.
Fuel a warm community. Instead of relying on the power of church services alone to draw the church together, the leaders also strategically planned social events to connect the whole church in relationship.
Prioritize young people (and families) everywhere. The Archdiocese made the decision to prioritize young adult ministry at St. John’s and also instated campus minister Father Rick as its priest. In addition, the congregation developed training and small groups geared to help young families entering a new chapter of parenthood.
Be the best neighbors. As just one example of its commitment to serve the marginalized, the church fed—and continues to feed—dozens of its homeless neighbors every day.
Great News for Your Church: Change Is Possible
The story of St. John the Evangelist, while remarkable, doesn’t have to be uncommon. The thousands of US churches growing older have good reason to be concerned.
But they don’t have to admit defeat.
Perhaps your congregation’s future looks dismal, and that’s what led you to read this book.
Or maybe your church isn’t in danger of closing its doors, but you know it has so much more potential. It may not be growing old, but it’s not growing young or benefiting as much as possible from the energy and vitality of young people.
If you can relate to either scenario, this final chapter helps you move beyond what needs to change by helping you plan how your church can change. For many congregations, this question of how to bring about change is actually more difficult.
THE ROLE OF CONTEXT
In the Growing Young Wheel, the outside rim labeled “context” is now shaded. This is because your church—and every church—needs to understand how to embody these six core commitments in your own particular setting. While you can certainly learn from the experience of other congregations, what works for them might not work in your town or with your young people.
Nor will it work to cherry-pick a few ideas from each chapter and expect to bring about sustainable change. The six core commitments will not help that much if you apply them haphazardly; instead, we want to help you apply them strategically.
As the powerful story of St. John’s illustrates, the six core commitments require more than a quick fix or list of easy steps. But the good news is that your church isn’t left guessing about how to develop your own unique plan; you can build upon our research and the collective wisdom of leading experts on organizational leadership. In addition, our team has observed and worked with hundreds of churches that have successfully pioneered lasting change in their programs, systems, and overall church culture.1
In tandem with the research our team conducted in this project, we had the privilege of working closely with Dr. Scott Cormode, the Hugh De Pree Professor of Leadership Development at Fuller Theological Seminary. Scott’s writing, teaching, and conversations with our team significantly informed this entire project but especially these principles about contextual change.
Given our goal in this chapter to help you weave together and implement the core commitments from the previous chapters, its format is a little different. The “Ideas for Action” normally placed at the end of a chapter are instead already woven into the research. Our hope is that as you work your way through this research on transition, you’ll fold your insights and ideas from previous chapters into a comprehensive plan that empowers your congregation to grow young.
The overarching great news is that deep and lasting change really is possible.
The churches involved in the Growing Young study prove it. When interview participants were asked whether their church had always been effective with young people, many admitted that their church had not been effective from its inception. Of those young people and adults who knew the history of their church, more than one-third reported that their church had undergone significant change to become more effective with young people.
Making this bold move to more fully embody the six core commitments benefits churches on multiple fronts. As we’ve highlighted, the biggest benefit is vitality. Young people’s energy, excitement, and passion can electrify churches and propel them forward into a more hopeful future.
However, there are also real dangers for churches that make shifts to grow young. A church may risk upsetting a large portion of its membership (perhaps even those who provide your church’s financial backbone). Perceived failures may cause church members to become more disgruntled and frustrated with those in leadership. Leaders may even lose their jobs. It is certainly wise to count these potential costs before jumping in and making adjustments.
But at the end of the day, the decision to grow young is not rooted in statistics or strategies (even though, as you can tell by now, we love both). It’s rooted in prayerfully seeking God’s call for your congregation. So gather your church’s staff, volunteer leaders, and anyone else who cares about teenagers and young adults as you prayerfully ask God for guidance. Take courage in the fact that millions of churches in the last 2,000 years have successfully navigated significant obstacles to adapt to new realities. Your church can too.
Three Myths about Churches That Change to Grow Young
Before we explore how leading churches initiate change, we need to dispel three common myths that will not help your church grow young. In fact, relying on any of these myths can stall or sabotage your church’s efforts to embrace the six core commitments.
Myth #1: There Is a Single Silver Bullet
There is neither one easy step to take nor one common problem to fix that will lead your entire church to grow young. When participants in our study were asked what they might want to change about their church, their responses varied greatly. No single area was mentioned by more than 10 percent of congregants. While this can free up churches to experiment and learn, it also puts more pressure on leaders to listen to their context as a compass to help chart their own particular course.
Myth #2: Bigger or Well-Resourced Churches Can Change Faster and Easier
Possessing a big building, the latest technology, a significant number of staff, or a surplus of cash positions a church to make shifts quickly, right?
Not according to our research. In fact, when hundreds of pastors were asked in our surveys about their biggest challenge to becoming more effective with young people, only 1 in 10 mentioned the church’s lack of material resources. This wasn’t because all the churches are well-resourced. Some of the most innovative and exciting churches in our study are fairly small and lack a big budget, a large staff, or a fancy building.
Myth #3: Hiring _______ Will Solve the Problem
Many roles could fill this blank.
A new pastor. A youth pastor. Someone outgoing. Someone young. Someone experienced. An expensive consultant.
Hiring can certainly help, at least in the short term. But most of the real revision that needs to happen in a church cannot be imposed from the outside or from the top down. It needs to be owned and implemented by the entire church—usually from the inside and sometimes from the bottom up.
Creating Your Church’s Plan for Change
You likely have a sense for where your church is currently (represented by the image on the left side of the diagram)—it might be stalled, growing old, or doing well but not reaching its full potential. By now, you probably also have some picture of what your church would look like if it were growing young (represented by the right-hand image). Your goal now is to create your plan for change to get from “here” to “there.” The following sections on listening, storytelling, and tools for change empower you to embody the six core commitments and create your own contextual plan.
CREATING YOUR CHURCH’S PLAN FOR CHANGE
The reason these myths don’t work is because the type of changes required to grow young are adaptive challenges. As coined by Harvard leadership professor Ronald Heifetz, adaptive challenges involve shifts in attitudes, values, and behaviors that require leaders to learn new ways to solve problems. Heifetz contrasts adaptive challenges with technical problems in which leaders can resolve their dilemmas through current know-how.
Think of a technical problem as someone with a broken arm. A doctor can set the bone and apply a cast, typically solving the problem in a handful of weeks. While activities like driving may become a bit more difficult, significant changes in behavior and values are not required. Adaptive work is more like trying to convince someone to stop smoking. A doctor can provide guidance about the risks and suggest ideas that might help the person stop smoking, but they cannot stop smoking for the person. Further, a spouse, friend, or even therapist cannot stop smoking for the person. The ultimate decision depends on a major modification of the values and behaviors of the smoker. Applying this principle to organizations, Heifetz writes, “The single most common source of leadership failure we’ve been able to identify—in politics, community life, business, or the nonprofit sector—is that people, especially those in positions of authority, treat adaptive challenges like technical problems.”2
After studying hundreds of churches and witnessing the complexity of their systems, structures, and culture, we are strong advocates for the power of adaptive change. Most of the important obstacles faced by churches that want to grow young involve a shift in the attitudes, values, and behaviors of the people in the congregation. Throughout this entire book, we have sprinkled in principles of adaptive change that we believe best position your church to grow young. We’ll specifically revisit more thoughts about adaptive change in the section “Tools to Help Your Church Change” later in this chapter.
Leadership Begins with Listening3
Since the six core commitments in the Growing Young Wheel have already illustrated what we should do, it’s tempting (especially for those of us with type A personalities) to launch into action steps that help us feel like we’re making progress. We’re inclined to immediately make a formal announcement from the platform, develop an elaborate strategic plan, or hire a new staff member. But if leaders move forward before carefully listening to their congregation, they’re implying that they already know and understand what their congregation needs. Forward momentum, while critically important to leading change, must first be tempered with appreciating the particular obstacles and opportunities of our own unique church context.
If we don’t listen to others, we are prone to a common mistake, namely, equating the health and needs of our church with the “three Bs” that have often been used to measure congregations—building, bodies, and budget. While these can provide one helpful picture, there is so much of a church’s past, present, and future that falls outside these simple categories and must be incorporated in our growing young plan.
Churches that grow young move past such reductionist categories; they take time to understand and respond to the needs of their own young people. In fact, when pastors were asked, “What are the three biggest challenges your church faces when it comes to ministering to young people?” nearly half (45 percent) of respondents highlighted young people’s general busyness or transience. Recognizing this, those churches that began listening well revamped their ministries to adapt to teenagers’ and emerging adults’ unique schedules.
“Students are consumed with school and homework and extracurricular activities and sports and all that stuff. I feel like some churches try to force too much and put the pressure on. One thing that our church does well is we try to just listen.” —Trevor, age 27
This focus on listening is certainly true in the case of St. John’s. When asked to describe Father Rick, participants referred to him as “very in touch, relatable” and said “his connection to people is evident.”
HOW DO WE START LISTENING WELL?
Begin by gathering a team that commits to listening well. Resolve together that if your church truly desires to grow young, you won’t get far without understanding your current context and reality.
Every congregation is different when it comes to how much time should be spent listening before crafting a plan. However, consider spending at least two months listening well before you decide on any further action steps. Rather than create an inflexible timeline, evaluate your progress along the way. You and others on your team will likely know when you’ve listened long enough.
WHO SHOULD WE LISTEN TO?
Here’s a starter list. Undoubtedly, you will think of additional individuals or groups relevant to your church.
• God. You guessed it—listening to God is nonnegotiable. Spend time as a team in prayer, consult Scripture, or engage in other spiritual practices to help you hear God’s voice.
• Young people themselves. This is also nonnegotiable. Don’t try to make any shifts without sitting down with at least a few young people (or 20) to gain their perspective.
• Your own heart. Spend time exploring your own thoughts and feelings about helping your church change and embrace the core commitments. Keep a journal for a few weeks, or spend time in a team meeting discussing the viewpoint of each person at the table.
• Research about young people. Chapter 3 gives you access to the best scholarship on this generation’s search for identity, belonging, and purpose. If you’re feeling particularly motivated, dive deeper into the books and resources referenced throughout that chapter.
• Parents, Sunday school teachers, and youth/young adult ministry volunteers. Given their unique interest and role in developing young people, include at least a few parents, teachers, and small group leaders in your listening tour.
• Older generations. Some of the most successful churches we’ve observed capture the passion and support of older members of their church and channel it toward younger people. This often happens best by listening to and honoring those seasoned members.
• Your church’s neighbors. Depending on your goals, this might be beyond the bounds of this exercise. However, careful listening to those outside your faith community can provide valuable insight as well.
WHAT’S THE BEST METHOD FOR LISTENING?
The method you use to listen well is entirely up to you. Some churches in our study utilize the power of detailed surveys. Others rely primarily on one-on-one conversations or focus groups. Another church holds a newcomers’ dinner in which the pastor hosts a meal in her home twice per month. Recent visitors are invited alongside long-standing members to share stories and perceptions of the church. Try one of these methods or experiment with your own even better ideas to see what works well for your congregation.
“We don’t really focus on innovation or change but simply on listening to our kids through relationship. The rest just follows naturally.” —Tony, youth ministry volunteer
Whatever path you choose, you might want to work with your team to develop a list of common questions that everyone can use in their various conversations. To help you get started, consider the following:
• How did you hear about our church?
• What drew you to our church?
• What do you like best about our congregation?
• What do you like least about our congregation?
• What is one idea you have to improve our church?
• What’s something exciting that has happened in your life recently?
• What’s something difficult that has happened in your life recently?
• If there was one story from your life that would help me understand who you are, what would it be and why?
• What is something that you hope for or dream about?
As you begin to approach others, listen as if the future of your church depends on it. Because it does.4
WHAT SHOULD WE LISTEN FOR IN RESPONSE TO OUR QUESTIONS?
In your listening, aim for more than surface-level conversation. Ask about people’s hopes and dreams. Listen for the pain in their lives and the questions that keep them awake at night. By doing this work in your own context, your church will be positioned to respond to the longings and losses that really matter to your teenagers, emerging adults, and families.5
Afraid teenagers won’t want to talk to you? Think again. Try talking about something they actually care about, such as stress, dating relationships, or learning to hold down a job. Or enlist an adult young people know well to partner with you when you meet with them.
In addition, listen for ideas about what your church could be or do. Discern their expectations for your church, especially when you hear words like should. Pay attention to what sparks their interests or passions. Consider listening for the presence (or lack thereof) of the six core commitments: pay attention to people’s hopes and frustrations related to leadership, empathy toward young people, understanding Jesus’ message, community support, priorities of the church, and being good neighbors.
Perhaps most importantly, listen for stories. Reflect on what the stories convey about your congregation’s attitudes and values, along with the implications for your journey to grow young.
HOW SHOULD WE USE WHAT WE HEAR?
During one of your team meetings, invite each person to recount the key themes heard during your listening. Identify and reflect on the implications of topics or phrases that are either particularly vivid or repeatedly mentioned.
WHEN DO WE STOP LISTENING?
Never.
You will never finish listening.
Even when you feel like you have completed this first phase of listening and can start creating a specific action plan, listening should weave its way throughout your entire transformation process. In fact, we recommend that you occasionally loop back to the above groups at whatever time intervals seem right for subsequent rounds of questions and story gathering.
Vision Is a Shared Story of Future Hope
Church leadership conferences and books over the past few decades have hammered home the importance of vision. Our research on churches that grow young affirms that vision is a wise place to invest time and energy. When asked about the history of their church, 31 percent of those who said their church changed to become more effective with young people attributed that shift to a change in the church’s vision or strategy. This was the second highest response, only slightly behind shifts in church staff.
While having a vision is important, churches’ definition of “vision” and understanding of what qualifies as a “vision statement” vary widely. Bringing helpful clarity to the topic, Scott Cormode defines vision as “shared stories of future hope.”6 This definition encompasses three crucial elements of a generative vision: shared, stories, and future hope.
The first crucial element, shared, implies that the vision does not emerge from the mind of one person—or a few people—alone. The third crucial element, future hope, signals that Jesus brings Good News for the whole world and, as a result, any church can grow young over the next few months, years, or decades.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF STORIES
What makes this definition so potent is the second key element: stories. God’s story, your story, and your church’s story are connected and lead to something powerful: our story. Connecting vision to stories enables the vision to immediately connect with an individual and sweeps up that individual into a story much larger than any one person alone. Stories challenge, encourage, and lead people deeper into the redemptive gospel narrative of what God is doing in the world.
Your church, your family, and the fans of your favorite sports team all tell stories that give them a unique identity. When it comes to churches, sociologist Nancy Ammerman suggests:
Stories, then, provide us both with the common elements that allow us to make connections with each other and the unique identities that keep us anchored in the midst of our diversity. They can be told over and over, linking us to our past, while evolving with each new telling. . . . Active, intentional storytelling is the basis on which all communities have always been built, and that is no less true today when communities are so fluid and fragile.7
Take a moment and think of a person from your church (or from a church you’ve been connected to in the past) who has a vibrant faith. Envision a young person, or even an older person, whose identity is rooted in the grace of God, who knows they belong in the love of Christian community, and who passionately lives out their God-given purpose through a mission-oriented life. Now think through the story of that person’s life and experiences that shaped them into who they are today.
Now dream on your own or (even better) with others, “What would our church look like if we wanted today’s young people to have these same experiences?”
At St. John’s, the leadership team could have chosen the story of an older parishioner like Gladys. Gladys grew up in the church in the 1940s and 1950s when the parish was thriving. Perhaps keychain leaders recognized her potential and gave her opportunities to lead because they prioritized young people and families, including hers. Maybe older adults in the congregation empathized with her hopes and concerns, looking past some of her teenage quirks and enveloping her in a warm community. Her deepest passions were possibly awakened and fueled by the Jesus-focused messages in the church’s vibrant teaching and small groups. It could have been these passions that led her to help start the church’s ministry to its neighbors who were homeless. It’s likely that all of these core commitments are the reason she is still part of St. John’s today.
Following this exercise, the leadership team could then ask, “How can these experiences that were formative in Gladys’s life be manifested in the lives of today’s teenagers and emerging adults?” Yes, some of the packaging and delivery needs to be updated to match the church’s current culture and context. However, as leaders recognize the dominant themes in the stories of people like Gladys, all ministries and programs of the church become rooted in a cohesive whole.
PUTTING STORIES TO WORK IN YOUR CHURCH
Based on what your team heard in your listening, consider drafting a short (one- or two-page) story of what you hope your church will be like in the future. You might find it helpful to begin by first writing stories that focus on individuals.
Previously, you unpacked the real-life stories of one or more people with vibrant faith. Now it’s time to brush up on your creativity skills and imagine a future for either a real or fictional young person. What do you hope or dream will happen in the life of that person as a result of your church? How do you hope that your church’s embodiment of the six core commitments shapes their faith and life?
Try writing a short (one- or two-page) story about one young person. Or maybe about a few. Once you’ve developed the right story or stories, tell them over and over in every part of your congregation.
When another leader catches you in the hall after worship and asks what you’re excited about, share a story.
When you are invited to give a report to your church board, share a story.
When you meet with someone new to your congregation and want them to understand your greatest dreams for the future, share a story.
These stories might be actual accounts of what God has already done in your young people or your visions for how God intends to work in your community in the future. Either way, watch as these stories become contagious and transform the culture of your church.
Tools to Help Your Church Change
Your team has listened well to understand where your church is now.
You’ve crafted shared stories of future hope to paint a picture of what your church will look like as it grows young.
If you’ve done these first two aspects well, this will make the final step of developing a plan for change easier.
Not easy.
But easier.
Based on our research, our team recommends the following four guiding principles to help your congregation navigate the peaks and valleys of your growing young journey.
BEGIN WHERE YOU HAVE THE MOST INFLUENCE
We asked leaders of churches growing young to identify the major challenges that prevent them from reaching young people more effectively. We hypothesized they might point to traits of youth culture, or qualities of young people’s families, or the attributes of today’s young people.
CONGREGATION’S GREATEST CHALLENGES IN REACHING YOUNG PEOPLE
TOP CHURCH-RELATED CHALLENGES (ranked in order)
All of these challenges were named, but they weren’t at the top of the list. The top class of obstacles was their own congregation. As indicated in the diagram, leaders felt most hindered in their congregation by a generation gap, inconsistent or nonexistent volunteers, and the lack of an effective church strategy.
While these hurdles may seem daunting, we’ve been impressed by the way many churches that grow young—even those that are large and complex—maneuver them with agility. Rather than focus on those obstacles that are largely outside the church’s control (like the impact of the surrounding culture), effective leaders focus on what they can influence inside their own congregation, such as their own keychain leadership or uniting the church around a common vision.
CONSTRUCT A HOLDING ENVIRONMENT
Earlier in this chapter, we distinguished adaptive challenges from technical problems. Heifetz believes leaders can best solve adaptive challenges by creating and managing a “holding environment.”8 Similar to the doctor who cannot force change on a patient who smokes, church leaders cannot force their congregants to change their deeply held attitudes, values, and behaviors about their church.
But that doesn’t mean leaders are helpless. They can create holding environments to nurture and encourage major shifts. A holding environment is a space that keeps attention focused on a problem in a way that is uncomfortable enough to promote change but safe enough that the church’s anxiety about change isn’t too acute. The role of the leader is to carefully raise the heat so that the problem is taken seriously but then lower the heat when tensions rise too high and threaten to boil over.
Whether or not leaders knew the term holding environment, many of the churches we studied demonstrated a keen intuition about how to drive change at a pace their context could tolerate. For example, most of the congregations did not prioritize young people at all levels of the church right away. Instead, they slowly raised the heat by highlighting in their preaching, meetings, and one-on-one conversations that the church was in danger of growing old and irrelevant if it didn’t change.
Sometimes those shifts come so fast and furious that churches need to lower the heat. One church in our study launched so many new ministries and changed the worship format so often that the congregation experienced change fatigue. Recognizing this growing exhaustion, the leaders in this church gave their congregants a chance to recuperate by pausing to celebrate, intentionally waiting several months to introduce anything new.
EXPERIMENT ON THE MARGINS9
As you introduce the core commitments in your context, it is tempting to immediately and publicly roll out a new campaign in front of the whole church. Consider starting with a less overt approach. Rather than launching change from the inside out, try saturating your congregation from the outside in. In other words, look for opportunities to implement shifts that start on the periphery rather than at the core of the church. Trying a new idea first with a Sunday school class, small group, handful of students, or anywhere not on display to your entire congregation qualifies as an experiment on the margins. For most churches, changes in the main worship service do not.
But there are strategies to help you experiment on the margins even with changes in your worship service. The leadership team of one rural church in our study knew that tackling music style head-on could spark a long and messy battle (many of you are nodding your heads along with them). So as an experiment on the margins, they encouraged the emerging adults to start a worship band that practiced immediately after the regular Sunday worship service. While the congregation shared coffee and cookies, they could see and hear this group rehearsing.
Before long, some of the members who would have been most opposed to a drastic and immediate adjustment in music style asked if these young people might be allowed to play one or two songs for the main worship service. Slowly but surely, the church embraced a newer style, which has been a generative step in its journey to grow young.
MAINTAIN DISCIPLINED ATTENTION
When I (Jake) was in my early twenties and fresh into ministry as a youth pastor, I thought that changing our church would be quick and easy. As I participated in several daylong strategic planning sessions with our church’s leadership team, I wondered impatiently, “What is everyone waiting for? Why won’t they just change faster?” Over the next five years, I watched the church commission one outside consultant and two executive pastors to lead the charge, with few significant results. Like many, I was shortsighted about the time and care it takes to implement lasting transformation.
For many churches, the main barrier to initiating change is not a lack of desire but a lack of the long-term dedication and discipline needed to make the transition a reality. Churches that grow young successfully fight against distractions or other pitfalls that threaten to derail them by maintaining disciplined attention.10 Leaders who maintain disciplined attention intentionally keep themselves and their team focused on the tough questions and difficult shifts ahead through five key strategies.
Develop a growing young team and start meeting. As your church prepares to take steps to grow young, create a guiding coalition that is separate from your church board or leadership team. Recruit a variety of respected stakeholders to serve on this team, including staff, elders or deacons, congregation members, parents, young people, and anyone else who should be represented. Meet every three to four weeks, making sure that each time you identify the next steps your team plans to take, who’s in charge of making sure those steps happen, and when those steps need to be completed.
Create a plan to conquer conflict. In one of your early meetings, discuss how you will handle (or are currently handling) conflict. It is an unavoidable aspect of change. When you find yourself mired in conflict, rely on the vision-filled stories you’ve crafted to remind yourselves why you’re pursuing these adjustments in the first place. Practice your best listening and lean into the unity in Christ that holds your church together. At the end of the day, keep hold of the shared stories of future hope to which God has called your community.
Treat failure as a door to learning. Great organizations fail frequently. So do great churches. The key is not to avoid making mistakes but to learn from those mistakes as quickly as possible so you can head in a better direction. Lean into a gospel of grace not just as individuals but as an organization. As you marinate in a sense of God’s grace, love, and mission, you might find your church’s tolerance for organizational failure increases.
Leverage the power of small wins. Rather than focusing on a single marker that will tell your church it has “arrived” and has grown young, identify several smaller victories your team can measure and celebrate along the way. If your team continues listening well, there will be ongoing stories of positive life transformation you can celebrate. Theresa, a 25-year-old small group leader, emphasized, “Our church tracks BUT NOW statements. We know we’re making progress and people are growing in their faith when they say things like, ‘I was going to do ____, but now I’m going to ____.’ We celebrate that!”
We want to continue to be part of your journey toward growing young, especially as you hit roadblocks or if you’re not making progress as fast as you’d like. For tips on how to deal with setbacks in your journey, please visit ChurchesGrowingYoung.org. There you can access a free assessment survey and a host of practical resources and consulting and training options, as well as find other leaders who are on the same road toward growing young. You might also consider joining a Growing Young Cohort, a community of innovative churches committed to growing young together.
Think long term. While many of the churches we’ve studied witnessed exciting movement within their church in a few months or a year, broad culture change in a church typically takes several years. While you’ll understandably need to focus your initial plans on the next few weeks or months, keep your church’s long-term trajectory in the back of your mind. Perhaps schedule a daylong meeting for one and two years from now in order to celebrate progress and address obstacles impeding your progress.
Leading Change in Practice: Growing Young in Volga, South Dakota
When this study began, our team did not anticipate that one of the most exciting and change-friendly churches we would encounter would be a largely volunteer-run congregation located in Volga, South Dakota.
Volga is a rural town of just 2,000 people. During our visit, it was often referred to as a bedroom community of the nearby city of Brookings. This sleepy label did not seem to cast the town or Volga Christian Reformed Church (CRC), a congregation of 100, as a hotspot for young people. There were few restaurants or coffeehouses, no nightlife to speak of, hardly any pop culture, and not much else often believed to draw teenagers and emerging adults. In many ways, the town and church seemed well positioned to grow old.
And it was. Just like the community, much of the congregation was over 60. Most of the church programs and ministries catered to this older generation.
But then the leaders and people at Volga CRC decided to shift their trajectory.
In the midst of a pastoral transition, Vonda, a 20-year youth ministry volunteer, decided to help the church grow young. Having been raised at the church, Vonda knew the congregation’s culture and cared deeply for its young people. Her job as a teacher at the local public high school gave her an on-the-ground understanding of the hopes and challenges of teenagers and young adults. Further, given that she was closer in age to the older contingent in the church, she was able to empathize with their needs as well.
Working with a team of volunteers, Vonda launched a quiet campaign nearly 10 years ago to bridge the two generations and create one unified church. She didn’t consult a master plan or request a three-month sabbatical so she had time to strategize. Instead, she shared with our team that young people “are creative, motivated, and innovative. If we hope to change, we need to listen to them.”
From this listening, the team members recognized that they wanted to help younger and older generations mix with each other in hopes of nurturing a warm community. To encourage the generations to develop organic relationships in relaxed settings, the team began holding youth group gatherings in the homes of older congregants. Next, Vonda and her team organized “Bridge Sundays” in which young people led an all-church Sunday school class every month there was a fifth Sunday. Doing so ensured that the needs and interests of young people were regularly kept in front of the church. After the class, the whole church gathered in the basement for a good old-fashioned church potluck during which teenagers shared personal updates and stories.
Since youth leadership of the Sunday worship service would have been too big of a jump for Volga CRC initially, this first step of having youth lead a Sunday school class was an opportune experiment on the margins. This experiment was so successful that before long, the young people were invited to begin leading music for the main worship service.
In addition, Vonda took more direct steps to connect the congregation’s various generations. She invited Trudy, a 90-year-old golfer, for a round with some of the teenagers in the youth group. While at first skeptical of Trudy, the teenagers eventually lightened up once they saw she was quite the skilled golfer. When she sank a 30-foot putt on the seventh hole, the high school students went nuts. That story quickly spread throughout the rest of the church.
Over the years that this church sought to grow young, Vonda and her team also continued to invite young people to take Jesus’ message seriously. Their method was not particularly innovative, consisting mostly of Bible study, prayer, and sharing life together. She explained to our team that at the very least, she wanted young people to know that “Jesus died for you, loves you, and you are good enough no matter what.” The volunteer team personalized this message to each teenager as much as possible, based on each student’s unique hopes and struggles.
The major breakthrough, however, came two years ago in a way that no one could have planned. Given his background in youth ministry, the new pastor, Bryan, shared Vonda’s vision to bridge the generations and looked for opportunities to do so. During a prayer service, as the prayer requests came in, Bryan handed some important keys to young people by asking them to volunteer to pray aloud.
The congregation was not prepared for what they heard as the young people prayed. Teenagers and emerging adults prayed passionate, fervent, mature prayers. While they prayed, it became apparent to the older members that these young people were not disinterested in God or church. They were fellow believers who took their faith seriously and desired to have a place at the table. The older adults in the church were floored and began to look at the younger generation in a new light.
When we visited the church, every group we interviewed told us this story. One of the older adults teared up as he recalled, “I was very proud of our youth in that moment.”
The young people themselves recounted how they had earned a new level of respect after that prayer service. “It was like the older generation now knew that we actually wanted to be part of the church,” one teenager shared. From that point on, the church began to prioritize young people at all levels of the church.
Now young people regularly help lead worship. The pastor has committed to periodically attend youth group gatherings, retreats, and other activities. The church’s elder board has upped its commitment to young people, most notably through adjustments to the church budget.
The most important fruit of this prioritization is that every young person now feels welcomed, loved, and known in their church. One high school student gushed, “Walking through the doors on Sunday morning is the best—I get a happy feeling whenever I think about it.” Volga CRC is that warm. Because of their church’s magnetic community, several high school students now plan to go to the local college rather than move far away.
Another teenager commented, “I feel like I have 20 grandparents at my church.”
In addition to the handful of young people whose families attend the church, a dozen teenagers who live in the surrounding community now participate in the life of the church. They show up even though their parents are not Christians, because by being the best neighbors, Volga CRC has demonstrated something compelling that these young people want to be a part of.
As a result of this unparalleled sense of community, Volga CRC is growing young. Its ministry is not flashy, its facilities are pretty basic, and it has only one full-time staff person (and it’s not Vonda!). However, the church is now a place where young people love to be and where they are growing in their faith.
Volga CRC also benefits from the life and energy emanating from its young people. As one senior adult shared, “Seeing so many young people around the church brings a smile to my face.”
The church is growing in numbers too and is seeking ways to keep up with the increase in attendance. Perhaps most importantly, this church, which once faced the possibility of growing old and dying, is now excited about the bright future that lies ahead.
A future that feels young.
Chapter Highlights
• Any church can change to grow young. Nearly 1 in 3 research participants noted their church had undergone significant shifts to become more effective with young people.
• Churches do not change to grow young by pursuing a silver bullet, relying on their size or large budget, or hiring staff to solve their problems.
• A crucial early step in a congregation’s journey toward growing young is to understand its unique context through careful and systematic listening to all generations.
• By sharing stories of future hope, congregations can both develop and communicate their vision for growing young.
• Changes toward growing young are made easier by beginning where you have the most influence, constructing a holding environment, experimenting on the margins, and maintaining disciplined attention.
Strategic Questions to Help Your Church Develop Its Own Plan to Grow Young
Your Church Now
• Who are the key people from your church who should be part of the leadership team or guiding coalition to help your church grow young?
• To whom does your leadership team need to listen? Make a list of individuals or groups, noting the names of those from your leadership team who will do that listening.
• What are the four to six major themes that stand out?
• Go back through this book and review your ratings and answers to the questions at the end of each chapter. Based on what you noted and what you’ve heard from your congregation, which two of the six core commitments need to be the focus of your church’s time and attention in this next season? Perhaps make notes about where you want to focus on the Growing Young Wheel below.
Your Church Growing Young
• What is one inspiring story your team heard during your listening?
• Imagine and write a shared story of future hope that focuses on your hopes or dreams for one young person in your congregation.
• Imagine and write a shared story of future hope that focuses on your hopes or dreams for your congregation overall.
• Given the stories you’ve discovered and developed, how can you share them with your congregation in such a way that inspires the church to want to grow young? With whom can you share stories, and when?
Your Plan for Change
• For the first core commitment you want to improve on, what two or three steps could your team take in order to make progress? Who needs to be involved in those steps, and when will they take place?
• For the second core commitment you want to improve on, what two or three steps could your team take in order to make progress? Who needs to be involved in those steps, and when will they take place?
• What potential areas of conflict or roadblocks might you encounter? What is your plan to move past those roadblocks?
• What are small markers along the journey that your church can pay attention to and celebrate? How will you celebrate them?