It’s easy to think only large churches with big staffs and significant budgets can reach young people. The truth is they are. But new research shows they’re not the only ones. Kara Powell shares brand new research on how average churches with few staff and little money are reaching young adults in the same way large churches are.
Welcome to Episode 106 of the Podcast.
Guest Links: Kara Powell
Growing Young: Six Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church
ChurchesGrowingYoung.Com
Kara on Twitter
Kara on Facebook
Links Mentioned
Takeaways from this Episode
Kara Powell and her team at the Fuller Youth Institute spent 10,000 hours collecting data from churches to find out what they were doing to reach young people. There were huge variants in background, from culture, to denomination, to ethnicities, and what they found were six core commitments that created healthy environments for young people to thrive.
- Empathy. Churches who empathize understand the main questions that young people are asking and journey with them as they figure them out. 3 questions are being asked:
- Who am I?
- Where do I fit?
- What purpose do I make?
- Jesus’ message. For younger people, Jesus is first and Christianity comes second. Jesus is magnetic. He’s a message, a person and a context who can handle our biggest questions, including our doubt. Young people connect with that.
- Keychain leadership. This is leadership that isn’t centralized control. Every leader has keys of authority of power and influence, and as young people are ready for them, leaders know how to hand the metaphorical “keys” to them.
- Prioritize young people. From allocating a budget to speaking their language, churches doing well to reach younger audiences invest in them.
- Focus on families. One of the best ways to reach young people is to equip their parents and partner with them.
- You don’t need a big budget, and you don’t have to be perceived as “cool.” You can leverage your time, talents and volunteers to serve, and any leader can get better at engaging young people, no matter how “old” they are.
Quotes from this Episode
CNLP 106: Kara Powell on How Many Average Churches are Actually Reaching Millennials Click To Tweet
CNLP 106: Kara Powell on How Many Average Churches are Actually Reaching Millennials Click To Tweet
CNLP 106: Kara Powell on How Many Average Churches are Actually Reaching Millennials Click To Tweet
CNLP 106: Kara Powell on How Many Average Churches are Actually Reaching Millennials Click To Tweet
