Floors and Young Adult Ministry

Jess: First of all— Allison, we’re going to write about something topical soon, I promise. We’re just trying to figure out what that’s going to be.

Over the last month or so, Wes and I have been working hard to make some improvements to our house. This summer, we worked a lot on the outside—we built the patio and put in the fire pit, cleaned up the flower gardens, etc. Now that it’s getting colder, we’re doing more inside in our path to make this house nicer for ourselves and for future pastors at Crosswicks.

The biggest project was ripping up carpet and fixing up the hardwood floors in the dining room, family room, and hallway. As many of you, especially those who have had the joy of visiting us, know, our carpet was a mess. It was stained, there were still indentations in it from the furniture the previous pastor’s family had. There were also several places where the carpet was coming apart. The vacuum has been further destroying these portions of the carpet. When we got the cats, they decided those sections were toys. Not a great situation. We talked to the church board, and they basically said, “Do whatever you want,” and we took on a task neither of us had done before.

As soon as we had word that we could do the carpet, I started ripping it up one Saturday. Although ripping the carpet up didn’t take a lot of effort, getting all of the edging out did. For those of you who don’t know, there are pieces of wood with nails sticking straight up nailed into the floor around the wall to keep the carpet in place. It’s a pain in the butt to get up. The mat under the carpet is stapled into the floor, so that was fun, too. After ripping up the carpet, we discovered that only the outside edges of each room had been stained before—clearly they had laid down rugs and stained around them. Then we waited two weeks until we had another day free.

Friday, we bought the stain we liked, got wood putty, and asked about renting a sander. Then we went home and I spent a LONG time filling the holes in the floor with the putty. The floor obviously hasn’t been exposed for awhile, and it needed a lot of work. The next morning, we headed out to Home Depot (our second home) and picked up the sander, a bunch of pads for the sander, and another can of stain. Wes, the awesome guy that he is, sanded our floor three separate times before we headed back to the store with the sander. Then it was time to stain…and stain again…and polyurthene…and polyurthene again. But now the floor looks awesome. This weekend, we’ll be putting in room dividing pieces, and over Thanksgiving we’ll be doing baseboards.

The reason we haven’t done these pieces yet is because a couple of weekends ago, I tiled our kitchen floor. This involved ripping up the horrible linoleum, ripping up the boards under the linoleum, pulling up a layer of tiles, and pounding hundreds of nails into the floor. At this point, we had an ugly, concrete floor. While Wes was out gallivanting in Texas, I put down tile and grouted the floor. It is probably my favorite floor in the house because it makes such a huge difference. Our house is finally coming into the 21^st century, and we’re really loving the pride that comes with all this work. And I think we’re done with the big projects for awhile…

Wes: So a couple week's ago, I went gallivanting around in Texas. That's a fun word. Let's take a second to say it a couple times. Gallivanting... Gallivanting... Gallivanting...

Ok. That's enough. Let's move on.

So I was ga.... I was in Texas for the Young Adult Ministries Summit that the General Board of Ordained Ministry hosted in Austin, TX. About 60 or so young adults from UMC's around the nation (and one Presbyterian who was spying on us) met together to talk about the future of young adult ministries within the United Methodist Church and how we can do a better job of reaching this almost altogether unreached group. It is a sad fact that something like 80% of all church-going 18 year-olds stop going to church after they graduate from high school. They are free for sometimes the first time to make their own decisions, and for many, not waking up early on Sunday to go to church is an easy decision to make. This becomes habit, and the majority of them do not come back to church (if they ever do) until they are married and have kids of their own. 

Now, in the UMC, a young adult is defined as anyone between the ages of 18 and 35 (sometimes through 40). This is a lot of ground to cover, and a lot of different types of people comprise this category. There are the single college students, the professional college-aged students, the married without kids, the married with kids, single without kids, single with kids, age groups, etc... So for those who have to try to work with them and bring the Gospel to them, these different groups have to be taken into account. 

So we had a lot of ground to cover. I went in expecting it to be a resourcing and equipping type of conference, but it was much more relationally-driven than that. I had a wonderful time talking with people from around the US and hearing about what has and hasn't worked for them as their churches try to reach out to the young adults around them. We talked about churches that are getting it right, that are thinking outside the box and are truly succeeding in bringing in this age group. We also talked about churches that are not doing it right.

So I thought I would share some of the things that we talked about, so that all of the millions who read our blog would be added into the conversation as well. 

Things TO Do:

-Try different kind of music

-Try new times for worship

-Be open to new forms of communication (like blogging, facebook, and twitter)

-Make sure childcare is provided

-Be willing to go to the people (this might even mean places like bars)

-Do more than just services (take of the last "s" on that last word for a good place to start)

-(If you didn't get the hint up above, it was "service")

-Don't enforce a dress code, enforce comfortability and welcoming for all

Things NOT TO Do:

-Expect what you're already doing to work--if it did, they would be there already

It's pretty much that simple, really. I hope this was helpful. 

:)

You stay classy, World Wide Web.

-Jess and Wes