How millennial-ready is your church?

ByDave Hall

How millennial-ready is your church?

A diagnostics website will be launched at CRE next week (16 Oct) that helps local churches create support networks for emerging young leaders.

For while some churches have been hugely significant in their millennials’ development, others have little idea of the high calibre of personnel in their pews each Sunday – according to a new study.*

‘Some churches have given practical leadership opportunities, often stretching millennials** beyond what they felt ready for,’ said Simon Barrington, founder and director of Forge Leadership Consultancy. ‘Creating safe spaces where it is OK to risk and fail – opportunities like these are extremely impactful for learning and development, whether the people ended up leading in churches or in charities, the public or private sector. There is a huge opportunity for churches to be even more intentional in increasing those opportunities and being more specific in recognising the value they are bringing.’

However, the survey also discovered a profound disconnect in some churches where the established leaders had no idea how far members of their congregation had risen in the workplace, and found it difficult to know how to support them.

‘We are launching a diagnostics website on Oct 16th,’ explained Simon. ‘This will help churches to identify how millennial friendly their culture is and tools to enable them to create appropriate support networks that are safe and allow the tackling of real issues.’

The full report, Millennial Leaders: Now is Our Time and this is Our Voice, will be presented for the first time to more than 1200 visitors on Tue 16 Oct, the opening day of CRE 2018, when the Millennial Leaders website will also be launched.

* Millennial Leaders: Now is Our Time and this is Our Voice explores the opinions of Christian millennials in leadership positions across all sectors of society in the UK. Forge Leadership Consultancy, in association with Bible Society and Redcliffe College, conducted the research between September 2017 and April 2018, utilising 50 in-depth qualitative interviews and more than 440 responses to a quantitative survey.

** Millennial is a term given to a specific generation of people who reached young adulthood in the first two decades of the millennium. There is variation over the specific dates used, however for the purposes of this research millennials are identified as people born between 1984 and 2000. This fits in with the majority of millennial classifications.

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