5045 - Congregational Accessibility for Young Adults

Rev. Hank Peirce, First Parish, Medford, Massachusetts

"Young adults are adults, and thus they need to be treated as such," said the Rev. Hank Peirce.

Peirce is the parish minister at First Parish in Medford, Massachusetts, a Unitarian Universalist congregation with a relatively high proportion of young adults in their twenties and early thirties. "They have mortgages, they have school loans, they have this life they’re trying to make," just as all adults do.

Peirece believes his success at attracting young adults to his congregation lies entirely in treating young adults with the same respect that he treats adults. "This is the attitude I have gone through my entire ministry with," said Peirce, "this is the whole message" that allows him to make his congregation accessible to young adults.

But Peirce also had a central message for young adults. "My message to you is to act like adults," said Peirce. "And I'm saying this as a guy with all these tattoos, and a guy who is loud." He suggested that young adults integrate themselves into the center of congregational life. "Don't just volunteer to be a youth advisor, get on the finance committee, get on all the other committees, so people get to know you," he said.

According to Peirce, young adulthood itself is a new concept. He believes that young adults began to be separated out as a distinct age group or developmental stage beginning sometime around the 1990's. Once society had created this new category, both young adults and older adults began to believe that so-called young adults were supposed to behave differently.

"I'm saying 'young adult,' but I don't really think of people as 'young adults' in our congregation," said Peirce. "They are just members [of the congregation] in my view." He disagrees with efforts to create special worship services and separate young adults groups within Unitarian Universalist congregations. "Don't think outside the box, think inside the box," said Peirce. "Don't try to develop separate congregations for young adults, integrate them into the wider congregation."

"I don't see my church as a niche church," he said. "I was really worried at first that we were just going to be just the 'young adult church,' but that hasn't really been true." While early on in his ministry, a large number of people in their twenties and early thirties joined his congregation, now he sees many new members in their forties, fifties, and sixties. Peirce believes that all ages are really looking for intergenerational community, not age-segregated congregations.

Nonetheless, young adults do pose special problems for Unitarian Universalist congregations, but the problems arise from generational changes, not from developmental differences. Peirce said that many people in so-called "Generation X" grew up without any exposure to organized religion. Because of this, he said, they tend not to have the leadership skills that they would have gained by growing up in a congregation. "They are folks who for the most part have only worked for someone else," said Peirce, rather than having had to take on responsibility for themselves.

Many young adults have not had adequate education in financial management. "They don't really know how to balance a checkbook," said Peirce, "and that is a really problematic. In a stewardship workshop, one young adult said, 'I don't even know how to manage my personal finances let alone church finances.'"

Peirce also acknowledged that many Unitarian Universalist congregations will have to make changes to attract people in their twenties and early thirties. For example, Peirce contended that too many Unitarian Universalist congregations are "closed clubs" that do not welcome new people who are different in terms of age, but also in terms of race, ethnicity, etc. Congregations must communicate to the wider community, said Peirce. "You need to do ads, or do interviews in the local papers" as a way to get the word out. "A Web site is really important," he added.

But Peirce challenged the widespread notion that congregations need to offer completely separate and different worship services for young adults. Instead, young adults, like any adults, seek in worship "an acknowledgment that they are real, that they are human, that they are a part of our community," he said. Peirce recommends keeping all ages worshipping together, but changing details of the worship service. "We use different kinds of music that might be more familiar to young adults," said Peirce, such as music by contemporary singer-songwriters.

"Church provides a community for people who have never really had a community," said Peirce. What's important is to keep the entire congregation accessible to all ages.

Reported for the web by Dan Harper.

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