WASHINGTON — On a recent Sunday afternoon, I had the opportunity to visit with Aaron Graham, lead pastor of The District Church in Washington, to catch up on the church since its launch in September 2010. Among its partners is V3, a church multiplication movement sponsored by Virginia Baptists.
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As we talked, a few things became clear — Aaron is gracious, at ease with himself and his neighborhood, and passionate about the mission that God has called him to.
“I’m a white guy in a primarily African American neighborhood,” he says. “Right where we live is 50 percent African American, 30 percent Latino, maybe 10 percent white and 100 nationalities. So for us, Indonesia is six inches that way and El Salvador is a foot and a half right there.
“It’s incredibly diverse and that’s one of the benefits of being in a city — incredibly complex to figure out how to do ministry, but you don’t have to go across the oceans to reach the nations.”
Aaron and his wife, Amy, are familiar with serving in the city. Before moving to Washington, Aaron started Quincy Street Missional Church in a low-income neighborhood of Boston where he served for five years. Amy served as the youth minister and worship leader. And before that, Aaron’s passion for serving in the city began as a youth at Bon Air Baptist Church in Richmond, Va.
The Grahams have lived in the Columbia Heights section of northwest Washington for four years. Aaron and Amy know everyone on their block and four families on the street are part of the church. In June, Aaron baptized a neighbor who has lived on the streets most of her life; now she’s fully a part of the church.
Aaron Graham prays with a worshiper at The District Church.
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“This morning we had somebody that works at the White House worshipping next to somebody that works for John McCain and so you’ve got Republicans, Democrats,” said Aaron. “It’s cool to see that. And you’ve got a GED worshipping next to a Ph.D. and so that’s kind of the Kingdom being expressed. That’s fun because those are the kind of connections that end up happening outside of formalized church settings where people meet and help to serve one another.”
The District Church (www.districtchurch.org) meets in the Capital City Public Charter School at 3047 15th Street, N.W. Its central values are worship, community and justice.
“[Those values] reflect the upward journey of connecting with God, the inward journey of connecting with each other and the outward journey of connecting with the lost and the poor,” said Aaron.
A highlight of the conversation was Aaron’s thoughts on how churches can engage and reach younger generations. His comments are offered below:
A couple things, one as it relates to Millennials. This group is amped up to make a difference in the world and yet their antenna is heightened in their skepticism of the church and institutions. So the challenge with this is that it makes it hard to call this generation to be a part of an institutionalized community. The benefit and, I think, the great hope that this generation offers is that they can help recover for us God’s missionary heart which is at the very center of the church.
One of the great ways Virginia Baptist churches could reach the millennial generation is to not allow missions to be a program of the church but to be at the very heart of the church. We are all called to be missionaries and we are all called to influence where we are.
The District Church gathers for worship, led by pastor Aaron Graham.
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We want to be equipped on Sunday mornings to be able to live this gospel out at our workplace, in our homes, with our neighbors and with our friends and for too many they’ve seen a disconnect between those two worlds. They’ve grown up as a generation to which parents have given a lot of things, but they’ve seen that it’s created a very segmented life and so “I’m busy doing all these activities and I’ve got my church life here, and I’ve got my social life here, and I’ve got my home here and then I drive an hour to this thing over here and to my job” and suddenly it’s like “what’s the larger story that’s being written about my life and I’ve accumulated all of these things but what is it ultimately for.”
I think the younger generation wants to lead a more integrated life, which is why for Millennials, family is their number one priority, ironically. More Millennials than anybody else say, “I want to stay committed to my wife for life, I want to be committed to my kids.” You see more dad’s involved in their kids’ lives as well.
I would say rather than expect Millennials to join you at church, go to them and get behind what they’re doing. But don’t be easy on them because the ironic thing is that this younger generation wants to be challenged, they are longing for true authority, they are longing for people to call them not only to a mission that’s meaningful, but to a relationship with Christ.
What’s surprised me is that I thought, “Well, maybe with this generation you’d need to kind of make it more and more seeker sensitive and maybe keep the sermon to 15 or 20 minutes and maybe kind of sugarcoat it a little more — maybe that’s what will reach them,” and that is the exact opposite of what I’ve seen.
The issue is not church, it’s not whether they want to live for something, it’s not a lack of hunger for spirituality. It’s just that people want to be involved in something that they know is going to touch the core of them.
And, yes, they might have a little too much skepticism toward the institution of the church, but the thing that I’ve said over and over to our young adults — and I think that everyone should say to anybody who’s kind of given up on the church — is that we can spend our whole life critiquing the church or we could instead spend our life building the church.
I had to make that decision a year and a half ago and call on other people to do that. I think that’s the most rewarding thing that’s happened in our life — to say, “You know what, we might even be right in our critiques, but let’s be the answer to the prayers that we’re praying.”
Millennials aren’t going to have a perfect church, just like Boomers didn’t have a perfect church. The question is, are we moving towards Christ, are we moving in this direction, or are we just standing on the sidelines and identifying everything that’s wrong.
So I would say join Millennials where they’re at and how they’re serving in their community and how they’re serving in their schools and workplaces and their neighbors and help get behind that and believe in it, rather than waiting for them to show up because you have a slicker marketing campaign, or a better website, or more contemporary worship. Those things don’t hurt, but that’s not at the center of what will reach them. You’ve got to go to them.
The second thing is to challenge Millennials to stop complaining about the church and in fact be the church that they’ve dreamed of and give them the room and the freedom to be able to do that.
Millennials are not waiting for permission to serve. Mark Zuckerberg and all the young billionaires who have been in the social media age — the reason that they’ve been so successful is because they’ve empowered people to run with things. If we can be strong with the vision, mission and values and the biblical foundation, then I think we can attract people and release young adults to begin to express that in ways that we can’t envision for them. When we try to determine how that’s going to look in advance it may feel less empowering for them.
Jody Faig ([email protected]) is co-coordinator of V3, a church multiplication movement sponsored by the Virginia Baptist Mission Board.