Growing Young
Six Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
All churches grow old. Strategic churches grow young.
Churches are losing both members and vitality as increasing numbers of young people disengage. Based on groundbreaking research with over 250 of the nation's leading congregations, Growing Young provides a strategy any church can use to involve and retain teenagers and young adults.
This strategy includes six core commitments for growing young:
● Unlock keychain leadership
● Empathize with today's young people
● Take Jesus' message seriously
● Fuel a warm community
● Prioritize young people (and families) everywhere
● Be the best neighbors
Growing Young also profiles innovative churches that are engaging 15- to 29-year-olds and as a result are growing--spiritually, emotionally, missionally, and numerically.
Packed with both research and practical ideas, this book shows pastors and ministry leaders how to position their churches to engage younger generations in a way that breathes vitality, life, and energy into the whole church.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
According to these three directors of the Fuller Youth Institute, a nonprofit serving Christian Latino communities, there are some specific steps churches can take to bring today's young people both new converts and those who have moved away from their faith into the fold. Through a series of surveys and studies, the authors discovered many positives about how churches function as well as areas where churches can improve outreach programs to appeal to teens, college-age students, and young professionals. Specifically, they argue for dismantling the nepotism involved in many leadership positions, empathizing with a liberal mindset concerning technology and concepts of community, fueling a warm community, and prioritizing young families. Readers will appreciate that each chapter includes accounts of churches successfully executing these suggestions. In addition to explaining how to make these changes happen, the authors provide a summary of highlights at the end of each chapter along with strategic questions to help the reader's church "grow younger." Readers will be delighted by the lively approach of this primer for developing church communities.
