One of the most important
factors in succeeding with young adults is to do so with purpose. There are
lots of ways to succeed on accident, but that’s not helpful in creating a
movement into the next generation.
Churches that approach Millennials with the vision that it’s one of the
most important things they can do are churches that find more success.
A typical approach to
creating a ministry to young adults or college students often begins with
someone suggesting, “why don’t we just order some pizza and announce in the
church bulletin that any young adult interested in helping figure this out is
welcome to come for lunch after worship.”
That doesn’t feel very purposeful.
The problem of intentionality
is often the first hurdle churches need to overcome. Quality ministry to the next generation isn’t
built overnight and it’s road is lined with wrong turns and dead ends, but
unless we challenge ourselves to think about how we are structuring and resourcing
it on purpose, our young adult ministry will meet once every 6 months, after
worship for pizza. I think we all want
more out of this.
We don’t succeed by shooting
our arrows and then drawing a target around it.
We clearly identify what we are going after and draw our tactics towards
the goals. In my work with Ministry
Architects, we do this by thinking in terms of “rules of thumb” when it comes
to creating sustainability in children’s or youth ministry.
Things like:
o
How much
money are we spending, per kid, in our youth ministry?
o
How many
staff members are we deploying for this group?
o
How many
volunteers are we deploying on a weekly basis?
o
How big
is the worshipping size of our church?
All of these factors not only
help us prescribe sustainability, but they also help us describe expectations
in a healthy way. When we know what we
are aiming at and draw achievable goals, everyone succeeds.
Working with college students
and young adults need the same sort of systematic and realistic approach to
ensure measurable success. In our work
with churches and ministries around the country we’ve found a few “rules of
thumb” that help us develop a sustainable ministry that will last into the
future as well as one major consideration in defining the trajectory of
ministry with Millennials.
Finances
When we examine youth
ministry we found a fairly constant factor of $1,000-$1,500 per kid per week
was a pretty good basis for understanding the size of a healthy youth
ministry. When it comes to working with
college students and young adults, the finances get a little fuzzier. There is a good working average of about $750-$1,000
per young person across many churches but that number can be augmented vastly
depending on how it is spent. Most churches spend that budget in staffing,
which we’ll discuss later. Because this
demographic is so focused on relationships, there most often isn’t a need to
create a budget with high amounts of program dollars. However, the more you invest in the right
people, even if those people don’t cost very much, the farther your dollars
will go in creating impact with young adults.
Finances aren’t as
hard-and-fast a rule as some of the other sustainability factors but there is
one key piece to budgeting around this ministry – if you spend it, they will
come. If you are focused on seeing
improved impact with Millennials, the more you spend money on that task, the
more reach you’ll find yourself having.
We are especially starting to
find this to be true of ministries trying to reach 50 or more young adults and
college students on a weekly basis. You
might be able to “under spend” this rule and still reach 30-50 young adults on
a weekly basis while on the low end, or under of the scale. But 50 seems to be a critical mass hurdle for
many ministries. You might find the
ability to draw an attendance of 50 for an event or program, but that number
will eventually slip back down into the 30s unless there is an infrastructure
designed to carry more than 50. In order
to create sustainable ministry from 50-100 in attendance per week, it’s typical
to “overspend” the attendance ratio and work past the top end of the
scale. Once reaching past the 100 mark
on a regular basis, the number seems to right-size itself again and starts
costing less per person to run the ministry.
Staffing
Staffing is more of a
fundamental rule of thumb when creating successful ministry to young
adults. As one of the Young Adult
Pastors we interviewed said about his ministry, “one of the reasons this thing
works is because they are paying me to do it.”
Having focused hours directed at reaching this demographic is very
important. It’s worth thinking about how
your church can pay attention to that word, focused
hours. We’ve found that churches that
staff this ministry by tacking it on to the hours for a youth director, a
worship leader, or even an associate pastor have a limited return on their
investment.
Working with Millennials is
such a relational task, that whoever is leading the charge at your church needs
to have the bandwidth to meet for coffee, go out after 9pm for a hangout as a
group and flex their schedule around the changing lives of these young
adults. That’s much harder to do if your
point leader already has another full-time job… especially at the church.
This doesn't always need to
be a paid position; smaller churches may have a dedicated volunteer who runs a
small group of college students and be very effective.
We’ve found that for every 1
full-time staff member (or it’s equivalent) a church’s ministry can reach about
100 Millennials through weekly worship, through programs or events or through
relational connections.
Now there are some cautions
about this number and I should add a qualifier.
For every 1 full-time equivalent of the right staff member. The
right leader makes a huge difference in seeing this ratio succeed, and I’ll
talk about that later.
This ratio might work itself
out in a few different ways. You might
have a full-time Director running a weekly program along with making relational
connections to get to about 100 on a given week.
You might have a volunteer
that spends about 15 hours a week running one small group and connecting relationally
with around 20-25 Millennials.
The key is to have a
dedicated and consistent presence aimed at reaching these Millennials and to
resource them appropriately as their ministry succeeds. “Staffing for growth” is an important factor
with Millennials, especially early on when a program or ministry is
growing. Think intentionally about staying
ahead of the curve by adding staffing support.
When a program is reaching 75 on a weekly basis, think about adding a
part-time worship leader. When your
staff member is seeing 20 young people in their small group, think about paying
them for a half-time position. Think
ahead about sustaining the growth that your ministry is seeing.
The Right Leader
As I mentioned above, having
the right leader charged with
reaching Millennials is important to see the 1:100 ratio thrive. To be honest, that ratio is not always
easy. Many ministries find themselves at
1:50 or 1:75 and wonder why they aren’t getting the full reach out of their
leader and it’s often because we didn’t take the time to find the right mix of
gifts and abilities. Don’t be mistaken –
we love whatever volunteer that steps to the plate to help lead the charge, but
that doesn’t mean we should let just anyone drive the bus. Any leader of a ministry to the Millennial
generation should have a good mix of, relational ability, team-building
experience, coaching ability and, culturally relevant to the millennial
generation.
Millennials have such a high
need for relationships, that the point leader needs to instinctively speak this
language. Young people are looking for
friends, looking for places of connection and looking for meaningful
relationships. If you put a leader in
place that is focused more on getting tasks done or making sure all the
questions in a Bible study get asked, you’ll find yourself struggling to meet a
good staff-to-attendance ratio. It’s
very easy to hire a staff person to run a ministry to Millennials and find
yourself with a small group or two of about 25-30 people. There’s nothing wrong with a ministry that
looks like that, but a relationally skilled leader would also be having coffee
appointments and lunch meetings with another 20 people, thinking of creating
gatherings at their home for another 40 people and making phone connections
with another 10. Find someone who is
wired for relationships to lead this ministry.
You also need to find someone
who capable of building teams. A good
relational leader can, and will, grow a ministry to the size that their
relational tank can handle. But a good
team-builder can build a ministry that goes beyond their own personal
relational abilities.
Whether that means developing
a core group of small group leaders, or a worship team, the right leader will
multiply themselves into other volunteers and create a relational culture
around everything they are doing.
While they are developing
teams of leaders, the point-person will need to have some skill at
coaching. Young adults are busy making a
lot of mistakes in their lives. It’s the
first time they are learning to do things like, manage their own lives, making
major purchases, making romantic decisions and they are often doing these
things away from support systems they had growing up. The role of a leader in a ministry to Millennials
will always involve some level of mentorship and coaching, it’s worth the time
to find someone who can do this with some level of success.
Lastly, the right leader will
be culturally relevant to Millennials.
Now that’s not to say they need to be the same age, or belong to the
same circle as the Millennials we are trying to reach. Yet, as a general rule, the more a leader can
create common ground with Millennials, the more their likely to instinctively
help meet the unique needs they are bringing to the table.
Maybe you’ve met some of the
same leaders in ministry that I have over the years, those who pride themselves
on avoiding whatever technological trend is gaining momentum in the world. You know these people. They pride themselves on some piece of
abstinence against a growing trend.
Whether they are luddites, too important, or just late adopters, these
are the people that have scoffed at whatever you are interested in and said
things like, “psh, facebook. I turned
off my facebook.” Or “I hate cell phones
and all this texting, I’m never going to get cell phone.” This value for leaders in Millennial ministry
isn’t about getting on a tech bandwagon, or casting judgment on those who avoid
such things outright, but the reality is that the communication styles and
needs of Millennials are so vastly different from previous generations, it’s ludicrous
to turn up our nose and simply avoid the things that would reach the generation
we’re leading just out of principle. I
can’t imagine a foreign missionary walking into a village in Africa and flat
out refuse to learn the language of the tribe they were called to.
They don’t have to be hip, or
cool, or even popular. But whoever you
select to help lead the charge for Millennials should be relevant enough to
this generation that connection and communication with them comes easily and
naturally.
Fishing Ponds
Finally, there’s an important
factor that churches often fail to intentionally consider when drafting a
ministry to Millennials and it has to do with local fishing ponds. Where are the places one could find Millennials
in your community? Are you in a setting
where a lot of young professionals are finding work? Are you near large areas of apartment
buildings? Are their local colleges or
universities within close proximity?
Answering these types of questions will help you determine the size of
your fishing pond.
If you are in a suburban
environment where every other home is owned by couples with young children and there
is a playground or elementary school on every corner, you should expect that a
ministry to Millennials in your community would remain very small. Certainly there will be some of these people
in your community, but your ability to market to, communicate with and draw in
many of them will be difficult.
Evaluating your own church
congregation as a fishing pond is an important factor here as well. Do all of your high school graduates go other
places for college or work after graduation?
If so, your millennial ministry might take vastly different shapes in
the summer time, or on Christmas break than they do during the school year.
A good rule of thumb is to
consider the need for at least one main fishing pond in order to have a
thriving ministry to Millennials and the size of this pond will affect the size
of your ministry. If you have multiple
ponds, then it’s also worth considering the multiple needs your ministry might
try to meet. If you have a small fishing
pond of some members of your congregation that are young and isolated from each
other, then your ministry might be as simple as equipping a volunteer to give Millennials
opportunities to build friendships and engage in ministry together.
Each of these factors is
measurable in someway, whether it’s adding up your total financial investment
or doing behavioral interviews with candidates for leading your ministry. Taking the time to develop a coherent
understanding of your current investment in millennial ministry, your
expectations for it’s success and your ability to invest in it for the future
are important to defining success.
In most churches, you won’t
succeed in reaching Millennials by just paying attention to one of these
factors. There is a balance and
interaction between all of them as they are interconnected. But churches who pay attention to all of them
and set their expectations accordingly find themselves further ahead in
engaging the next generation.
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