When Stuart Crawshaw turned 21 he found he was the last young adult left at his church.
"All my mates I had grown up with at church during the 1980s had left. The next youngest person was 35," he says.
Most of Stuart's mates had left for the pub scene. But, as numbers dwindled, the Christians left as well to find another church with young people their age.
Stuart's experience at Gymea Anglican is repeated many times across the country. The latest National Church Life Survey (NCLS) found that 40 per cent of church-goers' children do not go to church. Despite young adult retention rates improving amongst Sydney Anglicans, about one in three children of Sydney Anglican attendees does not attend any church.
The Rev Craig Blacket, who co-ordinates TAFE ministry in Sydney, says that if we are serious about the 10 per cent mission goal then we need to tackle the issue of young adult retention.
He has seen many young people lost in the transition from school to work, and believes the issue is more acute for those who go straight into the workforce than through university, where there are well-developed campus ministries.
"Most of my TAFE people make the transition into the adult world earlier than university kids. [As teenagers] they are working with hardened people. So youth group becomes like kindergarten; it doesn't cut it."
The Rev Jodie McNeill from Anglican Youthworks agrees with Craig's observation, but adds that across youth ministry you tend to see some drop off as each age group "graduates' to an older group. He says one simple solution is to provide opportunities for young people to build friendships outside their immediate school year group.
Craig believes the answer " at both the parish and Diocesan level " is to ensure ministry to young adults is more holistic and integrated.
"From school to TAFE and uni and then to work. And once they start having kids the process starts again. Pull that off and we'd have a good crack at the 10 per cent," Craig says.
Back at Gymea, this is what happened and it has made a world of difference. Rather than leave himself, Stuart Crawshaw and his wife Louise, who were then both involved with the student ministry at UNSW, did something fairly unusual.
"We thought rather than run a youth group, if we just stuck around, we could be a peer group for the young people to grow up into."
So in 1991 Stuart began Soul Revival community with four teenagers. He hung around with them on Saturday nights doing the things typical teenagers do, like going to the movies, watching videos and eating pizza. But every week, Stuart would also open and read the Bible with them. And then they would go to church together at Gymea on Sunday.
"The idea was to evangelise as a community, rather than go out with non-Christian friends on Saturday night and hope to tell them about Jesus. We wanted to provide a Christian community where people could be invited into and see the Christian life lived out."
Fifteen years on, the Soul Revival community has reached maturity. It still meets on Saturdays, but with the oldest members in their 30s with their own kids, the meeting now kicks off mid-afternoon.
"The families meet from 4.30," says Stuart. "After dinner the young adults kick on into the nights. It is an eight-hour expression of community. But people come and go as it suits them."
Without a venue, numbers are restricted by meeting in people's houses, but the community is fairly stable with about 130 people involved.
What is surprising is the impact Soul Revival has had on church attendance at Gymea. The NCLS shows the church has a large spike in its age profile for young adults and twenty-somethings.
"As people's lives get busier some do leave Soulies, but we find these people keep going on Sundays."
The Soul Revival community also provides the church with a big backdoor for people who fall right out of church life.
"We have had people coming back years later to see if the community is still going," says Stuart. He was recently asked to be best man at the wedding of one such young bloke.
Stuart Crawshaw says the beauty of his approach is that any size church could do the same.
"It is just a nice organic way of saying we are just mates," he said. "It fits with the Australian culture."
Long term: Build a treehouse
On August 18, Soul Revival at Gymea Anglican Church will launch "the Treehouse' to provide support for leaders of youth communities across NSW. The invition is out to churches with Sutherland, Keiraville and Ulladulla Anglican already joining in, and links developed with some Aboriginal churches.
The development of this network adds a new option for churches serious about addressing the issue of young adult retention.
The Treehouse recognises that to build "a Christian community of continuity you need the support of others," explains Soul Revival leader Stuart Crawshaw.
"When most Aussie kids want to build a treehouse, what do you do? You ask your neighbours and your parents to help."
Stuart says that one of the advantages of operating as a community is that members become "more servant-hearted rather than consumerist". The level of commitment community requires translates directly into young adult retention.
The idea of being servant-hearted not only means that the young adult community gives to the wider church through their mission activities with indigenous churches. It also means that the wider church gives something back to them as well.
Stuart is building accommodation on his own block of land so that young people can live for free. He is also encouraging empty-nesters at Gymea Anglican to rent their spare rooms at peppercorn rates, so that members of his community can remain living close by despite being a fairly expensive suburb for housing.
"We are thinking through what it means to be more sharing of our physical resources," he says.
