Young Adults and the Church

The Division on Ministries with Young People is a relatively new initiative of the UMC that does outreach efforts for both youth ministry and young adult ministry. The person who heads up the young adult end of things is named Julie O'Neal. Among other efforts, Julie has been developing an online resource for young adults and young adult ministry called the Young Adult Network. Check it out.

The church should take notice of this. We don't do a great job of keeping our young adults after they graduate from high school and leave their youth groups. There is a high attrition rate for churchgoers in the college and 20-something years. And increasingly, once people stop going they never really start up again. So any outreach that meets young adults "where they are" is a good thing, especially when "where they are" is usually the Internet.

I did an interview with Julie recently about her work and specifically about the Young Adult Network. You can read it in this week's edition of the United Methodist Reporter.

I also did a column that looks at the problems facing young adult ministry and Julie's efforts at addressing them. My column is also in this week's issue.

Oh, and one more thing. A feature of the Young Adult Network is that they get real live young adults to write essays on the site that cover a number of different issues. The writer that they are featuring right now is Adrienne Trevathan, a good friend of mine from Lambuth days. Adrienne is a first year M.Div student at Garrett-Evangelical in Evanston, IL. She rocks. You can read her stuff on the front page of the YAN for the next few days.