Young Professionals

Young Adults, 20-39+, out of church. Or, in church... but on the fence.

Are These Members of Your Church Missing In Action? Where are they?

Somehow our church is losing the majority of its young adults. This "missing generation" of single adults and childless couples is falling through the cracks. Some of us will come back once we have a family and want them to experience church like we grew up with. But many will never come back. They are somehow disconnected. How do we reach them? How do we solve this problem of being the only one in church that is in our age group? The answer in NOT to drop out ourselves!

The Young Professionals Ministry is a dynamic young adult ministry formed to address this very issue.

Our Goal: Connect with God and Each Other. Young Adults want to "belong" in our church. We are there to meet that need through friendship and fellowship.
Our Mission: To inspire, motivate and train young adults to live passionately for Christ.
About Us: We are a group of young adults that know that you don't have to become lost when you return to your home church after college and find that there is no one there your age.
Group Events: We do fun stuff! Whether it's skiing in Canada, church planting in Oregon, or raising money for the Ukraine, our events create vision and are fun, help us connect to each other, and most of all, are spiritual. These events form the basis for our young adults to then return to their own community and nurture their one-on-one relationships.
Leadership training: We teach you how to start a young adult ministry and meet the needs in your church. Our ministry fosters a spirit of helping humanity and sharing what God has given us.

A Young Adults Story…

"Grandma lives in Canada and is a faithful reader of the Canadian Adventist Messenger. In April 2002, she read an article entitled, "Young Professionals Come To Canada". My sister and I had not been attending church since our teenage years, so my grandma saw this as an opportunity for us to connect with young adults in their 20's and 30's. My sister and I were transferring to our new home Oregon where, providentially, the founder of the Young Professionals Ministry lives. Soon we met Heidi at church and heard about the ministry's mission projects and retreats Sabbath morning during 'Mission Moments.' The upcoming annual retreat to Whistler in May 2003 sounded great! I was scared though as I'd never been to an event like this, let alone with a group of young adults. After praying I felt peace about going. Whistler was incredible and completely changed my walk with God. I realized the vital importance of fellowship with like-minded young adults. The group activities, worship and new friends drew me closer to God and our Adventist church. Since Whistler, I have participated in 'Mission Moments' sharing my own exciting renewal experience. Currently, I am actively involved in the Young Professionals Oregon coast church plant project. I actually went door to door for the first time in my life, visiting and extending an invitation to our community chapel services in the coastal village. It's great to be back!"
A passionate Adventist young adult

How can I get involved?

Become a young adult leader… Be involved! We'll show you how!

1. Host a weekend conference with training sessions & dynamic messages. To arrange a weekend for your local area, please contact YPM Director, Heidi at: Heidi@yp4him.org

2. Tell other young adults about this ministry! Then get them involved in your local group.

3. Tell your peers! The Young Professionals Ministry welcomes out of church, un-churched and other Christians. Our ministry events are a safe place for them to come.

4. Support our ministry through a charitable gift. (See our donation information below.)

Thank you for your support! The more people we have involved, the better our ministry is at making this "missing generation" feel connected and feel like their church is their home.

Find out why we're having so much fun!

Young Professionals Ministry
PO Box 33996
Portland, OR 97292-3996

The Young Professionals Ministry is currently a supporting ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Donations should be mailed to the above address. Please make checks payable to: 'Sunnyside SDA Church' with Acct. #9374 noted to receive a tax-deductible receipt.

Donate Online Now--Secure Payment with Paypal:

Young Professionals Ministry is coming to…YOUR HOMETOWN
Taking that passionate living to the local level in your hometown, we are thrilled to share in this edition of our e-newsletter about "First Friday's-A Worldwide Event". Every young adult can catch the action in their local area…we need your help to make it happen. Keep reading to find out how you can a part of the Young Professionals Ministry network. (And coming soon, every First Friday's group will be able to list their event on our website. Details will be available soon for local leaders of First Friday's.) With over 90+ countries around the world represented on our list serve, we hope to have a group in many of the countries soon. Looking forward to having you join us for a "First Friday"!

North American Mission Trip
For those who love to travel, share their faith and explore what living life on purpose is all about, the Oregon Coast Fall retreat was this and more! Don't miss more incredible opportunities to share Christ in a coastal community. Check out our Events page for upcoming trips to the Oregon coast.

STAY CONNECTED
If you're visiting this site and are not yet subscribed to our e-news, please fill out our simple subscribe form and stay connected. For our young-at-heart friends…please pray for us and tell young adults about our network. Did you know, out-of-church young adults have returned to church and many more are now active in their local churches as a result of their parent(s)/grandparent(s) sharing about this ministry? The young adults came to an event(s) and their lives were positively impacted. We welcome every age to subscribe to our e-news. And to all young adults, we look forward to having you join us here in North America or in your part of the world for an event!

In His service,
The Young Professionals Ministry Team

ANN Feature: Adventist Business People Work Together For Common Goal

August 12, 2003 Silver Spring, Maryland, United States .... [Wendi Rogers/ANN]
They're known as a group of energetic and enthusiastic Seventh-day Adventist lay people. Adventist-Laymen's Services and Industries (ASI) is all about people who love what they do--and love God--sharing their faith in their respective areas of expertise. Started in 1947, ASI is an organization of businesses and ministries run by lay Adventist church members.

With the motto "Sharing Christ in the Marketplace," ASI has approximately 1,000 members who meet annually for a convention of networking and sharing stories. Growing every year, the convention features some 250 to 300 exhibits-ministries, businesses, schools and organizations-as well as meetings and youth programs. ASI also holds regional meetings across North America.

"ASI is a group of Adventist lay people...involved in work in the United States and places all over the world who have dedicated their businesses and their ministries as a platform to share Jesus Christ in the marketplace," says Dan Houghton, president of Hart Research Center in Fallbrook, California.

"ASI is incredibly important to us as a place of spiritual renewal for fellowship with people of like mind and being a part of a group of people who put their energies together to achieve a much bigger result than any of us can do by ourselves," says Houghton, who served as president of ASI from 1997 to 1999.

"ASI is an inspiration...because of all of the focus on sharing Christ in the marketplace," says Heidi Domke, director of Young Professionals, a network of young people with the mission of inspiring, motivating and training young adults to live passionately for Christ. "I believe in the mission [of the Adventist Church] and as young professionals and young adults, we're out there working in our professions as a community and this [ASI] is an organization that has helped us to network and be supportive of that mission. [ASI] has lots of mission-focused outreach evangelism [programs] that has something happening everywhere around the world."

Dwight Hilderbrandt, former secretary-treasury for the organization and ASI member, says he appreciates ASI and what it offers. "We're all working together for a common goal," he says.

According to ASI staff, one of ASI's biggest and most successful projects the organization funds includes working with young people to help them get involved in witnessing. They have supported youth evangelism initiatives for five years now, and this year marks the largest ever--40 young people have worked in 10 different sites in New Mexico, United States, where the ASI Convention was held this year, Aug. 6 to 9. Weeks before a convention begins, young people go door-to-door in the area where the convention is held, introducing people to their faith. They hold evening programs-produced and conducted by youth--and their work culminates during the convention, where they hold a baptism for those who have committed their lives to God.

Another major project that ASI has funded, in conjunction with It Is Written, an Adventist television ministry based in Simi Valley, California, is a DVD program that assists lay people in developing religious programs on their own. Called "New Beginnings," the DVDs have been used in numerous countries all over the world.

The organization, which started under the name Association of Seventh-day Adventist Self-Supporting Institutions, can originally be credited to Ellen White, a founder of the Adventist Church. Under the direction of White, Madison College, an Adventist institution near Nashville, Tennessee, was established in 1904. White spoke about the role the college was to play in establishing a self-supporting work that would complement and challenge organizational schools.

The school, which grew and planted satellite institutions throughout the United States, served as the meeting location once a year, for 40 years, for not only schools, but sanitariums, rest homes and other Adventist organizations. The ASI Web site, www.asiministries.org, states that this laid the foundation for what is now the annual ASI International Convention.

The ASI Web site describes how the organization operates: "We recognize that our time, talents, treasures and body temple belong to God. We are stewards of these possessions. Accordingly, we believe that our vocations can and should be a ministry to aid in the advancement of the great gospel commission. We are committed to supporting the Seventh-day Adventist Church and its various outreach programs, which include health, education, evangelism, community service, family concerns and special projects."