Rev Bill

Several weeks ago I began posting about the Pew Foundation’s US Religious Landscape Survey 2008. The 5th “learning” from this survey is that:

“More than six-in-ten Americans age 70 and older (62%) are Protestant but . . . this number is only about four-in-ten (43%) among American ages 18-29.” [p. 7]

To me, this comes as no real surprsie — every Church I have served had few young adults — but it shows that we are not doing a very good job at addressing the spiritual needs of young adults. You can blame the “young people” all you want, but until mainline Protestant churches are willing to make some changes it is going to be difficult to reach the next generation of believers.

What types of changes need to be made?

That depends on the congregation and what they are doing now — but letting the young adults know you are interested in them and welcoming them is vital — for a church and for the young adults!

George Bullard posted today about what he calls “low threshold community cultivation events” — events that are not a lot of work on the part of the congregation and not threatening to those you are trying to reach — like recruiting non churched folks for Crop Walk Teams, Cancer Society Walk Teams, and the like. These could get young adults around your church folks, and let them see that they are fun to be with!

What are some other ways churches might reach the young adults in their community? Leave some ideas as comments!

You can read my other posts on the Pew Foundation U. S. Religious Landscape survey here and here — read George Bullard’s ideas on on this particular learning here — and read the survey from the Pew Foundation here.

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