Young Adults In The Church

I am very active in my home church. Yesterday I got a message from the church secretary saying that they are trying to get the youth to come out to more activities. She added that the young adults are very influential to the youth but the young adults are the only group not doing anything and asked how can they help. They are going to have a meeting soon and I need to bring ideas if I am available to attend. This flipped my wig. There were young adults working with the teen choir, the youth dance ministry, teaching the teens at vacation bible school, and teen retreats. Several young adults led the day camp. The young adults pretty much run the drama ministry. Young adults also frequented the youth study center with the teens.  We encourage those who are in their last year of high school to come to our own ministry functions. Many of the young adults go out with the outreach ministry as well. Therefore, this notion that the young adults weren’t doing anything was very ignorant. Needless to say, the young adult population at most churches is the slimmest. Our church is no exception. Though we are small in number, we are ferociously handling Kingdom business, usually in close proximity to the teen population.  

Attention all church members: it is not the job of the young adults to encourage the teens to come out to different functions. If the PARENTS don’t make urge them to go and they don’t want to go because it’s the same programs every year since their parents were teens, they will not attend. There’s not enough monkey business we can do to change this. This goes back to an article I read on Von’s Black Conscious Thought about the black community saying it takes a village to raise a child. She felt that this was an easy out for parents to not do their job. Therefore, everybody else is responsible for other people's children. All they have to do is feed, clothe, and teach a few manners, if that, and the rest is up to us-community, schools, and church. Don’t let the program require money. That’s an automatic no-go.  Then when there is no programs for the kids, everybody is back to huffing and puffing.    

This in a lot of ways goes back to this paternalistic desire for the church to do everything in the community (I’m looking at self). I was going to write a book about how the black church can do better. After writing several chapters, I had to ask myself what would be required of the individuals? If the church is supposed to teach men how to be men, teach children how to act in public, teach people how to work on their marriage and clean up their properties, teach financial literacy, and open up businesses I am assuming that black people are so weak that they cannot do this on their own. Do black people need a movement, an overarching support system, an external prompting to do the basics? The church is not to replace the home. It is to supplement the home. If the problem is the teens, it must be laid at the foot of the parents and youth coordinators. Yes, I understand that young adults are very important to teens. However, if the young adults are actively involved (if not leading) at least 2 ministries each, while working, getting degrees, taking care of parents and younger siblings, dating, doing non-church related community service, and working out their own salvation the dearth in attendance cannot be laid on them. Even if the young adults were severely lacking in ministry efforts, it still would not be their fault.

On another note, everybody is not gifted (or patient enough) to work with children. To tell young adults that their only role is to work with the youth and even then not be recognized is a slap in the face . God gives gifts liberally and working with the chi‘ren is not for everybody. Even if it is at one point, a person may want to work with adults more at a later point in life. After all, that’s what they are. There are only so many topics you can discuss and things you can do with kids because they have so little life experience and they are dependent on their parents. So it can get boring and very easily seem like babysitting, if someone is not wired for it for the long haul.

Church leaders, please carve out a respectable place for your young adults. They (not the teens) are the next generation of church leaders. They must be developed just as much as the kids, if not more.