Editorial: Good news for churches with fewer young people

Students from preschool through graduate school are back in class. While the fall schedule is back in full swing, you may be one of the churches seeing fewer students on Sunday mornings, Wednesday evenings, and whenever else you have student activities this fall. There’s good news and bad news about that.

Part of the good news is you are far from alone. That may not sound like good news, but it does help to know you have company. The bad news is you have company. Many churches are seeing fewer students involved in their ministries.

But that bad news isn’t the whole story. There’s good news—truly good news—for churches with fewer children, youth, and college students involved in their ministries. This good news should be a source of relief, hope, and even excitement for you and your church.

Especially since that good news exists despite so much bad news today.

Some bad news

Here’s some of what weighs on us like bad news.

So many of our churches are aging. It’s undeniable there is a lot of gray hair in our churches. It’s not bad to have gray hair. Gray hair isn’t really the issue. It’s just a visual marker that we don’t have as many younger people in church as we did 10, 20, 30, or more years ago.

In many churches, finances are tight and getting tighter. For plenty of churches, it’s always been that way. But for all of us, costs are spiraling up—at home and for the church—while incomes are not following suit. Many incomes are fixed. Something’s got to give at some point.

Meanwhile, we’ve run up a $40 trillion debt and expect to grow that number. This is bad news for our children and grandchildren. We, however, live in the days of Hezekiah. “At least there will be peace and security in my days,” Hezekiah said (Isaiah 39:8).

Aging and finances aren’t our only concerns. Baby Boomers, numerically the largest generation of senior adults in history, are watching friends and loved ones die one after the other. The grief compounds. Dolly Parton, a Baby Boomer, died just yesterday.

Then, there’s our polarization and distrust, ongoing foreign wars and other conflicts, tainted lettuce, unrelenting inflation and triple-digit heat, water shortages. No, things aren’t what they used to be … except when they are.

And young families and young people as a group really are less involved in church. Many have lost interest in church altogether. The grief compounds.

Lord, we need some good news. We need news that will bring relief, hope, and even excitement, not just to us, but to our churches.

Some good news

The Lord has heard our prayer. There is some good news.

Growing Young: Six Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church, a book now 10 years old but no less true, points to some of that good news. No, this editorial has not become a book review, though you might want to read the book for yourself.

Researchers and youth ministry experts Kara Powell, Jake Mulder, and Brad Griffin point in their book to things that will relieve weary churches and their older adults who are lamenting the decline of children’s, youth, and college ministries.

Boy, that does sound like a book review, doesn’t it?

Here’s the thing, for decades, we have put more emphasis, energy, and money into programs, activities, and personnel than we have into people, including ourselves. Too many of us have neglected our own discipleship—our own walk with Christ and spiritual development. We need to fix this in ourselves before we try to fix it in others. The good news is we can.

Likewise, too many of us have overlooked, downplayed, or misused our God-given ability to connect with young people. As for downplaying what God has given us, we’ve come to believe we’ve completely lost touch with young people; we can’t relate to them anymore; they don’t want to listen to us or won’t listen to us.

Here’s some good news: We don’t have to be in touch with what “the kids” are saying, wearing, watching, doing, or listening to these days in order to connect with them. We also don’t have to do all the talking, or even most of it, when we’re around them. This should come as some relief.

Some more good news

The authors of Growing Young conclude from their research that what we do need to do is be present more with young people where they are and listen more to them, even if they don’t want to talk … at first.

And when we do speak, we need to lead with grace, hope, encouragement, and God’s love—more like another Baby Boomer, Sandi Patty, in her new song “The Voice I Have Now”—not with grumbling and complaining about all that’s wrong with the world … and them.

In other words, we need to care for young people before we expect them to care about us.

I know, I know. I hear: “We do care for them. Just look at all we’ve done for them. If that’s not caring, I don’t know what is. They should be grateful.” I also hear louder than those words the bitterness, resentment, and anger that the way you’ve tried to communicate love hasn’t been received as love.

There’s good news for that, too. It’s not that young people don’t want to listen to you or that they don’t appreciate what you’ve done. They are more likely to listen and be appreciative after we communicate our care for them using their language, not ours. This will take time, intention, and patience on our part.

A great place to start may be something you and they have in common. You may both know what it’s like not to be listened to.

Even more good news

For decades, we treated our children’s, youth, and college ministries like for-profit businesses. Build it, and they will come. But that approach to ministry is only available to those with the resources to pull it off, and not even to all of those anymore.

But being present in the places where young people are, listening more to young people? Those things are available to every church—big churches and small churches, rural churches and urban churches, rich churches and poor churches.

Being present and listening more aren’t all we need to do, but the research shows when we do these two things, we produce more of what we really want anyway—God-honoring relationships that communicate the good news of Jesus and grow his disciples.

When we do these two things, however slow going it may be, we are more likely to find young people wanting to be with us and to listen to and learn from us. How’s that for hope and excitement?

If you’re not a young person anymore, then you’ve lived through plenty of bad news. If you’re reading this, you’ve survived so far, and you have scars to prove it. There’s a world of young people out there who need the wisdom, perseverance, and most of all compassion you’ve gained through the good and the bad of life. The good news is God’s given you enough to give some away, and in giving it away, you won’t lose any of it.

And here’s some more good news: You will be amazed how much of your wisdom, perseverance, and compassion young people will catch if you will just be where they are with listening ears.

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Eric Black is the executive director, publisher, and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.