As most of you now know I am working at the church as a Pastoral Intern with and emphasis on college/young adults. So what is it that I am actually going to do with age group? Will we have a college and career class, or a “young adults” service? I will try to explain what my vision is for the younger people of the church and hopefully clear up what college and young adult “Stuff” is going to look like here.
In almost every church in our day there are similar conversations going on. You may have had these same conversations. “Where are all the young people?” “Why are so many youth leaving the church?”, Why are the twenty somethings not plugging into the church?” These conversations go on from church to church all over the country. People want to know how to get the younger generations to really be a part of the church. There are just a few ways that most churches try to make this happen. Here is the list: Contemporary services with coffee bars, young adult and singles classes, cool trips and ipod give aways. Yet these ideas rarely accomplish what they are intended too. These plans may band-aid the issue for a while but the problem seems to remains “Where are all the young people?”
So what will Cornerstone do to actually make this work? What am I going to do as the guy who is brought in to make this work? Okay lets chat. If you are to scan the room on a Sunday morning at our church you will see that there are many younger folks in the crowd. One of the unique things about cornerstone is that there is so much age diversity from Sunday to Sunday. The problem is however Sunday mornings are the only thing a majority of the younger people are connecting too. We are not (as a whole) serving, connecting, or leading. This is what I want to see change over the next few years, a move from attendance to true membership.
So here is the plan. Starting Monday the 21st we are going to be starting a underground small group that will go throughout the summer and lead us up to home teams in the fall. This summer group will be going through scripture study on the Gospel. We will look at the Gospel from many different angles and discover how vast and incredible it really is. Then in the fall this group will hopefully break into two different groups and become two home teams. These groups will be our generational connection point. These new home teams will be our launching pad to plugging the younger people into serving, connecting (multi-generationaly), and leading within the church.
The second part of the plan is called strategic events. We are going to be doing some very cool stuff coming up this Summer from Band of Brothers men’s study group, to a Man Camp, to drive in movie nights at the church. The future looks bright for our church. I am looking forward to training up and serving with young leaders as Cornerstone truly becomes multi-generational in all areas.
Music Listening to while blogging: Jack Johnson
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