I love the people of the Young Adult Ministry Team. I love them because they are the church I have been dreaming of. We are all struggling together in the same (general) direction. One of my first blogs was my wish to some day pastor a church with a mission statement along the lines of "a herd of people all struggling together towards Christ." I'm so tired of mission statements that declare that a church (usually of 12-50 ancient white people) will win the entire world for Christ and live every second for His glory and have no distractions ... ever.
We all drink, most of us don't attend a church right now, few have probably opened a Bible in months, and many of us don't feel nearly as close to God as when our spiritual life revolved around showing up for game night at youth group. But, we all love God - and deep down we want to serve Him and His church with more of our heart.
See, young adult ministry is tough. We haven't had an actual "YAMT" for a number of years. We don't have any campus ministries in WPA that are UM sponsored (I could be wrong, but I don't think I am), because of age restrictions we have almost no outlets for young adults in ministry to youth, and we have an increasingly smaller number of young pastors. I don't think I would be willing to make young adult ministry my top priority if I was pastor of a church of 50 people in a small town.
We are now embarking on the "Believe Again!" plan for ministry. What is a proper response from a young adult to the new plan for ministry? What does young adult ministry look like under Believe Again! ?
Wesley Houses in college town? Young Adult pastors at larger churches? Intellectual outreach to the post graduate level students? Starting more new churches - especially in college towns. California University has no United Methodist presence. The United Methodist church (to my knowledge) does no college outreach at Cal U. I think our churches can do better ... but, I also think that our conference can do better - and we can help the young adults to enable themselves.
Believe Again! What does that mean to Young Adults rapidly fleeing from our denomination?
We all drink, most of us don't attend a church right now, few have probably opened a Bible in months, and many of us don't feel nearly as close to God as when our spiritual life revolved around showing up for game night at youth group. But, we all love God - and deep down we want to serve Him and His church with more of our heart.
See, young adult ministry is tough. We haven't had an actual "YAMT" for a number of years. We don't have any campus ministries in WPA that are UM sponsored (I could be wrong, but I don't think I am), because of age restrictions we have almost no outlets for young adults in ministry to youth, and we have an increasingly smaller number of young pastors. I don't think I would be willing to make young adult ministry my top priority if I was pastor of a church of 50 people in a small town.
We are now embarking on the "Believe Again!" plan for ministry. What is a proper response from a young adult to the new plan for ministry? What does young adult ministry look like under Believe Again! ?
Wesley Houses in college town? Young Adult pastors at larger churches? Intellectual outreach to the post graduate level students? Starting more new churches - especially in college towns. California University has no United Methodist presence. The United Methodist church (to my knowledge) does no college outreach at Cal U. I think our churches can do better ... but, I also think that our conference can do better - and we can help the young adults to enable themselves.
Believe Again! What does that mean to Young Adults rapidly fleeing from our denomination?
posted by Michael Airgood at 12:16 AM
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