My son Ben pointed me to a blog the other day titled Church Redone. The author identifies himself as “Joshua, a twenty-something guy on the east coast’ who is about figuring out what it means to follow Jesus. In a recent blog, “10 Ways to Keep Me from Discovering Church”, he identified 10 ways many churches (maybe your own) makes it hard for young adults (and just about everyone else) from connecting to a church. . The link is; http://www.churchredone.com/ where you can find all the details. Here is the list:
- Don’t have a website .
- Be completely inactive in the community
- Don’t answer your phone
- Allow misinformation :
- Lack clear signage :
- Have insufficient parking/seating
- Ignore Visitors :
- Respond half-heartedly to inquiries
- Be evasive about your beliefs
- Lie to me
3 comments:
Its very hard to reach people my age... even harder still is retention. The church may, some how, manage to get us there but gives us little to keep us coming back *personal experience in recent months*. Make it interesting, interactive, creative, fun... we'll understand, participate and maybe even enjoy. If pastors don't welcome us - like saying hi before or after the service, if there is nothing relatable for a young person then its not going to work. When pastors use their church history, New Testament, and Old testament classes from seminary as their only resources its not going to hit home for the common person no matter how old they are. In personal experience, if there aren't any young people in the church - why would one young person want to join and be the ONLY one. Its no fun being the only person your own age with a 5 year age gap between you and the next closest person... *sigh* Thanks for your entry Mike definately hits home. MISS YOU :-)
Its sad... cause I look around the church and there are no young people between teh ages of 18 and 30 besides me. I wish I could say that is only my own church... but its not. Some Churches don't even have that. Some churches have a gap that spans from 10 year olds to 50 year olds and nothing inbetween. I dont understand how congregations and pastors can think that they don't need to reach out to the young people in the community - make themselves new and improved and available. What is wrong with trying to improve the old model of doing things?
Mike. Thanks so much for highlighting this post. It's gotten a surprising response online. Since search engines devalue duplicate content (hence why I retain full copyright) please update the post to only include an excerpt or perhaps the list without explanations. I'd hate to see either of us negatively ranked. Thanks again.
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