The Outset - Questions Seeking Understanding

It's always a bit awkward posting your first blog entry on a new blog. There's the pressure to make that first entry pop and draw others in and get people interested. In this case, because we will be blogging for a designated amount of time, there's also the pressure to make each entry count. However, I think there is something to be said ignoring all the rules and telling it like it is.

Here's the story or at least, my side of the story. I'm a 26 year old future pastor who is finishing up her last semester of grad school before she becomes the pastor of a church. When I started at Luther Seminary, I was fairly convinced that I would get out of here and work mainly with high school youth. It's what I loved doing and I was fairly good at it. Plus, there's generally a need for that kind of work in churches.

However, as I've put in my time at seminary, spent the past year as an intern at Christ Lutheran Church in Charlotte, NC, gotten involved with The Source in Stillwater (an alternative worship service), and reflected on church life in general something has become painfully clear: there not a whole lot out there for young adults especially those who haven't grown up in the church or are disenfranchised with the church in general.

Worship is often the entrance point for most new people. Worship is something corporate, it's something usually non-threatening to new people, and it's easy to invite people to. It's a great door to invite others in and to come in yourself if you're looking for a new church. For those of us who grew up in the church and are used to the usual Sunday morning worship routine of old school organ hymns, reciting the Apostle's Creed, and preaching from the lectionary the church is still doing a fairly good job at this (granted there is always room for improvement there but that's for a different blog). If none of those things in the last sentence made any sense to you or is something you don't particularly enjoy, well then, going to church feels like either a totally alien experience or being hit in the face with all the reasons you left the church in the first place.

Who as a young adult listens to organ music on a regular basis? The way we set up worship can often be hard to follow. Even this long time Lutheran often has trouble when she goes to a new congregation that is very traditional and by-the-book. And I think the big question that this all leads to is how can you feel connected in a place where you have no idea what's going on?

Because that's what I really think this generation is thirsting for: connection. Sure we're all more connected now than ever with our 300 facebook friends, our myspace pages, our blogs, and our cell phones that allow us to be accessible at all points in time. But it's not enough. There is still that longing for a true connectedness not only to other people but also to something bigger than us; there is that longing to be connected with God.

These are all things I've been kicking around in my head and heart this past year. What can we do as a church to minister to young adults? How do we minister to them? How do design a worship service that speaks to where they are? How do we preach in a way that sparks their imagination and is relevant? How can we help empower them to go out into the world and make a difference? How do we start to rethink church, religion, and God in the face of what we as young adults are experiencing in our lives?

I know the conference is not going to give the me all the answers or necessarily any answers. I think it's going to give me ideas, different perspectives, new ways of questioning, and other things to start kicking around. And it might also give me some help in the all important discernment process as I really think and pray long and hard about whether or not young adult ministry and alternative worship is something that I am truly called to in the church. So please join me, Jeremy, and Jason (my fellow travelers and bloggers) on this journey as we head out to Orlando to learn, question, live it up, converse, minister, be ministered to, worship, pray and play.