As Seventh-day Adventists, we do a good job of holding public meetings to introduce people to Jesus and to bring people into membership who have already been interacting with the church body. We don’t do as good of a job of keeping people from slipping out the back door.
We also do an excellent job of educating our children and youth in Adventist schools in K–12 and beyond in many cases. However, graduation from academy as well as college far too often means graduation from church. We don’t do as well with the 20-somethings as we do with the 0–20s.
We believe it is critical to keep in touch and provide social and spiritual interaction with this age group. Too many of our young adults do not choose to integrate with those who seem old, if not ancient. Concern for this age group has inspired some thinking members in Montana to try an evangelistic experiment of mingling with this age group (see Ministry of Healing, p. 143) for the purpose of encouraging their walk with Jesus. We will see where God leads us in this.
Some forward-thinking church members have contributed significant sums of money to help make this happen. Our board has chosen to partner with these concerned members, and we are nearly through this initial two-year pilot project. Our hope is that this program can be extended as well as broadened to include other campuses around the state of Montana. We covet your prayers and would not turn down donations to keep this initiative alive and healthy.
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