Churches today are having the hardest time in reaching and then keeping young leaders. Sure the reasons are almost endless, but the fact remains that churches need to be a better job of not only reaching young leaders, but keeping them as well.

• Give them a piece of the pie…and let them eat that piece. Many churches let young leaders run a key part of the church, few churches let them run with it without handcuffs on.
• Mentor down. What is mentoring down? Typically it is when an older and more mature person is meeting with a younger and less mature person in order to learn from them, not just to speak into the life of the younger person. Every church in the world is trying to figure out a way to “reach the next generation” and yet this idea of mentoring down is mostly unknown. It may just be why churches are failing at reaching the next generation (the statistics are scary). Churches aren’t reaching young people in large part because they aren’t doing enough to know them and learn FROM them.
• Let them be a part of the process. When I say a part of the process I don’t mean “let them run the youth ministry.” That would be a part of the process of a youth ministry, not the church at large. Let them be a part of the process by valuing their input into the process in a relational way.
• Provide wisdom and support. If you’re a pastor and you have young leaders around you at your church it is a safe bet they are looking to you to gain wisdom and insight into being a pastor for the long term. You have that wisdom and you can offer that support. Don’t shy away from that chance or it will be taken as a “you don’t care” type of thing.

What would you add to the list?

(Photo: Will Gortoa)

You might remember the article the New York Times ran on “The Facebook Generation.” It was basically an article that looked at the implications of the how emerging generations view leadership, power, and influence.

Rhett Smith recently dove into one of the points the article brought out: All ideas compete on equal footing. I really love what Rhett had to say about this subject and I think it is a common situation at many churches.

Now, if you have spent anytime in the Church…on staff, volunteering, or just attending, this becomes pretty obvious, pretty quickly. Not all ideas compete on equal footing, and often many ideas aren’t even allowed to enter the conversation. Where I have often seen this played out is in the ideas between staff/church members of different “ranking”, i.e. ordained vs. non-ordained, associate vs. executive, senior pastor vs. youth pastor, volunteer vs. staff, etc. Though this is not to become a versus situation, it often breaks down into that when ideas are not allowed to be shared and considered equally among all staff members, volunteers and attending members.

I think many in previous generations are comfortable and accept the fact of hierarchical leadership. It submits to that leadership and accepts almost every decision reached without much second thought. I do think there is a decent amount of Biblical support for this mindset. But, my generation does not think this way. So when people say it is a reality of how churches work, I say that is why you have the “emerging church.” Young people left their traditional churches to go to a place where their ideas would be received and used.

Essentially I think this problem comes down to how comfortable we are with change. Certainly CEO leadership is a normal thing with the American culture, but it is a dying breed. Pastors today can either choose to invite young leaders into the decision making process or they can disenfranchise them and force them to go elsewhere. Rhett also speaks to this:

For the younger generations, the Church can often just be seen as “red tape.” Nothing is more discouraging than a person bringing a great idea to senior leadership, and having that idea shut down (if it’s even heard) as it navigates it’s way through the CEO/Business Management models that most churches operate from. Pretty soon, these people just take their ideas online where there is no “red tape”, and start changing the world…without the Church.

Do you see this happening in churches today?