Reaching Out to Young Families

I’ve responded to some questions from a church that I thought I would share here.

Our small church has struggled to attract families and has become a congregation with an aging demographic.  What would your approach be to reach out to families and younger people?

If the primary task of your pastor is shepherding the congregation with an aging demographic (see A Pastor’s Role) then outreach to families and younger people, who are not part of the congregation I imagine would lead to conflict. So my approach would be “careful”. ;)

I would be guided by always asking families and younger people in the congregation and without how the congregation was doing. Would you recommend us to your friends? Why?

I would seek out a relationship the school board and principal of the high school. This is where young families are. I volunteered as tutor and substitute teacher, putting myself under the school’s authority and helping them in their need, not my own. I got funding and a venue for a program the guidance counselor dreamed of providing, not my own program. (So, I was there when her husband left her. She ended up joining the church and becoming an elder.) When a High School football star was nearly killed I opened up the church for a healing service and provided a website for messages to him. (Over 100 young people came forward for anointing. The next day the web server crashed from overuse.) I would be at the football games and other events as a supporter not a competitor.

I would seek permission to add video to a participatory worship experience and work on the church’s social media friendliness. A change in worship would be a sacrifice from the good folks there now. A major part of this approach would be to reach out and work with the folks who like worship and church the way it is and to provide for them.

Christy Ramsey. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.