Vocatio: A Discipleship Journey with De-Churched Young Adults
Five years ago I was sitting next to a friend on a park bench.
We were musing about the future of the church. I was complaining about a ministry I’d been involved with that was coming to yet another unfortunate end. “It’s so hard to do anything that actually works to disciple young adults,” I bemoaned. “There’s so much resistance to doing anything out of the box. You either spend most of your energy trying to convince a vestry to change the colour of the curtains, or trying to convince your young adults to do anything other than sing songs.”
Hearing myself say it out loud like that sounded pretty cynical. But I’d experienced first-hand how hard it was to do anything other than a Sunday gathering. Discipleship with these sorts of constraints felt lame. I was tired, and sick of fighting.
And then, out of the blue, my friend posed a rather brutal thought experiment.
“If I was to hold a gun to your head, and say you had one year to do something that will actually work in terms of discipling young adults – and if it doesn’t work I will kill you – what would you do?”
Now that idea sounded harsh, but I took his point:
What if I stopped complaining about what is, and put my energy into what could be? As I sat on that chair, in that moment, it was like my perspective instantly changed, and I was looking at things from an entirely different angle. What if we began something new from scratch, made up of all the things that we thought might work, rather than focusing on all the things that weren’t working?
“OK”, I said to him. “I’m going to give it a shot.” But I had some criteria:
We needed to have a minimum of twenty people, and a maximum of 24 people for it to go ahead.
We would require a greater level of commitment than I had seen in any regular church.
We would only accept de-churched young adults as participants – people who had either tapped out of church, or who were on the very verge of quitting.
I figured that if we were going to fail, we might as well fail attempting to do something that was really worthwhile – and working with de-churched young adults seemed about as worthwhile as I could think of. I’d seen dozens of the young people I’d worked with over the years gradually slide out of church into obscurity. I could see that a dramatic change was beginning to occur in Western society. I wanted to learn what was going on beneath the surface for these folk. Besides, if we targeted de-churched young adults who’d already left church, then all the other churches wouldn’t feel like we were a threat, or come after us with pitchforks.
The community was finally set in motion, with the working title of Vocatio. From my past projects I was well connected with plenty of de-churched people to contact. I messaged my pastor friends from all denominations around the city and asked if they had any people who’d left their churches that they’d put in the “too hard” basket. Most had a few leads.
And we circulated the following spiel to see who else might be interested:
“Are you a young adult who’s tapped out of church but still wants to explore faith? Vocatio is a one year experimental community that seeks to explore vocation, emotional health and contemplative spirituality. If you’re an 18-30 year old who’d like to find out more, fill out an expression of interest form, and we’ll let you know more.”
To our surprise that first year sixty or so young adults filled out that form. We began to hold “Pitch Nights” where we’d tell them what being part of Vocatio would involve. “To be part of this community is less about “attending” and more about “committing” to our rhythm of life.”
We had four communal commitments:
YEARLY – to be mutually committed to the people of Vocatio for nine months – so no quitting.
WEEKLY – to attend our weekly three-hour evening gathering.
THREE MONTHLY – to go away on a three-day retreat every three months – so 3 long weekends.
WEEKLY – To have skin in the game by contributing financially to cover food and retreat costs.
And four personal commitments:
PRAY: “We agree to pray every day.”
BLESS: “We agree to intentionally bless a neighbour once a week.”
NOTICE: “We agree to a one hour spiritual direction session once a month.”
REST: “We agree to take a 24 hour Sabbath once a week.”
Believe it or not, we had more people want to sign up for that first year than we could manage – so we had to turn some away. And the final two years of Vocatio saw about 50 Vocat’s plus 20 leaders involved in the community.
For me, the mission of seeking out and working with de-churched folks is summed up in the pulling together of two of Jesus' parables.
"We leave the 99 in search of the lost sheep..." (Luke 15:3-7) "in the hope that eventually they might become prodigal sons and daughters of a loving parent" (Luke 15:11-32). The first part is primarily our job as we seek out these sorts of people, gain their trust, and invite them into a de-churched discipleship community. The second part is primarily God's work in a way that we have much less control over.
What we learnt on this three year journey takes more space than I have in this article here, but here’s what some of our Vocats said of their experience in Vocatio:
“This year in Vocatio I have found my tribe. It is a place to belong and grow in community, which was really lacking in my life before this. It was a big commitment to personal and spiritual development, and it took real effort to show up and be vulnerable too. But it’s been like learning how to float after years of treading water.” Said one.
“This year has been exactly what I was needing. Coming back again and again to the simple elements and rhythms of faith, and pushing into the discomfort I had avoided before now, has changed how I want to continue and will continue in my faith.” Said another.
“Vocatio has been life changing, and I will forever feel a part of a community and family. Vocatio gave me a reason to keep going when I had nothing else, and a safe place to discuss God without being judged or ridiculed.” Said a third.
As you can imagine, we felt pretty happy with that feedback.
Were those three years of Vocatio harder and more complex than we ever imagined? Absolutely.
But would I do it all over again? Absolutely.
Note: this article is taken from Spanky's upcoming book on his experience with Vocatio.
Rev. Spanky Moore
Spanky is an Anglican minister who's played in punk bands, been a Student Radio breakfast host, run a monastery, has worked as a University Chaplain, and dabbles in podcasting. Spanky is passionate in discipleship and mission with people beyond the church walls. He currently lives in Nelson working in a Pioneer Ministries role for the Anglican Diocese there.