What It Really Takes to Reach Young Families (Part 1)
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If a church is engaging young families, it’s pretty easy to see. What’s less obvious to the outside observer is all the decisions they have made to become a church those parents and kids want to attend—what it really takes.
There’s much more to it than curriculum, facilities or finding the right staff—and in this series, we are going to unpack all of what goes into it.
THE FOUNDATION
In this first episode, we are going to explore why reaching young families needs to be a priority and the tensions we know pastors are feeling around it.
- Core tensions with reaching young families
- The importance of engaging young families
- Next steps for leadership to take
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More Episodes in This Series
- The State of Religious Participation in American Life with Alan Cooperman of Pew Research Center – Episode 360
- Why Some Churches Are NOT In Decline – Episode 361
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Transcript
Sean:
Welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast, where each week we are exploring what it means to be an unstuck church. Recent research has confirmed that not only has millennial church attendance increased from pre-pandemic levels, but millennials now form the largest demographic of weekly and monthly church attendees outpacing Gen Z, Gen X, and boomers. On this week’s podcast, Tony and Amy begin a new series on what it really takes for churches to reach young families. If you’re a new listener to the Unstuck Church Podcast, you won’t want to miss out on downloading the weekly episode show notes. Each week we share important information to support that week’s episode, offer bonus resources, and give you access to the full archive of resources for when you go back and listen to past episodes. To learn more, go to theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. Now, before we dive in, here’s Tony with this week’s podcast sponsor.
Tony:
Today’s episode is brought to you by Planning Center, an all-in-one toolkit for organizing and running your ministries. And what is ministry without volunteers? Planning Center helps you build a sustainable and balanced volunteer schedule that aligns ministry needs with people’s availability. Then, you can connect your team using chat, where you can coordinate ministry details, make announcements and engage in fun conversations with your teammates. Get started for free at planningcenter.com.
Tony:
Well, Amy, we’re kicking off a new series today, and it’s one we’ve been really excited about in our planning over the last few months. We’re calling it what it really takes to reach young families.
Amy:
Yeah, Tony. And if a church is engaging young families, it’s pretty easy to see. You know, when I walk into our church every weekend, I see kids everywhere. But what’s less obvious, I think, to the outside observer is all the decisions that have to be made by the church leaders to really become a church those parents and kids want to attend. What it really takes, there’s more to it than curriculum facilities or finding the right staff. And in this series, we’re gonna unpack all that goes into that.
Tony:
Yeah. And as a matter of fact, Amy, it’s interesting, I have these conversations with pastors because they’re frustrated that they’re not reaching kids and students. Particularly with kids, I always remind them, if you’re concerned about the fact that you don’t have many children in your church anymore, you need to be more focused on reaching their parents, because kids can’t drive themselves to church.
Amy:
Not yet. Not yet.
Tony:
You can have the best kids’ leadership, you can have the best kids’ curriculum, you can have the best kids’ environments, but if you’re not reaching the parents of those kids, they’re not going to be engaging with the ministry of the church. And to some extent, that still holds true for students as well. So it’s one of the reasons why I’m very excited about this new series that we’re starting today.
Amy :
Yeah. And we’re gonna take this first episode to really explore why this needs to be a priority and the tensions we know pastors are feeling around it. Some of ’em you just mentioned.
Tony:
Right. Well, the reality is, if we’re not reaching kids or their parents, our church is aging. And that, of course, is going to be a challenge as the church continues to try to engage the mission that God’s called us to. But as of 2024, millennials are now between the ages of 28 and 43. And though that’s hard to believe, isn’t it?
Amy:
I know.
Tony:
Though many of them got married later, they’re still in their very early years of building their families. Some encouraging news actually, broadly, millennials are returning to church more than other segments of the population post pandemic. So according to Barna, 30% of white millennials report attending church regularly post covid. And that’s up from 26% pre-pandemic. Non-white millennials, 40% of them report attending church post Covid. And that’s up from 31% pre-pandemic. Gallup also reports that millennials now form the largest demographic of weekly and monthly church attendees, which is very encouraging. They’re now outpacing Gen Z, Gen X and our boomer attendees. So with that as a foundation, Amy, it kind of explains pastors reaching out to us, we’re hearing from them, they’re seeing data like this. And they’re wondering, why is it that we’re not seeing this in our church? And what can we do to change that?
Amy:
Yeah. Another source, Tony, of the tension pastors are feeling is that the challenges facing young parents today are very different from what they faced when their own kids were young. And I have a, well, we both do. I have a front row seat to this. Two of my kids and their spouses, they live nearby between them, they have four kids under two. And what they have in front of them to navigate is nothing like what my husband Jason and I had to navigate. I think through the smartphone, social media, the anxiety epidemic, isolation, safety at school, gender and sexuality, young families today are just, and the conversations we have with our kids and what’s in front of them, we’re just navigating a really complex cultural moment right now with the grandkids. And like my husband who’s a lead pastor, pastors know they have to be courageous to wade into these topics, otherwise they’re gonna risk coming across as out of touch or tone deaf when trying to engage young parents and their kids.
Tony:
Amy, all of that kind of makes me wanna go back to the 1980s. It was a great decade.
Amy:
I know. Me too. Our big decision was do they get a flip phone at 13 or 14? That’s all we had to really think about then. But it’s very different now.
Tony:
That’s right. Well, engaging millennials is so critical. And let me share a few more reasons why. A few years ago we did some research on the weekend experience. And here’s what’s interesting about what we learned in that, of course, what we were looking at is when new people show up, it’s not what, why they show up, but what makes them come back? And it was very interesting. Number one was kind of the hospitality or think about the guest experience. So the church that was just friendly and welcoming? That was the number one reason that we found a correlation. And not just new guests, but guests showing up again. Number two though was related to kids’ ministry and kids’ ministry environments. And both of those two were ahead of the worship experience and the teaching itself.
Now pastors, if you’re listening, don’t be discouraged. You should still have great worship and you should still have great teaching. But I think what this research showed us is just the importance not only of guest services, which is critical, but specifically related to today’s topic, making sure that we’re providing a fun, fantastic ministry experience for young families and specifically the kids there. And that involves a number of things. It’s the kids environments themselves, but it’s also the kids programming that’s happening. And maybe more importantly than all of that, it’s how parents perceive that area of the ministry. We’ve also seen in previous research that churches that are seeing more faith decisions also are reaching younger families. Now, part of that, maybe because it’s actually the kids and students that are crossing the line of faith. But I think there’s a dynamic that exists in churches, multi-generational churches that are focused on reaching the next generation where we’re more intentional about how we communicate, how we engage our ministry. And that’s helping more and more people cross the line of faith.
And it’s what we see modeled throughout scripture too, Amy, with Jesus setting the example and saying, let the little children come to him, Matthew 19, and in all the family language throughout scripture, God’s heart is obviously for his church to reflect a family. So the foundation we want to set with this first episode is this. You have to decide to become a multi-generational church that’s focused on reaching young families if you want to reach them. You have that intentionality.
Amy:
Yep. And so we’ve established the foundation of what it takes, and we’re gonna get into the leadership and the vision aspects of creating this right framework to enable kids’ ministry to thrive in the rest of this series. So where do you wanna leave our listeners today, Tony?
Tony:
Yeah. So I think it would be helpful just to do a little bit of a deep dive with your team to understand kind of the baseline of where we are today. And let me give you some examples of how you could do this. First, I would encourage you take a look at the percentage of kids in your church. So think birth through elementary school, typically fifth grade nowadays. Take a look at that percentage of kids in your church and have a conversation about how you’re really doing. So again, we’re trying to set the baseline here. And one of the things you could consider is taking a look at how many kids and students connect to the church compared to the percentage of kids and students in your community. So, pretty easy these days to Google and find demographics about your community. And I would encourage you to kind of take a look at, if you can, maybe a 20 minute drive time around your church’s location, identify in your community, what’s the percentage of the population that’s birth through high school graduation, and then compare that percentage to the percentage of kids and students in your church that are birth through high school graduation.
And ideally, our hope is that churches that are engaging with The Unstuck Group are actually seeing a higher percentage of kids and students in their church compared to the surrounding community. Because that’s an indication that they actually have a multi-generational church.
Amy:
Tony, how about the vital signs percentage of kids?
Tony:
Yeah. Good question, Amy. So if you want a general benchmark, when we go into churches to help them help serve them and make sure they’re actually reaching multiple generations, we like to see 20% of the church’s total attendance being in kids’ ministry. Think again, birth through elementary school, and 10% of the church’s total attendance in student ministry in sixth through 12th grade. And so that’s another metric that you can use just to make sure that you’re reaching multiple generations through the context of your ministry. Now here’s what’s interesting, Amy. As we’ve looked at some of the differences between churches that are on kind of the growth side of the lifecycle of church and those that are in maintenance and preservation and life support, it’s fascinating. We see growing healthy, thriving churches tend to have a higher percentage of kids in their church.
It’s interesting though. Churches in maintenance and preservation and life support tend to have a higher percentage of students in their church. And so I think what this is a reflection of is when you get to the maintenance phase of the lifecycle, you’re starting to see decline in your church. When that happens, it’s an indication that you’re starting to mature as a church. You’re reaching older generations and older parents who have students, but not necessarily younger families, younger parents with birth through elementary school kids. Now, as you go through this process and try to get a baseline of where you are as a ministry, I would encourage you please plan to listen to these next three episodes with your staff and make sure you subscribe to get the Leader Conversation guides, because we’re gonna give you some tools that you can be using to further assess how are we doing when it comes to reaching young families, especially young families with kids birth through elementary school. And that should also lead to some really good conversations that you can have with your ministry leadership team. Amy, any final thoughts you have before we wrap up today’s conversation?
Amy:
Yeah. You know, probably just a reminder that these young families are the future of the church. As we opened up the podcast and you described the millennials, the 28 to 43s that are returning to church. I just reflected, that was me in 1998. You know, I was raised Catholic. My husband was Missouri Synod Lutheran, and we hadn’t gone to church regularly since we got married and bought a house in a new suburb. And over those years, we had three kids. Our marriage was in trouble. And by God’s grace, we got invited to go to church with some friends. Tony, you know this; it changed the trajectory of our lives. But here’s the deal. That church was ready for us. They were expecting us. They had, unbeknownst to us at the time, designed every aspect of our experience for us. They were expecting young families.
The lobby gathering experience told us. That the music was unbelievable. The message that was taught was like a bullseye message. It was one that we so needed to hear. And then I remember after the service in the corner of the lobby surrounded by donut crumbs, ’cause we had three kids under four, then the kids pastor spotted us and she walked over and introduced herself. And man, we just felt like we belonged there. And 25 years later, I can’t imagine how different my life, my marriage, my kids, my grandkids, how our lives would be if we hadn’t found a church that really unapologetically designed a ministry to reach us. And of course, I later learned as I went on staff that the church used to do traditional music, blended services. They had tried to do ministry where everyone had an equal voice on preference on the design of the ministry.
But they had walked through the hard roads of things like updating bylaws. So the governance was healthier. They got laser focused on their mission, and they navigated a lot of change to create what we experienced. And I am sure it was hard. That church, seven years earlier was a church, a Baptist church of 350 people where it had been forever. By the time we came those years later, it had grown to 1800. But again, they got laser focused on their mission, and they navigated a lot of change to create our experience. And I’m sure, again, that it was hard that some people left. But you know, really, Tony, they got one shot with me and my family. They got one hour that they would never get again. And they nailed it. And that one hour began a transformation in my life. It literally gave me life. And today’s pastors need to envision their churches on today’s Amy and Jason’s those young families. ’cause again, those young families are the future of the church. You have any final thoughts, Tony?
Tony:
Yeah. You know, Amy, it’s interesting, through the last 10 years or so, I guess we’ve been reading prior to the Pandemic about how millennials were just not connecting with faith and not connecting with church. And I had this hope and kind of reflecting on our story when we were young adults and starting to have kids, and how we really needed to lean into our church family in order to get through that season. Of learning how to be parents and learning how to have a family. And my hope and prayer really was that for the millennial generation, once they started to have kids, that they too would be drawn back to faith and drawn back to church. And it’s obvious from some of the data that we’re seeing now that that has started to happen. But we need to take advantage of this opportunity.
This is a unique season now for the church as millennials reengage with faith and reengage with the church. And if you haven’t figured it out, we’re really passionate about churches reaching young families. And it’s not because we think young people matter more than older people, or married people matter more than single people. We just believe God’s called our churches to be multi-generational churches. And that means the church has to be continually reaching the next generation as its leaders and members age.
Sean:
Well, thanks for joining us on this week’s podcast. At The Unstuck Group, our goal is to help pastors grow healthy churches by guiding them to align vision, strategy, team, and action. In everything we do, our priority is to help churches help people meet and follow Jesus. If there’s any way we can serve you and your church today, reach out to us at theunstuckgroup.com. Next week, we’re back with a brand new episode. So until then, have a great week.
