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Jeremiah 29:5-7 (NLT)
⁵ “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. ⁶ Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! ⁷ And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.”

3. Make Disciples: Younger in age

“Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren.[1]“ We are in a better position than we were a year ago but still a way to go. It is easier not to take risks to allowing younger people (of every age) to fulfil their potential. In particular, we suspect we are not reaching enough people with families, 20-30s, and 65-80s.

In our activities, we currently have a good mix of ages helping in groups, activities, small groups and as children`s and youth leaders.  We have moved away from the token young person. However, we struggle to see younger leaders emerging in the overall life of the church.

By 2020, GBC will be a place where everyone belongs whatever age or stage in life they are at, supported by peers and other ages, valued, participating, and growing as disciples together.

What are the priorities?

We need to ensure that our church represents the broad demographics in our community.

We need to ensure that there is a younger looking focus in all of our programmes (for people of whatever age) in terms of encouraging attendance and releasing leadership. We should encourage everyone at GBC to find a place of service now not later and especially encourage young leaders.

We need to continue to provide mentoring for the next generation of seniors, youth, worship leaders.

We should encourage both multi-age and peer group activities.

What`s the path from here to there? How should we (re)allocate time, people, plant and money do this?

We will intentionally seek out people to join teams and take leadership who are younger. We will encourage existing team members to allow others to step up. We will be willing to function differently to achieve this.

We will strengthen the opportunities to bridge the gap between being part of peer only groups to being part of something wider.

We will provide more opportunities for training for people to gain the skills they need (e.g. in Biblical and theological training, becoming an adult, parent, retired person) and for the use of internships and secondments of our young people.

We will restructure our Sunday programme to balance peer and all age events. We will form a team of all ages to do promote and facilitate cross and multi-congregational worship.

 

[1] Jer 29.6