As a church leader or member, you must pay close attention to the message the children and young adults of your church and community are sending to you. The way the next generation tells you that your church has lost touch with them is simple—they stop coming, according to Lee Kricher in his book For a New Generation: A Practical Guide for Revitalizing Your Church.
The book tells the story of how Amplify Church, the author’s church, changed from a dying church into a growing church, and the author details five strategies which were key to the turnaround success: Adopt a New Mindset, Identify the Essentials, Reduce the Distractions, Elevate Your Standards, and Build a Mentoring Culture.
While those five strategies were obviously crucial to the turnaround, they do not in themselves explain what it is that made the church so attractive for children and young people. A crucial preliminary step seems to have been locating one or more other churches which are successfully reaching children and young people, and identifying key elements which can be copied or adapted to the local context. This preliminary step seems to have been vital both to giving the church’s leadership confidence that a turnaround was possible and to providing inspiration for creating environments which are compelling for children and young people.