Reaching Young Adults Starts With Falling in Love With Jesus

Key takeaways

• Start with your own heart. Pastor Ray Clark says the growth of Grace Young Adults in Houston began when he fell in love with Jesus again in 2022.
• Protect what people came for. His team removed every part of the service that most of the room ignored and kept worship and the word.
• Let people practice. Prayer begins as the doors open, and the room is invited to pray for one another during the service.
• Choose collaboration. Houston pastors worship together so the city can see them cheering each other on.
• Give up the common. Ray and a young guest named Andy talk about letting go of things that may not be sin yet still compete for the heart.
• Send people out. The next goal is evangelism and discipleship beyond the building.

A late start in church and a long road to Houston

Pastor Sammy Rodriguez, guest hosting Beyond the Letter, sat down with Pastor Ray Clark, who leads Grace Young Adults at Grace Church Houston. Sammy described a gathering of about two thousand young adults, ages 18 to 30, every Tuesday. Ray stepped into the role in 2021 and held the official title from 2022.

Ray did not grow up in a Christian home. His family was Catholic in name and rarely went to church. He started attending in Tampa, Florida, because of a girl in the stands at his baseball game, and her father said he would have to come to church with them. Around sixteen, in that youth ministry, Ray says the Lord got hold of his heart. He gave his life to Jesus at seventeen and again at eighteen, because he was up and down.

After high school he chose a ministry internship over a baseball scholarship, and his father blessed the decision. At twenty he moved to Houston to volunteer and intern in youth ministry, then followed his pastor to Las Vegas to help plant a church. Later he moved back to Houston in faith with no job on the table. The church put him on maintenance, where he painted curbs, pressure washed and worked on septic tanks. He became the associate youth pastor for four and a half years, then the interim young adult pastor.

The ministry had grown to about three hundred under his best friend. When Ray stepped in, a hundred young adults left, and he wondered whether the job was really his.

Stripping the service down to worship and the word

A friend coached Ray to whiteboard everything in the service. The rule he was given: if seventy five percent of the room is not engaged with an element, take it out. The list included a pre-service video, video announcements and a two-minute greeting time.

Ray's team found that people were engaged in two things only, worship and the message. They cut everything else except one segment for announcements and the offering. Ray felt God telling him that he has these young adults for an hour and a half, maybe two hours, so he should not waste it. People now know what they will get every time, and the team does not throw them a curveball.

Falling in love again in 2022

Ray says the first change was personal. In 2022 he started watching The Chosen and saw the personhood of Jesus in a new way: how Jesus noticed people, saw them and valued them. After episodes he would be on his knees with his wife, both of them praying. He began cutting back what he watched, scrolled and listened to, and compared it to a diet. He wanted an atmosphere in his home that was inviting to the Lord.

Ray also described what Revelation 2 did to him. The church there had not grown weary, yet had lost something.

But I have this against you, that you left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I am coming to you swiftly, and will move your lamp stand out of its place, unless you repent.

(Revelation 2:4-5, WEB)

Ray had been preaching, launching small groups and running the ministry, and he saw himself in that rebuke. He put it plainly: "you are more in love with being the messenger than the message itself." The renewal spread from his household to his staff, the interns and college students who work with the church, the volunteers and leaders, and then the congregation. He recalled John Wesley's line about setting yourself on fire with passion so that people come to watch you burn.

Practicing what the church teaches

Sammy brought a line he shared at a table discussion earlier that week: "we may teach what we know, but we reproduce who we are." He asked whether leaders have shared Jesus in the last thirty days, and not only from a stage. He also urged making anything a group is asked to do reproducible, with time to practice and people cheering them on.

Ray's team does this with prayer. Services start at 7:30, but the doors open at 7:20 with the worship team already playing, prayer prompts on the screen and someone on the mic leading the room. People enter an atmosphere of prayer instead of a countdown.

Ray also described a night when ICE raids were happening nearby. He told the room that some people were afraid to leave their homes and others stood on the other side politically. He asked those who were fearful, or standing in the gap for someone who was, to raise a hand, and asked everyone near a raised hand to lay a hand on that person's shoulder and pray. His point was that people are people, and that the church should help them practice what it calls them to be.

Ray sees a generation ready for this. Eighteen to thirty has often been missed in churches because "it's been a demographic that's been seen as a liability and not a resource." Today, he says, "they want to put their hands to ministry." His goals now include better small groups and discipleship, and a ten week foundations class. He says plainly, "what happens in this building cannot stay here." In two weeks his team plans an outreach at the University of Houston, hoping a thousand students will come.

Celebrating instead of competing

Both pastors spoke about the pull toward competition between churches. Ray's own pastor warned him that God's hand on the ministry would be removed if there were disunity or impurity on his team. Ray later found the same idea in Hebrews 12:14.

Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man will see the Lord,

(Hebrews 12:14, WEB)

Once a year, at Motion Night, Ray invites pastors from across the city to come and simply receive. That event has grown from 720 people in its first year to 1,200, then 2,400, then 5,000 last year, when the church ran out of parking. A pastor named Lou later organized a worship night downtown with several of the city's young adult ministries. Ray says it freed them from competing, and that young adults who watch pastors champion one another start asking why they are so competitive at work.

Sammy described a similar gathering in his area that drew about sixteen hundred young adults from many churches. He pointed to the numbers in Houston, about 7.8 million people, and said no single church can hold them all. He also spoke of staying open handed when people leave one ministry for another, and said "you want to cover but not control."

Common, holy and the voice of God

Andy, who is twenty, said that what his generation takes in shapes who they become. He described feeling convicted after watching part of Stranger Things, telling his brothers and sisters in Christ, and cutting it off. He said it is not everyone's conviction. He also suggested that when God seems quieter than before, he may be training us to hear him through friends, family, messages and Scripture read with fresh attention.

Ray tied this to Ezekiel 44:23, a verse he said he had been wrestling with.

They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.

(Ezekiel 44:23, WEB)

Ray explained, "The common is not sinful. It's just common." In a message called Set Apart, he told the congregation he was wrestling with things he thought he should give up, and he took out his earrings and nose piercing in front of them. He was clear that he does not call these things sin. For him they had become common, and he wants to be holy.

Sammy added a story from Hawaii. While encouraging a friend to lay down a relationship, he felt the Holy Spirit tell him to apply the same words to his own life. He ended his relationship the next day, and he believes that obedience prepared him for what came after. Sammy also encouraged young adults to find a local church and serve there, and said "we so worry about the what and not the who" when it comes to calling.

What this means for you

If you lead young adults, you may be hunting for systems you can copy. Ray says the first thing he tells people at roundtables is to fall in love with Jesus or consecrate themselves. What would you remove from your week, your screen or your service so there is more room for him?

If you are a young adult, a parent or a friend, the same invitation applies. Ray says that if he were their age, he would "fall in love with Jesus every day." He pictures embers from a bonfire landing on someone else and catching fire, and he closes with a plain question: "it might just start with you."