MAYA - What Young Adults Are Looking For In Church
Young adults wanted to maintain some level of familiarity while expanding their horizons. When a young adult returns from college or comes home from a prodigal season, he or she finds comfort in the familiar faces of past sages and leaders. When I asked Charity why she was struggling with coming back to church after she returned from her time away at a Christian university, her response was, “Everything seemed different. Nothing was the same. I expected the church to be just like it was when I left. It wasn’t, it felt strange.” However, in the same conversation, Charity thought our church was “missing out on some brand-new worship songs we are singing at school.” She suggested we try and sing some of this music. Charity wanted old wine in new wineskins. She wanted familiarity and trendiness. No wonder church leaders struggle to craft the kinds of environments young adults need!
To do this meshed ministry is built on a MAYA strategy. The MAYA stage strategy was introduced by designer Raymond Lowey and MAYA is an acronym for: Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable. [1] Lowey’s industrial design firm developed projects including the logos of Exxon, Shell, the US Postal Service, as well as helping to design the Greyhound bus, railroad cars, Sears Refrigerators, the Studebaker and even Airforce One. [2] In his book, Never Leave Well Enough Alone, he explained the MAYA stage as, “a critical area at which the consumer’s desire for novelty reaches what I might call the shock zone. At that point the urge to buy reaches plateau, and sometimes evolves into a resistance to buying. It is a sort of tug of war between attraction to the new and fear of the unfamiliar.” [3] In regards to young adults specifically, Lowey advised their acceptableness to change is greater than older people and younger generations ultimately exert more influence on older generations. Individuals are attracted to the carefully crafted interplay of new and old. [4]
While his words were to industrial designers, church leaders should heed and apply his warning: “In summary, let us say that any advanced design involves risk to the manufacturer. I believe there is no alternative between taking some degree of such risk or slow but certain eventual disappearance of the firm.” [5] We adapt or we will slowly suffer creeping irrelevance.
Research in the church world supports the MAYA concept. By a nearly 2-to-1 ratio over any other option, unchurched Americans prefer church buildings that look more like medieval cathedrals than what most think of as more contemporary expressions. [6] In designing environments that help young adults practice their faith, keep the MAYA principle in mind. Radical change will attract radicals but might actually repel some young adults. At the same time, we have to take the calculated risk of change necessary to attract young adults. They need familiar innovation.
Footnotes:
[1] Raymond Loewy, Never Leave Well Enough Alone (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 278.
[2] Derek Thompson, Hitmakers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction (New York: Penguin Books, 2017), 47, 53.
[3] Loewy, Never Leave Well Enough Alone, 277-278. On page 281, Lowey suggests 30 percent of consumers react negatively. Although he concedes the number is arbitrary.
[4] Paul Hekkert reached the same conclusions in what he called the “Unified Model of Aesthetics.” He concluded that humanity balances seeking familiarity and enjoying the thrill of novelty. For a detailed explanation of Hekkert’s design aesthetics and principles of design, read his article in Psychology Science. Berghman, Michaël, and Paul Hekkert. “The Beauty of Balance – an Empirical Integration of the Unified Model of Aesthetics for Product Design”, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1765/114959.
[5] Loewy, Never Leave Well Enough Alone, 281.
[6] Ed Stetzer, Richie Stanley, and Jason Hayes, Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches that Reach Them (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2009), 132.
