Native Drums
Explore the powerful symbolism of drums in African American culture, once tools of communication and resistance during the darkest times of slavery. We confront the lingering shadows of economic exploitation and the pervasive influence of media and religion in controlling black narratives. Let’s reexamine the role of the black church and its mission to fight systemic injustices, urging a return to prophetic ministries that prioritize humanity and community over material wealth. This podcast episode is not just a reflection of the past but a call to action for the future, urging us to build a more just and liberated world.
Native Drums
Grown-ish and Gone: Why Are Generations Missing from the Church?
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Something is happening in our churches, and we can feel it in the seats, the silence, and the missing voices. We keep hearing “millennials aren’t coming,” but that phrase blurs the truth: many congregations are losing multiple generations at once, from millennials to Gen Z to school-age kids. We sat down with Pastor Nicholas Bostic to get specific about who is missing, why it matters, and why the real audience for this conversation is often the adults who shape the church experience.
We talk about what younger people actually encounter when they do show up. If someone is facing overdue rent, a cutoff notice, or the stress of raising kids with limited support, how do they hear teaching on giving, discipleship, and commitment? We explore how church communication can become “over their heads,” how tradition can unintentionally shut people out, and why clarity and compassion are not compromises, they are leadership. We also name what the church loses when young people are absent: technology skills, social media reach, fresh urgency, and the kind of honesty that helps surface real needs like depression and low self-esteem before they turn into crises.
Then we broaden the lens to leadership development. If a 38-year-old can carry major responsibility at work but still feels too young to be trusted in church leadership, what message are we sending about belonging and the future church? We close by inviting you to the Future Forum, a hands-on working session where we bring real data, interrogate assumptions, and leave with a plan to strengthen youth ministry, intergenerational ministry, and long-term church growth. Subscribe, share this with a church leader, and leave a review so more people can join the conversation.
Why Generations Are Disappearing
SPEAKER_01Greetings, everyone. My name is Napoleon Bradford, and I'm honored to be with you for another edition of Native Drums. If you've noticed lately, and this phenomenon is not germane to the Savannah Grove Church, but things are changing in our local bodies. Something's happening in our churches. If you look around, there are generations that simply don't seem to be present anymore or not to the level of engagement that they once were. Now, today's session is not to bash a generation, but to explore possibilities about what we're seeing. And to join me today, because I'm not by myself today, is my beloved brother, uh Nicholas Bostik. Nicholas Gerard Bostik. And uh I'm gonna let him introduce himself and then we're gonna jump into this conversation. Nick. Good evening.
SPEAKER_00Good evening, sir.
SPEAKER_01Hello, man.
SPEAKER_00Great to see you. Thank you so much for having me on.
SPEAKER_01And thank you for agreeing. Just tell the people, for those that don't know you, uh who you are and what you bring specifically to this conversation.
SPEAKER_00Well, again, thank you so much for having me on. Um, look forward to uh our conversation. My name is uh Nicholas Vostik, Pastor Nick, as uh fetchly people call me, um, from Columbia, South Carolina, um, just doing the work of the ministry, been working with youth um for numerous years, um, have a chance to be able to help out with the youth department um and other areas. And I just look forward to that. Um, so even as we talk about the topical conversation tonight, um, what I can bring to the table is just my leadership and youth leadership and ministry um all together, and just hoping that we can bring awareness, help hopefully we can bring some light um to shed on this this conversation that it just needs to be had, you know. Uh there's no ifs, ands or buts about it because the youth is our future. Matter of fact, uh the youth is our present. You know, they're so important that we are raising them up the right way, rearing them in the right direction. So um I'm honored to be here. And and again, what we can bring to the table, I believe, is limitless as we do the work for the Lord.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. So let's kick this thing off.
Who We Are Really Talking To
SPEAKER_01For the longest in the church, we've been hearing about this term millennials. Millennials are missing, millennials are missing their millennial conferences. But but let's frame this properly for the audience that is watching. What was let's let's really make this plain. Tell us a little bit about the real audiences that are missing.
SPEAKER_00The the real audience that is missing is really um the understanding of why our children are missing. So the audience that we need to address is not necessarily the youth, uh, but it's the older generation, those that are currently in the church, because we we have to look at not the question of why they're missing, um, but the reason or or more in depth is what are we doing that may either push them out or not pull them in? Um, so our audience is really those that are currently in the church. What do we need to do to bring the outsiders, um, especially our youth to the church? How can we not only bring them but keep them?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love it. I think I think also we really need to quantify these groups, right? Because we say millennials if it's a blanket term, but to be honest, millennials are probably 46 to about 30, 31, right? So they're not the children, right? After millennials, you got a whole generation Z who used to be the youngsters, but they're 29 to about 18, maybe 15, right? That that's a wide group, and then after that, you got Generation Alpha, uh, who are um currently our school age children, right? But as of 2026, you got generation beta that is being born. So anytime you hear churches, and I'm just saying this, and this is no shade, right? But anytime you say millennial, we're missing the millennials, what you're really saying is we're missing almost three generations.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Exactly, right? So um, and that's important, right, Nick, because I I think that you you're working with the youth, but if you're not careful, they will try to put all generations on you as if you're responsible for all generations, right?
SPEAKER_00Right, right. Exactly. Um you you you said it right, and the breakdown, a lot of times we we like you said, we have to quantify it because a lot of times we we hear youth, uh, but we have to understand that they have different mindsets um at those different ages. What you can do to the millennials, you can't necessarily do to Generation Alpha because they're not going to receive it the correct way or the rate, the way that you meant it to uh be received. So we have to have the mindset of what uh what we're bringing to the table, what type of ideas, what type of strategies, uh, what what curriculums um that we're putting in place because we have to understand that we have to be flexible. We have to reach them where they are. You know, they're not always going to gravitate um to the traditional uh church setting or church atmosphere. We have to meet them where they are and let them know that church is for all ages, it's not just for the older people or the season uh people, church is for all ages. So, what are we doing to make sure they're aware of that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's good. That's good.
Meeting Real Life At Church
SPEAKER_01I think also the way we approach it, and you mentioned this earlier. The question is not why are they why they won't come to church? The question then becomes, and you just said this, um, what are they encountering when they come? Right, are they getting what they need when they come? Are they is it speaking to them? Right because times have changed, absolutely, right? Situations are different. Karen, my wife, was sending me this, she sent me this Bible study the other day that had this crucial question, right? It was the question was this um if uh your lights were two days from being cut off, your rent was due, how much would tithing be a priority? Now, for the old church, right, they they they wouldn't even talk about that because they they may not they may not even want to deal with the reality of that Jesus will work them out, right? That Jesus working out, what's the song? Um, no, you got a light bill, dude. Work it out, telephone just connected, waiting on your next paycheck. Some some senior saints, not to their knock, but they're so far removed from the struggles of a 23-year-old single parent of two. Right, right. They're so removed of from the struggles of a of a 40-year-old grandmother who also has a child that's about the same age as their grandchildren. Right. So I think um one of the things that we may wrestle with or may have to wrestle with is how do we make the situations that these generations are going through understandable to a church that's trying to program for them without really considering them.
SPEAKER_00Right, right, right. Because even as you talked about the tithing, and and let's be real, you know, we grew up understanding the concepts, understanding the basics. Um, we know that the Bible, the basic instructions will before leaving Earth, but a lot of our younger people, they don't understand the basics. They don't under, they don't have that true foundation. So you're saying the the senior saints, you know, with their their situations with tithing and things of that nature. But we gotta be we gotta be honest with ourselves. A lot of our young people don't even know what tithing is, they don't understand the concept, they don't understand the principle of the matter because they're either not in church enough or they're not getting the understanding or the teaching of it properly. Maybe the churches are teaching it, but they may be teaching it over their heads, so they're not understanding um the breakdown or the reality of it all. So it's it's it's how are we communicating to our young people? You know, the message is there, the message could be strictly from the Bible, but how is it being taught? How is it being broken down? How is it being um for the young people to be able to receive on the level that they need it to be um delivered?
SPEAKER_01That's that's good, that's
Let Them Speak And Lead
SPEAKER_01real good. That's real good. I I was talking to a young girl, um, she's a dynamic young girl, as a matter of fact, she is a techie, she's a techie, she she has an independent YouTube page, she does TikTok, she will be considered an influencer. She carries not only her cell phone, but she carries her camera around and she uploads her videos and stuff directly from her camera to her TikTok Instagram. And she asked her grandmother one day about why they weren't why why there weren't more children and leadership at the church that her grandmothers attends. And she said, children, you're just that you're in a child, you're a child, and you need to stay in a child's place. Right. Here's my question. Um what do you think the church is missing by not having access to these generations that are missing? What what are what do you think the church is missing out on?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think the church is missing out on so much that they don't even realize the magnitude of it. Um, we could we could have a whole segment on everything that the church is missing out on. But if you if you try to do a broader scope on it, some of the things that the church is missing out is the the savviness of young people, the transparency of them, the knowledge of uh technical tools of the trade, uh, if you will. There's so much now where we're getting stuff from AI, chat GPT. Um, there's so much uh just avenues that we can reach so many more people. Um, and and it's just so easy for the young people. It's so easy for them to pick up a phone, pick up a computer, uh, iPad, tablet, whatever, and just really just be social with it, you know, get information out there. So I think that on when you look at the the reality of the secular side, um, their knowledge of the tech and technology uh is so grasped, but also their mindset of how they think. Um we were brought up in a generation where uh things took time. We understood you know the cooking process, baking. You couldn't just throw something together and it was just instantly done. Uh young people today, they they're more on that instant. They want to see results now, they want to see things happen. Um, I heard a lot of people say they're the microwave generation. They want to air fryer.
SPEAKER_01They're the airfryer.
SPEAKER_00They want it quick and easy, but their mindset is like that, not just with that analogy. Um, they want results and they're willing to do stuff to see results right then and there. So their eagerness to learn, their eagerness, eagerness to do things, um, is really it could help catapult a church because they're they're when they do stuff, they're all in. Um, and I believe that that's one of the things that um we're taking away from them is because when they come to church, they feel like, like you said, they have to stay in a child's place. They don't have a voice. They feel like they don't really belong there. They feel like you know they're just forced to come, or it's just something that my parents go to and now I'm I'm getting drugged there. But I believe that we need to get to a place where they understand that church is for everybody, especially them. They need to understand that they do have a voice, they need to understand that they are somebody that's that that should be seen, that should be um heard. And maybe they don't know all the answers, but let's hear what's on their heart, let's hear what's on their mind, let's hear what's bothering them so that we can help answer or help those problems or those situations. Because too many times they are quiet. So we don't know what they're going through, we don't know what's happening. That's why we hear so many different cases of suicide or um you know, joining gangs or running away, or you know, uh having situations with self-um uh depression, uh low self-esteem, things of that nature, because we don't hear their voice enough. Um, and in order to really reach their heart, we need to hear what's on their mind, hear what comes out of their mouth.
SPEAKER_01That's good.
When Adults Block Young Leadership
SPEAKER_01And I know that your your proclivity is youth, but let's let's broaden the scope. Um because we just said that Generation Z is 18 to about 29 30. Right, right, right. So let's let's let's quantify this, let's put this into perspective. And then uh millennials are about 30 to about 45. So they're not allowed to be in leadership in the church, right? If you really look at, and I wouldn't just say Savannah Grove, I'd say a lot of churches, there are 38-year-olds who are at the age of retirement from the military, but still aren't old enough in the church's eyes to be a deacon or a trustee, right? So, what does that say? We talk about what what I can be valued at my job enough to make rank, right? Enlisted in a 20-year period will probably retire somewhere between a sergeant first class, master sergeant, possibly uh sergeant major, right? Uh in on the officer side, they'll probably make colonel, but in the church, they're regulated to working with the youth ministry or a junior deacon. Right? Um so what possibly could the absence of these generations be saying to the church? What could their absence be saying?
SPEAKER_00Well, and in all actuality, what's being said is that we have no future church. We have no no church of tomorrow because we're not raising up that next generation to take over. We have to understand that we can't be set in our in our old ways, we can't be sitting set in tradition, we can't be set in, oh, they're not old enough, they're not mature enough. Uh, what we're doing is we're losing out on our churches, and we we we now we question why the churches are empty with their youth, because they don't have enough, say, or they don't have enough uh time or or or training or whatever to be in those positions, like you spoke about. Um, whether it's a deacon, whether it's a pastor, whether it's an elder, whether it's a missionary, trustee, whatever the case is, we have to start training them and really putting that responsibility and just having that mindset that we can trust them um to do what they need to do. Because none of us are perfect. We make mistakes, and even at an older age, you know, we can make mistakes in that position. So we have to be more uh reliable on them, we have to put more faith, more trust. And if we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, we're gonna help rear them in the right direction, we're gonna help raise them. But I think one of the things is we have to we have to examine ourselves. Um, a lot of times in the churches, the leadership, uh whoever you know has the say or calling or you know, raising up that next group, we have to examine ourselves. Are we training that generation properly? Are we giving them enough uh leeway? Are we allowing them to get their foot in the door and really motivating them to want to be in those positions? Because I don't think we do enough um to warrant them, say, hey, I want to be in the church, I want to do this, I want to work. We don't give them that satisfaction. And because of that, they're like, Well, I don't belong in the church. I I have no reason. If we begin to give them assignments, if we begin to give them positions, when we begin to give them um say in the matter, they're gonna feel like church is their home, church belongs to them as well, that they are actually a part of the body of Christ. Right now, they a lot of times they feel like they're on the outside looking in, but we need to bring them in that inner circle and train them up, whether it's not just a youth day and they're being that junior deacon or that junior usher or whatever, but really solidify their place in the church and give them those roles and responsibilities. And if they fall, guess what? We need to be right there to pick them up. We need to be right there in a loving manner, uh, in a in a in a graceful, a graceful and merciful manner to say, hey, you made a mistake. We're not we're not perfect, but we're striving for for uh perfection. So even though we make mistakes, be there to help lead them, to help guide them, to help get them back on the right path. That's what we have to do is really mold and shape our future so they're ready to take on their present. And that's how the church grows, and that's how the church continues um to flourish.
Future Forum Details And Next Steps
SPEAKER_01Man, Nick, listen. So you segue perfectly into how we're gonna wrap this thing up, and we're gonna wrap this up by announcing that the examination you just talked about is what we are about to bring to the Florence area next weekend. So August 22nd, we are hosting this this uh this conference, this symposium, this summit called the Future Forum. Generation grown-ish, yes, sir. Right? So so tell them a little bit about it, Nick.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's like you said, it's gonna be next Saturday, August 22nd. It's gonna be 9 a.m. at Savannah Grove Baptist Church. Um, listen, it's gonna be amazing. Uh, under the direction of Dr. Raf Candy, we're going to have Continental Breakfast. Um, we'll also have lunch being provided for those. So get you get your churches. Um, we're we're inviting churches, we're inviting uh pastors, we're inviting leadership, we're inviting youth pastors, not just leadership, but we want members to come as well because listen, it's it takes a village, all right, not just to raise a child, but to raise a child in the church to make sure that they are rooted and grounded and connected in the Holy Spirit. So it's for any and everybody that wants to come out, but especially those that have a voice in the church, because we really want to take a deep look, not To throw blame, blame, or shade, or anything like that, but what can we do to help bring it? It's not always the fault of the children. What are we doing to want them to come in? What are we doing to keep them once they do come? Um, so generation growners, this this uh future forum is going to be amazing again. 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. If you don't know the address, Savannah Grove Baptist Church is on 2620 Alligator Road in Effingham, South Carolina, 29541. So register today, call the church, get your information. We want you there. And there's no registration cost, it is absolutely free. Yes, I said absolutely free. Um, only thing if you want to purchase lunch, um, that's the only cost that you have. What the Continental Breakfast uh will be just that. It will be um complimentary and it's going to be an amazing time. We're gonna have groups conversation, we're gonna have breakout conversation. It's something for us all to learn and grow to make sure our future is bright with our young people.
SPEAKER_01That's good, that's good. And I just want to add, it's not a forum, it's not a seminar. This is a working session. So we are inviting you to bring your data, right? Bring your attendance, bring your roles, right? We're gonna listen, we're gonna interrogate, we're gonna have discussions where we interrogate assumptions and we look at our own infrastructures because we know that no church is the same, right? No church is the same, but there are indicators and areas within each of our bodies, each of our local bodies that can be improved, that can be strengthened, that can be evaluated. So we're gonna introduce some frameworks and we're gonna provide space for there to be some very intense dialogue, and we're gonna leave with the plan. We're gonna leave with the plan. So, again, that's this Saturday, the 22nd. Um so today's native drum was to introduce the idea. Saturday's future forum is to really sit with it, and then you will hear some more conversations after that in future native drums as we have conversations with these very populations, these very with the very populations we're talking about. Because again, we can only plan so much for them until it's time for us to really have a conversation with them so they can tell us what they really need. But it starts with our work this weekend, amen.
Final Charge And Closing Prayer
SPEAKER_01Man, give them some closing words. Thank you for being on. Um, thank you for being uh such an amazing um visionary, such an amazing leader uh of this movement. Um, just just give the people some parting words and uh make sure they know that they need to be there this Saturday.
SPEAKER_00Amen. Amen. Thank you so much again, Pastor, for having me on. It's been truly an honor. Um, if I if I had anything to leave, uh just make sure we realize that our future is now. Um, our future is our young people, our future is those that are up and coming. But for in order for them to take over, we have to train them and rear them in the right direction now. So if I could, Pastor, I just want to leave uh and with a closing prayer because I believe that anytime we talk about um church, anytime we talk about you, we have to put God in it. Um, and we want him to be the center of everything, and we just want his glory to manifest, not only over um the future form, not only over generation grownish, but all churches alike because ultimately we all have the same mindset as we want to build the kingdom of God and tear down the walls of darkness. So I just want to pray right quick, Pastor Father. We love you and we thank you for any and everybody that's going to tune in to this session of Native Drum. Father, we just thank you for the great work that's happening right here at Savannah Grove Baptist Church. Father, we thank you for the churches of light. Father, even in this uh segment that's happening this Saturday on August 22nd, Father, we just pray that it will be a mighty move, that you will open our eyes, our ears, our hearts to receive, unlock some doors, um, some things that's been a mystery to us, that we really couldn't figure out how to get our young people involved, how to build our churches, to how to um just really gravitate more to you. But Father, we ask that you will help us in a mighty way. Father, we thank you for those that are even listening now. Father, we ask that you will come into their hearts, make them over again as we accept you as our Lord and our personal savior. So, as anybody that needs to know you better for themselves or just do a self-evaluation to be a better Krishna, a better believer, or just a better person in general. We thank you for that in the name of Jesus. We thank you for the great impact and the results that we will see from this Saturday's event. We give your name all glory, honor, and praise in Jesus' name. Amen.
SPEAKER_01Amen. Listen, y'all be blessed. We love you to God be the glory. Good night. Good night.
