I found this on "Out of Ur", one of the blogs I read regularly. This article hit close to home, as I am heavily envolved with the Young Adults group at my church.
Many churches struggle to reach the ever-elusive young adult demographic. Are 20-somethings simply disinterested in church? Not according to Brian McLaren. He believes we are failing to listen to the questions young adults are asking.
This post is a preview of McLaren’s commentary in the upcoming Fall issue of Leadership. Here the Emergent leader encourages churches and parents to begin investigating why young adults are leaving the church—not to argue them back into the fold, but simply to understand their perspective.
There was irony in the title of the old TV game show Family Feud. The irony was that the feuding between families was much less intense than the cheering within families as members tried to answer the same trivia questions.
In our churches, family feuds of another sort arise when members of the same family are asking different questions. For example:
In the third row, left side, mom and dad are asking how they can raise their 14-year-old daughter so she will never rebel and never get in trouble. Meanwhile, their daughter, seated with her friends in the last pew, is asking how she can get out from under their control.
Or in the ninth row, another mom and dad are wondering how they can be sure their 18-year-old son will (a) go to a good college and get a good education so he can have a good job and a good life, and (b) not be exposed to philosophical, scientific, or political questions that may cause him to question his faith. But their son, sitting with his girlfriend in the pew directly behind them, is asking how he can find a college where he can ask the philosophical, scientific, and political questions he has already been exposed to in high school.
These families share something in common: their young
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