lifeasmission

This past Sunday, Easter, was officially my first day with Living Hope. It’s been about 4 years since I worshiped regularly with more than 10-15 people, so it was quite the (re)experience. Everyone I met was tremendously friendly and the services were a refreshing celebration of the new that comes in Christ.

I have had some time to tour the city. While Living Hope is a church community primarily situated in the suburbs of Memphis, it is also close to a lot of interesting segments of the city like Cooper-Young, Binghampton, Midtown, etc. I am currently staying with Greg, the student pastor at Living Hope and his roommate Russell and am trying to figure out where I might want to be on a more permanent basis. But, between trying to factor in where the majority of the congregation seems to be (Germantown/Collierville area), where the folks in whatever small group I end up being a part of are at, where young adults seem to spend their time, what I’ll be able to afford, what section of town I personally might enjoy most, and the fact that I would love to try and putt off some sort of intentional community sort of situation, it’s seems to be quite the task.

I am tremendously excited to start connecting with the young adults of Living Hope and asking together what it is that God may want to do in and amongst us. This promises to be an interesting task for a few reasons.

First, Living Hope is not really a programmatic community. That is to say, we have no real desire to offer every program under the sun to in order to appeal to everyone’s various felt needs and desires. As a result, we really emphasize a life lived in community which worships and serves together. Anything else that happens really flows out of that.

Second, Living Hope is vitally concerned about making disciples and not merely Christians. This was one of the most attractive things about the church to me. For our community, everything hinges on whether or not people are actually becoming more like Christ. All our discussions, plans, and prayers as a staff revolve around this.

I say that these reasons make for an interesting task regarding young adult ministry because most young adult ministries are primarily predicated on programs specific to young adults and doing those things which attract young adults.

So, if I had been doing this job some years ago, the main question I would have been asking myself would have been, “What sorts of programs do we need to offer to get young adults involved in the church?” And I feel like I could have answered and executed that pretty well.