Mark Broadbent
I have the privilege of being part of a church that targets unchurched young adults. Since planting 4 years ago, we've made heaps of mistakes. But we've also seen God do some amazing things. Here is a glimpse of what we have learned...

#1 You need a critical mass of about 50 young adults.
I am sure there are exceptions to this, but this has certainly been our experience.

WHY IS THIS TRUE? WELL THERE ARE SEVERAL REASONS...
> Young Adults are looking for a spouse
> Young Adults want to spend a lot of time hanging out with friends
> Young Adults are very different culturally to youth and older adults. Only a larger group of young adults will lead the church to make some of these cultural changes.
> ...etc

IF THIS IS TRUE, WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS?
1. You may be better off not trying to reach young adults.
I have met pastors who wanted to start a young adults ministry because their church didn't have one. BAD REASON!!! Surely the reason we start a young adults ministry is because we actually care about young adults. No church can reach everyone. Maybe your church can't reach young adults right now. And that's ok. Focus on who God has called you to reach.

2. Get everyone to jump at the same time.
When we started City Life Christian Church, lots of young adults were keen to be part of something that would be effective in reaching out to their friends. The problem was, they weren't sure if it was going to work. So we ran a series of weekly prayer meetings for 3 months, and kept casting vision of what it would look like to reach unchurched people. We also built up an email list of about 100 people. There were still heaps of people who had doubts though.

So we decided to have a public information meeting. Everybody and anybody was invited and 67 people rocked up. This was our way of getting everybody to jump at once. Everyone at that information meeting could see everyone else. And everyone then felt like there was enough people to make this work.