"Reaching...Keeping" seminar just a few weeks away

We are just a few weeks away from our weekend seminar which will focus on the challenge of “Reaching People under 40 while Keeping People over 60.” In the Foreword to the book of this title by Eddie Hammett and Randy Pierce, the leaders for our seminar, another church consultant observes, “Because of the revolution in American culture over the past fifty years, how to reach people under forty years of age and not lose people over sixty will be the primary challenge for established churches in the U. S. . . . The cultural revolution has been so effective that established churches are now faced with two cultural groups of people—those born in the old, disappearing world of the churched culture and those born in the new emerging non-churched world. In order for established churches to survive, much less thrive, they must learn how to reach and disciple people from the ‘unchurched’ culture with-out tearing apart the church.

“But here’s the challenge established churches face: the methodologies that reached people born in the ‘churched’ culture are not reaching those born in today’s ‘unchurched’ culture. This challenge is driving established churches to the brink of institutional death. From my twenty years of experience as a consultant I estimate at least 80 percent of the churches birthed in the United States before 1980 face this challenge.

“Few established churches are winning this challenge. Some simply aren’t willing to entertain any level of change. Others are so frightened by the cultural changes that all they can do is retreat behind their walls. Still others are too comfortable with what they have, so they consider congregational death more desirable than disruption of their comfort.

“In all fairness to established churches, the changes needed to be made in order for them to reach the new world are so daunting that the best of us wilt a bit under the prospect. But here is where Hammett and Pierce’s work offers hope to established churches. They describe a win-win strategy for reaching both groups while keeping the established church. In doing so, they ask an important question: ‘Where does a person’s need for personal comfort end and a person’s commitment to the costliness of the gospel begin?’”

This is a description of the situation we face as a congregation, along with so many other congregations. The purpose of our “Reaching . . . Keeping” seminar weekend is to help us find ways to be more effective in reaching young adults and families while continuing to provide a vital ministry for those who may have been a part of the congregation for many years—doing all of this through a win-win strategy. The seminar is only the beginning of a process of exploring the direction God is leading us. There will be no “finished product” or “detailed roadmap” after the weekend’s events, but the prayerful hope is that we will have committed ourselves to journey together to seek the way forward to which God is calling us and that some of the next steps for us in this process will be coming into focus.

Make your participation in this seminar on May 22-23 a priority for your time that weekend. Be in prayer for the seminar and all of the preparation for the weekend. Pray most of all for our faithfulness into the future as we seek God’s guidance and pursue His will for us as a church who desires to “reach people under 40 while keeping people over 60.”