Letter From Richard: Young Adult Ministry

Many people understandably point to numbers of decline in the Episcopal Church and across churches as a whole. With average ages of congregations reaching into the mid 60s in most cases, it’s understandable that many people have deep questions about the health of the church. We at St. Paul’s are so lucky to have a core community of people in the Millennial and Gen Z generations, and the age-based ministry of this group has changed in organic ways in my brief time here. When I first came aboard, I was told about the fluctuations in the recent past of the 20-30s groups. This is not unusual, and makes perfect sense considering that most people in their 20s and 30s are dealing with rapid life changes by choice or by circumstance. 

So too has the group in my time. Initially, former Family Minister Maya Little-Saña and I worked together to get purely social gatherings together most Wednesday nights around San Diego. She had a bit more bandwidth than I did week-to-week, and like many things for this age range, it held together very well for a little over a year. As people’s lives and circumstances changed, a desire for something less purely social took root, and now we do a Bible Study every first and third Wednesday of the month. Along with this, our current Family Minister, Kate Gould, has started the Community Dinner Party Project, which is a relaxed meal that is purely about community building where she has seen a few Millennials and Gen Z folks. There’s no secret sauce to attracting a younger crowd, other than this: Be authentic. St. Paul’s bears an authenticity in word and deed that speaks to people, and for my Millennial generation and Gen Z, who have been brought up with advertising constantly pummeling us from our earliest stages of development and with the advent of the internet, we can tell what’s authentic, what’s genuine, pretty easily. We have a nose for deception. Keep living into the authenticity that is St. Paul’s as the Cathedral for the City, and we will keep attracting people of every generation, especially those who will carry the cross into the future.

Rev. Cn. Richard Hogue Jr.