Thread on young adult ministry:

In WWII, the US studied damage in bombers to learn where their designs needed to be reinforced

Problem was, by definition they weren’t studying the planes that got shot down

The returned bombers were lucky to not be shot in core places, but engineers followed the data they had and reinforced the Swiss cheese wings instead of the precious engines

Anyways, it gets me thinking about young people in church; war analogies aside, a lot of us buck the trends and find life and deep spiritual richness in mainline churches

But if we’re data for connecting young people w/God & church in a healthy way, we can be like those planes,

Scraped up, sure, but not shot down. We’re here for a reason. Going 110% with the metaphor, it’s good to reinforce our Swiss cheese wings but let’s no forget what’s precious and vital! The things that we find vital in the broken church of this moment!

Here’s an example: inter-generational community

Young mainliners lament the fact that we rarely have dense enough numbers to form local community

So young people must want community with each other! The way to reach more of us is by appearing young and savvy!

But having ppl like us to hang out with is our Swiss cheese wings. It’s a problem, yes, but if young community were our vital engine part we’d go to a yoga studio or whatever

The plane study teaches us to flip and reverse it: maybe we’re connected to church community because on some level we value (even need) inter-generational community; it’s a vital engine piece that’s missing from other parts of isolated, dispersed 21st century life

Maybe we need to love and care for this intergenerational ministry instead of primarily spending resources on a mask of cool hip young vibes to attract the youths

(Btw lots if places do this well and if you have an intergenerational ministry please share!)