H2O is a growing church on the campus of Bowling Green State University (located between Findlay and Toledo, OH). Affiliated with the Great Commission Ministries, H2O (www.h2ochurch.com, http://vimeo.com/85996764) is pastored by 30-year-old Rob Warren, a 2012 Master of Divinity graduate of Winebrenner Theological Seminary. Rob was a keynote speaker at this year’s CGGC Great Lakes Regional conference and sat down with Don Dennison (one of Rob’s professors during his time at WTS) to talk about how churches can be more effective in reaching a younger generation.
Don: Christianity
Today recently reported that 80% of Southern Baptist churches
baptized one (or less) young adults (age 18-29) in 2013. Their
leaders admit they are not being effective in winning and discipling the next
generation. In your opinion, why is that happening?
Rob: There
seems to be a resistance to progress and change, which I would consider
necessary for growth in any capacity. What worked at one time is not working
now. If we are going to reach people we haven’t reached, we’re going to have to
do things we haven’t done. Many of us don’t know necessarily how to engage with
this younger generation, and we have got to learn—much like what you do with
overseas ministry. We have to learn the culture and be willing to do things
that we wouldn’t normally/traditionally do. It’s like trying to chop down a
tree with a dull ax. Some of us might be working really, really hard, but we’re
not working smart. We need to be in tune with what’s connecting with them and
keep them in our ministry focus.
D: What are some common characteristics we need to
know about this next generation?
R: One of
the most important things we can learn about the younger generation is their
strong need for community, relationships, and connection. Our philosophy in
reaching them has to be connection-driven, and we’ve seen that as we’ve planted
churches on college campuses across the United States. The connection piece is
just massive.
D: That connection piece has to happen where--on
their turf? You can’t expect them to come to us automatically.
R: Right.
The days of the Field of Dreams: “If you build it they will come” are
over. We have to go to where they are. In our churches, we need a responsible
person who knows the culture to go and to lead that charge to invade that
territory. That’s why we do what we do with the H2O network. We go to
them!
D: In reaching 18-30 year olds, does the church
need a “hip pastor “who has been a star athlete, like yourself?
R:
(laughter) No, I don’t think so. The reality is, in our network of churches,
there are collegiate church pastors who are 50 or 60 years old and still
reaching young people. We just need people who are passionate and laser focused
on that demographic and know how to relate with them.
D: What is H2O doing differently than most churches
in being able to attract, reach, and disciple young adults?
R: In
my estimation, two things (which may open up a can of worms with some people):
One is the whole attractional vs. missional discussion that started years ago.
We have embraced that we need to be as attractional as humanly
possible one day a week and as missional as humanly possible
every other day.
D: That’s a powerful way of saying it.
R: In
reaching young people, we found that attractional is missional.
We strive for excellence in everything we do. We try to create
a place where people want to be so they’ll come, meet Jesus, He changes their
life, and then they embrace the call to reach those around them. The second
thing we try to focus on is intentionality with everything we
do. We have a strategy and a process in what we’re trying to do. From the
minute we meet people, it’s about connections. In our strategy we know three
things: who we want people to become, where we want them to go, and what we
want them to do. It’s laser-focused on connections, showing them
Jesus, then equipping them for His mission.
D: This generation really is into authenticity, but
they also value excellence. Can you really achieve both? Doesn’t the goal of
always striving to have a perfect presentation come off as too artificial?
R: I heard
an older pastor once say that the authentic argument for the younger generation
is stupid because everybody desires that. But there is that tension; we try to
create an environment with the excellence component that really allows people
to experience God.
D: How important is “experience” for this new
generation?
R: That’s
why they are at the bars. They are trying to feel something. Why do we go to
these concerts? We are trying to feel something. Psalm 34:8 says, “Taste and
see that the Lord is good…” With excellence in our services, we
strive to help them 'taste' and feel.
D: So how do you appeal to the senses at H2O?
R: We try
to take out “the cringe factors” and really get them into a spirit of worship
so they feel comfortable. The cringe factors are the 30-45 second transition
where you are adjusting the mic. We want to take people on a journey to the
cross and to the empty tomb, so the excellence factor helps people really
experience something in our services, and then we inform them that it’s Jesus
they are experiencing, feeling, and longing for. That’s our mission: to engage
the campus of Bowling Green State University, inform people of the
Gospel of Christ and inspire our community to live like Jesus and change
the world. Part of the engagement process is to create a place and atmosphere
where people actually want to come. We’ve seen it. We have non-Christians,
un-churched and atheists coming because they see some value, they hear something,
or they experience something they like. It’s weird, I can’t explain it.
D: Hearing and seeing and feeling is obvious.
Tasting? Smelling?
R: (laughs)
We don’t use incense or anything like that. We try to do interactive things
which give people a place to express and move out of what they are feeling. We
try to create a lot of moving in our services. For example, once everyone was
handed a chain link when they walked into a service where we were talking about
how we are chained to sin and death. We gave everyone the opportunity to give
that chain back through faith in Jesus. We said, “Hey, if that’s not for
you, then hold on to that chain.” But there’s something experiential that
makes people think and feel, “Dude, I’m really holding onto this chain. I’m
walking out of here chained, keeping me from God.”
D: Awesome! One argument against ministry to
university students is that you may reach them but have them only four years or
so. Why bother because it won’t translate to long-term growth, and the constant
turnover kills you. How do you respond to that?
R: That’s
exactly why we need to do it. We are so laser-focused on
discipleship and leadership development for the long term. We are
striving to help them create rhythms to their lives that revolve around Jesus.
Our goal is to equip students to be disciples and disciple-makers and send them
out. It’s a constant revolving door with H2O, which is the hardest thing about
collegiate church planting but, for us, it is the most strategic. We
do it because we’re sending people out around the world every year, every
semester, equipped for ministry in the church.
D: Ok, so you’re not just about evangelism but
making disciples.
R: Oh,
yeah! It’s a two-fold thing. We want to reach them and attract them, but we ultimately
strive to equip them because that’s how we are going to change the world and
that’s why we go to college campuses. It’s not the most lucrative; it’s not the
easiest. But if you look at the history of the world, every major
movement that has brought about significant change has started with young
people. So we operate out of the idea that, if we can just grab them
for those four years…train them, disciple them, equip them, and then when they
graduate, send them out and say “Get involved in a church. You’ve been
equipped, start serving.” That’s why we do it, because it’s hard.
D: Do you attract a lot of students who consider
themselves drop-outs from a local church?
R: It’s a
mixed bag. We get some students who cause us to ask, “where did you come from?”
Their parents and their church at home discipled them well, and they get it.
They are all about Jesus and they could probably come on staff with us as
freshmen. Those are the kind of people who really change things on campus from
day one! Then you have the people who have grown up in the traditional church
who often say: “I only went because Mom and Dad told me I had to
go.” A lot of those end up getting saved, and that’s an awesome thing.
Regardless of where they come from, we get the students and give them purpose…
(that’s another thing with this next generation: they want to be connected to
something purposeful)…when you show them how they fit in, they start bringing
atheists and completely unchurched people (like me).
D: You are attracting a percentage of worshippers
who are not university students but from the local community, right?
R: I’d say
we are 75-80% university students: being undergrad or grad students. Then about
20-25% are recent graduates, community members, faculty, staff, coaches, and
we’ve tried to create a space for them. We’ve always said “you’re welcome,”
but our philosophy of ministry has a type of ‘stiff-arm’ because we just didn't
have anything for them. This past year we said “Enough of that. Let’s use
some of these people to help reach college students.” and it’s working.
We’ve created a kids program that we call “H2O Kids” where we utilize education
majors, and then we have small groups for community members.
D: So you provide that to meet their needs, but you
still focus primarily on university students?
R: Yes.
Sometimes families will come but we tell them our expectations for them is to
adopt a life group of undergrad college students: have them over to
your house, feed them, deliver stuff to campus, give them care packages.
D: So what’s the discipling process?
R: Our
strategy is to get everybody in our front doors (Sunday services, Groups, and
Outreach), and we want everybody to go through “The Well.” The Well is where we
define what we want people to be (a disciple), and that’s all about
discipleship. It’s a seven week-long program that informs them, challenges
them, and connects them. Its also the first step in leadership at h2o as well.
The bar is high for the Well but we find that young people like a challenge.
We require them to get connected to a life group, serve in the church
every week, have a weekly meeting with a staff member or an older student, and
come to all the Well sessions. From there, we seek to get everyone into
“huddles”, which are groups of 5-8 people who meet for 12-week. Huddles
create a place for high obedience/accountability to occur. The two
questions that guide them in Huddles are: What is God doing in your
life? And how can you respond and the group help? They have a
curriculum to use with that.
D: Do you ever have push-back from students who say
“I’m so busy with studies. I don’t have time to be involved in these small
groups?”
R: No,
we’ve noticed that college students have a ton of time. As we’ve opened up the
doors to more city people, the city people are the ones who say “I don’t
have the time for that.” College students are sometimes giving us 20 hours
a week. It’s crazy. We set the bar really high intentionally, and say “here’s
the radical minimum standard.” We want them to pursue an intentional
lifestyle of following Jesus so by the time they are released out of college,
they’ve had a crazy amount of training and discipleship. The last step in
our strategy, after huddles, we have Leadership Training Group (LTG) which
equips people to know how to become a disciple maker.
D: This generation responds well to a high
challenge?
R: We’ve
seen that. We try to create a culture that’s high invitation--high challenge, which is what we have found to be
the best culture to create disciples and reach young people. High invitation--low challenge is
self-righteous and apathetic. Low
invitation--low challenge is a bored culture. No one wants to be part of
it. Low invitation--high challenge
is a stressed out, convicted culture where everyone is miserable by being
yelled at and brow-beaten with the Bible.
D: They don’t deal well with guilt.
R: Exactly.
The high invitation--high challenge
is where Jesus camped out. He was constantly communicating “Come have a
deeper relationship with me,” but He was also saying “you need to
represent me, the Father, and the Kingdom really, really well.” That’s
where we try to be at. We’re an open door for everybody. You are going to feel
welcomed and cared for and connected. But you are also going to be confronted
with this high-challenge, this radical-minimum standard of what Jesus said.
D: What are a couple lessons about reaching the
next generation you’ve learned along the way?
R: The
connection piece is massive, we can't move past that. People often don’t
respond well just getting together for bible study as it often times lacks the
'life connection' component. The best discipleship times are sitting on
the front porch of a fraternity house with ten guys. We talk about the Bible
and about life in a laid back environment; they’re asking me about my marriage
and why I am a Christian, its really great. So don’t forget that
connection piece, the relationships, and knowing where they are at.
Also, I go into their space each week, and I bring
them to my house. That’s been one of the biggest things i have learned. The
church culture, no matter how 'cool' your church is, is not necessarily going
to appeal to them. What appeals to them is people really following Jesus and
being super intentional with discipleship and mission. This generation
has a hypersensitivity to hypocrisy and it keeps many from even wanting to
engage with 'church people'. I sit down with guys and they say “I
understand the Jesus thing, but I’m not going to be one of those people because
I know that I’m going to mess up.” They have this really high disdain for
hypocritical people. But we seek to help them work through that and show
them its all about Jesus.
D: So it’s going to take lots of time and
intentional relationships, going where they are.
R: It takes
time and it’s messy. People are messy. One of the big things we embrace is “belong
before you behave.” A lot of what the younger generation believes is that
“I have to behave before I belong,” and we tell them “I don’t care if you
are drunk, come to small group. Don’t be an idiot, but come to small group.”
One guy came to a group as an atheist, and he walked in thinking, ‘I
shouldn’t be here’ but he was baffled by the kindness and connectivity that
eventually showed him Jesus, and he became a Christian. So the “belong before
you behave” is huge for us.
D: If a church starts to reach out to university
students or young adults, and encounters resistance from an older generation
regarding, for example, style of worship, how should they respond?
R: I’d say
“you don’t have that option! You’re a generation away from dying. You can
hold on to what you are doing and enjoy the comfortable thing, but your church
is dead and you don’t even know it yet.” That’s a hard thing for people to
hear, but it’s truth. We need to fight against resistance and reach the
young people.
D: How would you describe the worship style at H2O?
R: We do a
lot of hymns and 'contemporary' songs with a full band. It’s loud, it’s
good, and it’s always about Jesus. And the college students love the
hymns sometimes more than the contemporary stuff. They are deep;
there’s a rich theology in them. People appreciate that. We have a big band,
and we try to create an environment where people think, “This is awesome!”
I see football players come in all the time who are not churched, who
don’t believe in God, and I sit behind them and watch their heads bob to the
music because the music and the band are so good. They are bobbing their heads
to ‘How Deep the Father’s Love’, and it’s funny because they don’t even
know what they are doing but that’s great.
D: What advice would you give to a church wanting
to reach out to the next generation in their community? How do they start?
R: The
biggest piece of advice I can give is to find a church or leaders who are
reaching the next generation and get with them. Ask them to come into
your world, look at all that you are doing, and critique and challenge your
process. I think the greatest leaders are the ones who have the courage
to face the reality that maybe the culture they’ve created is not working, but
then work to change it for the sake of progress. That’s the biggest thing
that’s blessed us, because I know that without fresh eyes you’re
paralyzed. You’re going to keep doing the same thing; that’s what we tend
to do until we’re challenged.
