Interview with Reggie Joiner author of The Slow Fade

A discussion of the most overlooked and underdeveloped facet of the modern church—how to keep college-aged people engaged in faith.

In The Slow Fade: Why You Matter in the Story of the Twentysomethings, Reggie Joiner, Abbie Smith and Chuck bomar discuss why many churches and families have programmed a youth ministry finish line at twelfth grade. They walk their seniors out the door, breathe a sigh of relief, and let them disappear for a few years. There is an assumption they’ll return to church later, as adults with young families.

Many never come back.

They become less and less involved in church and faith and, eventually, absent altogether—they slowly fade away. Facing critical decisions that affect the rest of their lives, college-aged people need a faith community more than ever.

The Slow Fade: Why You Matter in the Story of Twentysomethings is written by a senior pastor, a college pastor, and a twenty-something—rethink one-on-one mentorship as the way to end the slow fade. They offer insights and suggestions that will help anyone get started fighting the fade.

Read the interview below and consider your part in The Slow Fade.

Q: In your book, The Slow Fade, you relay that statistics show somewhere between 65 and 80% of people who grow up in church will drop out of church when they become college-aged. How long has this been going on?

A: The trend of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds disengaging from church and faith has been a growing problem for more than twenty years. While those who are college-aged are increasingly fading out of the picture, mainstream denominations and independent churches are slowly graying and declining in attendance. The sad news is that churches’ strategies to reach these twentysomethings have not significantly adjusted to respond to this issue.

When you ask the average church what their plan is for college-aged people, you usually get confused looks. Frankly, twentysomethings are perceived by most leaders in churches as a transient demographic, people who don’t tithe and who need to solidify their faith on their own.

Q: What is happening in the lives of these young people as they begin the “slow fade?”

A: The one thing they have in common is they all are becoming disconnected from their communities of faith. At a time in their lives when their faith should be accelerating, it has begun to dim. At a stage when they’re developing a new network of friends, there is a relational gap. At the moment they are beginning to wrestle with what they thought was certain, they are missing voices they know they can trust. They are fading off the radar of those who were their Christian leaders during the very season when they are trying
to solidify what they really believe.

It is not intentional on anyone’s part. No one is deliberately orchestrating the fade. It is just out of sight, out of mind. And some of the most influential and promising leaders of faith for the next generation are being ignored and gradually fading from view.

Q: So what is the answer? Is it to simply to create more effective college ministry programs? Or a new breed of college ministries in churches across the country?

A: Not really. The issue is not to reinvent college ministry in the local church, or this book would have simply been written to church staffs or student pastors. Although there are some principles here that translate for the local church, our desire in writing this is to appeal to a different audience.

If you are an adult who is interested in influencing the slow fade, we hope this book will mobilize you to build a relationship with someone who is college-aged. The real question is, who has the greatest potential to influence the faith of those who are in their late teens and twenties? Yes, we think it is the church, but more specifically Christian adults who are in the church who have a passion to invest in this age group.

The strategy is simple: Recruit a new breed of mentors to invest time in those who are college-aged.

Q: You write about the value of belonging. What is the importance of helping college-aged people feel connected, feel that they belong?

A: Honestly, most college-aged people don’t know where they belong—especially in the church. If I don’t know why I belong to something, or how I bring unity to some degree, there’s little reason to stick around.

To know that we belong—ultimately to God—is arguably the end we were made for and the beginning if being made whole. Though acceptance is often an external (or felt) craving, belonging is the layer that lies beneath. Acceptance is fleeting and arbitrary, whereas belonging is grounded in something more permanent. Belonging stems from the knowledge that I am intrinsically connected to a place, or people, beyond myself. I can dress stylishly, speak eloquently, or excel at something enough to find acceptance.

But my acceptance will always be based on something about me—and thus up for grabs when that something changes or falls short. What I need is to be loved based on simply being me.

Q: So what are the practical next steps for coming alongside college-aged people and positively influencing them?

A: Well, believe it or not, we’re going to say you shouldn’t do anything. Yes, nothing. The first thing a person needs to do is explore the questions of identity, belonging, and worth that we all wrestle with—questions we seek to resolve in our own stories. So answering these questions for ourselves is where we must start. Too many don’t want to admit this, but embracing our identity in God is never done.

People have suggested that at some point you have to land on who you are and stick with it no matter what. This might be true to a point, but recognizing that we’re constantly in process is critical for every believer. And the process is worth it.

Life is filled with hurts, disappointments, and challenges that shape who we are, and it’s the continued commitment to self-discovery that allows us to grow into who God is shaping us to be. The choice is always before us. Are we willing to remain teachable and continue moving toward discovery? ntentionally moving forward in this process is both healthy and necessary as believers, but it is also one of the things that make us effective with college-aged people.

Q: So a person needs to look within before they start looking into the life of others?

A: Absolutely. Whether we’ve realized it or not, our capacity for wonder, discovery, and passion pushes us either forward or backward. If your life were a book, would these three things only be in previous chapters? If so, we want to encourage you to begin to write them back into your story now. Before we reach into the slow fade happening in a forgotten generation of twentysomethings, we have to acknowledge the slow fade that’s happened in our own lives.

Wonder, discovery, and passion can no longer be distant childhood memories. They’re ongoing, and we’ll never fully experience them outside the context of relationships— our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves (who He made us to be), and our relationships with others. You need that college-aged person, and that person needs you. Not because you’ve arrived somewhere they haven’t, but because you’re both searching for the same things in the same three places— God, yourself, and thers.

Q: You make this concept of mentoring sound extremely important, but I’m sure some readers will feel intrigued by the idea but not qualified.

A: Most people we’ve talked to about investing their lives in college-aged adults don’t feel comfortable with the idea. When pressed for a reason, they generally feel the task of mentoring someone is too daunting, that they are underequipped for such an overwhelming responsibility. We believe that is because Christians haven’t defined the role of a mentor very well, or possibly because we never defined it, and someone drew his or her own unrealistic conclusions.

As mentors, we have to be careful that we don’t develop a messiah complex. We can’t start with the selfimposed duty to carry people to a point of completion, a point where we know they will be invincible because they were under our care. If we are honest, that isn’t true of us, so why would it be true of them?

We know that we ourselves need the grace of God to become who we need to be, and the same is true of every college-aged person. Ultimately, they need God, not you. And fortunately, God is the one who bears the responsibility to carry someone to completion, not us. So let’s breathe a sigh of relief.