Plan Seeks to Increase Young Adult Retention in Australia

Leaders work on university outreach as a way of supporting Adventist students.

December 5, 2022 | Australia | Kimberley McMurray and Juliana Muniz, Adventist Record

The Australian Union Conference (AUC) of the Seventh-day Adventist Church has launched Disciple Focused Life Group Leadership, a project that aims to reach university students outside of the church and provide support for Adventist students within secular universities. The four-year initiative will place two young adults within chosen secular universities around Australia in an effort to set up life groups on campus.

According to statistics from the Barna Group, 72 percent of young people who attend church in Australia drop out of church life as they transition into university and young adulthood. The goal of this initiative is to help Adventist young adults stay in the church and to facilitate outreach to secular university students. Life Group leaders will have funding for the resources needed to facilitate life groups, as well as training and support from mentors at each level, from local church to the South Pacific Division.
Jeffrey Parker, youth director for AUC, said, “It is so exciting to see all of our Australian conferences wanting to be a part of this Life Group ministry proposal as it rolls out over 2023/24. All the conference administration teams see the need to move forward in this space and want to act fast to connect with both our own Adventist young adults and other university students that can be reached for Christ.”

The new project will not only provide an essential resource for conferences that want to get started, but it will also provide a boost to the ones already investing in it, such as in the North New South Wales Conference (NNSW).

“I have seen many of our young adults slip away from church as they face university life. It is my belief that if we give them an opportunity to connect in a regular Life Group setting, within the university itself, we will inspire them to continue their connection with Jesus Christ,” Parker said.

With Adventist Students on Campus (ASOC) clubs in three universities, the NNSW young adults department plans to expand into all seven campuses in its territory.

NNSW’s main ASOC club started in 2019 on the Newcastle University campus. Providing for the needs of the students and conducting frequent initiatives to connect with them, the group grew into a church plant and officially became a church company in September 2022, so far baptizing more than 20 students.

Aiming to empower more young people to join the task force, the NNSW young adults department recently conducted its annual University Ministry Summit attended by university students, Bible workers, and passionate lay people from all over Australia.

Linsday Birch, who is starting a new ASOC ministry at Griffith University in Queensland, found the event encouraging. “The summit answered many of my questions and helped me know my immediate next steps. It also gave me a framework and a greater vision to work towards,” she said.

Birch said that at the summit, she was inspired by the global impact of university ministry. “A key piece of information I learned was that in Australian universities, there are 1.6 million students, 30 percent of which are international students, mostly coming from the 10/40 Window. I saw how important university ministry can be for evangelizing, equipping, and sending back frontline missionaries to the hardest-to-reach parts of the world,” she added.

NNSW young adults director Blair Lemke also believes in the great impact of this type of ministry. “Not only does university ministry have a global impact, but it is an opportunity to retain and engage Adventist youth who leave their home communities to attend university and may otherwise drift away,” Lemke said.

The AUC is working on developing a new website that will be online in mid-December. The website will give parents, grandparents, friends, and university students the opportunity to inform where they’re studying and help them link up to other Adventist young adults in the area.

The original version of this story was posted by Adventist Record.