Reaching People under 30 while Keeping People over 60

Creating Community across Generations

Edward H Hammett

• Publisher: TCP Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780827233058
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

Seasoned church consultant Edward H. Hammett shares his latest insights and suggestions for churches seeking to serve all generations. This is an updated version of Hammett's 2007 book Reaching People Under 40 while Keeping People Over 60 that expands the reach another decade and emphasizes diversity with insight from new contributors Paul L. Anderson and Cornell Thomas.

A TCP Books title.

PART I: UNDERSTANDING THE CHURCH’S MULTIDIMENSIONAL CHALLENGES

1

Pastors Burn Out, and Churches Die

If you grew up in the church, as I did, you can probably remember a different day in the church. Doing church was pretty easy. Programs ruled. Everyone participated in just about everything, and most congregations and communities were homogenous. Everybody used the same curriculum, studied the same Scripture. Whatever the church leaders asked the congregation to do, they did. Well, almost. It probably wasn’t as wonderful and easy as we sometimes recall it, but it was a different day.

The Dying Church

We lived in a churched culture. We counted our progress by the four Bs: bodies, budgets, baptisms, and buildings. We were usually more concerned about where we would put all the new babies than with whether we had the budget to keep the lights on and the staff paid.

Most of our competition was friendly rivalry with the church down the street to see who had the best youth ministry. Almost everyone went to church somewhere, at least on Sunday morning. If not, they at least knew they should. When you visited newcomers or hardcore nonattenders about coming to church, they knew the church language, knew what you were talking about, and appreciated your visit. An annual revival was certain to draw a crowd and reach some people—perhaps some the church had been praying for and trying to reach for years.

This wasn’t just a simpler time of your childhood memories. It was really like that. Churches really were thriving in a friendly environment. A denomination could program for A Million More in ’54 (a Southern Baptist emphasis).

That day is gone. What once worked, no longer does. Hardly anyone has a revival anymore because it’s almost impossible to get busy members there, much less the unchurched. Many churches no longer have a night of planned visitation for the same reasons. Church members often won’t come, and church guests sometimes fail to appreciate surprise visits. The age of knowing what to do, how to do it, getting great support, and seeing results is a thing of the past.

Perhaps even worse is that many people today have a negative image of Christians, of denominations, and of the church in general. In the past, even people not involved in church had great respect for it. Today many secular adults see the church as neutral or negative. Before someone can be reached for Christ, that negative image must be overcome. Often this takes a long time and is accomplished only by gradually building relationships.

Cultural Challenges

Culture is now specific to a group. That’s what culture is—shared values, characteristics, beliefs, goals, and practices. Church attenders tend to find people much like themselves in the church. They feel comfortable there. A few decades ago, most people who attended church had that experience. Today, at the same time the world seems smaller—meaning we have access to products, information, events, and even travel with relative ease almost anywhere in the world—our world is also much more diverse. The world has come to our doorstep with a myriad of beliefs, customs, habits, ideas, and ways of understanding. People know where they feel comfortable and where they don’t, where they fit in and where they feel like a stranger.

Each community, church, people group, family, or Sunday school class has a culture created by its participants over a period of time. People who helped fashion it usually embrace it and value it, while those who were not part of creating it often feel alienated or even repelled by that culture. This is often one reason a newcomer to a group doesn’t fit in and often doesn’t join the group. (I discuss the impact of culture on the church in more detail in my books Spiritual Leadership in a Secular Age and Making the Church Work.¹)

In the last several decades, cities, states, organizations, and institutions have found themselves challenged by a growing multiculturalism and a pluralistic society. Language, rituals, traditions, and values are not as clear and readily accepted as when we were in a church culture with people from the same or similar backgrounds and belief systems. Now the world has shifted—families have changed, and schools have children who may speak many different languages (but not ours), and who may come from a number of different countries. Businesses have become culturally sensitive, while churches for the most part haven’t changed at all. In fact, many churches believe that remaining the same as they were when their culture was formed in the 1950s or earlier is their godly responsibility. For many, they are not looking for a church but rather for a life mission.

Cultures Coming Together

John Bingham makes a fascinating observation. He wrote that places of worship and sporting events lead the way as places modern Britons are most likely to mix with people of other races, classes, and generations:

Groundbreaking new analyses of the friendship networks of almost 4,300 people aged from 13 to 80 has identified churches and sporting events as the last bastions of neighborliness and integration in Britain. Overall, it found that churches and other places of worship are more successful than any other social setting at bringing people of different backgrounds together, well ahead of gatherings as parties, meetings, weddings, or venues such as pubs or clubs.²

Church is a vital institution and experience in our increasingly diverse world. I suspect what is true in Britain is equally true in the United States.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not suggesting that churches change their biblical message. I am suggesting the church is intricately valuable in our culture when it connects faith in the midst of the diversity. I am also suggesting that we might need to consider altering our methodology so that those in our new world might be able to hear the Good News in ways they can understand and embrace it. That’s really what this book is all about. Ultimately, it’s about reaching people, evangelism, making disciples, carrying out Jesus’ command to reach people. Here’s the pinch: when you begin trying to make the needed adjustments, church members—usually sixty and over from the church culture, and certainly of that value system regardless of age—become angry, resistant, intolerant of change. They withhold their money and leadership. They vote collectively to keep things the way they are, for, “If the way things are is good enough for me, it should be good enough for others.” Now what does a church or leader do?

In most communities, if the congregation decides to keep the over-sixty crowd satisfied (to keep their money?), the church will not grow numerically. In time, the congregation will die (unless the community demographic can support a church focused on senior adult ministry). In all probability, keeping the sixty-plus crowd happy almost always assures that the church will reach few new people under the age of thirty. (By the way, those who are fifty or so are transitional persons—some join those with under-thirty characteristics, and others join the over-sixty group and their characteristics.)

The reality here is that most denominations have not been reaching many people under thirty for decades. Most people thirty and under are from a world with different values, traditions, rituals, and personal preferences—a different culture. Tension escalates, leaders resign or become disgruntled, money begins to dry up, and the church community becomes more and more introverted— focused on caring for people within the church rather than being concerned about reaching out to those outside the church to people they don’t understand and really aren’t sure they want in the church anyway. So begins a cycle of maintenance and survival for most churches. What’s a leader to do?

Leadership Challenges and Solutions

While principles remain intact for an effective New Testament church, the design of programming and the approach to leadership face many seismic shifts. Quite often these shifts prove threatening; most always they bear fruit for those who persevere in leadership development. Both volunteers and paid staff find themselves overwhelmed by challenges in this situation. They love the church and most sincerely want the church to grow.

At the same time, they experience conflict: church is a place where they are comfortable, where they come for fellowship with lifelong friends, where they worship in a setting and style that easily helps them connect with God. In my travels across the country I increasingly hear a refrain from clergy and lay leaders alike: “I’m tired of working harder and not making any progress.” “I am tired of fighting with those who want to stay the same while my call is to fulfill the Great Commission.” “I just cannot do any more. My plate is full and running over. I’ve got to have a break!”

To reach out to younger people may mean that this place of familiarity will change so radically that they no longer know how to function, and so they are torn. Do they change to reach a new generation, or do they keep doing what once worked but no longer does. Do they welcome under thirties into their fellowship, or do they watch the church continue to decline and perhaps even die? Others feel they are not honoring their past and present leaders or family members if they allow things to be changed. Still others control the pace of change as much as possible in the church because they cannot control the rapid rate of change in their workplace or community. The challenges church leaders face are immense.

The solution is often complicated and messy. Heart-held beliefs and identitygiving rituals and practices may have to change. Tension may erupt, challenging relationships. Church leaders may be torn between loyalty to friends and taking a risk to find a new way of doing church. Generations of family members within a church may strongly disagree. Personal preferences may have to be discarded to try to reach younger people. Even with the best planning and research, change is a risk. Your change may attract younger people, and it may not. Trading the secure for the unknown may mean losing the older generation, while it may or may not reach the younger crowd.

Transitioning puts heavy demands on church leaders, both paid and volunteer. The church must continue as it always has, which is demanding in itself, while researching, dreaming, praying, seeking God’s guidance, and giving birth to a new direction—all at the same time. Workloads and stress may increase exponentially.

While stress levels and workloads are rising, leaders must continually communicate love for all. Leaders are to demonstrate a desire to hear each member and an effort to communicate openly with the entire church. They must find a way to be inclusive with existing members while knowing that many will dislike any changes that are made. Such an inclusive spirit is both Christlike and practical. Jesus’ example is to love everyone, even enemies. Church leaders need to remember that opposition in the church isn’t usually the enemy. People within the church who disagree may have the same goal in mind but different ideas about how to get there. Alienating senior adult leaders may mean that they withdraw their substantial influence and finances.

Cultural Sensitivity Creates Community

Church leaders who are sensitive to what is happening both inside and outside the walls of the church have a growing awareness that the world outside the walls of the established church is changing and that new methods and strategies are needed to remain relevant. Such sensitive leaders have probably also noticed, over time, that the pews are not as full as they once were, fewer children come to the front for children’s sermons, not as many high school students are recognized in graduation events each year, the pastor is performing and members are attending more funerals than weddings, across the congregation on any given Sunday a lot more gray heads appear than blacks, browns, and blondes.

The Builder Generation’s aging out. Church and denominational loyalists, we love local church ministry. Proudly we narrate how we built our church as institution and as facilities. We explain the way it was done in the fifties and the sixties, almost unaware we Builders are dying out. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editor’s Foreword
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I: Understanding the Church’s Multidimensional Challenges
• PART II: Discovering Points of Tension
• PART III: Finding the Win-Win for the Church
• Conclusion: Coaching Conversation with Paul Anderson
• Generational Distinctives of 6 Living Generations
• Notes
• Bibliography and Online Resources