As I mentioned, in his blog College Ministry Thoughts, Chuck Bomar, the head of CollegeLeader.org, has started a discussion about what it means to be connected.  There seems to be an increasing number of younger adults who don’t feel “connected” to the church.

As Chuck mentions, a number of the common methods used to determine whether or not a person is connected don’t seem to work, especially with younger adults.  I think the biggest reason for this is that what it means to be connected is a very subjective thing that varies from person to person.

For one person, attending services and showing up at a home group meeting twice a month is more than enough to feel connected.  I certainly can imagine parents with a couple of children who have very little social interaction with other adults finding a twice a week small group as being a great connection.

On the other hand, there are people who feel like they can’t develop a relationship in that time.  For them, being connected means finding a place to belong, a place where they find a place where people can invest in each other’s daily lives.  Going someplace for an hour and a half, once a week, then going home isn’t going to create that sense of belonging, and without that belonging, they feel little connection.

I think that a person is connected if they truly feel like they belong.  If that’s an accurate definition, then there is one problem with it – it is extremely hard to measure.  There is no universal measurement that we can use on everyone at a church or ministry to determine whether or not they are connected.  It means that we have to spend time talking with them to know whether or not they feel connected and why they feel that way.  That can be a very time intensive job.  And it’s a job that has to be done repeatedly, since just because someone feels connected today doesn’t mean that still will three months or six months or a year from now.

On the other hand, spending that time with people will help those of us who are ministry leaders to determine ways to improve our ministries so that people will feel more connected.  Also, if we spend that kind of time with people, it is likely that they will feel more connected themselves.