Today I had the opportunity to hear my friend Mark Matlock teach a group of about 30 Youth Workers a seminar that he calls Youth Ministry 2025. He did this seminar at the two National Youth Workers Conventions this year and if you didn't get a chance to hear it you should go ahead and buy the MP3 here. The goal of this time together was to encourage youth workers to think about what their community, church and youth ministry would look like 15 years from now.
What I like about Mark is that he is a futurist. He probably wouldn't call himself that but I'm labeling him here. He did a great job of showing us statistics that paint a pretty compelling picture about what population statistics will be like in 2025. Out of those statistics he painted a picture of a Youth Ministry world that looks drastically different than the world we live in today. I'm guessing most of in the room though weren't ready to think about what we need to be thinking about now in order to be prepared for this change.
One stat that he shared was a little disturbing for me. Mark shared that Texas will have one of the largest older population of white people as well as be one of the top 5 states contributing to the growing rise of the white teenager. And, the average age of the white population was continuing to increase. This stat worried me because I live in a community that is predominately white and looks like it will probably stay that way for quite a while as not much changes here. And as the teenage population is growing it will continue to look like our church is reaching more people and we won't need to change.
The problem with that is as the world around us is becoming more and more multi-ethnic while my community is staying the same. We will be graduating students into a world that looks nothing like where they grew up. And, they might not be ready for it.
Mark aslo talked about how the "boomer" generation which is getting increasingly older is going to be the group in our church with the most time. What would that look like to reach out to them even more as a resources to your youth ministry.
So the questions are:
1. What will your community look like in 15 years?
2. What will your church look like in 15 years?
3. What will your Youth Ministry look like in 15 years?
4. What are you doing to prepare?
Just sent this to our youth ministry team. Thanks.
But dude, you only have to drive 7 minutes from your house to be in a very hispanic area. It seems like there’s a line of demarkation around Turtle Creek of white people driving slowly in their Benz and hispanic people racing their tripped out, ghetto clunkers. It’s weird.
Tim. Exactly. The problem is with the growing white population we dont have to change. Well still grow. Thats disturbing as we need to change
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Thanks Eric. Ready my above comment to Tim. Thats probably better than the article
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Great post. As you talk about the growing Boomer generation, I’d encourage you to listen to a sermon by Rob Bell did on growing old. He offers to present a biblical vision of aging. “Those with the most time, the most resources & the most resources are often the ones who have the most to contribute, yet are asked the least by the church.”
Thanks Adam. Im a fan of Rob. His thoughts are always good.
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