Disciple: Doing Just One Thing Can Change a Life

Creating a connection can build foundations for young adults

By the Rev. Tambria E. Lee

Imagine picking up your cell phone, reading an email or unfolding a note tacked to your office door with one of these questions:

• Can you reach out to my friend who just found out her close friend from high school overdosed and died?
• Will your church accept me if I am gay?
• Can you call John and meet him at church so that someone can be with him when I tell him his father has died?
• What does God and the church say about sex?
• Can you tell me when the 12-step program for young adults meets?
• Can I start a weekday meal for the homeless in the church kitchen?
• What do you do for spring break that doesn’t involve a cruise, a bus or sleeping in a tent?
• Is there a Bible study here that allows me to ask all the questions I want?
• Can you help me figure out how to stay in school with a newly unemployed parent?
• My mother died the first week of school and all I want to do is go home.
• Do you have a young adult group for recent graduates?

These are some of the many and varied questions diocesan college and young adult missioners answer every day in coffee shops and classrooms, at lunch tables and in corporate corridors across the state. They have learned that answering these questions makes the difference in whether or not these young people explore, join or remain in church. Some students find their way to a campus or young adult ministry, but many are not even aware these key networks exist.

Every member of the Diocese of North Carolina has the power to change that.

Many universities, particularly public ones, do not share information about students with outside groups. Campus ministers and young adult missioners depend on congregations to connect young adults leaving their home church to campuses and parishes throughout the Diocese of North Carolina so they can be welcomed in the radical way of Jesus into the young adult community.

By using Just One Thing, you can create those connections for those leaving your church for the next chapter in their lives, helping them find their new – or even first - faith home. Just One Thing is a form that takes less than one minute to fill out; it is on the diocesan website and when submitted, it is sent to the campus minister indicated or the nearest young adult missioner. The young adult will then be contacted and welcomed.

It is a tender, exciting and vulnerable time when a first-year student, graduate, professional or undergraduate starts a new path. It is even more challenging for those leaving the comfort and security of academia for the uncharted seas of work and making friends. Help continue the adventure of faith formation begun in parish churches in the waters of baptism, nurtured in Sunday school classes and youth groups, crafted in the school of outreach and learning to reach across a pew to pass the peace. Don’t make young adults wait until they have children to return to the Church. Then it may be too late to be that haven for their hungering soul. Help them, and those who have yet to discover the power of relationship with God and God’s people, to keep the faith by doing Just One Thing.

The Rev. Tambria E. Lee is the chaplain and young adult missioner at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.