This recent study found that while young people are just as spiritual in their beliefs as previous generations, that they are coming to church in less and less numbers.
What do you think? Do you see this being the case at PLC? Should this inform how we program our services?
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I think it's because they don't care. They don't really see a reason to come to church. I don't see this being the case at PLC. In this age of 18-29 years old, most seem to keep certain aspects of themselves "locked" away and they rarely work on them. I've seen it described as an "identity lockbox." They figure that they went to church when they were younger and those feelings/beliefs/ideas will still be there after one of the roughest periods of their lives. Should this inform on how we program our services? I'm not sure, but after reading Jesse's facebook note, I'm leaning towards maybe. I'm not even sure what that looks like. I look at it as a swimming pool. If all of those students we have influence over are in this pool, don't we have to jump in to test the water? Don't we have to jump in to make waves?
ReplyDeleteWhat about young families? Are young families with young kids encouraged to attend church together as a family? Don't we have a "family ministry" atmosphere at PLC? We have a lack of volunteers for "Kids" ministry. Do you know WeeKids and KidVenture are run separately? Do you know KidVenture closes some weekends and the WeeKids wings never close? Do you know our WeeKids wings have turned away kids because of lack of volunteers? Do you know on weekends KidVenture is closed, parents try to put their kids in the WeeKids wings? Are kids encouraged to attend church with their parents in the sanctury? Should they be? Is this part of family ministry? Or, are families encouraged to attend PLC and then must go to their separate rooms? We had a single mom (first time to PLC/church) with 3 young kids attend a few weeks ago. KidVenture was closed, so she asked to put her kids in the WeeKids wing. We bent the "rules" a little and allowed older kids in the WeeKids room. The kids heard about Jesus for the first time. How awesome is that? I thought it pretty cool. The mom was so thankful we were able to meet her needs. However, this does not always happen due to lack of volunteers. Kids have been turned away due to lack of volunteers. Do you know some families do not attend when KidVenture is closed? Do we encourage families, including young kids, to participate in "Big" church. Is our church sanctuary inviting kids, or asking them to find a room? (are you sure you wanted comments?) Do we give young kids a book to read, pictures with bible stories to color, or some kind of activity to welcome kids in the sanctuary? Or, would we rather not? As I said before, some families do not attend church if they can't dump their kids into a room of their own. Any feedback on this? What are we trying to do for young families?
ReplyDeleteFirst off, absolutely love the post above. Great questions that should be thoroughly thought out.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, to answer Jesse's question, EVERYONE should read "Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity" by David Kinnaman. True statistics, great facts, awesome insight.
-MRB