To Grow as Worshippers

Having to tell people to hang out or converse with the 20 to 30 year olds in your corporate gathering is problematic. If they are not seen as adult worshippers who should be interacting with the other adult worshippers, it shows that a different focus is happening.

Two points need to be made about this topic. One, if you have to tell the other adult age groups to encourage your college and career/young adult/“adultescent” groups (a group that I don’t think should even exist, but that’s for another blog), it’s too bad for a couple reasons. One, if you are a C&C person you know they are doing it out of obligation, which is sad for you. If they have to be told to say “Hey, how’s it going? You’re doing great!”, isn’t that kind of depressing? That they wouldn’t even do that with you without being told to? Or that no one has talked to you, apart from task-related things, prior to that?

And two, they should be seen as adult worshippers who, instead of cordoning them off in some section in the corner, they have a lot of richness to give and get from the group. Thinking they have to be in the same group to meet each other in some kind of dating pool shifts the focus of the group to a not great foundation to begin with. Instead, they should interact with married adults, and married adults with kids, and other single people as worshippers, speaking into each other’s lives about living life across the board as worshipping believers. If it’s based on the idea that these people won’t find dating matches outside of these C&C groups, isn’t that a bit of tunnel vision? Because if you see all of the adults in the gathering as worshippers, first and foremost, then you see that a guy who would be in the C&C group could be interacting with a guy friend who is married and they could be talking about life and what it means to be a godly man and what it means to be a godly husband and father and, through that interaction, that single guy could interact with other single girls who are friends with the wife of the married friend. It’s not like they would never meet other single people! But the focus of the single people who get funnelled into C&C groups would be different. It wouldn’t be this push for getting people married off, but it would be on the people in the gathering focusing on growing as worshippers. And, though a seemingly small statement, it makes a huge impact. The focus is on living as worshippers instead of stunting them in this group that has little interaction with the rest of the gathering - interactions that could prepare them for the next life stages in their life and could ensure that the whole gathering turns their attention from life stage identities to beholding God as every-single-day worshippers who want to live in the joy that God desires for His people, who see that their worshipping lives continue on regardless of what may or may not occur in their lives when it comes to spouses or children. Saying the C&C groups are important and then never talking to them as other adults isn’t going to show them any difference. You’ve basically said to them, “all the C&C people are going to hang out in a group with a C&C member leading it, and then, by the time they get married, the married group will have moved up to married with kids, and so the married group will just be the C&C group but up a stage” or “we’ll talk to them when they get up to the next group when they get there” and everyone’s scrambling on their hamster wheels and you wonder why single C&C people feel out of it? And all you do is tell people to say hi to them, which they now know is a takeaway point? Being told to encourage them (which, what does this mean here exactly?) and yet not actually being interested in befriending them isn’t going to do anything either.

Treat them as adult worshippers. Women believers treat them as women and men believers treat them as men who are a part of the gathering. Prior to the point of ever having C&C groups, parents should be talking to their kids about the Bible and what it means to find your identity in being a worshipper, an identity that spans any life stage that you go through and impacts your response to it. And, in this knowledge, and the desire of the entire gathering to grow as worshippers living in glorious delight of God, see that they have the ability to interact with married couples, or married couples with children, and learn from them, yes, but that they have the ability to point their married or parenting friends to godly marriage and parenting, as well - as they all look to God together.

Don’t make them a thumbs-up, daily affirmations with no real talk, participation trophy group of “youngsters”. Starting at 18 they are actually ADULTS - even the secular world sees this. Treat them as individuals who have the capacity to be wise and mature through the Spirit instead of relegating them to seeing how late they can stay up on a retreat or which new girl arrived on the scene to date or who ended up figuring out the result to the ice breaker game, like four on a couch, that has lasted five hours. It’s not helping them grow.