August 24, 2009
The X Factor
What we've learned from the rise, fall, and renewal of "Gen-X" ministries.
This article is from the Summer 2009 issue of Leadership Journal. You can read the entire article at Leadership's website.
When the willows sway in South Barrington, the evangelical world notices. So Willow Creek Community Church provoked headlines in 2006 when leaders said they would end Axis as everyone knew it. As recently as 2001, about 2,000 young adults had gathered on Saturday nights for alternative music and relevant teaching. But before temporarily closing in 2006, Axis attracted fewer than 400 twenty-somethings. How could a trend-setting ministry decline so severely in just five years?
Due in no small part to Willow's example, ministry leaders across the country once viewed separate, age-targeted services as the key to reaching a generation largely absent from the churches built by their Boomer parents. Little more than 10 years after Willow launched Axis in 1996, many of these once-prosperous twenty-something ministries have folded, spun off, or morphed. Leaders from these ministries have learned differing lessons from the experiment. Some are now advocating new messages for reaching the emerging generation. Others have changed their ministry's structure. Still more want better biblical preaching and radical discipleship. All have been provoked to think deeply about the nature and implications of the gospel and have seen their ministries leave lasting effects on the larger church.
Costly conformity
Only one thing surprised Dan Kimball about the Axis reorganization: it took 10 years. Kimball, who teaches and oversees the Sunday gatherings for Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, California, has tracked many young adult ministries over the years. He estimates that 90 percent of worship services targeting a younger generation run into serious trouble after three years. One factor is the way these age-specific ministries isolate young people from the rest of the church.
He talked to Axis leaders, including Nancy Ortberg, for his 2004 book Emerging Worship. Ortberg told him that the Axis staff interacted little with other Willow Creek leaders. As Axis participants aged, few connected with other Willow Creek ministries. Trouble was brewing. Kimball questioned whether a ministry based on generational preferences could long survive.
"If we are talking about a mindset, then to make someone switch to another approach to spiritual formation and worship when they reach a certain age is a difficult undertaking," Kimball wrote in Emerging Worship. "It would be like birthing a Korean worship service that uses Korean language, Korean music, and a Korean mindset in all their communications, and then—when they reach a certain age—telling them they can't worship as Koreans anymore."
Kimball learned this lesson the hard way. In the mid-1990s he served as the young adults pastor at Santa Cruz Bible Church where he began experimenting with a new worship gathering. He darkened the room, arranged the chairs, lit candles, and served coffee. While these moves seem cliché today, they were radical for the time. Within a few years, Kimball's experiment had become the church's largest worship gathering. Then the questions started. When will the twenty-somethings start coming to "normal" church?
"So what began as a very exciting missional adventure slowly turned into a tension-filled dilemma. It felt like two churches in the same church," Kimball said.
Church leaders opted to introduce commonality across generations. The two groups shared a small group structure, music ministry, and even sermons. The strategy didn't work. Though he started with candles and coffee, Kimball had begun to realize that his generation thought about community, evangelism, leadership, and communication very differently than the older leaders. The relationship had to change, so he decided to end the next generation ministry at Santa Cruz Bible and plant a new church. For the first year, Vintage Faith Church rented space from Santa Cruz Bible Church. Later it merged with another aging congregation. They had facilities; Vintage Faith had people. Those from the older church who persevered through the merger have become grandparent-like figures to the twenty-somethings at Vintage Faith.
"I feel that if we can see church as the people, and not just define church by the worship gathering, a lot would be solved in bridging generations," Kimball said. "We could focus more on the older mentoring the younger, the older opening their homes and being sages and guides to the younger. Instead we focus so much on getting the twenty-somethings into the main worship gathering. But just sitting in a room for an hour and half looking at the backs of everyone's heads does not make something intergenerational."
Conspicuously absent
Not even Kimball knows the exact origin of twenty-something ministries. As more young adults delayed marriage and parenthood, there developed a need for adult ministries that were not family-based. The simplest solution was to follow the model of high school and college ministries. The result was age-specific programs that functioned like youth groups for young adults.
This approach appeared to be working until "Gen X" became a catchphrase in the 1990s and Boomer church leaders noticed their conspicuous absence.
Continue reading "The X Factor" at LeadershipJournal.net.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga on August 24, 2009
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Comments
It's telling that much of the article focused on the successes and failures of different approaches, programs, structures, styles, arrangements -- in other words, the externals.
The concluding paragraph finally gets to the truth: what people of any generation really need is love, acceptance, grace, friendship, mercy, community, all combined with and flowing from the gentle teaching of the eternal truths of scripture. That sounds deceptively simple, but usually takes humility combined with hard work and sacrifice.
Posted by: John at August 24, 2009
I've been pondering church more and more lately asking some questions concerning the ebb and flow of popularity and excitement in the evangelical community, and I can't help but wonder if the fundamental problem is that we haven't actually thought critically and biblically about what a church is. I think the reason my generation is fleeing the church is that the evangelical teaching (not explicitly of course), has been that good church is good preaching, good music and excitement. Once we could find better preaching, better music and more excitement online, we stopped going. The evangelical church, in convincing us why to show up there rather than elsewhere, failed to convince us why it was necessary at all.
I wonder if we just need a new robust vision of ecclesiology, and learn to allow our programs, services, ministries, relational structure, etc., to flow out of that, rather than simply trying to jump to whatever we think we keep people excited. I wonder, if we could change our emphasis away from "what works" to "what is faithful," if we would find that people are willing to walk through desperate times and understand that community life, like family life, is not easy, but it is deeply meaningful.
Posted by: Kyle Strobel at August 24, 2009
Another big question I have about on-line podcasts and specifically what Kyle raised up - is that sitting watching or listening to someone speak whether on-line or in person or on video screens does not make a church. Or getting all ages into one meeting sitting in a room together does not make an intergenerational church. It is fascinating as when you ask people what does interngenerational church look like, it almost always is answered with seeing people of all ages in the room worshiping together and hearing a message. If we define intergenerational church by the worship gathering, we are in trouble.
If going and watching someone speak and listening to the worship music is "church" then we might as well stay home like we do when we rent DVD's and watch movies.
But if that is seen as just one part of the church, but the real church is the interactive live relationships people have with one another all week long while serving on mission in a local body - that is more what church is.
Serving on mission with others in community stretches us, forces us to pray more, be in community more, get into Scripture more..... my biggest fear of the whole video and podcasts and all that, is that if we aren't teaching a clear and biblical ecclesiolgy we will subtlly teach an incorrect form of what church is and frame new expectations of what "church" is to future generations.
Posted by: Dan Kimball at August 24, 2009
Maybe the key to reaching younger 20-somethings is as simple as walking across the room and caring about the 20-somethings already in your church, who will pass that on to their friends outside the walls.
or you can change the lighting and music and advertise things like "you don't have to dress up" like we're all 7 year-olds without mommies to dress us.
Posted by: Josh C at August 24, 2009
Excellent comments, Kyle, Dan, Josh. Our church is currently discussing "how old do you have to be to be an elder?" The spirit is good (wanting all ages to be involved at many levels). But somehow the very question puts people in categories that trivialize.
"How many freckles do you have to have to be an elder?" would be an extension of this logic. Why is age more relevant than freckles? Age is something we've chosen to divide us into groups. That bugs me.
Posted by: Jarrod at August 25, 2009
Timely, Dan and Out of Ur, and great ideas from Dan and Kyle ... we have a post up at our site today (Jesus Creed) about ministry in this gap of 20somethings.
Posted by: Scot McKnight at August 25, 2009
It's been going on for a long time - building Christ's church focused on "what seems to work" rather than on what God asked us to do. The "what seems to work" will always change with changing trends and styles. What God has asked us to do has nothing to do with trends and styles. It hasn't changed. Trends and styles always get the priority place in leaders minds over what God has asked us to do. Why? Hired clergy driven assumptions about church. If you are going to bring in $30,000 - $40,000 a year in the offering plate to pay a "required hired expert", you have to bring in a crowd of people who "like" and "enjoy" and "feel good" about what they see so they will drop that kind of money in the offering plate year after year. This dynamic forces God's styless, trendless, timeless, supernaturally designed dynamics that reveal Himself to be put on a back burner. The hired man may be good at talking about the things God asks for, but to keep the style/trend oriented givers to keep it up, they actions and behaviors will all be trend and style oriented. This is building church on the sand rather than on the rock.
Giving up the hired expert assumption frees the church from pandering to bogus flesh oriented interests. When a leader earns his own living and helps people grow spiritually, he can speak and act in harmony with God's design. He must be humble enough to never want a crowd following him. His joy will overflow simply with making disciples one at a time and sending them out to reproduce beyond himself.
You cannot plant mono-generational, style driven, giving consuming dynamics of church life and expect to reap humble, reproductive, intergenerational servants of Christ.
Posted by: Tim at August 25, 2009
The big question that we should be asking is whether it's an outreach or a fellowship. If we frame it as an outreach, then the church can/should create a path of integration. As a fellowship, the church has no idea on what to do with people who move out of that particular affinity.
Posted by: Eddy E at August 25, 2009
In the article I kept reading about the "young professionals." What about the 20-30 yr old blue collar folk? Has there been no success, no work with them? Is there a difference in reaching the blue-collar vs. white-collar GenX/Millenial/whatever 20-30 yr old? Because within every generational group there still exists diversity. It ssems sometimes that Willow Creek churches, and even CT, prefer to target the college educated and ignore the up and coming skilled labor.
Posted by: DaveAllen at August 25, 2009
I remember in 2000 as I entered seminary I wrote a paper about Gen-X and how it was a 'culture' and as such should be treated as such by a specific type of ministry. by the time I ended in 2003 I retracted that view and chalked it up to consumerism and bad church programs.
our church has never intentionally organized to minister to Gen-X, we in fact almost ignored them and just talked about being part of the family and community of God. and now at least probably 40% of our congregation are in teh Gen-x range.
Posted by: Geoff Holsclaw at August 26, 2009
Diversity. While we like to make generalizations about paid clergy or a specific ministry, we need to understand in some contexts it works and is right, in others it isn't/doesn't.
What I do find interesting is the reference to youth ministry (ie, Senior High School ministries) and the 20 somethings. The stats show that Sr High ministries haven't worked - we are in the 3rd generation of young people leaving the church after high school; and so we have the 20 somethings "growing up" and leaving the church at their "graduation".
A huge part of the issue is our lack of discipleship. High school programs dropped the "club" type programs including Sunday School and went to the large gathering and worship oriented meetings - Where is the 1:1 discipleship? A program like Christian Service Brigade offered Gender-specific ministry, a personal discipleship program (through achievements), and was one of the few "in depth" spiritual ministries a man could be involved with in the church, was dropped in the mid 90's. VBS stopped happening in churches a decade or two ago as well. When we do the age specific ministry, we have to include the 1:1 and small group discipleship or you will have no growth. What do we do with the 20 somethings that is up close and personal and accountable?
While we work at finding ways to reach the 20 and 30 somethings, we had better make sure we ground our own kids in the truths of the Gospel of Jesus.
Posted by: Steve Grove at August 27, 2009
I just finished reading the whole article and here are my thoughts...
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1. WHY IS AXIS BEING USED AS A SUCCESS STORY?
> I love Willow (Hybels inspired us to plant a church), and I think what Peacock is doing is great.
> But given that they average 23,000 ppl, have a senior pastor like Bill Hybels, unbelievable facilities, and effective/healthy culture... why have they only got 400 young adults??? Something must be going wrong.
(I am really not trying to be critical, I am just doing the numbers)
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2. I AM INTERESTED...
> Did AXIS decline because it wasn't working, or because Nancy Ortberg left (in other words... a change of leadership)?
> Did 722 transition because it wasn't working, or because Louie Giglio had left and Buckhead was taking off?
(In other words, how do we really know that these models didn't work?)
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3. OUR EXPERIENCE
Some friends and I planted a church in Brisbane, Australia to target unchurched young adults. We now average 200 young adults a Sunday, and by percentage, we're the most evangelistic Baptist church in our state.
I don't think our success or failure is built on our model though.
I think what matters to us is our values...
> The Gospel
> Community/Authenticity
> Generosity/Compassion
> Mission
On top of that I think it comes down to the gospel, the power of God, and leadership...
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Anyway - I am really keen to learn from Kimball (who I totally rate), Willow/Northpoint (which I totally rate), but I feel like we must ask the hard questions...
Who is getting the job done under difficult circumstances???
Which churches have the most number of young adults?
Is it Driscoll, Bell, Burke, Keller, Kimball???
I have no idea...but it would be worth exploring what they are doing and what is working.
Mark
Posted by: Mark Broadbent at August 27, 2009
Regarding Dan Kimball's comments that follow: "Maybe the key to reaching younger 20-somethings is as simple as walking across the room and caring about the 20-somethings already in your church, who will pass that on to their friends outside the walls."
Great point! I couldn't agree with you more. We had two 19 year olds visit our worship gathering last Sunday night for the first time. I had met one of them while he was working at a gas station and added him to our "contact" list for emails. He ended up bringing a friend with him. After the gathering, they said they would be bringing their other friends back with them who really needed to be in church.
Regarding Dan's following remarks: "or you can change the lighting and music and advertise things like "you don't have to dress up" like we're all 7 year-olds without mommies to dress us." Whoops! We just sent a mailer to nearly 37,000 homes picturing a guy from the chest down in blue jeans and tennis shoes on the front that read, you guessed it! "These are my church clothes." In my context, that's one of the questions I get asked a lot, believe it or not. "What should I wear?" We also included a brief testimony on the back from a family who had been looking for a church family/home for over a year. They appreciated our "casual atmosphere and natural people" and the fact that our music was "not traditional, but not over the top, either."
We are a brand new church in Mansfield, Texas, that just started worshiping weekly. Our "Big Day at New Day" is on Sept. 13, our "official" launch. You're all invited, of course. Just go to www.newdayumc.com for all the details. I got a feeling: it's going to be a great night!
Posted by: Sheila Fiorella at August 28, 2009
I forgot something in my last posting. If you can't make it to Texas on the 13th (or even if you can), please pray for New Day. Thanks!
Posted by: Sheila at August 28, 2009
My bad (will that attract young people? jk)I attributed Josh C's remarks to Dan Kimball. Forgive me!
Posted by: Sheila at August 28, 2009