All in the Family: Incorporating Youth and Young Adults into the Church Family – by Steven Germoso

Last week, I was stopped in the church parking lot where I was invited to preach. With true passion, a church member shared her burden for the youth that her church ministers to. The youth have been attending the designated programs but were, in her words, not getting it. They were not seeing how Jesus affects their lives. After hearing her heart’s cry and some possible ministry opportunities, we prayed in a parking lot as vehicles pulled in to attend the 9:30 service.

The constant search for the best ministry programs with which to engage children, youth and singles has left many inoculated against church commitment and fostered insatiable consumerism. As the church, we have tried to raise our production quality and create relevant environments for our young, whilst the downward spiral of youthful participation in the church continues. Few congregations have the resources to keep up with these demands.

These societal and economic challenges create opportunities for resource-strapped congregations to explore a different paradigm. The biblical images of adoption and family are fertile soil for transformative relationships. This also has its challenges. We naturally want (and youth are no exception) to be with people of our age, race and affinity. This is the approach most churches employ in youth and young adult ministry. However, the Gospel helps us to overcome our selfish desire to dwell in homogenous units. Families are made up of different ages and marital status, but are united in their gospel mission.

It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child; it also takes a community to disciple youth. It is within these extended families of faith that youth can experience faith application first hand. Members of the family of faith model Christianity in the midst of the daily challenges of relationship, economic hardship and societal brokenness. Kitchen tables, neighborhood parks, and restaurant booths become the classrooms for life on life discipleship.

My preschool children have grown up within this church as family paradigm. For my family, this ecclesial expression is house church. Just as families can be messy, so is our church life; one moment we are talking about the incarnation and minutes later, the conversation shifts to dating. Church is not an event, nor is it broken up into programs targeting certain groups, but is a group of people loving God (and each other) together. Youth and young adults are not asked to attend meetings, but are instead invited to participate in family life.

So, what does this model look like lived out in the day to day? Perhaps it is easiest to picture your own family, or better yet, family as God intended it. What does family life look like? It might be embodied in a college student and a professor praying together after worship. It’s having a regular pasta night in which any member of the church family is welcome to stop by and fill up. It is families hosting singles for game nights and frank discussion on what it means to be married…or not married. It’s hanging out at the neighborhood playground or ball field, and playing ball together, whether you’re 8 or 80, or anywhere in between.

And the Gospel, the good news of the Kingdom of God, is relevant to it all; thus the Gospel is continually sown into this paradigm of kindred relationships. It is within the soil of these authentic relationships that the seeds of transformation are planted, take root and grow. Church as family reroutes our energy into a different foci for church life. It tangibly demonstrates our own adoption as God’s children, as we embrace sisters and brothers of all ages. It is messy, it is time-consuming, and I have found it to be wonderfully grace-filled. My prayer is that the Spirit will lead the Church to unite all ages—and answer parking lot prayers everywhere.