Where are all the twentysomethings?

Have you stopped and looked around at all the faces in church on Sunday morning? If you haven’t noticed we have many children, teenagers, 30-50 year olds, and 50+er’s. What you will not see is a large amount of twentysomethings. On record, my church has 94 people in our database that are ages 18-29. What is shocking is that only 28 of the 94 have attended church this year more than 5 times and only 5 have attended 25 times or more. This means that out of the roughly 350 people we average on a Sunday morning only 5 of them are between the ages of 18-29 and are considered regular attenders. Quite frankly this scares me.
Our congregation is not out of the norm when it comes to the disappearance of our twentysomethings. According to the Barna Group only 3 out of every 10 twentysomethings attend church regularly, with every 6 out of 10 claiming they have a relationship with Jesus Christ. This means that a lot of twentysomethings believe in Jesus but do not find it important to be a part of a church family.
Why is this happening?
So you may be asking yourself “why is this happening”? I suppose this is something that I have bit of insight on since I am a twentysomething and have many twentysomething friends. It seems my generation is absent from the church for a couple of reasons.
The first reason is the twentysomething’s themselves. With most of them going off to college, church seems to be the last thing on their mind. With studying, partying, and working consuming most of their time, church and Christianity are usually just topics of debate in a current events or philosophy class. With much focus on their own needs and wants the church is far from the “I” centered culture in which they dwell. Some churches cater to this consumer mentality and do a good job of raking people in with a self help seminar for a sermon each Sunday, but in turn no real transformation occurs because the Gospel is the last thing that is actually talked about.(The consumer church point is a whole other article and could be belabored for pages!) I have a friend who was a leader in a para-church organization and I occasionally ask him when the last time he’s been to church; his usual reply is with an answer that is counted not in weeks, but in months. Church is last on his list of priorities. Being plugged into a diverse body is no longer a priority to him, and for most, if they aren’t getting something out of it, then it is a waste of time. Many twentysomethings have divorced the bride of Christ(the church) with Christ himself. They have cut the body off of Christ. This is serious, but the blame must not solely rest on the twentysomethings.
The church is just as responsible for severing the twentysomething part of the body as the twentysomethings themselves. We must only look as far as the defined “ministries” most churches have. Most have a children’s ministry, youth ministry, elderly ministry, singles ministry, and shut in ministry, but rarely do we ever see a young adult ministry. Many churches have small groups, but seldom do they consist of anyone between the ages of 18 and 29. Most churches have very strong youth groups and then cut the members off cold turkey after graduation from high school. This leaves the youth group member an unprepared fish out of water that was once used to having church catered to them and handed to them on a silver platter. An occasional visit back to church only reminds them of how irrelevant the church is to their life. From a distance the twentysomething longs to find a group of people they can relate to, but the church appears to be a dried up well.
The reason this is so frightening is because in ten years when church leadership will begin to change we will find few Christians ready for the task. We must find a way to call this twentysomething generation back to the church and most importantly back to Christ.
What can we do?
I never bring forth a problem without trying to find a solution. First and foremost I am not recommending yet another ministry to add to the list, rather I am calling for a shift and change in the church as a whole.
The battlefront is first and foremost in the home. We must begin to teach our children and teenagers about the importance of a true relationship with Jesus. That it is not only about a “personal” relationship with Jesus Christ, but also a relationship with God’s people. God calls us to be in fellowship with other believers and be a functioning part of the body of Christ. We all must see the importance of having a church family with scores of aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, brothers and sisters, etc., in each church congregation. We must restore the concept of the family of God and we ourselves must start thinking and acting in accordance with this central Christian belief. We must begin to think and believe that the “old people” are not just old people, but are caring wisdom- filled grandparents who love their grandchildren. We must begin to see that the little kids and teenagers are not just immature, loud, rambunctious nuisances, but beautiful, growing, children of the Lord. We must embrace our church family and begin caring for each other in new ways and see that every generation is just as valuable as the next. Although this may seem like a tangent, it is essential to bringing back the disappearing twentysomethings. It is proven that during this stage in life the most important decisions one will ever make transpire, including schooling, career, spouse, having children, and place of residence. We must see how critical our investment as the church is in the lives of the twentysomethings. They are longing for someone to invest in them and teach them how to live life and make good Godly choices; not as a condescending baby-sitter, but as a mentor that is going to walk through life with them. They are yearning for a sense of belonging and direction just as we all are.
Second, we must begin to seek new and creative ways to do church, which means stepping out of our comfort zone and putting someone else’s needs before our own. Church is not about us! Church first and foremost must be about the glorification of God. This will inevitably result in the loosening of our tight grip on our own needs and wants, and allow us to start doing ministry as Jesus did. Do not confuse this with breaking away from the scriptures to do something real wishy-washy, but see this as a call back to the scriptures to do real and honest Biblical ministry. When we see Jesus in John 4 with the woman at the well, we see ministry as it should be. Jesus met the woman on her turf and just by speaking to her He did something that would have never ordinarily been done in His time. She was a female outcast in a race of outcasts, and Jesus, a Jewish male, extended love, blunt truth, and the Gospel in a way she never expected. We too must be imitators of Christ (Eph. 5:1) and do this type of ministry to bring the lost home to the family of God.
My prayer is that this article may be a charge for us believers to act in a way that the American church as whole is not. I pray we see the twentysomethings, and all people for that matter, flock back to the church and have transformed lives because of the Gospel. Let us begin to shift our motives, actions, and focus away from ourselves and on to Jesus. And as we do, let us see what Jesus wants us to be about. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20 (ESV)

Any questions or comments contact Dustin Nimmo at 513-734-7201 or dustin@bethelumcyouth.com. This article can also be found online at bethelumcyouth.com.