Explaining “Targetting Young”
Dec 8, 2003 Uncategorized
I got a great comment from my friend Rick on my rant about churches needing to target young. I felt he asked a great question and so I am not only posting a comment on that entry, but I am ccing it here as a post. I would love to know anyone’s comments on this.
Great question, Rick. I threw that post out without adequately explaining myself. This is a good lesson to me.
Hopefully this will make sense. Please correct me if it doesn’t.
Our mission at Riverview is spelled out in our “It’s The Dream” brochure that you can pick up in the lobby or download it here.
One of the things we dream of is “sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with thousands of students, singles, and young families in the Greater Lansing area; connecting these people into the vibrant fellowship of a multi-generational church family - loving, learning, laughing, and growing spiritually together.”
Our goal is a “multi-generational church family” and our target is “students, singles, and young families.” Essentially, what this means is that we see (for some of the reasons I shared in my blog entry) a need to target young. At the same time, we see a huge value in a connecting young people with those who have more experience, wisdom, and (yes) age.
What I meant by “99 out of 100″ was that most churches target older and because of that a lot of youngers will not attend or check out Christianity. We seek to provide that “1 out of 100″ target for them. That doesn’t mean that Riverview is not “for all non believers and believers alike,” just that we feel a lot younger than a lot of churches.
Does this make sense? I usually describe Riverview as a “multigenerational church that targets young.” When I say that, some people say “What about me? I am 40.” My response is usually, “Will you join with us to pass the torch to the next generation? Most young people will not go to a church that is targetting older than them, but most mission minded older people will be willing to go to a church that targets younger than them.” That is what I mean by saying be “mission minded.”
Rick, you and Grover are the examples of this in my mindset! You have always had this heart for the Gospel to go out to “youngers” and you are “young at heart” as it is! SO I AM BY NO MEANS SAYING YOU SHOULD LEAVE RIVERVIEW! WE NEED YOU!
Hope this helps.
BTW, you can download a teaching that I gave on this last year by clicking here.
