We need Young Adults, What do we do?

In almost every church that I work with, people say, "We want to have a young adult ministry but we don't have any young adults in our church, what should we do?"Often the motivation behind the question is a survival-mode mentality. It is easy for leaders to be consumed with keeping the church doors open, that they believe if they can just get younger folks in the door that will solve their problem. However, this is the wrong motivation.

Young adult ministry is one of the most challenging ministries that a church can undertake.  Because of this challenge, not every church will be successful at launching and maintaining a young adult ministry. That being said, it does not mean that local churches can not be engaged in ministry with young adults in other creative ways.

The first thing that a local church needs to do is to figure out if there are young adults who live in their immediate area to which they can minister. There are many ways to find this information out from the very basic, knocking on doors and doing a door-to-door survey, to the high-tech of tracking U.S. Census data and statistics through free and/or subscription-based websites. Regardless of which way you go, you need to know what is going on in your community so that you can make the best ministry decisions for your church. If you find out that there are very few if any young adults in your area, trying to develop a young adult ministry in your church could find you frustrated and disappointed.

For churches who find that there are not young adults in there immediately area, you can still be engaged in ministry with young adults. Try connecting with other churches that do have young adults in their immediate area and help them with a collaborative ministry. Connect with a campus ministry at a nearby college or tech school and collaborate in ministry with them. A lot of campus ministry programs struggle financially so if there is some sort of financial help that you can provide them, in some small way you are being in ministry with young adults.

One of the biggest assets of the United Methodist Church is our connection. It allows many local churches to be in ministry in significant ways with a wide variety of people. To be the most effective in reaching young adults today, we need to seize on this asset. Just because “my” local church doesn't have young adults in it, doesn't mean that we can’t be an equal partner in ministry to young adults throughout the denomination.