How do you attract teenagers, college students, single adults to attend a church with mostly elderly folks?

Question

Church location is closer in town of the city, and is not out in the suburb. Seriuos answer only please.

Answer 1

You have to give them something to look forward to. There has to be something attractive about it. Music for one, if you've got the old organ droning on, you won't see a young person within miles of your church. If you've got electric guitars, a keyboard, and a drumset, you are closer. Teenagers will come if there is a program that is promising for them. If it's a place that they can come and hang out and do fun things while learning about Christ. It's a lot of work, but college students need to have a ministry dedicated especially to them while they are in school. Single adults will go if they have friends that go. If you can appeal to one friend then you may be able to get more, but chances are attract a single, single adult will be difficult because they would rather use their Sunday mornings to sleep in than go to church. A later service may be the ideal way to combat that. Good luck and prayers for the growth of a younger community at your church.

Answer 2

Well people say that God is speaking in a today generation voice.
So if you want the youth to come you have to go to them. Pass out flyers advertising this huge worship jam. My church has these Jams sometimes during the year. It includes food music and live bands. Gospel bands of course. so make it appealing to the youth. Have lights and upbeatmusic. Have games and you will see an increase in the number of youth. However you can't have a jam every single night. So set up a youth group. My youth group is called Breakthrough W.H.A.T. the what stands for a world wide holy aggressive takeover. So you must appeal to the youth. and Hold youth conferences where they can come in and just talk about some stuff that they can't usually talk about. Don't be to formal. If you make it formal then they WILL think that yu hae to be dressedup. Make it come as you are. Sure enough if tey hang around in te pesence they will be influenced and get saved.

Answer 3

I think the hardest problem with attracting younger people to a Church with older people is how you are targeting your audience. Older people like hymns, traditional worship, reading scripture as a congregation and the traditional types of Church. Younger people generally are the opposite. Having a worship band is huge, singing songs that they can relate to and songs that they hear in contemporary christian rock. They need to hear messages that relate to there lives and issues they deal with. I don't know what your current service schedule is but if you have only one it could be very hard to make a good combination of the two different types of messages. You want to attract younger people but without alienating the older members. Try having a Saturday night contemporary service that is specifically geared toward a younger crowd. Or have two services Sunday mornings, an early one for the older generations and a later one for the younger crowd. As a Christian of the younger generation I have seen many Churches go through these same issues. Also make sure the Bible is the backbone of your Church. So many Churches now aren't relying on the word of God. And without it how do you expect to teach the word of God. I went to one small country Church once and they read about two verses before the sermon then the pastors sermon didn't relate to the scripture he read at all. And during the sermon not once did he quote scripture or say anything related from the bible. His message was basically that we should be good people, but he didn't say why. It was just all stuff that came from his head, nothing from scripture. The younger generation is sick of churches like this. They want churches who have the bible as the backbone of there Church and who challenge them in there faith. If you have any more questions contact me. I would love to help give you new ideas in attracting a younger crowd.

Answer 4

I think that if you want to attract College students especially, everyone knows you never have money in college, and a good dinner is sometimes difficult to find. Get permission from the college to put up flyers stating when you plan to have a "dinner social" that would be a good time to have fellowship as well as giving a dinner for hungry students. Have the congregation make different dishes and invite the students in the area.

Also, in the newspaper you could advertize a "singles social" same idea but for young adult singles.

For teens, that participation will probably be left up to the parents to take them there, maybe a Saturday afternoon get together?

Answer 5

I am not sure you realize this but this is, I believe, a Protestant only question. The answer is to make your services uniform and orthodox across the denomination. The ancient Christian services are still in use, start using them.

Change slowly so they can get used to early Christianity. The simplest answer is to look up the Roman Catholic Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday services for the "Liturgy of Peter", or to look up the "Liturgy of James," to find an example of the Antiochean liturgies. I don't think you can find the text of the Liturgy of Mark in English and unless you speak Greek or Copt, you are out of luck.

If everywhere is doing the same ancient services, there is no division by age. Age no longer matters because the services are timeless and ageless.

This is a serious answer. End the division and you end the problem.

I am attaching the service left to us by James. The texts are widely accepted by archaelogists as being from around AD 60. They are older than most of the scriptures.

Like Peter's and Mark's service, it is still being used although like both of the others, there is a tendency to use derived services due to the length of singing this entire service in Hebrew Canticallation.

Parts, such as the prokeimenon and the troparion are missing from the text because they are scripture passages and vary throughout the year.

Answer 6

Most modern churches lower their standards and bend the Biblical rules (and try to rationalize the act) to attract young people to church. They allow rock and rap with so called Christian lyrics, they allow homosexuality and anything that teens will like or be attracted too.

Visual technology or anything they can use to sound like the world and be like the world to fill a pew. Movie stars, sports and music celebs are also used.

Its amazing to me that Jesus is no longer good enough for the churches to fill a pew. They use people worship and audio visual stimulation to get the job done.

Compromising the truth to become one with the world is against everything Jesus and his Apostles taught. But for church to be popular and "happnin' ", with the teens you have to drop every standard a compromise the Biblical truth.

Teens will come - only in dribbles -and when they see they are lost. All one can do without compromising, is to witness. We cant cheat our way into heaven and we are not helping others into heaven by telling them certain things are okay when they are not, just to fill a pew.

Answer 7

It's a little difficult. I think you need to start with a younger person in the church going out and getting friends to come. That might help!

Answer 8

I am a Sunday School Superintendent. I am having this same problem. I have tried everything. I feel like stepping aside from this title because I don't feel I'm doing a good job.

Answer 9

youth centric events, concerts, stake parties, video game nights, etc. A dynamic young speaker helps too. It seems like the best way is through viral advertising, so get the youth you have excited about something and then they'll get their friends excited.

Answer 10

If you add some kind of youth program to your church you can attract the younger people. At my church they have an amazing youth program which definitly attracts younger people.