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By Kevin Smalls

The other Sunday I preached at one of our churches and at the conclusion of the service a young adult engaged me in conversation. She asked me would I be here next Sunday. I told her that I was a visiting preacher that day. She then told me that if I were here she would definitely come more often.

Before allowing myself to get a big head about what I was able to homiletically pull off that morning, I listened a little deeper to what she was saying.

She wasn?t telling me that I was a great preacher. She was not telling me that I was endowed with awesome preaching gifts. She wasn?t telling me that the current pastor is not an effective preacher.

After further conversation with her she was telling me that I told her story and she began to tell me how the sermon was relevant for her life. Everyone else that came through the shake-the-preacher?s-hand line said, 'good sermon.'

It dawned on me, while driving home, that if we are to reach the young adult generation we must find a way to preach their stories. It is when we do this that we are awarded their willingness to trust us as fellow sojourners in life and not just one speaking down to them.

Preaching to young adults (as to anyone) is a long process. It can?t be found in sermonic formulas, scholarly commentaries or refresher courses in preaching.

Preaching is a process that begins with intense and detailed spiritual reflection. Once reading the text, how does it affect you, anger you, surprise you, move you, or confuse you? These questions must be taken seriously or else your humanity can?t be present in the sermon.

Without revealing fragments of yourself you have lost the young adult community. Feel free to tell of that one time you were embarrassed, ashamed, humiliated, devastated or rejected.

Secondly, take the text into the streets, living rooms, parking lots, and even clubs and bars and find out how the two worlds meet.

What does the text teach us and reveal to us about God that we may have never considered? How can people grow closer to God just by one sentence? What theological sound bites can we employ?

Thirdly, find a way to deliver the sermon with power and presence. You can?t be bored by the message yourself. Preach it as though you have been transformed by it. Preach it as though you have been convicted by it. Preach it as though you have been empowered by it.

Young adults want the real deal. They live with mysteries they want unfolded. They live with burdens they want lifted. They live with diseases from which they want to be healed. They live with bruises and scars from which they need relief.

Young adults live with guilt and pain from which they need deliverance. They live with unfulfilled realities and broken dreams from which they want resolution. They live with bad choices and costly mistakes from which they want assurance of forgiveness.

How then can they hear without a preacher and how can one preach unless he or she has encountered his or her own vulnerabilities? These must be transformed into the preaching admitting what I got through ? and so can you.

Preach on ? your young adults are waiting!

The Rev. Kevin Smalls is director of young adult ministries for the Baltimore-Washington Conference.