I had a 2.5 hour long chat with our new rector yesterday and we were talking about reaching some of the 5000+ families that have moved within a mile or so of the church in the past five years. As you can guess I have some ideas on how I think churches can reach people. Then I ran across this article on buildings and noticed the last section which addresses hang out space. That got me thinking about Youth Rooms. We have some pretty cool ones in our churches. The thing is… what do these rooms communicate to our students about the purpose of youth ministry? Historically, churches have been designed to help people engage in the things of the church (worship, prayer, preaching, etc). Everything about the design, architecture, furniture, etc is intentional. So, what do our youth rooms say about our ministries? The typical church youth room resembles a recreation room more than a meeting space. What does that communicate? In the article, it suggests that people want a place to connect, hang out, and be relational (for what they called thier third place (not the worship space). Do our youth rooms accomplish this? Are our youth rooms places for experiential learning? that in my mind would be crucial for our vision.
Just thinking again…
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