How Does the Church Reach Young Adults Without Losing Them

Olu Brown, who planted Impact Church in Atlanta, was asked on the Jude 3 Project podcast how he engages young adults. His answer kept returning to the leader’s own honesty. He names three hard conversations every leader faces: with yourself, with other people, and with God. This week-long discipline asks you to practice all three and to hold at least one of them for real by the seventh day. The goal is to become a leader whose habits make room for honest questions.

You can work through it alone with a notebook, or with a ministry team that meets twice, once at the start of the week and once at the end. Anything personal you write stays yours. In a group, nobody has to read their notes aloud or name the person they are avoiding.

Begin with a snapshot of your own leadership

Brown starts from an uncomfortable admission. He told Lisa Fields that “if I weren’t a pastor or a clergy person, it would probably be pretty difficult for me to go to church.” He lets that reluctance shape his planning: “I don’t think first about people who are already in the circle.” Before studying his idea, take an honest picture of where you are starting. You will come back to it on the last day.

Take ten minutes and write short answers:

• When I plan anything in my ministry, whose face do I picture? Write down one specific person.
• Think of the last young adult who drifted away from your church or ministry. What do you believe was the reason? Write your honest guess, not the official one.
• What usually happens in my ministry when someone asks a question I cannot answer?

Do not fix anything yet. These answers are your starting assumptions, and the week is designed to test them.

Read two scenes from the life of Moses

Brown’s book, Leadership Directions from Moses, draws on the wilderness journey, and Lisa Fields pointed to its chapter on the moment Moses’s father-in-law tells him he needs help carrying the work. Both scenes below are narrative. They describe what happened to one leader rather than issuing a rule for every church, so read them for what they show, not as a formula.

Exodus 18:13-26

Read the passage slowly. Jethro watches Moses judge the people from morning until evening, and his verdict in verse 18 is blunt: “Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.”

• Who starts the hard conversation here, and what does Jethro risk by starting it?
• According to Jethro, who pays for the way Moses is working now?
• Moses changes course after being told he is doing it wrong. What in the relationship, or in Moses himself, made him able to hear that? Keep your answer. You will use it on Day 4.

Verse 26 adds a detail: Moses still brings the hard causes before himself. Sharing the load did not remove the conversations only he could have.

Numbers 32:1-33

The tribes of Reuben and Gad ask to settle east of the Jordan instead of crossing over. Moses answers in verse 6: “Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here?” Read on. The tribes promise to fight alongside the others before returning, and Moses agrees.

Brown frames the leader’s dilemma this way: “do I appreciate and value someone else’s choice and someone else’s promise instead of demonizing them for making their own choice.” Read the text with that in mind:

• Moses speaks sharply at first. Does the sharpness end the relationship or open a negotiation?
• What did Moses refuse to give up while granting their request?
• When someone in your ministry wants a different path than the group, what is your first instinct?

Testing the order of the three conversations

Here is how Brown laid them out: “it’s the conversation that you have with yourself. It’s the conversation that you have with other people, and it’s also, most importantly the conversation you have with God.”

Brown makes honesty with God the root of the other two. His illustration is pointed: “Some of us trust Google more than we trust God.” We hand a search engine our practical questions, he explained, and withhold the ones that hurt. “We don’t look towards heaven and shout, we’re angry or curse and get mad. And God is saying, I can handle those kind of things.” Lisa Fields named the cost of skipping that conversation: “I believe that a lot of people are passive aggressive towards God.” People keep attending, she said, while “they have all these unanswered questions and bottled up frustration with God.” A leader in that condition tends to lead others the same way: present, polite, and quiet about what matters.

Scripture gives that conversation a place. Psalm 13 is a lament, a protest prayed directly to God. It opens, “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). The psalm does not command anyone to curse God, and Brown’s language about getting mad is his own pastoral description. What the psalm and Brown share is the conviction that God is not protected by our silence.

Now test the ordering. Does Scripture always move from God outward? Exodus 18 runs the other way: a conversation with another person comes first and forces Moses to rethink his own work. So read Brown’s ranking as a claim about what matters most, not about what always happens first. Hard conversations can arrive in any order. Brown’s point is that the one with God holds the others steady.

His second insight concerns influence. In his family and friendships, he said, “I found myself avoiding difficult conversations in those areas and really prolonging my own healing blessings.” When that changed, so did the people around him: “as I become better at it, and model it, then I notice the people that I’m closest to also become better at it and develop a new courage.” That is the hinge of this guide. Young adults learn what a church will tolerate by watching how its leaders talk.

Seven days, three conversations

Each day takes fifteen to twenty minutes. Teams can meet after Day 1 and again after Day 7.

1. Day 1: Name all three. On one page, write three headings: Myself, Someone else, God. Under each, write the one conversation you have been avoiding. Be concrete: a name, a decision, a question. If a heading stays blank after five honest minutes, write why.
2. Day 2: The conversation with yourself. Write the thing you keep telling yourself is fine. Then write what you would say to a friend describing the same situation. Brown said he was “running from those conversations” in his own leadership. Name what you have been running from and what it has cost.
3. Day 3: The conversation with God, unedited. Read Psalm 13 aloud. Write your own prayer in its shape: complaint, request, and whatever trust you can honestly reach. Stop at the complaint if that is all that is true today.
4. Day 4: Find your Jethro. Brown said, “I was always fortunate and blessed to have other leaders who were wiser and far better than me” who coached him. Look at your Exodus 18 answer about what made Moses able to listen. Choose someone who could play Jethro’s part for you, share your plan for the conversation with someone else, and ask one question: What am I not seeing?
5. Day 5: Prepare the conversation with someone else. Read Matthew 18:15, where Jesus says to “go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.” Jesus is addressing sin inside the community, so not every hard conversation concerns a fault. The pattern still applies: go directly, go privately, aim to gain the person. Write one opening sentence without accusation, and one sentence stating what you hope for.
6. Day 6: Have one of the three. Pick the conversation you are most ready for, not necessarily the hardest. Lisa Fields was candid about the tension: “I like the outcome of it, but sometimes I like, I don’t like initiating it.” Expect the start to be the worst part.
7. Day 7: Review and decide. Write what happened. What did you fear that did not happen? What happened that you did not expect? Choose a date for the next conversation on your Day 1 page.

One boundary: if the person you have been avoiding has abused you or put you in danger, a private meeting is not the assignment. Talk first with a counselor or trusted pastor. If you are in danger at home, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.

Test the practice before you trust it

Start with the largest question. Everything Brown offers here comes from his own leadership and family life. It is a pastor’s testimony, drawn from one church, not tested research on what keeps young adults. That does not make it wrong, but it means you should judge it by evidence. Your Day 7 notes are evidence. Did the conversation you held change anything in you, or in the person you spoke with? If a team works through this together, compare results rather than impressions.

A second objection: some conversations are better left alone. Sometimes that is wisdom. The test is whether your silence protects the other person or protects you. Brown’s own account suggests that, for him, waiting had become a way of hiding.

The third concerns goodbyes. Brown argues that “we should never hold them hostage beyond the time that they’re supposed to be with us and release them with a blessing,” and adds, “if you can’t release people with a blessing, you can’t release yourself with a blessing.” He also admitted, “I would love to tell you that I handle those experiences very well and very mature, but I don’t.” A blessing at the door is generous. It becomes an evasion if it keeps a leader from the conversation with himself about why people are leaving.

Questions for the team, or for yourself

If you lead a group, ask these at the second meeting, in order. Let silence sit before you fill it. Go first on the questions about avoidance and give a real answer, because a group rarely becomes more candid than its leader. Anyone may pass.

1. Of the three conversations, which one was hardest even to name on Day 1? What do you make of that?
2. Brown ranks the conversation with God as most important. Did this week confirm or complicate that order for you?
3. In Exodus 18, the hard word came from someone outside Moses’s daily work. Who outside your ministry sees it most clearly, and when did you last ask them?
4. Where does your ministry make it costly to bring an honest question? Name specific settings, not general attitudes.
5. In Numbers 32, Moses grants a different path while holding a shared obligation. In your context, what is negotiable for someone who wants a different path, and what is not?
6. Recall the young adult from your snapshot. Has your guess about why they drifted changed? What evidence would tell you whether it is right?

Return to where you began

Take out the snapshot you wrote before reading Exodus 18. Rewrite any answer you now see differently, leaving the original visible beside it. The gap between the two is the clearest record of what this week did.

Then look again at the person you pictured when planning ministry. Brown’s starting point was someone who would need encouragement over and over. Would that person find, in the way you lead, a place where hard questions get spoken out loud? When Lisa Fields observed how easily culture lets us avoid direct talk, Brown answered briefly: “It can be, it can be, but it is possible.” Your Day 1 page still holds at least two conversations. Pick the next one and write down when you will have it.