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Programming for a Young Audience and Still Reaching an Older Audience

Orginally published on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 9:07 AM
by Todd Rhoades

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...

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


This post has been viewed 739 times so far.



  There are 22 Comments:

  • Posted by

    Over 50 in our church need compelling vision for what we are trying to do.

    Over 60 in our church need a place to contribute that matched the strength of their lives.

    Over 70 in our church need all of the above and some ear plugs. 

    We seek to connect over 60’s to younger people for mentoring. 

    Great stuff.

  • Posted by Peter Hamm

    If we are talking about service experiences, I totally agree. For instance… I find that if I make music that a 40, 50, or 60-something person would pick, that the older folks come right along, but the younger ones would stay away, or at least like it a lot less.

    If I program music (and drama/creative arts and sermon content for that matter) that appeals to the 20-something, the 40-somethings like it just fine, the kids enjoy it, and the older folks (at least here) are TOTALLY cool with it. Some even like it. Keep in mind that someone who is 70 today was a teenager when Rock and Roll was starting to make an impact. Someone who is 60 might have been pretty wild in the 60s!

    Leonard… I love what you said above, too!

  • Posted by

    I think this approach is true.  I think it best positions us to reach a broader spectrum of people. But we have been transitioning an established church rather than starting a new church.  And it has been painful watching our “seasoned” leaders bail out on us.  I’m anxiously waiting to attract some new “olders” who will help catch the vision and join us.

  • Posted by Adam McLane

    All this time I thought worship planning was about creating an environment where the mortal could connect and worship the immortal God… somehow I missed this in all that training. It’s all about the 20-30 year olds! It’s not about Jesus at all! All we have to do is be cool and our churches will grow. (please read the sarcasm here)

  • Posted by Peter Hamm

    Tommy,

    It is hard to see those folks bail, but some of them might. I encourage you to give away leadership and ownership to some of those younger folks!

    Adam writes

    [All this time I thought worship planning was about creating an environment where the mortal could connect and worship the immortal God...] Actually, I think you’re absolutely right to that point! And creating that environment means I intentionally DON’T program music that won’t connect with everybody. Since I know (from experience) that programming “younger” culture will help facilitate that connection with God better, I prayerfully and carefully might program a David Crowder song before an organ version of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” It’s NOT about just the 20s and 30s at all, but, as some churches seem to NOT realize… it’s not all about the 40 and 50+ people either…

  • Posted by

    When we can learn to be comfortable with our uncomfortableness so as to reach out to those who need Christ, we’ll do a much better job at reaching the lost. Our first realization must be that we’re not there to make it through another Sunday, but to engage people who are around us in ways that are relevant to them, not us. 

    The younger people only know and understand what is going on today and in very recent history, not what happened and what music was popular 30-40-50 years ago. However, those who are older know what was going on back then AND what is happening today which is why it is so much easier for them to relate to a contemporary setting than it is for a younger person to relate to ‘ancient history.’

  • Posted by Stewart

    I’ve also done the transitioning thing. And it is painful to see “mature” Christian leaders bail over issues of style - especially when their stated goal is to grow and reach a younger audience. Actually - the more painful thing is when they don’t bail and stick around as DIS-loyal opposition. grin

    In my experience the group that tolerates “other” people’s style preferences better are the new and not-yet Christians. It’s the people who “grew up Christian” (I’m in that category) who have the hardest time sacrificing personal preference for effective communication with a cultural group other than themselves.

    In general - you get who you program for.

  • Posted by Andy Wood

    In my experience, spiritually mature 40-60s people will tolerate and even engage beyond their personal taste if they see it as a mission, but won’t if they see it as pandering.  If people are bailing, it behooves us to ask some tough questions.  Pay attention to the people who are leaving.  If they’re fish heads (open mouth, smell bad, etc.), so be it.  But if people you respect as mature, wise, and committed to Christ no longer find a mission in (y)our ministries, it’s time for a serious series of talks, and probably some changes.

    One other thought.  For all our talk about 20-30s relevance, my Millenial kids love my PARENTS’ music.  They’re all into Sinatra, classical, etc. as well as Crowder, etc.

  • Posted by Ariel

    While I agree with Adam McLane that we should be focused on creating environments to worship God, not just to draw 20-somethings, I must say that the largest, most influential churches seem to be the ones that have a younger vibe.

    In my city where 80% are Hispanic and 70% are Catholic, the same is true - the churches with younger vibes seem to be the most effective for the Kingdom.

    Besides, it’s a beautiful glimpse of the Kingdom when I occasionally go to the Saturday service at a megachurch in my city of several thousand people and I see teenagers next to 40-somethings next to silver saints, all singing their hearts out to God with a Hillsong United song

    ...even if they do use the “evil drums” [did you catch my sarcasm, Adam?  =)].

  • Posted by Adam McLane

    ariel- I don’t have a problem with modern worship or drums or even appealing to 20-30 somethings. If you read that than it wasn’t intended.
    What I was responding to was the fact that Tony seemed to, in the blog post, say that planning has more to do with their success than the Holy Spirit!
    I respect what Tony and Perry are doing… I think it’s awesome that hundreds of people are coming to Jesus at their church each weekend. I just don’t think their worship planning has anything to do with it. I think it has everything to do with the Holy Spirit moving among them and people saying “we are the church” enough to bring unsaved people to the service. ... and in their desire to explain what’s happening they are grasping for things that aren’t really true.
    I’d just hate for anyone to read Tony’s blog post and grasp onto it (in true evangelical style) and try to use it as a rally cry… “If we only appealed to 20-30 year olds, we’d be reaching people.” I don’t think Tony is stupid… but I think misreading what he was saying would help some people make some very stupid decisions!

  • Posted by Noel

    We have discovered the same thing at our church as Tony.  Our unapologetic target is teens, college students, singles, and young families.  That essentially means we shoot for the early to mid 20s in our service style.

    When we share this at membership classes, inevitably someone will ask, “I’m 40, am I still welcome here?” Our answer is “absolutely.  And we ask you to be on mission with us to reach the youngers in our community.”

    This is how we breakdown in attendance:

    14-17 Year olds 7.6%
    18-24 Year olds 44.7%
    25-29 Year olds 11.7%
    30-39 Year olds 17.9%
    40-50 Year olds 13.6%
    50+ Year olds 4.5%

    I wrote a paper for our church (based on a message I gave on the topic).  If you want it, you can download it at http://www.noelheikkinen.com/papers/oldersandyoungers.pdf

  • Posted by

    I’ve been thinking about this discussion for a couple of days now and hesitant to post.

    As the worship leader and service planner, my ultimate goal is to lead others in worship.

    I’ve been to some amazing outreach oriented events where the music was all hymns and seen young people come to Christ.
    And I’ve also been to congregations that only had old people attending and they were perfectly happy with what I would consider church 50 years ago, but wondering why the young people wouldn’t attend.

    I think this is a complicated topic, because it’s not just our worship style that encourages young people to attend our worship services.

    Other factors:  Our passion for the Lord as a congregation, How welcoming is our congregation to this age bracket? Do we put them in the “observer” slot and refuse to include them in the service itself?  Are only older folks allowed to usher, take offering, pass out bulletins, lead worship?

    As the worship leader, I tend to plan services and “style” based first on whether it touches the heart and content, then on who it will appeal to.  We have a broad selection that we use, that appeal to some or both.  And it’s a mix and match thing, but not based on style at all, but on whether the service as a whole will connect.  Does that make sense or am I hopelessly rambling?

    I would guess that the churches that reach a younger group of people, are ultimately an outward focused church.  They welcome in the seekers and embrace them in community and the worship connects whatever style they use.

    By the way, 75% of our congregation is 25 and under.

  • Posted by

    Just one more thing to add…

    The young people of today are looking for something real.  They can smell a fake a mile away.

    Transparency from leadership is essential.

    They are skeptics.  So I would add that being real is vital.

    My cousin recently visited our church after attending my daughter’s wedding the day before.

    She knows the “gospel message” but I don’t think it has ever taken with her.  And I haven’t seen her for many years.

    Her comments about church really threw me.  She’s very sophisticated and earns a big income as a buyer for textiles and travels all over the world.

    After the service she expressed a desire to come back and bring her husband and his family who travel twice a year to the U.S. from Europe.  It wasn’t to stay in our beautiful resort town that she wants to come back (halfway across the country).  Her desire was for them to see a church that is “real”. Because she’s “never seen that before and didn’t think it was possible.”

    It was a cool moment.  But also very revealing about where this age group is I think.

    We don’t have a lot of fancy instrumentals, gadgets or the latest in software.  No drama.  Just a basic service that I hope touches the heart. 

    I think that is what is most important, vs what style we sing in.

  • Posted by Peter Hamm

    Jan.

    Amen.

    “just being real and transparent” is a HUGE thing that many miss. Which is why I do music that speaks in my voice (very contemporary, and when we do hymns, even they get dressed up, in fact they rock out the most in my church...), and we are pretty careful about being “real” in my church in every way, so we have a lot of “visitors” that stay. We also have a lot of people who walk away saying “I had no idea church could be like THAT!” (in a good way...) A lot of those people find Christ (or Christ finds them) after being away from churches (that they disliked and couldn’t connect with) for years or DECADES! We baptized 20 or so people last week, ALL ages were represented, from teenage or pre-teen all the way to mid to late 60s…

    We shy away from hymns, but program one or two a month, and on the rare occasion that it really suits the service, one or two in one service!

  • Posted by David Andrus

    I appreciated the article.  Our worship Pastor focuses on music that draws people to think about God, Jesus Christ, and what the Biblical message of the week is about.  I am so grateful for having a team member who is all about helping people think about how great God is.

  • Posted by

    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.

  • Posted by Peter Hamm

    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!

  • Posted by

    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.

  • Posted by Peter Hamm

    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…

  • Posted by Gary Sweeten

    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?

  • Posted by

    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

  • Posted by Tony Myles

    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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