Chicago’s northside is bursting with young adults.1 Those with an inclination toward church want — and frankly need — meaningful Christian connections. That’s a good thing, but there is a dirty little secret you need to know...
For some, the term “young adults ministry” sort of sounds like “church-youth-group-for-twentysomethings-who-are-socially-challenged.” Essentially, a group of rejects who need special pampering and attention because there is something wrong with them. They can’t make friends or find a spouse. I’m not saying this is in any way true, but it is a real feeling some are haunted by.
Perhaps your reaction is more idealistic. You picture an appealing group of thriving, sophisticated city dwellers eagerly awaiting your arrival. Ready to mentor you and help you make new besties. To coach you in your career development and invite you on wonderful social adventures. They know the perfect spouse, or the perfect married friends, just for you. The whole thing is just one giant Instagram feed of euphoric-jubilant-blissful-rapture.
These gravity lacking expectations are a recipe for juggernaut disappointment.
The positive news…
There IS a healthy and fulfilling way to find meaningful Christian community in any stage of life. To get there, we must question the nature of church life, the common pitfalls everyone faces, and our own personal needs and desires. Without taking adequate time to do so, we not only waste a lot of time (ending in potential disillusionment), but we do a huge disservice to everyone we interact with along the way.
People have a tendency to self-segregate. It’s usually based on feelings of comfort. I need to be around people more like me. Then I will be fulfilled and happy and most like myself. Sounds sort of reasonable? Maybe? Wrong! While we certainly benefit from peer relationships, and will stumble upon satisfying connections from time-to-time, what we really need is diverse integration. While children and students seem to benefit greatly from age-appropriate educational groupings, the confinement of young adults into homogeneous ministry appears to have some drawbacks. It may also prolong the failure to launch.
Segregation is one of the great problems of society at large.2 People seem to be stuck in their echo chambers, customized networks, identity politics, personalized feeds, and private channels. This only serves to make us more isolated, narrow-minded, self-interested, and less empathetic, and stunts our ability to become well-rounded individuals. Why on earth would we promote segregation in church?
Churches are supposed to be like families.3 There are parent-types we need to respect. Annoying siblings. Odd uncles. Wonderful aunts. Cousins we rarely see. The family pet. The kids next door. In God’s wisdom we learn to relate best when we are exposed to a variety of people, including peers. It’s especially useful when we have to bear with each other over an extended period. Yet, when it comes to church, our social-constructionist-mentality pushes us to engineer something that serves our imagined ideal. As if church is a high school group, college fraternity, or dating service.
The church is so much more than a social endeavor — it’s a self-sacrificing missionary community.
Young adults are...adults! Which means they need to behave like...well...adults. Which means they need to be relationally versatile. Which means they need to shed the church-is-a-youth-group mindset. It means embracing discomfort. It means building bridges. It means learning to love individuals instead of pigeonholing them to their basic identifiables. Value-based groupings trap us in exclusionary binaries. My group makes me feel safe since it serves my needs. Other groups are less safe because they elevate competing needs.
It may not be true in every case, but it's a formidable danger, silos of young Christian adults can easily descend into a self-defeating cycle. People of the appropriate age initially feel excited that “older” and “younger” people are systematically excluded. Phew! Those people are annoying. Then, the cool-awesome-hip-and-hopefully-attractive-people go to “events,” ironically often put on by adults. Everyone is looking for meaningful connections, perhaps long-term friendships, and of course romance plays a big part for many. There is nothing necessarily wrong with any of those impulses, but since people in this age bracket are more transient, less established, less committed, and more of them are single (plus a higher percentage of women), a few things can quickly go wrong.
Young adults who successfully find friendships or romance quickly move on from organized ministry events. Why not? They have met their goal. They had no real buy-in to the abstract ministry identity. It served its purpose. People who struggle to meet their relational desires in this context can feel resentful and disappointed, especially seeing the success of others, and eventually move on also. The gender imbalance in Chicago makes this harder on women.4 The hardcore types grit their teeth and stick it out to keep the ministry alive, but some of the newbies see them as a reminder of what they don't want to become if they stick around. The structure produces diminishing returns at seemingly every level. Reports of this phenomenon are not uncommon.5
The incentives of this type of ministry are all screwed up. It can easily spiral. Sadly, this focus and outcome can take energy and resources away from a church’s central mission, leaving a lot of wounded people in its wake. The dirty little secret is that age-based ministry is often dissatisfying and not what young adults really need — they must grow out of it in fact.
Jesus has the solution! He calls it church. It’s an integrated group of all kinds of people who commit themselves to each other for the long term. There may be affinity groups that form within a church, but they are not the primary goal. No church is perfect, but every church should refuse the temptation to manufacture sterile cliques. In the same way, individual Christians learn to reject the enticing desire to drift.
Instead, we strive for collaboration and synthesis. Many times this kind of depth is only experienced through Church Membership, Small Groups, Serving Teams, Justice Initiatives, or similar avenues. The point is people learn to serve each other. They are deeply enriched as they do it. Not that’s it’s easy, but it is rewarding. They learn from each other. They accept responsibility. They value singleness at the same level as marriage. They face the conflict of real relationships. They value the uniqueness of individuals above the comfort of optically definable groups.
They act like adults are supposed to act.
People will always naturally self-segregate to some degree. There is no use trying to stop the inevitable. Since peer relationships are of great value, an appropriate degree of this is usually desirable. People will naturally gravitate to some individuals more than others. This is how friendships can form. Good. People will long for romance and marriage, exploring multiple contexts to find an appropriate mate. Good. These activities will continue no matter what structures are placed around them. People are...people. We all want more love and less discomfort.
We therefore need a greater vision in order to defy our socially desired comfort level. We need to see ourselves as grown ups with responsibilities — as heroes with a divine mission. In a church environment that fosters integration, we might find ourselves becoming more and more like Jesus. That’s a far more compelling vision for life!
It should be no surprise that our church has a decently high percentage of young adults, albeit a diverse group for sure. This makes sense though. It’s mainly the result of being in a young urban context. It’s ideal, in a way — lots of peers, but enough diversity as well. Instead of having a segregated young adults ministry, we strive to be an integrated spiritual family that supports each other in our career and relational developments. We call young adults into adulthood and to own this process for themselves. To not expect others to wave a wand and make it happen for them.
Our church is open to the diverse people of Chicago — whatever their stage of life. In the end, we each get out of church what we are willing to put into it.
The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
~ 2 Corinthians 9:6
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