By: Carey Nieuwhof

This post is written by Dillon Smith, a Gen Z team member of mine.

There’s no doubt that Gen Z has some different habits than previous generations.

Thanks to the internet and smartphones, the environment that we’ve grown up in is completely unique, and unlike any generation before.

We spend more time online, go outside less, and care about wildly different things than our parents did when they were kids.

You might look at these habits and think that these habits are “just a phase” or that we’ll “grow out of it.”

We won’t.

I’m 22, and I still watch A TON of YouTube. Even post-graduation, my classmates still spend a ton of time on Instagram and TikTok. None of us plan on making any of these a smaller part of our lives.

So for the church: How do you become a bigger part of our lives online?

Well, first, I think you need to be aware of how and why we behave and think the way we do.

I’m seeing 7 habits of Generation Z that your church might be ignoring. Here’s the list:

1. I watch who I want, when I want

The internet has given me the freedom to watch exactly who I want, when I want.

So, the only reason my friends or I are watching your church online is either because our parents are making us, or because we deeply care about what you have to say.

There are just too many other appealing ways to pass the time for us to waste our time on something that isn’t helpful or fun to watch.

So what does this mean for teaching pastors and service programming directors?

10 seconds of boring is enough to lose a Gen Z viewer.

Every second of online content you produce needs to add value in an efficient and engaging way.

10 seconds of boring is enough to lose a Gen Z viewer. Every second of online content you produce needs to add value in an efficient and engaging way. @Dillon_M_Smith

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2. If you want me to follow you for a long time, I need to get to know you

Our spirituality is one of the most sacred and private things we have, and if you want Gen Z to trust you with our time and subscription, we need to trust you.

And, a weekly sermon just doesn’t cut it for us.

In this digital era, churches should be producing more personal content online, not less.

There are tons of Twitch streamers and YouTubers who are doing this well. As church leaders, it’s about time that we start learning from them.

The single best YouTuber I’ve found at building a feeling of community and trust is a guy named Matt Carriker. Matt (who happens to be a Christian) has built three massively successful YouTube channels that have a combined total of 15.26 million subscribers.

His OffTheRanch channel is a personal vlog, and his fastest-growing channel that allows his viewers to see into his family, his hobbies, his character flaws, his ideas, and his work. By taking us into his real life, it builds more trust and community within his audience.

I think churches could do something similar.

Lead pastors could take the vlog camera home and show some of how they parent, or the staff could bring the vlog to worship practice or community service projects to show how the church is run throughout the week.

It’s just an idea, but ideas like this are going to reach my generation.

If you want more on how to create videos that people love to watch and engage with, Sean Cannell’s Video Influencers would be another great channel to check out. Here’s Sean’s recent interview on Carey’s podcast.

In this digital era, pastors should be producing more personal content online, not less. @Dillon_M_Smith

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3. I’ve been trained to view myself as a brand

Thanks to platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, I’ve grown up viewing myself as my own brand.

I don’t think this mindset is healthy, but I do think it’s accurate. And as the church, we’re called to reach people where they actually are, not where we would hope they’d be.

If you want to reach a “me-centered” generation, show us what’s in it for us.

One biblical angle to take with this is to change your church’s focus from the Sunday experience to what the church is doing throughout the week. Show us how we can join your movement and not just build your platform.

This might be a bit closer to how the church was designed to function anyways. ?

If you want to reach a “me-centered” generation, show us what’s in it for us. @Dillon_M_Smith

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4. Gen Z would prefer to avoid our parent’s generation on social media

When I look back at my time in school, new social media apps like Vine, YikYak, Kik, and TikTok would come up in popularity in phases.

The life cycle of a new app would look like this:

A new app would release
It would become popular because our parents had no idea about it yet
Our parents would find out about it and create an account or have the school block it
We would all abandon it for the next app
Repeat

I think this is part of why TikTok exploded like it did, and why many of the young people I know are spending less time on Facebook and Instagram and more time on TikTok. It’s still cool to avoid our parent’s generation online.

So, for you and your church, I’ve got a few strategies to think about:

Even as new apps become popular, I still follow Craig Groeschel on Instagram and YouTube. I follow him because I trust him, and I’ll still watch him on those platforms because I know he’ll be there. If you’re a senior pastor, stick to where your people know you are, and double down.
For taking new ground on new apps (like TikTok), let a young staff member or young volunteer take the lead. Let the student ministry put effort towards experimental apps, and as the average age of an app’s users increases, begin to add adult-focused content.
No matter how old you are, don’t try to be someone you aren’t. If I see John Piper dancing on TikTok tomorrow, I’m going to be more concerned and less likely to follow him. No matter the platform, being authentically you is the best way forward.

No matter the platform, being authentically you is the best way forward. @Dillon_M_Smith

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5. Diversity isn’t optional

A couple of years ago, Greg Atkinson told me that if you want to reach the next generation, having a diverse church isn’t optional. He’s right.

Our schools are diverse, our workplaces are diverse, and our friend groups are diverse. If your church isn’t at least as diverse as the school we grew up in, we will question you as an organization.

As Derwin Gray and Darryn Scheske pointed out on a recent ChurchPulse Weekly podcast episode:

“Young adults aren’t leaving the church, they’re leaving the white church.”

If you want more on leading a diverse church, this interview is a great place to start.

If your church isn’t at least as diverse as the school Gen Z grew up in, we’ll question you as an organization. @Dillon_M_Smith

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6. My mental health issues aren’t going away

One of the biggest issues facing the next generation is a sharp decline in mental health.

Here’s the strange part: We’re fully aware of the mental health crisis, and what’s causing it, but our phones are too good to give up.

The rewards of the internet outweigh the risks for us.

So, how can you help?

Sadly, a sermon series once a year isn’t enough to reach a generation plagued with anxiety. The church needs a better solution.

Maybe it’s opening a counseling wing attached to your church. Maybe it’s making mental health a regular focus of your young adult ministry or small group or something else entirely. Whatever it is, this is a felt need that we have year-round that the church can’t ignore.

A sermon series once a year isn’t enough to reach a generation plagued with anxiety. The church needs a better solution. @Dillon_M_Smith

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7. When I talk to my non-Christian friends about church, I usually need to lead with an apology

During my first couple of years of bible college, I was a server and bartender at a restaurant in downtown Omaha.

All but two of my coworkers were 16 to 30-year-olds who were either atheist or agnostic, and almost all of them had stories about how the church had hurt them or their families.

So, if I wanted to have any form of evangelistic/spiritual conversation with them, I had to first apologize (for something I had nothing to do with) and convince them that not every Christian is judgmental or abusive.

This is true for most of the people my age.

If the church wants to reach the next generation, justified or not, you’ll need to apologize to most of the next generation first.

I wish this weren’t true. And I wish it were just an isolated thing, but it’s not.

As evidence that this wasn’t just my experience, I posted a tweet last week in a moment of stress that I would not be so quick to post again. The tweet said;

“As a 22-year old Christian, too often it feels like I’m a Christian in spite of the Church rather than because of the church.”

Again, if I could go back in time I don’t think I’d tweet this again, but one thing that shocked me was the response I saw.

It was by far the most liked and retweeted tweet I’ve ever shared.

And you know who did nearly all of the liking and retweeting?

Gen Z Christians.

They responded with things like

“Oof, I feel this.”
“This is sadly true.”
“Same.”
“I would share if I didn’t think it would create a storm I’m not prepared to tackle.”

This massive response tells me that the emotion I was feeling when I originally posted the tweet is hitting a chord with the rest of my generation. It’s telling me that the tweet might be more right than I know.

As the Church, we need to get ahead of this.

We need to follow Jeff Henderson’s advice and make sure our communities know what we’re FOR rather than what we’re against, and we need to apologize to those we’ve hurt, even if it wasn’t us who did it.

If we don’t do this, more and more irrelevance and hate await the bride of Christ.

If the church wants to reach the next generation, justified or not, you’ll need to apologize to most of the next generation first. @Dillon_M_Smith

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If You Don’t Have A Healthy Culture, You Won’t Reach Us Either…

Want to improve your team culture?

Better team culture gets fueled by better value statements.

But how to do create them can be so complicated.

How:

Do you know which values to choose?
Do you avoid creating value statements people roll their eyes at or think are so obvious they mean nothing?
Can you be sure the values are accurate but still stretch you?

I spent years reading books and studying how to create value statements until I had a breakthrough on how to create cultural value statements that were both accurate and aspirational, and that the entire team embraced.

I’ve broken that process down into three simple steps that can get you improving your organization’s culture and values today.

You can get free instant access to The 3 Step Guide to Developing Better Value Statements here.

Is there more? 

Did I miss anything? Are there other habits of Gen-Z that we’re missing? Did you find this article helpful?

Leave a comment below and let us know.

The post 7 Habits of Generation Z That Your Church Might Be Ignoring appeared first on CareyNieuwhof.com.

Source: 7 Habits of Generation Z That Your Church Might Be Ignoring

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by Downline Ministries: That is a question that quite honestly haunted me for a very long time. To be fair, I could give you the cliché Christian answers of who I am in Christ, quote some trite Bible verses at you—but none of that was penetrating my heart or emotions, or really changing the way I lived on a daily basis. While these verses were true and full of meaning, I still found myself facing a minor identity crisis or questioning my worth based on silly things. It all turned in to a sick game of comparison, like a never ending emotional game of chutes and ladders; if I accomplished what I wanted and got the attention I felt I deserved, I was climbing the ladder. If not – I fell down a chute and landed in a pit.  How I felt internally depended on how people perceived me externally.

I’ll save you the sordid details, but I imagine some of you may be able to relate to parts of my story and my struggle with codependency. This sin of idolizing the opinion of others slowly crept in to my life unchecked. Eventually, I began to think back and try to figure out why I wasn’t secure in my identity in Christ. I mean, I knew all the verses. I had even memorized some. I believed in Christ and thought I was trusting in Him to be my identity, but it didn’t feel like my identity had any roots. It was affected by my circumstances pretty easily- so what was I missing?

What I surround myself with matters.

There is a physical component to spiritual warfare, and one of the first things the enemy wants to attack is our identity – the very essence of who we are. He does this in a number of ways, and for me many of them start with what I am surrounding myself with. What I view, what I listen to, what activities I do  – all of those affect my mood and how I see myself.  Many times I am subconsciously taking in the lies of the culture surrounding me and I slowly begin to believe them. If I am not taking care of my body physically, oftentimes my mind and emotions follow suit. When I am taking care of my body and intentionally stewarding it for the glory of God, I notice that this affects my spiritual life. It all seems to flow together more easily.

However, when I spend my time listening to love songs, I begin to find that I am not content in my relationship status. As I watch TV, I am less content with my body image, my house, my lifestyle, and how “cool” my social scene is. As I listen to advertisements, I think that I do need more in my life to really be satisfied.
But all of those are lies!! When the Lord saw that it was not good for Adam to be alone, he made a helper fit for him. God didn’t just bring Adam a dog and convince him that it would meet his needs – He made an entirely new creation for him. God knew how he made Adam, and he knew what his needs were.

Often times I focus so much on the circumstances and things surrounding me that I fail to look to God. I must surround myself with His Truth before I can ever hope to believe it.

What I trust in will make me hopeful or hopeless.

If I am trusting in things of this world, I am trusting in a mere shadow. Creation was never meant to give me purpose or identity; it cannot bear the weight of my idolatry.  If I am trusting in a job promotion to make me feel worthy, I am going to be sorely disappointed and spend my life jumping from idol to idol to try to find value and meaning.

When my hope is in Christ and in being everything He has created me to be, life will look so different. Now my roles, seasons, and callings are a way for me to glorify God using the passions, talents, and abilities that He has uniquely gifted me with in order to express my identity. And that brings me hope. This hope is eternal and resting in something bigger than myself and my mundane daily activities.

The things of this world, the chasing of the “American Dream” leads me to feel spent, hopeless, and ultimately empty because they were never meant to satisfy. I have a longing for something that will only be satisfied in eternity – when my identity is flowing from that, it gives me hope and security. This hope is secure because God is secure – Scripture calls this hope an “anchor for our soul” – it keeps us rooted, not tossed to and fro with the waves. We stay grounded because this hope in Christ, that what he says is true, because he is unchanging.

Our identity is in Christ and brings unity amidst diversity.

My identity is only rooted in what God says is true of me—nothing else. Now, don’t hear me say that nothing in this life affects us, it does! But, the temporary seasons, roles, callings, and times of this life serve to give me a platform to express my identity. They don’t define me. I am the same woman single or married, parent or not, employed or unemployed, rich or poor. Paul belabors this point in Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Notice here that he is arguing for our unity in our identity. Our identity in Christ leaves no room for prejudice, judgment or division. We are Christ’s workmanship, created in him for good works.

Not for our own glory.

Not to be the best at everything.

Our identity rests in the fact that we are created in God’s image, to be his image bearers to this world and to walk in the manner worthy of the calling that we have received. Lord, I pray that I will choose to believe that each day.

—Downline

Downline Ministries exists to strengthen and elevate biblical discipleship in and through the local church by strategically partnering with church leadership to equip men and women to make disciples in their home, church, and community for the glory of God and exaltation of Christ among the nations. Learn more about Downline Ministries here.

The post Who Am I? appeared first on Discipleship.org.

Source: Who Am I?

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by Rich Birch: Today we’re talking leadership and Biblical hospitality with Jersey’s own Terry A. Smith. God has done some incredible things in Terry’s church over the years. Terry A. Smith is the Lead Pastor of The Life Christian Church (TLCC) in West Orange and Paramus, New Jersey. Over the past 27 years, TLCC has grown from 54 members to a church family approaching 3,000 people. A non-denominational Christian community, TLCC is known for its vibrant diversity and robust leadership culture with people from more than 132 distinct communities in the New York City Metro area who are regularly engaged in the life of the church.

Terry is with us to discuss church diversity, hospitable environments, and what it was like to move from the Midwest to a suburb of the Big Apple.

Diversity among better-life-seekers. Terry came to TLCC from Indiana in the early 90’s and started pastoring what was a small church of immigrants at the time. They welcomed him into their midst and the lessons he learned from them have helped shape TLCC’s culture tremendously. Today TLCC’s congregation continues to be diverse, coming from different communities, political backgrounds and ethnicities, but what ties them together is the common thread of being hungry to get better at life. These folks tend to be leaders and respond to a message of leadership, so Terry and his team have worked to build a culture of leadership within their church.

…

Source: Hospitable Leadership at Your Church with Terry A. Smith

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Source: Valuing Diversity Like Jesus Did

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Source: Two Church Planting Startup Models

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by Rich Birch: Church leaders in prevailing churches think of themselves more like scientists testing theories than bakers applying a prescribed recipe. Rather than looking for the “perfect” strategy for your church, it’s better to consider your practices as a series of experiments and then watch the results. While it’s important to learn from other churches and incorporate “best practices” from organizations, your church is a unique culture, and therefore you need to employ a “uniquely you” strategy to connect with the community you are trying to reach!

3 Reasons Summer is the Perfect Time to Try Something New at Your Church

Easing Attendance // Most churches see a slight pull back in attendance during this season. This means that the logistics side isn’t as taxed as other times in the year, making it easier to try something new.
Program Reduction // Similarly, churches often cut back on their programs during the summer, which means that the leadership and staff have more energy and time to try something new.
Fall is Coming // Most churches see the time between Labor Day and Christmas Eve as a critical season in the life of the church. Leveraging the period before that season to improve your ministry is a great use of your time.

Are you looking for a few new or different practices to possibly test this summer to see the results in your church? Here are four testable items that you could experiment with over the summer and then make changes to improve your ministry in the fall.

Try Something New with Your Announcements

There are five precious minutes in your service that are solely intended to move people to action. The announcement time is a high leverage opportunity to encourage your people to move from where they are to where you want them to be. It really is the quintessential leadership moment during the service. However, it’s usually under-planned and under-utilized in most churches. You’re missing out on the opportunity to make sustained progress in your church simply because you’re not leveraging those critical moments in your service.

Rather than relegating the announcement portion of the service to just one person, a growing trend in thriving churches is to use a team of two co-hosts. This summer, what if you experimented with co-hosts during all your weekend services?

5 Benefits of Co-Hosts for Your Announcements

Requires Practice // The only guaranteed way to get better at this part of your service is to practice. When two people make the announcements, it requires them to talk through the elements and practice together, which in turn improves the announcements. This part of the service is about moving people to action and getting them connected. It deserves to be well thought-out and executed effectively!
Increases Diversity // As a church grows, it needs to appeal to a broader community. One way to do this is to have a variety of people on stage at your church. If it’s all “guys” on the stage, you may be unintentionally sending the message to ladies that they are less welcome in your church. If everyone on stage is over 65, you communicate to the next generation that there isn’t room for them. Co-hosting increases the diversity of people on stage. Take this opportunity to appeal to a broad group of people.
Builds Influence // The people who are on stage gain influence in your church. People see them and begin to trust them. Although we don’t want the stage to be a shortcut around the “hand-over-hand” work of building a church, it is a valuable tool for increasing the profile of leaders on your team. Regular hosting helps people to know, like, and trust leaders.
Trains Leaders // Constantly training others and releasing ministry to them is central to our role as church leaders. Often, roles like this require “public face time” that we’re hesitant to give away because we’re not sure how to train people. Resist this temptation! Bring another leader on stage to co-host with you and have them start by doing just one part of the announcements. Putting them in front of people will be an adjustment. As hosts get more comfortable, and as you become more confident in their abilities to move people to action, give them more elements of the announcements. As their proficiency grows, you can hand off the responsibility of raising up other co-hosts to them.
Departure Insurance // The people who are with you today won’t necessarily be with you in the future. All leaders are temporary to some extent as people move on for one reason or another. If you have the same host in front of your community all the time, it makes these inevitable transitions more difficult. Sharing the stage exposes people to a range of leaders and can help you down the road when you need to move people to a different seat on the bus. Obviously, you don’t want to put leaders who are a high “flight risk” in front of your people, but having co-hosts helps expand the group of leaders people are used to seeing on weekends.

Looking for more help trying this experiment at your church? Download this PDF on co-hosting announcements that includes tips from a team that’s done it!

Experiment with Different First-time Guest Gifts

An early step in most churches’ processes for helping new guests get connected is to offer them a free gift in exchange for their contact information. The purpose of these gifts is simply to encourage your guests to “raise their hand” and indicate that they are new. Knowing exactly what gift to offer your guests can be a bit of a mystery, and sometimes it seems much more like an art than a science.

When our church switched from one gift to another we saw a 500% increase in the number of first-time guests that submitted their contact information! Clearly, it’s important to get this gift right! However, due to the expense of these items you want to make sure you’ve experimented with a few different gifts to see which one garners the best response.

3 Factors to Consider for First-time Guest Gifts

Perceived Value // At the core of this transaction is the perceived value of the gift that guests will receive in exchange for their contact information. What you’re looking for is high perceived value but lower actual cost. Design and presentation are often factors in this equation.
Brand // There is a delicate balance in how this item relates to your brand. Real estate agents are notorious for handing out all kinds of swag to people around town. But ask yourself, when was the last time you wore that t-shirt from them? If the items you give to your guests are overly branded to your church, it won’t feel like a gift but an advertisement.
Cost // As a rule of thumb, the number of guests who attend your church in a year should be equal to your average weekend attendance. So, if your church averages about 500 people every weekend, then you should be averaging about 10 first-time guests every weekend. This is important because whatever item you end up choosing to give as a gift, you’ll need lots of them over the course of a year. For this reason, testing the response to the gift is important because you’ll most likely end up investing quite a bit in it.

What if this summer you picked two potential first-time guest gifts and then tried one of them for a month and the other one for the second month? Closely track the feedback on the gifts. Which gift received the higher number of total guests picking it up? Also, listen carefully to the guests’ feedback on the gift at the guest kiosk or wherever the gifts are handed out. Record all the comments that are made throughout the month. After just two months of testing, you should have a better idea of what to give to your guests going forward!

3 Common Items Prevailing Churches Use for First-time Guest Gifts

T-Shirts // People love free t-shirts. It almost seems like it’s embedded in our culture! These relatively low-cost items do carry a high perceived value. The design can be done in such a way that it communicates about your church but doesn’t overwhelm the guest.
Coffee Mugs (& Travel Cups) // Coffee continues to be a culturally acceptable addiction. Many churches make up mugs or travel cups featuring their logo and find that these functional gifts are a hit with their guests.
Water Bottles // Staying hydrated is important! Many churches find that elegantly branded water bottles are a practical gift that their guests love!

Looking for more help with gifts for first-time guests? Check out: First Time Guest Gifts: 26 Lessons from 33 Churches

Test Changes to Your Offering Talks

Most churches take an offering at some point during their services. Churches looking to make an impact in their communities invite people to join their mission by giving back to God. How you deliver this part of your service is one of the pieces of the generosity puzzle. Do it poorly and the finances at your church will suffer. Do it well and you will see a rise in the giving at your church.

What if this summer you tested an assumption or two about how you do the offering talk? There might be a better way to do this element of your service. Maybe there is a way to do the offering talk that would encourage more generosity from your people. There could also be a way to do it that feels more in line with the mission and vision of your church. Here are a few different offering talk tweaks you could test this summer:

3 Offering Talk Tweaks to Test

Before or After the Message // Some churches have seen a change in giving depending on the placement of the offering during the service. Specifically, why not test its placement before or after the message? This data might be helpful for you down the road as you’re looking to make-up small financial shortfalls that can happen from time to time.
With or Without an Offering Talk // The best practice is to take the two minutes before the offering to slow down the service to thank people for giving and to connect their gifts to the vision of the church. But what if you could quantify the difference this is making in the life of your church? Take a month to craft pitch perfect offering talks and then do another month where you don’t emphasize the offering at all. What difference does it make both to the revenue and the feel of the service?
Digital Giving // What if you took a month to specifically show people how to give digitally? Maybe you have a new “text-to-give” service that you want to test out. Try pitching that option for a month and see what difference it makes; then don’t mention it for a month and see what happens.

Looking for more help with the offering talks at your church?

6 Common Problems with Offering Talks and How to Fix Them
8 Elements of Effective Offering Talks (Plus 8 Example Scripts!)
Offering Talk 201 // An Advanced Strategy for Encouraging Generosity at Your Church

Examine What Happens If You Change Your Meetings

Stop and think about how much of your time is spent meeting during an average week at your church. Now do some quick math to calculate that across your team. That’s a lot of time! Although it can seem like a “plumbing” issue of how the church does its work, in many ways the meeting culture of your church could be a make-or-break aspect of what is either pushing your ministry forward or holding it back.

You need to ensure that your team is being a good steward of that meeting time.

The meeting culture in your church is like a garden; sometimes you need to pull out the weeds in certain areas and sometimes you need to add a little fertilizer to others. There are meetings that you probably need to get rid of altogether or maybe there are other meetings you need to do more of. The summer season is good time to change up your routine in this area because your team is often in flux with vacations and other commitments.

Try These 3 Experiments with the Meetings at Your Church and See What Happens

Make Every Meeting Optional // Seriously, tell people they don’t have to come to any meeting and see what happens. Get your leaders on board for ensuring the work of the church still gets done but make it evident that people aren’t “required” to come to any meeting. You might be surprised what your leaders do to ensure that people show up.
Cut Every Regular Meeting in Half // What would happen if you only had 50% of the time to complete the regular meetings every week? Would the work still get done or would the wheels come flying off the church? We did this a few years ago, and I was pleasantly surprised that our productivity went up, not down!
Try Remote Meetings // What if your team wasn’t all located in the same town? Try some meetings using remote collaboration tools like Zoom or Slack. We often only envision the work of the church being done by people who are in the same building as us. However, considering the potential to take some of your functions to a remote team can open up all kinds of interesting possibilities for the future of your organization.

Download this FREE PDF to help your team think about the meeting culture at your church: 5 Healthy Meeting Habits in High Performance Church Teams

Source: 4 Experiments to Run this Summer to Help Your Church This Fall – unSeminary

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Source: Why and How Multicultural Leadership Strengthens You, Your Team, and the Faith

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By Lee Kricher:

Our church needed to make a tough decision. In the fall of 2003, I became Senior Pastor of Amplify Church, an evangelical church in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. Weekend attendance had been in steady decline for several years and was hovering around 200 people. We were on an interest-only plan with our bank because we could not afford the monthly mortgage payments on our church building, which was deteriorating after years of neglect. But what alarmed me most was that the average age of those attending the church was just about my age at the time—50 years old.

My definition of a “new generation church” is one where the attendees’ average age is at least as young as the average age of the community in which the church meets. Since the most recent census indicated that the average age of those in the neighborhoods served by our church was 35 years old, Amplify Church was definitely not a new generation church. We could not allow the presence of a handful of young families and children in regular attendance blind us to the fact that we were one of the fastest dying churches in the city.

We decided to put our hearts into becoming a new generation church. This was not an easy decision. We knew that our approach to church had to change in many ways if we were going to lower the average age of our members and attendees by 15 years. Though our core beliefs and values would remain unchanged, everything else had to be “on the table” for possible change – every program, every ministry, every tradition and every practice.

The framework for change we employed was fivefold: adopt a new mindset, identify the essentials, reduce the distractions, elevate your standards, and build a mentoring culture. These strategies, along with specific corresponding actions, are detailed in the book, For a New Generation: A Practical Guide for Revitalizing Your Church.

First Steps

What are the best first steps to take when a church wants to get connected or re-connected with the next generation? Here are a few things that made a difference for Amplify Church:

1. Identify the average age of your neighborhood/community and compare it with the average age of those attending the church. Determine to do whatever it takes to close the gap.
2. Take key staff or lay leaders on “field trips” to healthy churches that have every generation well represented.
3. Regularly weave into weekend messages the importance of reaching the next generation.
4. Proactively engage church members in one-on-one discussions and conversations in small groups about the importance of becoming agents of change instead of blockers of change.

The Importance of a Mentoring Culture

Foundational to building a new generation church is a commitment to develop young leaders. This is not only critical for churches in decline, but also for churches determined to avoid decline! That is the primary reason that I asked a number of our key leaders to join me as participants in a Leadership Network cohort that focused on creating a Leadership Development strategy. With the help of Brent Dolfoand the Leadership Network team, we framed a document titled Leadership Development at Amplify Church (click to download). It affirms that “the primary role of every leader is to develop other leaders” and that “the leaders of tomorrow are already here.” It also reinforces the importance of shoulder tapping, shadowing and interning in order to build a mentoring culture and pave the way for “perpetual” church revitalization.

The Transformation

I was hoping that our multiple-year journey would go smoothly, but change seldom does. The concept of re-connecting with the next generation was well received, but when things started to change in order to actually reach young people, about one third of current attendees left. One of our top givers said to me, “The kids you are trying to reach don’t have checkbooks.” Then, to my dismay, he added, “If you go through with these changes, I’m leaving the church and my checkbook is going with me.”

Fortunately, most people did not respond in this manner. They began to embrace the hope that our church could more effectively reach the next generation. Their hope was realized as new people started to attend our church. Within two years the average weekend attendance doubled from 200 to more than 400 people. Within five years, our average weekend attendance exceeded 600 people. And 14 years after embarking on our journey, the average weekend attendance at Amplify Church exceeds 2,000 people. Even more significantly, the average age of those attending is just under 35 years old. Every generation is well represented for the first time in many, many years. We have been transformed into a new generation church.

As Scripture calls us: “We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about his power and his mighty wonders” (Psalm 78:4 NLT).

Lee Kricher is now in his fourteenth year as pastor of Amplify Church, with three locations across Pittsburgh. He is also author of For a New Generation: A Practical Guide for Revitalizing Your Church, available at foranewgeneration.com.

Original Post: Making Our Church the Same Age as Our Neighborhood

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