Evangelical Gen X Ministry: Take It and Leave It
Tom Beaudoin
April 1, 1999
Everything I need to know I learned from evangelicals. Almost.
I am blessed to make a living doing what I love: writing about, thinking about, and helping churches around the country set up ministries to "Generation X."
Though I am Catholic, and the majority of my work takes place in Catholic churches, almost all of my foundational knowledge about Gen X ministries came from watching evangelical peers set up similar ministries. Church-within-a-church, church planting, targeted ministries: these are all basic terms from a language foreign to Catholics. But they are central concepts to many successful evangelical Gen X ministries. Having spent many years in and out of Protestant churches, I have not hesitated to take their truths to the young Catholics with whom I minister. Here's what I have learned.
1. Know your "customer." My evangelical brothers and sisters pushed me to examine my generation from the explicit standpoint of faith. I learned to pay heed to, take note of, and—in a fashion that would make Maria Montesori proud—get myself methodically out of the way of my peers as much as possible, so that I could develop the skill of quasi-scientific observation. Evangelicals taught me that this included reading polls and cultural data. Whatever secretes data about potential ministry attenders—from bathroom graffiti to box office sales—is helpful in getting to know the people you would like to attract to your ministry. To be sure, a necessary judgment about the "customers" and their worlds is usually a part of the evangelical approach to Gen X ministry. But first we must know them.
2.Non-opposites attract. In an age of deference to diversity, evangelicals taught me the value of generational homogeneity. American ...
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