Young Adults Ministry – Designing a New Service Format

It’s an exciting time for our church as we minister to the Young Adults (YAs) in our congregation. I’ve been asked to propose a service format that will resonate with YAs, hopefully resulting in a unique service for (but not limited to) the YA’s.

I’m going to need your help with suggestions and critiques! I’ll be posting up my proposals on this blog and it’d be great to hear what you think =)

We’ve been talking to the YAs in our church and we’ve identified 3 points that we feel define what they are looking for in their experience of church.

Sense of Community
Participation/Engagement
Relevant Teaching

While all churches are supposed to provide these things, it seems that YAs and the youth (Generation Y??) find these 3 things lacking most in our big church. The question is – how do we incorporate this into a service format?

Things that we usually do in our service (in order):

Songs
Prayer
Welcome/Announcements
Offering
Scripture reading
Sermon
Communion
Benediction
Ministry/personal prayer time

We’ve had suggestions for improving this – such as public prayer request/testimony time, as well as group discussion/prayer time.

So watch this space! Subscribe via email/RSS/Twitter (see the column on the right).

Meanwhile, what’s your ideal service format? How would you reach out to Young Adults? Leave a comment!

Share this post :

~ by jonhyz on May 31, 2009.

Posted in church, corporate worship, emerging church, young adults ministry
Tags: alignment, liturgy, worship service

3 Responses to “Young Adults Ministry – Designing a New Service Format”

Use more visuals in the sermon? Since it’s a known fact that younger people can’t sit still for as long, having more visuals will help make the sermon more applicable and more interesting for them.

K said this on May 31, 2009 at 7:26 pm | Reply
When i go for a sermon. I don’t focus at the slides. I focus at the pastor. If the pastor able to preach effectively he doesn’t need slides at all. ( etc obama doesn’t need visuals to do his speeches 😛 ) if what he sayings sounds like something i heard for the 101th time, my head slowly starts to drop n ….. You engage youths by being different(shock them) or letting them “feel” or think about the sermon. Get the young adults thinking, inspiring and feeling during service through the order of service and i dont think their fall alseep.

andrew & the belly of fire said this on June 12, 2009 at 4:03 pm | Reply
yeah the speaker’s ability is always key. but i think the right visuals can really enhance a sermon. but i think that requires a good design team eh? 🙂

what did you all think of al gore’s presentation visuals in ‘an inconvenient truth’?

jonhyz said this on June 17, 2009 at 11:19 am | Reply

Turn your ears… a worship blog