As a leader, we want to get people connected into what we are doing. The question is, how do we define connected?

Well, practically speaking, this is often defined by physical involvement. If there are large numbers of people coming to what we are doing, we assume people are connecting. However, just having people show up in the same room at the same time doesn’t mean they are connecting with one another—especially across generations. And that’s important to differentiate.

It’s one thing to get people to something and even have them serve in some capacity. But it’s an entirely different thing to help people connect inter-personally with others and bridge the generation gap. This is more difficult to do than just having people show up. It takes more time and an entirely different strategy.

Here are THREE practical ways you can work to become a connected church across generations and do so in sustainable ways. I will categorize these into Long-Term, Mid-Term and Immediate ideas to keep in mind and implement.

Long-Term. To build a culture that is connected inter-generationally, the people involved must be motivated by the gospel. I’m not trying to sound over simplistic or super spiritual. I really mean this. The reality is, people who have only accepted the benefits of the gospel and have somehow missed the call of the gospel will only serve as a hindrance to becoming a truly connected church.

The gospel, at its most basic level, calls us to be selfless (Mark 8:34), with a unique focus on Jesus and others knowing Him. The gospel motivated Paul to use his personal liberties for the sake of others (1 Corinthians 8:13) and it led him to give up his personal preferences so that others might come to a saving faith in Jesus (1Corinthians 9:22).

This is the mentality that feeds relational connectivity. True and sustainable connectedness will be robbed unless the most basic principles of the gospel are serving as the motivators for the people involved. Our gospel presentations, then, must include both the benefits and the call of the gospel.

Mid-Term. Be very intentional with the terminology you use. Whether it’s in a one-on-one conversation or from a massive stage in front of thousands of people, we must talk about the unifying aspects of everyone involved.

For instance, when we use the word “family” in church contexts, we are most often referring to individual family structures. Our motivations are good, but if we are not extremely careful we can alienate college-age people, anyone else that is single and possibly someone that comes from a broken family.

To be a connected church we ought to redefine words like family, as the “family of God,” which allows everyone to have common ground. It’s in little nuances like this that change a culture and lead to being a connected church.

Another facet is to stay away from terminology like, “Big Church” because it inherently carries an “us and them” tone.

Immediately. Actually connect two people on some sort of common ground. This can be any facet of life, really. Take vocation, for example.

Consider connecting two people from two different generations for one cup of coffee and do so over the common interest in a particular industry. Maybe an older woman in your church is an engineer and you know a college student who is interested in engineering.

Ask the older individual if she would mind sitting down with a younger woman who is interested in this field of work just to “talk shop” and be available to answer any questions about it. This type of inter-generational exposure to people is what cultivates a connected church. Not every one of these connections will become an intimate relationship, but many of them will. And if connecting people like this is a pattern in your life it will, in fact, lead to your church being a connected one.

Chuck Bomar is the pastor of Colossae Church in Portland, Ore., co-creator of XP3 College, and author of numerous books including his latest, Better Off Without Jesus.

Little if any energy is needed to becoming disconnected . . . or even divisive. That, unfortunately, seems to come all too easily. And this is precisely why the Scriptures tell us to be diligent to preserve the unity we do have (Ephesians 1:3). The reality is, it requires a great deal of energy and intentionality for us to maintain connection and the unity God has given us with others.

This is probably why we have a hard time doing it. We experience this in our churches. We want to get people connected, so we seek to connect them with other people just like them. And while it does create some sense of connection for people, it also naturally creates points of disconnection as well.

Just think about it.
A teen feels connected to the youth group and their small group leader, but may be disconnected to the church body.
Husbands may feel connected to a men’s group, but disconnected to their wives spiritually.
We could go on and on.

1. Celebrate unified diversity. Any time there are two people who are different from one another serving together or walking through a facet of life with one another, celebrate it! Tell the story to your ministry or church. As you sit with others in the church, tell of the situation and the beauty of how two totally different people are living in unity.

1. Focus on the unifying aspects of faith. Too often leaders talk about generational differences rather than helping different generations focus on the similarities they have with one another. If you allow two people from different generations to spend enough time together, they will find more common ground than they ever imagined. In your teaching, focus on the aspects of your faith that all believers have in common. Talk about the needs we all have. Make known the realities of sin that we all struggle with.

1. Cultivate relationships between generations. Personally get to know people who are older than you. Get to know younger people as well. And, whenever you find common ground between two people in different stages of life, connect them on that common ground! You might just introduce them in the lobby on a Sunday morning. You might have both of them over for dinner one night. The means of connecting people can be any variety of things, but the point is to connect them relationally.

But this doesn’t have to be an either-or issue. We believe leaders can and should provide connection points with peers as well as people of different generations, different stages of life. Here are three practical ways you can take steps toward becoming a truly connected church:

By doing some simple things like this consistently and frequently in your church or ministry you can become a “Connected Church.” We think it’s worth the energy.

Too often, our goal is to transition our kids into a church service, rather than the life and body of the Church (with a capital C). High school grads’ biggest need is remaining connected to the body of Christ, not necessarily our local congregation or ministry (although that would be great, as well).

Whether or not your students leave for school, intentionally fostering a connection in your ministry (and/or a church near their campus) beyond just you and their parents is vital. Far too often we fail to recognize that truly loving our students requires us to help them connect beyond us individually. Here are some practical ways you might do this:

1. Have a dinner/barbeque for your graduates, but invite a couple or two from the church as well. This couple is there just to hang out and talk. Nothing more. Age doesn’t matter, but this couple needs to be relational, down to earth, and mature in faith. This can provide an opportunity for your students to connect with people they never would’ve otherwise. Simply introduce them as your friends and let your students know they wanted to be there because they were going to be praying for them as they transition into the next phase of life. (I’d recommend telling your students individually, keeping it authentic and relational; if articulated in a group setting it could create awkwardness, with the perception of being forced.) Emails and phone numbers may be exchanged, but this should happen naturally rather than institutionally.

2. Host a weekend retreat for your graduates where you invite some older, more mature adults. Again, age doesn’t matter but they should have the same qualities as the folks you invite to the barbeque. Have a lot of down time just to hang out, but have these people share their testimonies at some point. It’s important that they articulate their personal story and are careful not to give the typical “I want to tell you all the things you should not do,” teacher-to-pupil type of testimony. They are real people with real stories. Graduates can apply their stories to themselves. They need to see these peoples’ hearts (besides, they already know what not to do).

3. Meeting with our students one-on-one is vital, but sometimes it’s better if we’re not the ones they meet with. There are times when another leader in the church can help them just as much as we can, possibly even more. As much as possible, connect your students to these other people. When an issue comes up in a conversation with a student, talk to her about it—but at some point let her know there’s someone you want them to talk to who’s dealt with the same thing. If your student trusts you, she’ll meet with this person.

In all of these situations, constantly pray that mentoring relationships are being formed with young people beyond just you.

The big pink elephant in far too many churches these days is the reality that kids will soon be graduating from high school and going away to college—and very few leaders know what they will do to keep in touch with these students. Even if our intentions are good, the pressures of fall kick-off easily sweep our desires into the trenches of our daily ministry with those in our physical presence. Disconnection is inevitable for far too many kids.

So, many of us think of new and creative ways to stay engaged. We send care packages, gift cards, invites to events we’re doing during the holiday weeks and maybe even put together a blog or something with hopes of conversing to some degree through that platform.

These are great. These can be very effective.

But there is something else you can do that, potentially, scratches the itches that these ideas can’t reach.

What if you asked your leaders of the senior small groups, or other loving adults that already have relationships with seniors, to intentionally stay engaged for a “5th year?”

“Ah!” you say, “I’ve done that and it doesn’t seem to work for a lot of people. Most lose touch after a while.”

But what if you didn’t just encourage them, but also equipped them to do this effectively and with much needed intention? What if, you were able to give them a resource that not only helps them understand some of the daily thoughts college freshman struggle with, but you provided them with very specific questions and guidance to ask in normal, non intrusive ways, like over the phone?

What if, let’s say, you were able to provide a year’s worth of questions to these leaders to refer to as they talk with those students? What if you were able to give them a ton of ideas of ways they could continue investing in that relationship personally by being a much needed “outside voice” in their life—even though they might be 1,500 miles away?

We don’t like pink elephants in our rooms. And we don’t like them in yours either. That’s why we created two new XP3 Next Conversation Guides that were written specifically to continue the relationship, and that are easy to use via long distance. These two new guides, The One About Trajectory and The One About Friends (Starting Over), will help you guide a college freshman through a critical time in his or her life.

Look for these guides now available for individual purchase through XP3 College Individual Edition. Simply create an account and then you’ll be able to purchase individual Conversation Guides. Or you can also access these guides through your XP3 College Group edition or XP3 Students account.

XP3 College offers Conversation Guides for mentors and small group leaders to connect older adults with 18-25 year olds. XP3 College also offers a transition piece, called XP3 Next, for High School seniors and an ongoing connection piece for the first semester away. For more information, visit www.xp3college.org.

A bachelor’s degree can bring an unparalleled amount of hope to college students. Every high school graduate knows that not getting one will make it extremely tough to get a decent paying job in the future. Actually, for them, the dreams of having a meaningful vocation will be brought to reality once they have their degree.

If you talk to college-age people about obtaining a bachelor’s degree, you’ll find their aspirations to be off the charts as to what that means for them. Our culture preaches the hope of an education as the passport to a privileged life. And college-age people believe it hook, line and sinker. That is, until a few months after graduating.

Add Entitlement to Ideology
In addition to this hopeful ideology, immediately after graduating they also have a sense of entitlement. They think that because they have the degree employers would be honored to have them work at their company. Idealistic and arrogant, but this is the reality of most college-age mindsets. But shortly after graduating, their dreams are shattered after realizing the economy doesn’t cater to their ideology very well. Reality doesn’t just creep in; it crashes in.

Recent graduates are likely to go through an array of negative emotions with the lack of job opportunities, but that’s just the surface. I would suggest that as spiritual leaders our focus needs to be beyond vocational pursuits and deeper than crushed dreams. From a discipleship perspective we need to see this as the consequences of misplaced hope. The reality is they’ve placed a tremendous amount of hope in their vocational pursuits being brought about in a degree. Is that where our hope ought to be? Of course not.

That might sound super spiritual, but here’s the reality: The false senses of hope they hold so dearly end up crushing their spirit. And the sooner we help people think biblically about hope, the less their spirits are crushed. It’s that simple.

Guiding Thought Processes
Working with college-age people requires us to help guide their thoughts toward biblically mature conclusions, especially when it comes to the placement of hope. And, ideally, we can do this before their dreams are crushed. I’ve found many things helpful in guiding the thoughts of college-age people in this, but here are three that may help you today:

• What commitments do you want to shape your life?
• What gives you hope today?
• How do you think all of this fits into the gospel message?

These are very pointed questions while at the same time being ambiguous. But they will certainly be a help to creating good discussion! As you ask them, pray that God shows you how to guide their thought processes toward His perspective.

XP3 College offers Conversation Guides for mentors and small group leaders to connect older adults with 18-25 year olds. XP3 College also offers a transition piece, called XP3 Next,  for High School seniors and an ongoing connection piece for the first semester away. For more information, visit www.XP3College.org.

This article was originally published at www.collegeleader.org

Within your student ministry, there is a group of people that may never know the life-giving connection of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ. They may never know your church beyond the walls of your student ministry. And caring for this group of people may not even be listed in your job description.

It’s your volunteers. And part of the reasons why are very natural to the culture of student ministry volunteers. Let’s talk reality for a moment.

Part of the draw for your volunteers to serve with students—and honestly, for you as well—is that student ministry is more “fun” than adult service. You play games. You eat lots of good food (well, if you like cheap pizza and potato chips). You have awesome worship. You do fun things. And sometimes the people who serve in student ministry just feel like they don’t fit in with the rest of the church.

Many times, these volunteers fall within the college-age range of 18-25. They’ve just graduated from high school or college, and they are not quite sure where to find their place, so student ministry feels like a familiar place to land.

Lastly, sometimes people are drawn to serve in student ministry because they are new to their faith, and have a resolve to help students make different choices than they made. So, they pour themselves into students while still being new to their own personal faith and relationship with Christ.

All of these are great, but how can you pour into your volunteers in a way that not only equips them to connect with students and families, but also allows them to personally feel connected to God and your church body—not just your student ministry? How can you help volunteers who are new to their faith find a community where others are pouring into them and walking alongside them?

We might suggest that when you give them a place for conversation, do so in a way that serves as a catalyst to a deep, relationally connected culture. One way of doing this is by connecting your volunteers (beginning with those who are struggling to find where they fit in with your church body) with mentors—older adults in your church.

Where do you start? We’re glad you asked. Here are some steps to get you started.

1. Identify the college-age volunteers serving in the student ministries and take note of their interests and other characteristics.
2. Identify some adult friends who are loved and trusted and who have similar interests and characteristics.
3. Personally connect an older and younger person with each other on a commonality they have with one another.
4. Informally stay in touch with each person and particularly with the college-age volunteer, often asking how things are going with their new relationship.
5. Encourage the volunteer to share what they love and enjoy about this new relationship with their small group of junior high or high school students.
6. Encourage the college-age volunteer to eventually introduce their small group to their friend.

Before you know it, the chasm between generations is bridged. The older adult friend naturally shares their experience with their other adult friends. The junior high small group watches their leader admire someone older and outside of their immediate sphere of exposure

And it’s these small individual steps that slowly snowball into a culture that is desired and appreciated by all.

Chuck Bomar is part of the creative team for XP3 College (www.xp3college.org), and the author of several books, including his latest, Worlds Apart: Understanding the Mindset and Values of 18-25 Year Olds.

You have an opportunity to learn from and connect with Chuck this Thursday, February 24, 2012, as he will be teaching a four-hour intensive training and discussion about ministering to college-age people for CollegeLeader Regional Training (Nashville, TN). The cost is $40 for ministry leaders; $30 for students/volunteers. Location: New Vision Baptist Church. 1750 N. Thompson Lane Murfreesboro, Tennessee 37129. Click here for more information about this training.

I’ve been working in ministry with college-age people for over a dozen years now and I continue to learn new things. There are things I once thought of as crucial to our ministry that I’ve since learned aren’t nearly as important as I once thought. On the other hand, there are also things I didn’t pay much attention to that have proven to be a vital part of a healthy and vibrant ministry.

So—for whatever it’s worth—I’d like to offer you a little advice from my experience that I believe can really help you continue building a sustainably healthy ministry. Here’s my nugget of “wisdom” for you: you need people to help you.

Okay, I know, that’s not an epic thought and you already knew that. But the fact that we need other people brings up some issues that are tough to overcome. First, finding the right volunteers can be difficult. More difficult for some than others, but we are all constantly looking out for new people. However, once we find them we inevitably run into the wall of finding resources that truly train and equip our leaders without exhausting everyone involved. If we pick the wrong ones, we end up with yet another thing we need to handle.

To take this even a step further, it’s incredibly difficult to find a resource that fits the objectives of our ministry in a way that releases our volunteers with confidence to do the work of ministry.

Because we face all these obstacles, we end up doing the majority of work ourselves. We know we need people to help, but we wonder if there is anything out there to help us equip them.

With XP3 College, we get that. We understand because we’ve been there, and so we’ve put together some basic resources to help you cast vision and train mentors for college-age people. You can accomplish the goal of discipleship in a sustainable and effective way without exhausting anyone.

Seriously, I mean that. That’s not an infomercial that is too good to be true. It’s not overnight, but it is an effective tool. These resources can actually be the tool that helps you transition away from you being the sole leader. It provides ongoing training for leaders. It puts effective tools in the hands of those leaders who bring a confidence that leads to them running with ministry. And, it will actually help you lead those leaders.

One of the things I didn’t pay as much attention to early in my ministry was the fact that I needed to put time into equipping my leaders. One of the reasons for that is simply because it was hard to find the time to do so. I just had too many things going on and the price to train and equip other leaders was just too high. Well, XP3 College just lowered the price of that for you.

Chuck Bomar is part of the creative team for XP3 College (www.xp3college.org), and the author of several books, including his latest, Worlds Apart: Understanding the Mindset and Values of 18-25 Year Olds.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a church where people from different generations had a deep-seated desire to be around each other because they valued the differences of the others? Wouldn’t it be great to have older adults that actually embraced their role of discipleship? And, wouldn’t it be amazing to have a bunch of younger people that felt like they belonged in the overall church?

We all would answer these positively. Or, at least, I hope so. But most of us have experienced the difficulties in creating such an environment.

When we talk about a solution to the relational chasms between generations we often talk about mentorship. We think about the practicalities of who we can approach, how to approach them and typically how to get the most amount of people involved—immediately. We dream of the connections to be made and the transformation stories to be told.

But, if I may, I would suggest we ought to be talking about creating culture instead.

Because we too often jump to an eHarmony-for-Mentors approach where masses of people are lured into a programming of relationship, we inevitably miss the creating of culture. Out of a desire to mass-produce, we get both potential mentors and mentees to sign up and in much excitement we begin connecting the dots. If you’ve tried this approach then you know that it might look good initially, but most of these connections don’t last. This can be awkward and cold at best. And, the reality is, at its worst this approach can end up crushing the potential of cultivating the culture we all long for.

Creating culture requires paying the price of time—and much of it. It requires patience and a posture that values individual steps as markers of success. And possibly at times, a posture that rejects the tendency to force mass production. This is hard for us Americans. So, here are a few things we can do to connect people in more sustainable and culture-shaping ways:

1. Begin by focusing on those in your church you already know have a heart for people of different generations.
2. Find an older adult that is relaxed, committed to Scripture and is a good listener. Then, find younger people that are in a place where they could use someone else’s wisdom in a particular area of their life. Maybe even begin with a vocational interest.
3. Intentionally, but personally, connect these two individuals for one cup of coffee or lunch.
4. Follow up with both individually, afterward, to see if they connected with each other. If so, encourage them to get together again. If not, talk positively about what they did learn and then look for another potential connection for them.

Taking it one step at a time like this is the starting point of creating culture. A culture cannot be created overnight. It takes time. Time is a big price to pay, but it’s always worth it when there are connections made and those individuals begin talking about it with others they know. When this happens, the snowball just gets bigger.

Chuck Bomar is part of the creative team for XP3 College (www.xp3college.org), and the author of several books, including his latest, Worlds Apart: Understanding the Mindset and Values of 18-25 Year Olds.

There’s no question that cultivating intergenerational relationships is an obstacle many churches are seeking to overcome. We can get people from different generations to sit in the same church service, but this doesn’t mean they are “connecting.” If we desire to cultivate intergenerational relationships we must ingrain at least the following five values into the culture of our churches. Here they are and some thoughts about each one:

1. Value of Family – We cannot alienate people by language. When we speak of “family” we ought to focus on our theological family more than nuclear structures so that we do not alienate singles, college-age people, or children who unwillingly find themselves in a broken home. The bottom line is healthy nuclear families are not an end, they are a means to an end.

2. Value of Responsibility – We must help older believers understand their responsibility to invest in younger people. We cannot consider ourselves successful in ministry if we don’t focus on this. The bottom line is measuring faithfulness in ministry must include how we hold people accountable to the standards of scripture.

3. Value of Others – We must help people embrace the call of the gospel to focus on others, first. If people think their faith is about them they will then think the church exists for them and thus will not interact intergenerationally unless they feel like it benefits them. However, a gospel-centered person seeks to give community to others before seeking it for themselves.

4. Value of Quality – We must begin finding ways to measure quality of relationships. We typically only measure quantitative elements in ministry. Churches that are helping cultivate intergenerational relationships are finding ways to measure quality. The bottom line is measuring quantity is not necessarily a sign of success for spiritual leaders.

5. Value of Difference – We must embrace our unique differences, but also value the differences of others (personality, giftedness, etc.) to the point where we intentionally pursue those different from us. Churches have traditionally structured around affinity because we are inherently attracted to those just like us anyway. However, embracing the value of difference would lead to us to also structuring toward diversity. I’ve found that if we structure to promote and protect diversity, affinity naturally happens. But if we only structure around affinity we tend to lose the beauty of diversity, which ultimately leads to generational disconnection.

After serving for almost nine years as pastor of student ministries at Cornerstone in Simi Valley, California, Chuck Bomar is now the senior pastor of Colossae Church located in Portland, Oregon. He’s also the founder of CollegeLeader: an organization focused on helping local church leaders understand and embrace ministry to college-age people. Chuck has written numerous resources including, College Ministry 101: a guide to working with 18-25 year olds (YS/Zondervan). He and his wife, Barbara, have two daughters, Karis and Hope.

I recently read a NY Times article called, “What is it about 20-Somethings?“ The article talks about the ever-changing (and extended) process twenty-somethings go through as they inch toward adulthood.

Here’s something interesting the article points out: “We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones:
1. completing school,
2. leaving home,
3. becoming financially independent,
4. marrying and
5. having a child.

In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s.”

Notice these stats were 10 years ago and we are just now seeing the trends. It’s great this is being recognized, but it’s another thing to actually meet the needs this change brings on in our ministries!

In our book, The Slow Fade, Reggie, Abbie and I seek to provide some practical ways we can address and meet this change. I’ve also discussed the issues bringing some of these changes on, what college age people think through and how they do so in the midst of this extended adolescent-like process in 2 other books: College Ministry From Scratch and College Ministry 101.

The article continues with some other related stats:
*One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year.
*Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once.
*They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch. *Two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married.
*And marriage occurs later than ever. (The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation.)

Have you noticed any of these things yourself? Is there anything else you’d add to the list of changes because of extended adolescence compared with the generations before?