Monday Morning Insights

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    Programming for a Young Audience and Still Reaching an Older Audience

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    I wonder, though… what is your experience.  Do you agree with Tony (and my) premise?  Or would you care to differ?  What have you found in your church?

    You can read all of Tony’s post here...

    I’d love to hear your input…

    Todd

    My friend Tony Morgan wrote something that caught my eye recently. He said:

    "If we design our service experiences for a younger audience, we’re more likely to reach that younger person and we’ll also reach older folks. The reverse is not true. If we designed our service experience for an older audience, the younger crowd would not show up."

    I would say, I have to agree with him...

    Comments

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    1. sgillesp on Tue, September 02, 2008

      This makes me tired.  All you folks breaking down your congregations by age, pointing out that their small percentage of “olders” are mature Christians who want to serve younger people.  That’s nice, it really is.  But where do you suppose all the other ones went?  Do you care?  And what about the 80-year-olds?  Do they not deserve a gospel witness?  Some of us are out here in churches with the folks who don’t feel welcome in your church.  What makes me tired is the sense of the article, that if I would just do what you do I would reap the same “success.”  Does that mean that I would then ship out the 1/3 of my congregation that is over 80?  I’m not sure that success in the kingdom of God looks like that.  Kudos to the folks in the thread who talked about inviting everyone to worshp the Lord - that’s what we’re aiming at.  I try to include praise songs and hymns and classical music, although we’re not able to afford the kind of instrumentation you’re talking about.  So I suppose we won’t attract the 20-somethings, but I do believe we’re following Jesus, anyway.  On the other hand, I think we’re pretty real.

    2. Peter Hamm on Tue, September 02, 2008

      sgillesp,


      I’ve led worship in different kinds of churches. Some focus younger, like the one I’m in now, and yes, we lose some of the older folks. Some focus older, and yes, they lose some of the younger folks.


      Some try “blended worship” to reach everybody. In my rather extensive experience, unfortunately, when you try to make all of the people happy all of the time… you end up not really serving anybody. Almost nobody actually connects the way they can if you “target” somebody.


      In my community a lot of older people don’t like the way we do church. Guess what. There are TONS of churches that they DO like… so I’m not worried, because there are VERY few churches around here programming for younger people… so that is what we are called to do.


      Everybody needs a gospel witness. That’s why I thank GOD for the churches that are NOT like us in our community! They can and do reach people I can’t. I can and do reach people they can’t.


      AWESOME!

    3. Jan on Wed, September 03, 2008

      I think it’s interesting to note as well that it’s the older already Christian folk who dislike our service.  But the senior non Christian likes it and stays.


      We’ve led and baptized several 70 & 80 year olds who have been for years thought to be “unreachable”.  We were even told by these same unhappy so called long time Christians folk not to even bother with one of these women.  If she was going to become a Christian she’d already had plenty of chances.


      Imagine their embarrassment, when she did just that and now is growing in Christ and excited about knowing Him and tells all her friends they need to try it too.  What an absolute blessing!  It is very telling that these “believers” were more embarrassed than blessed.


      And our new older believers absolutely love church.  It’s the highlight of their week. They invite any and everybody and the church as a whole is not geared to what we would traditionally think of as their likes.  I think a lot of it is not the worship style which is definitely not what they would choose to listen to, but the fact that they are loved, wanted, heard and accepted.  They have in short family and they have hope.


      I think sometimes we are just listening to whiners who think they are mature because they have white hair.  Ministry to them isn’t any less valid. They definitely have less time to get it together.  And we need to reach them.


      But we cannot sacrifice the future of our churches by only catering to the likes of one age group, at either end of the spectrum, in my opinion.

    4. Peter Hamm on Thu, September 04, 2008

      Jan,


      We have those kinds of experiences pretty often, too. I do notice that any grumblers we have, though, tend to be “middle aged”. The older folks really get what we’re trying to do and appreciate it. It’s those between my age and theirs that generally complain, but rarely…

    5. Gary Sweeten on Thu, September 04, 2008

      I am stunned by the lack of knowledge about how people are motivated and influenced. I have a BS and MS in Education and ED.D in Counseling and we studied how people best learn and change in every class. To think we can mix up all educations, age levels and levels of Christian experience in a one size fits all mass meeting is far from true.


      We have long known that children and youth need differently designed curricula but have been stedfast in forcing adults of all maturity and experiences to sit passively in a big hall. It is well known that we all learn and change best when we actively engage in doing.


      I have known and followed Christ for over fifty years and want action oriented meat. Do you really think I would learn best if the service was designed for someone who needs one percent milk?

    6. CS on Thu, September 04, 2008

      Gary:


      “I am stunned by the lack of knowledge about how people are motivated and influenced. I have a BS and MS in Education and ED.D in Counseling and we studied how people best learn and change in every class. To think we can mix up all educations, age levels and levels of Christian experience in a one size fits all mass meeting is far from true.”


      Being a well-educated man in this subject, when you look at circumstances such as the Sermon on The Mount, the Feeding of The Masses, and Paul on Mars’ Hill, how do you reconcile those situations when masses of people of all sorts of backgrounds, ages, circumstances, and education all listened to the same message, with your concept of a one-size-can’t-fit-all format?  Or, what about family churches that have existed for hundreds of years, where entire clans of people would worship in the same service?


      —


      CS

    7. Tony Myles on Fri, September 05, 2008

      What you attract people with is usually what you have to use to keep them attracted.


      Age doesn’t matter on that fact.


      If only we had something that wasn’t temporal, but was truly eternal.

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