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Last month, we looked at how we attract young people to our church by living out the call of the gospel by getting out of the church building and living in relationship with people. Young people are looking for a faith that is real and lived-out, something that is overtly spiritual, something they can sink their teeth into.

In the midst of sometimes turbulent times for mainline churches, I think we secretly wonder if the mainline has anything left to offer, especially in light of the claims made in articles such as last month’s Tennessean (7/6/08), which claimed outright that young people prefer non-traditional worship.

Pulling from my experiences working with a non-denominational church before moving to Tennessee, I’ve noticed some trends in these alternative worship services. First of all, at the church I was working at, we started experimenting with periods of silence, call and response sections of the service, communion where everyone came forward to the same table to receive—things I have since discovered have been part of the Anglican tradition for a long, long time, and possibly led me to feel more at home here in the Episcopal Church once I tried it out.

Yes, these services usually use contemporary worship music, something that some of our churches in the diocese would find very difficult to incorporate, but I don’t believe that young people’s preference for a church rises or falls based exclusively on the music. Again, I believe it is the way that a congregation lives out its faith and practices community that draws people, not just young people, but people of all ages, to our churches.

And because I’ve witnessed the adoption of practices, if not straight from the Prayer Book, then pretty close, in non-denominational and less traditional churches, I think that what we have in our tradition is a huge asset to attracting people, but especially young people.

So, you may ask, if all this is true, why is there a huge gap of young people in our churches? Well, part of that I think will be the subject of perhaps another article, but I think one part at least is that we as the body of Christ sometimes forget that the body of Christ is a family. And in families, we interact with people of multiple generations; do life with people of different ages; hold gatherings with multiple generations present. It’s easy for us to look to the church to provide our social needs, and as we think of being with friends, we typically picture people our own age. I know I do. But we as the body of Christ are called to more than that. It’s great that we find friends and social interaction at our churches, but we are called to be ambassadors of the gospel (2 Cor 5:20), and to be known by our love for one another (John 13:35).

Imagine what we could be like as we reach out to people in our sphere of influence no matter how similar or dissimilar they are to us, and start doing life with the people around us, including them in our heritage and in the glorious message that we’ve been entrusted to impart.

I often get questions from churches (and not just in our diocese either) that sound like this “how can we attract more young people?”

Well, thought I, sounds like a good thing to discuss in Connections this time, especially given last month’s article in the Tennessean (7/6/08 ) on young adults’ preferences in worship. So let’s take apart the statement and see if the answer lies within it somewhere.

“How can we attract more young people?” Well two questions pop into my head: (1) why do we want to attract them? And (2) what do we mean by attracting them?

See I think it all boils down to this word “attract.” What’s behind the question? Are there people in our church who feel a call to disciple the younger generation(s)? Is it a question of mission? Because mission as I understand it isn’t primarily about attraction, it’s about finding, seeking, and discipling.

Something’s been bothering me about the question of “attracting young people,” regardless of which of the several reasons is behind it.

The thing is, most of the people, and like I said, regardless of the wonderful motivation behind it, asking this question, want a program or solution to bring young people into their existing church structure.

Well, I think I’ve happened on the solution to attracting young people as I was musing on this.

Get out of the church.

That’s right leave.

Because you see, the church isn’t that building no matter how cute, historic, grand, beautiful, or whatever it may be. The building is an incidental. You are the church.

So go out and start taking the church—and the fantastic message of life in Jesus—to people you know.

Just live life in relationship with people, not from your church (gasp, I know).

Live life in relationship with people with no agenda. Share with them what excites you, hopefully Jesus is on the list, if not, perhaps you should start by doing a little soul searching and having a few in depth Jesus-times yourself.

As you share your life with people, including how you live in relationship with Jesus, they might get interested. Or they might not. But at least they won’t be in the very large category of people that don’t know a single Christian.

Some statistics for you.

The number of non-Christians a person knows has an inverse relationship with the length of time that person has been a Christian (Dan Kimball. They like Jesus but not the Church. Zondervan, 2007). So the most mature Christians, who should be out there making disciples, don’t know any non-Christians. Hmmm…

The average number of conversions per 100 people in mainline denomination per year is… Are you ready?

One.

And those non-mainline folks, their rate of conversion is actually better. And they wouldn’t be surprised to hear that. But wait, what is it?

One point seven. Yup, nearly double, but still, per one hundred? sort of pitiful (Lyle Shaller. From Geography to Affinity. Abingdon Press, 2003.).

People, our entire mission as the church is to make disciples.

And we’re failing! Churches that are growing are mainly getting Christians from other churches.

It’s a giant shell game of “find the Christians.”

So what we’ve been doing, isn’t working. People will no longer “come and see.”

Get out of the church. Get into the world.

It’s time we tried out that whole “salt and light” thing again.

Just go.

Extra: Do young people prefer non-traditional ways of worship like the Tennessean claimed? I think no. In fact, I think our rich Anglican tradition gives us a leg up on ministry with young people, but I’m out of space, we’ll have to explore that later!