Thanks for joining my email list because you have an interest in this book project I've been alluding to on social media for the last several months.

Well, things are shaping up.

After a lot of consideration, I decided that I didn't want to write the ultimate "how to get young people in the pews" guidebook. One, I don't know all the answers. Two, I keep hitting upon one particular theme in all the research I was doing. Everything seemed to point to one major key to getting young people to stick around at church, to creating intergenerational ministry, and to unlocking the potential of the next generation of church leaders. Everything ultimately came down to...

Listening.

The working title of my book is Listen to Us: The Power of Listening in Reaching Younger Generations for Christ. I want to leverage my ministry experience, work with college students, and my own certified youthfulness to argue that congregations need to work on listening to young people, thus creating relationships, thus creating the transformation that the Body of Christ needs.

I would love to share the Google Doc basic outline I have with you to get some feedback. To tantalize you, here are the chapers titles I came up with (the outline includes some key points for each chapter).

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Listen to Us

Introduction: New Problems, Old Solutions

PART 1: The Church Who Hears

1 A Theology of Listening

2 Where Listening Leads

3 Creating a Community that Cares

4 Learning from Listening

PART 2: Listening Well

5 Real Human Connections

6 Hearing the Hurting

7 Safe Space

8 Speaking Wisdom

Conclusion: They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love

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Want to peak at the outline? Just reply to this email.

Thanks for all your support!

-Jake Doberenz