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Articles & Resources to Reconnect with Youth Adults
 
List of Articles Below:
 
1. Young adults explore social justice in nation's capital
2. How Many Youth Are Leaving the Church?
3. Reaching Out to Young Adults
4. How to Reach Young Adults in a Wesleyan Way
5. Why We Can't Reach Young Adults
6. Young Adult Resource Hub
7. Young Adult Summit 2011
 
 
1. Young adults explore social justice in nation's capital
 
By Kathy L. Gilbert*
Jun 23, 2008 | WASHINGTON (UMNS)
Juliana Abe, a native of Côte d’Ivoire, is exploring a different culture and country while she works for the rights of Africans and African-American people around the world.
She is also enjoying getting to know her new "family" – The United Methodist Church.
 
Abe is one of 12 young people participating in the United Methodist Board of Church and Society's Ethnic Young Adults Summer Internship in the nation's capital. Young adults passionate about social justice and active in the denomination are selected annually from the church's five ethnic caucuses to participate in the summer intern program.
 
The 700,000-member Côte d’Ivoire church was formally received as a United Methodist annual (regional) conference at the 2008 General Conference, the denomination's lawmaking body, held in Fort Worth, Texas, April 23-May 2.
 
"We have different ways of worshipping in my country," Abe says. "We have very big choirs, lots of instruments, drums. ... African people like to dance during the service. It is not the same here in Washington."
 
Brothers and sisters
Abe is working at TransAfrica Forum, an African-American human rights and social justice advocacy organization that promotes diversity and equality in the foreign policy arena, according to its Web site. All the young adults in the intern program are placed in nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations in Washington, for two months.
 
"We are all different but we are all brothers and sisters in Christ," she said. Abe is a doctorate student at the University of Abidjan in Cocody, Côte d’Ivoire, and is active in the Cocody United Methodist Church.
Young adults explore social justice in nation's capital

Included in this year's slate of interns are young adults from Gambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Philippines. "This is the most international group we have had," said the Rev. Neal Christie, executive at the board. Christie oversees the interns and was an intern himself for the social action agency in 1984.
Jose Carlo G. dePano, a recent graduate from the University of the Philippines, said he is interested in seeing how problems are addressed in the United States so he can help his country gain social equality. He is active in The United Methodist Church in the Philippines.
 
"In the Philippines the government says we have equality, the government says we are in a democratic country, but there are a lot of political killings, a lot of poverty issues that are not resolved," he says. "They are offering short-term solutions for long-term problems." DePano is working in the Board of Church and Society's communications office.
 
Arianne Reagor, from Washington state, is learning about "making laws and harassing senators and Congress people," she says, laughing. She works with the Rebecca Project for Human Rights and is learning about how drug use affects families, schools and communities. She said she is also learning about the racism and sexism of the prison system. She attends George Fox University in Oregon.
 
Range of assignments
Other interns and their social justice assignments this summer include:
 
Young adults explore social justice in nation's capital

In addition to their assignments, the interns participate in weekly seminars that explore issues that concern different racial ethnic communities.
"The EYA program has provided me with an opportunity that very few people are blessed to receive, which is the opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and meet new people with different backgrounds and traditions, from different countries, and with different views," Lockhart said. "It allows us all to come together and focus on the one thing that binds us all together no matter what our age, ethnicity, or gender ... God."
 
* Gilbert is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.
 
 
2. How Many Youth are Leaving the Church?
 
February 24, 2009, 11:38 am » Brett Kunkle
If you discovered about half of the students in your church's youth ministry were going to walk away from Christ after entering college, would you do something about it?  I hope so.  That's not a very good retention rate. 
But what percentage of Christian youth are actually leaving the church?  There’s been some debate about the actual number, with some saying as little as 4% will remain Christian, while others suggest there’s virtually no exodus.  Christian Smith tells us that evangelicals have been "behaving badly with statistics" and quickly dispenses with the 4% "panic-attack" stats.   But can weget some idea of the percentage of youth leaving the church withoutbeing irresponsible with numbers?
These are the most recent and most cited studies that I could find:
The LifeWay and Barna studies include research details.  I’m no sociologist but from what I can tell, their methodology seems sounds.
Here are some related studies:
  • "Spirituality in Higher Education":  The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA found that 52% of college students reported frequent church attendance the year before they entered college but only 29% continued frequent church attendance by their junior year.
  • College Transition Project:  The Fuller Youth Institute's current data seems "to suggest that about 40-50% of students in youth groups struggle in their faith after graduation."
  • "The Religiosity Cycle":  A 2002 Gallup Poll study found that church attendance “drops during the teen and young adult years.”
Conclusion: It's safe to conclude the church is losing a signficant portion of its young people for some period of time.  Even if we take Barna's lower numbers and then cut 10% off to be extra conservative, we're stilltalking about losing half of our young people.
Is that acceptable?  And if not, why are we losing them and what needs to be done?
 
 
3. Reaching Out to Young Adults
 
Posted April 9th, 2008 @ 2:34 pm by Chris Salzman
Trevin Wax relates some of the thoughts he picked up from Robert Wuthnow’s book After the Baby Boomersabout how to reach out to young adults (18 to twenty-somethings).
His main points are in bold and I’ve provided a short summary of each of his summaries, but please read his whole post if you’re interested:
1. Raise expectations regarding post-boomer religious participation while simultaneously providing support for this generation.
Young adults are busy and uninvolved with the church, we need to create innovative ways of ministering to them while also raising the level of our expectations for their involvement.
2. Buck the trend of late marriages.
We need to emphasize sexual chastity, but more importantly emphasize earlier maturity. Don’t push people into wedding vows, but rather encourage an atmosphere of maturity so that young twenty-somethings will be ready for marriage.
3. Reach out to new movers.
We need to actively evangelize to people who are new to communities as people in transition are more willing to join a church in their settling process.
4. Emphasize doctrine again.
Wuthnow’s research indicates a lack of doctrinal understanding among young adults. They also really want that understanding. The church must offer substantial training in this regard.
5. Stop expending so much time and energy debating stylistic issues.
Young adults are not interested in the ‘worship wars’. They’re interested in liturgy, tradition and the preaching of the Bible.
6. We need to deepen our understanding of other religious faiths.
We’re doing a good job of reaching the ‘unchurched, but have little understanding of other faiths and how to evangelize to them.
Number 3 makes a lot of sense to me. I know most young adults are looking for places to fit in and find friends. Why not the church? And a hearty Amen to numbers 5 and 6.
 
 
4. How to Reach Young Adults In a Wesleyan Way
by James-Michael Smith
 
www.jmsmith.org
 
1. Tell his story – A Postmodern generation is all about stories and real people. Make Wesley real to them! Tell them his story as a young adult, specifically such things as:
• His passion as a young adult college student at Oxford for living the Gospel in a tangible way through devotion to God mixed with care for the poor and imprisoned. Wesley himself was a young twentysomething when it all began!
• His failed mission to Georgia to convert the natives. [i.e. Journal entry 1/24/38] • His fear of dying before his Aldersgate experience [i.e. journal entry 5/19/38]. Even as a
devoted Christian—a minister even!—Wesley faced fear and doubt and feelings of unworthiness.
But God didn’t leave him in that state forever. • His relationship with the Moravians, Whitfield, and other Christians with differing theology. He
learned from them, was inspired by them, loved them dearly, but eventually had to separate from them doctrinally. He never lost his love for them though or his recognition of how God used them in his life.
• His challenging the system of lifeless anemic church leadership and faith devoid of the Holy Spirit and apathetic to evangelism. He became convinced and convicted by field-preaching [i.e. journal entry 4/29/39] realizing that his call crossed denominational boundaries [i.e. “The world is my parish” journal entry 6/11/39].
• His openness to moving beyond the bureaucracy in order to advance the Kingdom of God. He ordained lay preachers [i.e. journal entry 12/27/45].
• His openness to allowing God to be God—but still maintaining a desire for structure, accountability, and discipline. He experienced all sorts of manifestations of the supernatural, yet didn’t seek to quell such “enthusiasm”, as his detractors labeled it. [i.e. the “exorcisms” such as that recounted in journal entry 10/23/39].
 
2. Talk about his relationships with women! Love life is a key topic for young adults, many of whom have experienced unhealthy or broken relationships themselves and are looking for true love.
• Wesley’s childhood under Susanna shaped him spiritually, but also may have played a significant role in his view of marriage and family life.
• His stoic “pursuit” of and subsequent rejection by Sophie in Savannah and his petty reaction of denying her communion illustrates how romantic pain can lead to all kinds of rationalization of poor behavior!
• His tepid, strained marriage shows that even the great men of God can be extremely clueless in marriage!
 
3. Share his passion for the Gospel—the Biblical, Apostolic, Orthodox Gospel! Young adults do not respond to a Gospel of social justice and brotherly love without the underlying commitment to Biblical authority and Evangelical faithfulness that Wesley embodied. We want to be challenged! We want to be pushed! We want to be made uncomfortable by complacency and comfort that most North American Christians have always enjoyed! We must uphold and pass on the unwavering commitment Wesley held
regarding such issues as:
• Biblical Authority – Outdated continental scholarship based upon Enlightenment assumptions should be given a long overdue burial.
• Social Justice – Young adults want to be involved in tangible ways of helping the poor—such as the current situation in Darfur—without having their faith co-opted by political agendas, both on the Right and the Left! We don’t resonate with the John Hagees or the John Spongs; the Pat Robertsons or the Rudolf Bultmanns.
• Holiness and Church Discipline – Young adults don’t want to be part of a church that adopts an anything-goes attitude towards personal or corporate Sin. [i.e. journal entry 8/29/39, 3/16/48, etc.]
• Orthodox Ecumenism – Denominations have become increasingly irrelevant to most young adults who identify themselves primarily with Jesus rather than the UMC, SBU, AoG, or RCC. [i.e. journal entry 8/15/47]
 
4. Learn our language – Young adults are not spiritually apathetic; just look at the demographics at churches such as Granger, North Point, Mars Hill or Mosaic and you’ll see large-scale involvement among the 20s and 30s crowd. What do these and other churches who are reaching young adults have in common? .... They speak the language of young adult culture! Just as Wesley took the Gospel of the High-church Anglican tradition to the town squares and open fields of England in a manner they could hear and receive, so too must we not be afraid to communicate the Gospel of the Wesleyan movement to the visually-oriented, institutionally-cynical culture of young adults in our areas. Practical ways of doing this are such things as:
• Recognizing and affirming the young adults in our churches as spiritual (or at least potentially- spiritual) leaders in Kingdom of God.
• Committing to building a young adult community or networking with other churches (even across denominational lines) who have the same desire to reach our generation.
• Becoming a partner church with CharlotteO��E!!! (info available at www.charlotteone.org) • Subscribing to young adult resources such as Relevant Leader and becoming familiar with key
figures in the emergent and relevant churches around the country (Granger Community Church in South Bend, IN is a prime example of a UMC that is doing just this!)
 
And finally�
5. Feed us MEAT, not just milk! Young adults may initially be drawn in by felt-needs and spiritual fluff (though many are actually turned off by it ironically!), but beneath that is a craving for the deeper things of God. As people like Rob Bell, N.T. Wright and John Piper have shown, young adults crave theologically deep preaching and teaching. We don’t want flash without substance! [cf. “Young, Restless and Reformed”, Christianity Today, Sept. 2006]
 
 
5. Why We Can’t Reach Young Adults
by Jim Johnston
 
When our Threads team met in December to talk about what kind of content we needed on this site for the next few months, we came up with a pretty good idea. We decided to take the most asked questions we received at Connect Conferences this fall and answer them in detail.
 
Here is Question 1:
“What would you say was the number one reason programs/attempts to reach young people aren’t successful?”
 
Great question. It’s going to be impossible to boil it down to one key reason, so I will throw out several issues that have tripped me up in the last few weeks, months and years. Some failures are remarkably and painfully fresh in my mind.
  1. We fail to develop, disciple and trust young adult leaders.
    If you don’t get young adults themselves into leadership roles and let them truly guide the ministry, you’re wasting your time. Start with your core group and invest in them — long term. Make sure you are all on the same page with the destination you are heading toward. Then, give them ownership in decisions and directions. Expect some mistakes. Help everyone learn from the mistakes, but keep pressing on toward the goal of reaching young adults for Christ and teaching them to become mature believers. Don’t expect to be successful with a top-down, command-and-control leadership style. Teach your young adults to lead and let them do it.
  2. We don’t understand the world of today’s young adults.
    We’re a long, long, long way from Opie, Andy and Aunt Bee. The world today is unbelievably different than the world most of the Boomer generation is familiar with. Half of young adults grew up in broken homes. A majority of young adults struggle with a major challenge of substance abuse, pyschological problems like depression, and just plain loneliness. Church leaders have to sit down and talk with young adults about their lives and truly understand the world they live in. Until we are willing to truly understand and truly engage their world, we will never be able to lead them to Christ. We have to be willing to engage in their world, no matter how messy it might get. It’s important. Lives for all eternity are on the line.
  3. We don’t choose people over programs.
    Sometimes we are all about programs—Sunday School, Upward Sports, Support Groups, Women’s Ministry, etc. Programs are fine and good, but unless we are willing to value people more than programs, we will not reach the Millennial Generation. Maybe your church has done Sunday School for 50 years and has done it well. Are you willing to do it differently? Are you willing to go off site to do it? Are you willing to stretch your traditional hour of Bible study to 90 minutes or two hours to allow for more interaction among people who need to ask hard questions? Are you willing to do it at 11 a.m. Sundays instead of 9:30? Are you willing to offer Bible study at other times and settings during the week to account for all of the young adults in your community who are forced into working Sundays? Programs must take a back seat to people.
  4. We don’t expect enough from young adults.
    Challenge them to read the Bible through in three months. They’ll do it if it’s important to their spiritual growth. Challenge them to make a difference in their community through missions and service. They’ll do it. Ask them to create a worship service just for them and invite their friends and they’ll do it. They will rise to the challenge. Don’t worship at the church of low expectations. Worship the Lord Jesus Christ and hold up His expectations. You will be amazed at the results you see.
These are mistakes I have made. What do you think
 
 
6. Young Adult Resource Hub
 
For an up-to-date list of great resources pertaining to Young Adult Ministry, visit the Resource Hub.  There you can find print, and online resources, ideas for bible studies and retreats, as well as ministry partners and speakers.
Visit the Hub!!
 
 
7. Young Adult Summit 2011
Young Adult Summit 2011
 
October 21-23, 2011
 
Austin, TX
Event fee is $39.00 and includes program and two meals.
Registration opens May 1, 2011 Click here to register.
Contact Diane Coppock email: dcoppock@gbod.org
phone: 615-509-4764
Bring a group from your church and save!
Groups of five or more from the same church can attend for only $29 per person.
Can’t come to the whole event, but live in the area and can make it for the day?
Day passes are available for $20 each.
If you are a Young Adult or Adult Worker who serves Young Adults this event is for YOU!
Through separate learning tracks as well as common learning and sharing times, participants will:
 
  • Connect with other leaders in the church.
  • Share ideas and resources to build up young adult ministry.
  • Develop leadership skills to better serve the church.
  • Engage in meaningful conversation about how the church can more effectively be in ministry with young adults.
Need Child Care?
Child care will be available at no charge. Parker Lane UMC will provide professional child care workers who have received training and cleared background checks per their church policy. Child care will be offered on-site at the church during scheduled meeting times. Spots are limited so be sure to indicate you are requesting child care when you register.
Need a Scholarship to be able to come?
Need-based scholarships are available. Funds are limited, so you must fill out an application to be considered. Partial and full registration fee scholarships are available. Also, if you require hotel lodging instead of the more affordable church accommodations, but need some financial assistance to stay in a hotel, you may apply for lodging assistance.
Applications are due October 1, 2011.

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Grace2Live | Southwest Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church | Council on Young Adult Ministries | 16400 Huebner Road | San Antonio TX 78248 | 888.349.4191 | rhf143@aol.com. Visit the main SWTC site at www.umcswtx.org.