Unintended Consequences: How the “relevant” church and segregating youth is killing Christianity.
I recently spent six-months doing a rotation as a hospital chaplain. One day I received a page (Yes, hospitals actually still use pagers). Chaplains are generally called to the rooms of people who look ill: People gray with kidney disease, or yellow with liver failure, discouraged amputees, nervous cancer patients. In this room, however, was a strikingly attractive 23 year-old young lady sitting up cheerfully in the hospital bed, holding her infant daughter and chatting with family and friends.
Confused, I stepped outside and asked her nurse, “Why did I get paged to her room?”
“Oh, she looks fabulous. She also feels great and is asking to go home,” the nurse said.
“…And you are calling me because?” I asked in confusion.
The nurse looked me directly in the eye and said: “Because we will be disconnecting her from life support in three days and you will be doing her funeral in four.”
The young lady had taken too much Tylenol. She looked and acted fine. She even felt fine, but she was in full-blown liver failure. She was dying and couldn’t bring herself to accept the diagnosis.
Today I have the sense that we are at the same place in the church. The church may look healthy on the outside, but it has swallowed the fatal pills. The evidence is stacking up: the church is dying and, for the most part, we are refusing the diagnosis.
What evidence? Take a gander at these two shocking items:
1. 20-30 year olds attend church at 1/2 the rate of their parents and ¼ the rate of their grandparents. Think about the implication for those of us in youth ministry: Thousands of us have invested our lives in reproducing faith in the next generation and the group we were tasked with reaching left the church when they left us.
2. 61% of churched high school students graduate and never go back! (Time Magazine, 2009) Even worse: 78% to 88% of those in youth programs today will leave church, most to never return. (Lifeway, 2010) Please read those last two statistics again. Ask yourself why attending a church with nothing seems to be more effective at retaining youth than our youth programs.
We look at our youth group now and we feel good. But the youth group of today is the church of tomorrow, and study after study after study suggests that what we are building for the future is…
…empty churches.
We build big groups and count “decisions for Christ,” but the Great Commission is not to get kids to make decisions for Jesus but to make disciples for Him. We all want to make Christians for life, not just for high school. We have invested heavily in youth ministry with our lives specifically in order engage youth in the church. Why do we have such a low return on our investment?
What are we doing in our Youth Ministries that might be making people less likely to attend church as an adult?
What is the “pill” we have overdosed on? I believe it is “preference.” We have embraced the idea of market-driven youth ministry. Unfortunately, giving people what they “prefer” is a road, that once you go down it, has no end. Tim Elmore in his 2010 book entitled Generation iY calls this “the overindulged Generation.” They ask for more and more, and we give it to them. And more and more the power of God is substituted for market-driven experience. In an effort to give people something “attractive” and “relevant” we embraced novel new methods in youth ministry, that 20 years later are having a powerful shaping effect on the entire church. Here are the marks of being market-driven; Which are hallmarks of your ministry?
- Segregation. We bought into the idea that youth should be segregated from the family and the rest of the church. It started with youth rooms, and then we moved to “youth services.” We ghettoized our children! (After all, we are cooler than the older people in “big church”. And parents? Who wants their parents in their youth group?) Be honest: Have you ever thought you know more than your your student’s parents? Have you ever thought your youth group was cooler than “big church”?
- Big = effective. Big is (by definition) program driven: Less personal, lower commitment; a cultural and social thing as much as a spiritual thing. Are those the values that we actually hold?
- More programs attended = stronger disciples. The inventers of this idea, Willow Creek, in suburban Chicago, publically repudiated this several years ago. They discovered that there was no correlation between the number of meetings attended and people’s spiritual maturity. They learned the lesson. Will we?
- Christian replacementism. We developed a Christian version of everything the world offers: Christian bands, novels, schools, soccer leagues, t-shirts. We created the perfect Christian bubble.
- Cultural “relevance” over transformation.We imitated our culture’s most successful gathering places in an effort to be “relevant.” Reflect on the Sunday “experience” at most Big-box churches:
- Concert hall (worship)
- Comedy club (sermon)
- Coffee house (foyer)
And what about Transformation? Is that not missing from these models? Where is a sense of the holy?
6. Professionalization. If we do know an unbeliever, we don’t need to share Christ with them, we have pastors to do that. We invite them to something… to an “inviter” event… we invite them to our “Christian” subculture.
7. “McDonald’s-ization” vs. Contextualization: It is no longer our own vision and passion. We purchase it as a package from today’s biggest going mega-church. It is almost like a “franchise fee” from Saddleback or The Resurgence.
8. Attractional over missional. When our greatest value is butts in pews we embrace attractional models. Rather than embrace Paul’s Ephesians 4 model in which ministry gifts are given by God to “equip the saints” we have developed a top-down hierarchy aimed at filling buildings. This leaves us with Sunday “church” an experience for the unchurched, with God-centered worship of the Almighty relegated to the periphery and leading of the body of Christ to greater spiritual power and sanctification to untrained small group leaders.
Does not all of this work together as a package to leave us with churches full of empty people?
Here is an example: Your church. Does it look like this?
If you look closely, you will see the photo on the right is of a nightclub, rather than a church. Can you see what I mean about “relevance” and the clean Christian version of what the world offers? Your youth room is a pretty good indicator of what your church will look like 15 years from now. Because of the principle “What you win them with, you win them to,” your students today will expect their adult church to look like your youth room.
In summary, “Market Driven” youth ministry gave students a youth group that looks like them, does activities they prefer, sings songs they like, and preaches on subjects they are interested in. It is a ministry of preference. And, with their feet, young adults are saying…
…“Bye-bye.”
What might we do instead? The opposite of giving people what they want is to give them what they need. The beauty is that Christianity already knows how to do this.
Once upon a time our faith thrived in a non-Christian empire. It took less than 300 years for 11 scared dudes to take over the most powerful empire the world had ever seen. How did they do it? Where we have opted for a relevant, homogenously grouped, segregated, attractional professionalized model; the early church did it with a multi-ethnic, multi-social class, seeker INsensitive church. Worship was filled with sacrament and symbol. It engaged the believing community in the Christian narrative. This worship was so God-directed and insider-shaping that in the early church non-Christians were asked to leave the building before communion! With what effect? From that fellowship of the transformed, the church went out to the highways and byways loving and serving the least, last and lost. In that body of Christ, Christians shared their faith with Romans 1:16 boldness, served the poor with abandon, fed widows and took orphans into their homes. The world noticed. We went to them in love rather than invited them to our event.
The beauty of where we are today is that, unlike the girl in the hospital bed, our fatal pill could still be rejected. It is not too late. We can leave the culture-centered models we have been following for more Christ-centered ones. More ancient ones. More rooted ones. And the most beautiful thing is that students actually enjoy them.
So many have commented on this post in the last month that I did a follow-up: O Yeah! And other things I wish I would have said on “Cool Church.”
the gospel side 
The market-driven youth ministry also has the effect of writing my small-church off from the start. We are unable (financially and talent-wise) to be a market driven church, even if we wanted to be. When “big” is the measurement of success (instead of sanctification), a small church that is not growing in numbers is a failure. But our “little” church loves God and people. We have seen teens stay and become part of the body. We see people come under conviction and get right or walk away. We see growth. We reach out to the community. Most of all, we are complete in Christ, and we’re just starting to understand what that means. There are days I do wrestle with discouragement or envy towards large ministries, but most days I’m in my right mind and am just thankful God’s using us for His glory.
Underneath all the glitz and glamor, I hear this message being taught to our young people:
1. God is good, but
2. You’re not good enough, so try harder.
3. Don’t have sex.
Who’s coming back for more of that?
You’re right, we need to get back to the gospel message, which is:
1. God is good, and
2. He loves you so much that He sent His Son to show you how to live.
3. Follow in His footsteps.
It is worth noting that churches, initially, were AGAINST segrated youth groups forming up. Their reason? Because then parents would be “off the hook” for discipling their own children–and the churches back then KNEW this would happen. And what do we do? We drop our kids off at nursery/youth group and just pray that those in charge there would have the right influence in their lives. Why not BE the right influence in their lives??? I agree with this article 100% and even would go further with the truth of it all. The truth is–that it is, according to God’s word–the responsibility of parents to train up their children. Nowhere in His word does God mention separating the youth from the adults and small children for church. All came TOGETHER. And we can even just look back culturally and see that churches were multi-generational–during worship and preaching! But do take note that the church fought against the movement of youth groups at first! That says something we should listen to!
Thanks for weighing in “Whohears.”
Were they against segregated or just against spending money for leadership?
I agree with you in part: Surely parents have the first-line of spiritual responsibility. If there is a place the church has uber-failed, it is resourcing parents to lead in the home.
However, I would never say that there is no place for age-appropriate groupings. I am merely arguing against taking kids out of the big church. There are 166.5 other hours of the week to meet with people in age appropriate grouping. Greg Stier wrote a good defense of youth ministry in Group Mag. It was republished on youthworker.com: http://www.youthministry.com/articles/leadership/defense-youth-ministry
It is worth a read.
Interestingly, the founder of Young Life started the ministry when the senior pastor told a young seminarian, “The 2000 people in this church I can handle. And the 200 youth in the church, I can handle them as well. But out my window is the local high school. There are 1500 unchurched kids out there. See what you can do about interesting them in Christ.” Most of us in ministry today would never think we can handle 2000 people. We would be hiring a team.
Hey, I’m in my mid-20s and am going through a time of spiritual renewal. I was inspired by various things to consider if my spirituality was fake, and to some extent, it was. One of those things was to hear from one of my Christian friends that he wasn’t going to church because of all the fakeness there. Most of the commenters here, young and old, identify either tradition, newfangledness, or the content of the teaching of our unsuccessful churches as being fake. We’re all authenticity-seekers, to some extent. Now, I think fakeness is inherent in being an immature Christian. What our young (and old) authenticity-seekers are going for is exactly what they lack (although they may not realize it). They’re disappointed because the church isn’t challenging them to be real. I don’t know the solution completely, but perhaps an increased emphasis on Job, Ecclesiastes, Psalms and Jacob wrestling with God would help. Jesus died for authenticity’s sake as well as to make it right for God to forgive us: because of his awful death you can yell at God (let out your moaning Job 6:26 wind) and still always forgive him, and have as much communion as Jesus has with the Father.
Hi James,
I am glad to hear of your renewal. “Leaving behind childish things,” as Paul says, is a very good thing. The fight for authenticity is a beautiful thing. You tread on the path the giants of the faith fought their way down. As my Aussie friends say, “Good on ya!”
I would caution against thinking that we have “as much communion as Jesus has with the Father.” None of us was uncreated and only begotten. None of us has lived a life in which the Father’s presence was always known. We spend much more of our lives in Ps. 22: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” We see Jesus in this place only one time-on the cross with the totality of sin blocking his view of his Father. Most of us spend most of our lives in that clouding.
Btw, Way to go reading the hard stuff!
God bless you with intimacy with Christ as you pursue an authentic walk with him.
Hi James,
I was just re-reading your reply. You spoke about authenticity and how both too old and too new were perceived as fake. That is really fascinating to me. I am an old guy (or maybe it’s my background from a group that didn’t do fake very well), so I am curious: what does authentic look like? How do you know it when you see it? How is it different from preference? I have worked with inner-city folks for a long time. Some times “real” is rude? What is “authentic” core values and convictions and ways if relating to the world?
i posted a reply on episcopal cafe, but can’t find it to repost here. so i’ll just add a point i should have added there:
i find it fascinating where you are laying the blame. and like so many religious have failed to follow the most basic scientific principles. the first being that correlation does not equal causation. (this unwillingness to approach data rationally is one of the reasons people leave.)
ironically, its a symptom of the desire to become relevant. you use maths, sciences (god of the gaps anyone?), and other forms of scientific rationality in order to be current with the times. yet you’re ability to handle the data in a scientific rather than a reactive manner makes it all the more regrettable.
its pretty straightforward. all one would need to create the ‘meaningful’ statistics they have given you is enough data and a willingness to parse it into what one thinks are causal relationships, without once considering that there might be other social forces at work here.
as for those forces, i find it equally fascinating that no one here has referred to the warnings given back as far as the 1950s, i believe, that the tide of secularism which was then overtaking europe would eventually hit here. so its taken 50 years instead of 10 or 20. while the wave of fundamentalist fervor might lead some to believe that religion is on the rebound, extremism of any kind is more often a reaction, not a sign of regrowth, but the last gasp of a sinking ship.
as a christian and a former(?) youth minister it would make sense, only within the logic of anselmian atonement, that you, your work, your colleagues, are all guilty of some great transgression that led the church astray and ran aground the faith of so many potential souls for christ. pause for just a moment, analyze the data in a more scientific manner, quit looking for a scapegoat (including yourself), and tell me if you can’t see a much larger trend developing here in the West?
What is the “larger trend” you are thinking of Carl? Since I’m a guy–my wife will confirm, I just can’t read minds as well as I used to ; ) Seriously, I would like to hear more…
sorry, i just ‘found’ your reply. i hope that some of my later posts cleared up what i was driving at… if not feel free to ask again. i can be a bit obtuse at times 🙂
Hey Matt! Great post. I really do believe there is a disconnect happening; however, I believe there are many youth ministers, like myself, who understand bigger isn’t always better, or that just because a student is plugged into a small group, doesn’t mean they’re actually being “discipled.” I do believe what you mentioned as reasons why this gap is missing are symptoms of the real problem, which is churches not reaching out to this age group. I think when the church as a whole accepts this and starts doing something about it, the statistic will drop. I don’t normally post links in my comments, but I did write a post about this and how it can shape the future of youth ministry. http://www.youthmin.org/2012/09/03/the-future-of-student-ministry-and-how-we-stop-students-from-leaving-the-church/
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Most of the things mentioned here are symptoms, not causes. They look like causes for the problem of the mass exodus from the church because we lose sight of spiritual realities. The truth is, we have abandoned preaching in-depth truth about who God is. It is a bit arrogant to make ourselves as church leaders to be so important that we think we are completely responsible by our programming for the mass exodus. The truth is, they have been taught evolution in schools and colleges and can’t think properly about the Christian Faith. They have been given wrong ideas about truth and reality and think experience is the way to truth, and that you find meaning in life by making your own choices. The preaching nowadays is not about God’s nature – infinite, without size or shape, all-knowing, all-good, holy, righteous. Instead He is a big “babysitter” in the sky who wants to gives us freedom to make our own choices. Actually we should be preaching the Cross – i.e. the call of Jesus is, leave the world, leave your “options and preferences”, come and die with Me on the cross, and experience new life by My power through the Holy Spirit. Then there is the matter of sexual sin. Nothing like sexual immorality, impure books and movies, revealing clothing, etc to cloud the mind and harden the heart. Youth Pastors are not preaching that God will punish Christians who sin sexually. So whats happening? Well, God is punishing young Christians for sinning sexually. And pastors are standing by without confronting it. Another big one is that fathers have left the scene spiritually, and mothers are leading homes instead of the other way around. Pastors do not confront the disrespect that teens have for their parents. Church is a place for babysitting basically, but not for “instruction & reproof (correction)” 1 Tim 3:16. When we start good theology to 13yr olds, and preach that “judgement will begin in the house of God” 1 Peter 4:17, and that “the house of God” includes teenagers – and that there is a new Kingdom and new World coming for those who will forsake their entitlements, preferences, options, yes, even learn to hate their own life in order to become a disciple of the Son of God, then we will see something genuine happen.
My thoughts exactly!!! it is not the youth groups causing people to leave, but the lack of involvement in the homes, spiritually speaking. Parents are laying their responsibility on the teachers in the church,and when their child rebels, it is the churches fault! I think parents need to take some responsibility for not teaching and training their own kids like Deut. 6 instructs us to do. Kids are not seeing the gospel displayed in their own home, by the way they see their parents behaving, the kids are setting back and seeing it “doesn’t work.” Parents are not living out their faith in front of their kids, and explaining to them how God is working in their own lives, so they are not knowing how God could ever work in their life as well. They see self consumed parents, and our self indulgence to their kids thinking they are helping their kids, and instead giving them an entitlement attitude. When the kids leave the church they expect the church to cater to them, like their own parents did. They don’t expect it to be any different. After all they have been the center of the universe, so shouldn’t the church make them the center too? This is why they leave, and church hop until they find a church that will give them what they want, instead of looking for a church that they can be used of the Lord to give of their spiritual gifts. We have a taker mentality in the younger generation, because they have been entertained by their parents, and then entertained by the church. When they leave the youth and go looking for a church as adults, they are expecting the same thing. We are living in the last days, where men will be lovers of pleasure, and lovers of themselves, rather then of God. Why should this be a surprise to us? We think we can undo the indoctrination of Secular humanism that is taught 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, and then Expect our measly 1 hour Youth service to undo all the garbage they have been fed all week long? Ps. 1 says that blessed are those who sit NOT in the counsel of the ungodly, but yet that is what we are doing by sitting our kids for 8 hours a day in a secular humanistic school system, and then wonder why they are denying the faith? So, then we blame the church… Really? I think the church has dropped the ball in many ways too, by not teaching the full counsel of God, and watering down the message to tickle the ears of the hearer. So help the preachers who do that, but it can’t lie squarely on the church, I do believe there are some other issue to consider. Parents need to take responsibility of what their kids are taking in, and feeding their kids minds with.
Well, I have this to say…
I knew all this stuff was going on about 5-7 years ago. I grew up in a decent youth group, great youth leader, but at 16 I already saw what was happening to my friends/spiritual mentors that were older than me. Right around 50% then were continuing in the church. Then came my turn to graduate. Again, with my little group, we held the bar at 50%. Not awful compared to your numbers and statistics, but I saw, at 16, in 2006, that we are not taught commitment to Christ, nor about how to disciple others and lead a life of example in all of that. It’s lost in the American culture that churches have tried to follow. And truthfully, our minister did a good job of these things, truly, but it’s so hard for it to take root in the heart. (See my post script for thoughts on that.)
I went on to a Christian university, got my degree in Youth Ministry myself (I’m no angel here, I made huge blunders in college) and heard all of the stuff you’ve mentioned in this blog in all my ministry classes. And I’ve heard them in churches since graduating in 2010. Not to be too rude, but this is old news by about 5 years, at least! I’m sure you know, as you’ve been doing youth ministry for longer than that. And, as most of your readers probably know too, as they’re mostly the Christians who listen AND act. But we need more action. I guess, you’re catching me on the raw end of 5 years where I’ve heard all this talk and seen little change. I’ve advocated for my ministry to always be one to instill LIFE commitments to Christ, but truthfully, I don’t know how to do it and am learning. And I know that there will never be ONE way to do it, but we need to stop just talking about it and do something about it. I hope that’s what you tell people. I’m in Lebanon working at an orphanage now and I’m trying to learn how to pass this on. I’ve only been here a month and am learning lots of things, but it is my top priority, with all the children and teens and people, to encourage them to know Christ and to know that He is eternally committed to them, thus they should be committed to Him.
We just got done playing a game of basketball with the older boys here (age 15-19) and I’m gonna take a page out of my asinine, jerk of an arrogant jock attitude that I secretly harbor, and use it in the Kingdom: “Enough talk, just play.” (Not intended for you Matt, but for others that haven’t heard. I agree with you and know you’re doing your part.)
P.S. In the parable of the sower, only one seed of 4 fell on good soil… Not an encouraging statistic either… But when a crop does grow, it is bountiful and gives us reason to be thankful.
mvoss24, thanks for weighing in. How encouraging to hear that you are giving your life away in Lebanon. God be with you. You are right, nothing new here. It actually surprised me that this got so much interest. It is actually a summary of a seminar I did for Urban Youth Workers Institute 3 years ago. I was surprised that people thought it was new then. There was a group talking about this 25 years ago. They were on the front end predicting where we would be today. I have been working with youth since 1983, so I have seen a lot, and contributed to the problem. I do think there are ways forward, and I do think the parable of the sower gives us some good expectations. I have some very detailed things I advocate. Many of those come from my experience and passion for doing youth ministry the last 10 years in an urban, multi-ethnic, mostly poverty context, so they may not all translate.
Great article and great comments. Sometimes being cool is cold! The church has been driving off the track for some time. As a senior pastor, I have seen tremendous change over the years in one’s spirituality. It is one major contributor to how things are. It has always been a problem. Some hide their lack of it better than others. We certainly have created a mess for ourselves. With so much perceived deprivation, loss of self-controls, willfill negligence of divine guidance, selfish motives, rebellion, modification of His Word and words, and more, it’s no wonder that parents can’t speak with credibility, children can’t respect another’s point of view without spelling out hyprocrite in their minds and socieity considers their license to do as they please, because by-at-large, the church has been disobedient. We have abandoned Jesus because it’s too hard to follow the rules. We have abandoned Jesus because it’s easier to feed fleshly desire. What we hear in the church houses is not enough for a world at loss. And who wants to hear the morality police anyway is their worldly logic. Well, the good news is that God is still in charge! His Son is still reaching out and His Spirit can still guide us. An organization falls or rises on it’s leadership. In so many cases, preachers need to confess their lack of fulfilling their true biblical calling. Not all, but many preachers have let down their guard for enormous salaries, comfortable living at the expense of spiritual sacrifice. They have capitulated their fear of God for the sake of keeping members. They have given in to what people want instead of preaching what they need to hear. So many men and women of the cloth have led the church and influenced socieity to go down a cultural spiral that is hard to undo anytime soon. We copy other churches methods instead of imprinting God’s ways into our hearts, minds and souls. Thank God for humble spiritual men and women, that are holding on to Jesus, proclaiming Jesus and discipling and equipping the saints to stand on their own two feet for the church of the future. Thank God for spiritual leaders that teach that you don’t need all the man-made attachments in church to grow in Christ. God has said that “He is a jealous God”. Let’s retool our passions, refocus on God priorities and not “me” priorities. Let’s detox ourselves from popular cultural toxins. Let’s get excited about God and leading people to Jesus and not some popular song, or arbitrary condition or human that we think makes us feel that we have grown into spiritual maturity. Let’s become Christ saturated Christians for the cause of Cross! Let’s confess our shorcomings and move on, don’t look and don’t go back! People need Jesus first, then us.
Amen, Hector! Obviously you have been thinking on these things for some time. How do you, as a senior pastor, resist the urge to give people what they want rather than what the Scriptures say we need? How do you help your people see that what they say they want and what takes them deeper might be different? God bless you in your ministry.
I agree with some things in this post not all, so I would like to share my thoughts on what I don’t agree with along with some other thoughts:
It is not a sin to be relevant to today’s culture. We don’t live in the first century we live in 2012. Changing the style of something so people ‘get’ it or would be interested in it is not wrong, especially if it ultimately brings the person closer to God. Jesus told stories to people when He was on the earth using examples that were relevant to the listeners experiences in that time. How is using modern music or aesthetics, etc., to deliver the message of Christ wrong? I am so tired of seeing people point a finger at culturally-relevant styled messages, aesthetics and them appearing to view the concept like its an enemy. I’m afraid that there may be some church congregations that with a stoic stance refuse to make their gatherings more sensitive to seekers because they may possibly think they are holding on to “the old paths” by doing so. Since when are we not supposed to show hospitality? How is that holy? If we make sure our house is clean, looks nice and house guests are comfortable, and maybe even serve something we know they like when they visit, why on Earth shouldn’t it be done in a Church service? If WE are the Church, and our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, we should show hospitality wherever we are; whether it be at a Church, in a home, at a job, etc. I don’t think it is an issue of one over the other (less modern over modern) I think it is a matter of sharing the message of Christ by whatever means necessary. Doesn’t the Bible say we are to become all things to all men that we might save some? I think making a Church service into something that sounds and looks like something from 2012 is not a sin, and it removes any potential obstacle of them not being able to relate to what is going on and avoiding us (which would be a stumbling block to them hearing messages with the potential to change their lives. I’m not saying that all Churches should go out and get a slick website, build a coffeehouse and pretend to be something they aren’t if they are not that. But I do think it is good if one has the responsibility of leading a Church congregation under the headship of Jesus, to look at their surrounding community and think of ways on how they may be able to better relate to them and serve them (while bringing them the message of Jesus). I think you can have profound Biblical truth in a style that is culturally relevant in clean ways.
In my personal opinion I think it is a courtesy to put extra thought into accomodating whoever may potentially be in your midst or is in your midst. I remember one Church I went to and they placed great value on accommodating visitors, everything they did was quality. You know I think of them and I think “Wow. These people really care to make an effort. They are giving all they have.” They didn’t seem to take the stance of having something so so that is just “good enough” and either not caring or taking a resolute defense of that attitude; but they seemed hungry, willing to pour themselves out for the people in their midst by doing things with earnest effort and a mind on others. Didn’t Jesus give a parable about leaving the 99 sheep to go find the one that was lost? Someone I know has a cat that is missing right now. In attempt to find her lost cat she has put up signs, lovingly called for him, left the comfort of her home at 3 in the morning with a flash light to search for him, left out a cat bed, left out food and water, anything to attract him back to the house if he was scared, hiding or hurt… It wasn’t about her, no effort has been good enough to attract him back to her because he is still missing and not yet found. I think that is a good illustration of the heart of God. Are our hearts like this? We are supposed to grow to be more like Christ. How do you feel when someone goes out of their way for you? Personally, it makes me feel taken back, they earn my respect. Afterall, didn’t Jesus give His all by dying on the cross for the sins of humanity? Didn’t a woman pour our a ridiculously expensive jar of perfume to anoint Jesus? Didn’t the widow give all she had when she had two coins? I think of how we are to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, and love our neighbor as we love ourself. The Bible also says that we are to love one another the way Christ has loved us. If I know someone whose fiance just dumped them, is coming over to sort through it, is it going the wrong way to have warm comfort food prepared for them and make the environment accomodating so they feel more comfortable to spill their guts and while their spilling their guts? All people have needs or pain, and a lot of people hide theirs. A lot of people will not open up if they don’t feel comfortable with a person or an environment and because of that they may not stick around or come back. I personally don’t see how setting up a Church to be comfortable to those around us is wrong, I think it helps them get closer to us quicker, which opens the door quicker for us to link them to God and His ways.
In conclusion, I think about how the Bible also tells us to do whatever we do with excellence.. there is also a portion of Scripture that talks about to continue in the desire to do good and that if the desire to give a gift is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one doesn’t have. Those who gear their Church congregation to be seeker sensitive viewing it as an expression of their love for God and effort to bring people to Him should not be judged for their gift to God. Those who have a more simple missional style of connecting with people should not be judged in their gift to God. (This reminds me of Romans 14).
God bless.
Hi Tina, You do a great job of helping us see the heart of why the mega church does what it does: Love for Christ, wanting to reach the world with the Good News of Jesus, desire to speak their language. All of those are great. However, when the locus of those events is our building rather than THEIR world, are we really serving them, or serving us? The Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20) is “GO and make disciples.” When we make the time set aside for the worship of the King of Kings and time that the church has set aside for “the equipping of the saints to do the work of the ministry” (Eph 4) are we not, in effect, rewriting that Scripture as “Come and become a believer.” Where does the church “go”? Where does it make disciples? Do we really want to set aside discipleship to the least trained small group leaders? I would never fault the motive. The method seems to lack staying power. People warned us 30 years ago that we would create churches full of empty people. Is this not happening?
I believe that if the Holy Spirit leads a church that He will work to allow WORSHIP to our Lord and bring ministry to the needs of the church. I believe many come to church to be entertained,not to bring their WORSHIP to the LORD JESUS in giving thanks to Him for his suffering on the tree,dying for our sins and so many things He did for us. If as believers we ALL have gifts why dont we see them being used. Why does everything lay on one person. In Corinth you see, they were told to wait one upon the other they all had some thing to bring to that church. I know they needed alot of correction , but that instruction is there for a reason. I wonder if we really know what the difference is according to the bible between the worship meeting, ministery meeting and a prayer meeting. We are also called preists to our God and Father. We are different than the old testament priests because the Lord Jesus shead His blood for us so we dont need to bring a lamb, He is our LAMB OF GOD to who we should bring our worship, honor and praise.I’m Amazed Sundays we count numbers of people attending. Whats really important is how many of he same come every Sunday, dowe know those thatare poor and need help, the sick etc thats ALL of our responcibility, not one person.
And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Romans 12:2
should we really be conforming the church to accommodate the world in order to fill the pews.
“Conforming the church to accommodate the world” – really? The church has become its own silly subculture with its own bizarre look, music, dress… What growing churches today are doing is caring and loving lost people who are dying in their sins by reaching them in a way that they can understand. If you were a missionary in a different culture, you would learn the language and culture of those you are trying to reach first and then develop relationship with and share the gospel with them in their language and in a way they could understand. The church is finally starting care and “learn the language” of our culture and they are being shot down because they are succeeding at doing it. People are coming to Christ and lives are changing. It is not just warm butts in chairs, it is lives transformed by the power of God because someone cared enough to learn the language of their culture.
Dan, as a former young life area director, i am 100% for contextualizing the gospel and speaking their language. If what you describe were the picture we were seeing, i would be much more sympathetic…and 170 people wouldn’t have commented on this post. With hundreds of churches not referencing the Bible, I am not sure what that life-change is.
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Well I am not sure which churches you are referencing, but I have been in full time ministry for twenty years and do see and know of many modern churches that are being fruitful for the Kingdom and discipling followers to maturity. Not trying to be argumentative, but it is just not fair to generalize so broadly about “cool churches” the way so many are doing on these postings. I am quite sure that the stuffy and self righteous attitude I am hearing in many of these postings does nothing to improve the witness of those writing them. My hope is to encourage them to speak the truth, but to do it in love and humility. Pride can exist in both camps very easily. We must all guard against this if we are going to be effective in ministry… Agree?
Hi Dan,
I typed a reply earlier which I see did not post. Bummer!
I am sorry if I have come across as stuffy and self-righteous. That is not my intent at all. I would never impugn the motives of my brothers in the faith and ministry. I met one guy 20 years ago who had some pretty weird motives, but I have known hundreds sincerely want to be a part of building God’s Kingdom. That is a pretty great track record on the part of those in ministry in my book!
I am not judging motive but the “keeping power” of what we build when we first moved from biblical methods and are, increasingly, sacrificing a biblical message. History provides stark examples of revival without discipleship. Remember the burnt over ground in North-Western New York? It became a hotbed of increasing unorthodoxy over a 60yr period after the Second Great Awakening came through. That too was a move of God. Powerful things happened-but the long-term fruit, when not followed up well was often disastrous. In that case, from one small area we first got Adventism, then the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the LDS, Universalism and finally Spiritualism and seances. All from one place with evangelism without discipleship. I trust that you can see that dynamic beginning to show itself in our current willingness to do anything to keep our new expensive buildings filled: self-help messages, and preaching “principle’s for living using the Bible as a resource” (to quote the pastor of one of the five largest churches in America). We used to joke about dancing bears and Jesus jugglers, but a church in Phoenix put an Octagon on stage and challenged people to “fight for Jesus!” When we give up the historic purpose of the church and turn our people into passive inviters, we fundamentally change the nature of the faith that is developed in them. You mentioned that you doubted if the person in the pew ever really did personal evangelism. The Southern Baptists did research several years ago on falling baptism rates. They connected the numbers to another bit of data they had that said the number of their baptists that had introduced someone else to Christ personally had fallen from somewhere around 70% to 6% since World War II.
I am have spent 30 years in youth ministry. 25 people that we have developed are now in full-time Christian service. We have trained hundreds of volunteers. When I point a finger, four are pointing back at me. What I did was often heavy on evangelism and light on discipleship. We all become what we count. We were held accountable for the number of evangelism clubs, number of campers at evangelism camp and number of conversions. We all quickly saw through the setup and, locally, we decided to count disciples that made disciples-but we swam in the water that said we existed to become a bigger version of ourselves rather than a deeper one. Youth pastors asked to have 10% of the numbers of the adults have that same pressure to generate artificially inflated numbers – after all high school is 4 years and life expectancy is 80. So we are asking them to be 2x as effective as the rest of the church. That shapes what they do, does it not?
When the mainline lost people to the evangelicals they said, “Well, at least they are going to church somewhere.” Our young are leaving and they are going no where. We have to answer that bell. Do we not?
I have tried to answer your questions about why I feel it is right to raise a red-flag on the departing young adults issue. My question back: What do you see the problem as being? Why are the 20 somethings leaving in droves? I am ok defending raising the issue, but most people are not engaging my points but whether or not I have the right to question what we are doing.
Hi, Again, Matt. Well, I guess the reason I didnt respond to your points… (What do you see the problem as being? Why are the 20 somethings leaving in droves? I am ok defending raising the issue, but most people are not engaging my points but whether or not I have the right to question what we are doing.) …is because honestly I really don’t know why they are leaving and not coming back. “Broad is the road that leads to destruction”? They make the choice and the best we could have done as youth ministers and as pastors was to share the gospel message and disciple them as best as we could and pray that it will be fruitful. When they leave for college or leave home, they lean toward rebellion because they are suddenly without accountability…? I guess if i had an answer it would be the very thing I believed was the whole point of this article in the first place: i sincerely believe the answer is to package the Gospel in such a way as to make it understandable (to the 20 somethings and whoever else) without “watering it down” How to accomplish that the best way, i wish i knew. Just to include the whole of the gospel and focus on the main things without quarrelling over the non-essentials, i suppose. But I guess we will have to agree to dissagree. I do think many of the modern churches are on the right track and i have not observed very many that are bold enough (in thier pursuit of thousands of warm butts in the chairs) to completely abandon the scripture or the gospel message. I have, however, seen some who seem to be leaving out some important costs of discipleship to accentuate mostly just the benefits. Thats a big mistake and, although i am not thier judge, I honestly fear for those leaders on the Judgement Day. And i didnt mean to say that you personally sounded stuffy and self righteous (you have been very gracious as well as very intelligent in your replies and posts), but was referring to some of the others who posted responses to your article. Blessings to you and your ministry.
Hi Dan,
Reading all that you write, I am certain that when you were a youth pastor you absolutely knocked yourself out discipling students…and you probably hire youth people today who do the same.
My point all along is simply that we are getting precisely the outcomes that our methods should lead us to. When we had a great message and great relationship with a youth leader in the youth room, but the youth leader never closed the loop between the parent, the larger body of Christ in the main sanctuary, then we made an affiliation bond with the youth program but not the church. Does that resonate with your experience at all? It took me years to notice this. I had to look at the data to have my “aha!” Btw, it is precisely the problem that we faced when I was on YL staff. We created affiliation bonds with us (the church in mission) …rather than the church local that would sustain their faith through life if they did not stay with us into leadership.
We can preach an uncompromising message but with games for games sake ghettoized from the larger church and end up with them not having a reason to ever cross into the adult church. As the Mormon bishop said, “You make takers. We make givers.” He was so spot on it made me cringe.
What if instead of doing youth services when the adults are meeting, and trying to do evangelism based on getting students to come to our really cool thing (with far too much effort in the light shows and technology that no longer impress kids anyway), what if we trained our youth pastors to do six things really well:
1) Partners in ecumenical evangelism-taking teams of evangelists from our local church to the high school in partnership with the other churches in the community.
2) Trainers of your churches people called to youth to make them phenomenal discipleship leaders-those ecumenical evangelism agencies are freed to stay in their sweet spot- evangelism, and the church goes back to what we used to be great at: biblical disciple-making.
3) Resourcers of parents to make parents the front line of spiritual formation in the home, ala, Deut. 6, Psalm 78.
4) Integrators of students into the main service. …Students on the usher list, the music team, the hospitality, greeters, reading scripture, leading congregational prayer, giving testimonies.
5) Organizers of multi-generational “soul friendships” where the older pray for, read the Bible with, and care for students.
6) Participants on multi-generational service projects with students and adults…not just youth leaders, the whole church.
Those are things that foster students owning the church as their own. Those are the things that happen accidentally in the tiny churches without youth programs…the ones who keep their kids at twice the rate of those of us with expensive programs!
There actually has been a lot of good stuff written recently (especially from Fuller, Princeton and Duke’s YM grad programs) to combat this issue. Their “Sticky Faith” is one such thing. An SBC guy named Wright wrote a book called “ReThink youth ministry” a couple of years ago. There is a new one from England that I like called Growing Up: Biblical Youth Ministry in the Local Church. They are where we will be in 10 years, so his book is interesting.
Kinnaman is brilliant, but his new book is about getting back the ones who left. I am worried that we will keep perpetuating the error on further generations of youth. Now is the time to make the important changes. The evangelical world has 40-60 year olds to connect with. In the mainline we have 70-90 year olds. That is a much harder connection to make.
Btw, thank you for forcing me to move to a solution phase. You are a good thinker. I would love your feedback on my last response as it is probably a good blog post for those who see the problem and would like to figure out what to do.
Btw, As we speak, youth pastors all over the country are leaving the high school ministry for the junior high because high school numbers are slipping and they do not want to answer the questions boards and pastors are giving them about why the guy barely out of college has twice the numbers in jr. high that they have. That will obviously just exacerbates the problem of our high school ministries flirting with even more relevance and shallow content to the point of irrelevance.
Nice – yeah I was actually thinking, after reading this, that you ought to make it your next official post. GREAT ideas. You could /should write a book about this. Blessings and prayers to you this morning as you proclaim the Greatest Message!
Thanks, Dan. I don’t preach this morning. I go to hand off a building of ours to Scottsdale Bible- a really great Bible Church that took over one of our buildings when the congregation took their eye off the ball and became inward looking and lost their passion to reach their neighborhood. A sobering lesson about losing our confidence that the goodness of God is for all, not just for ourselves. (Romans 1:16)
Blessings as uou bring words of life this morning.
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Or, it could just be that in a more informed, logical, rational society, people are figuring out that religion is simply a dangerous fallacy, and they are choosing more productive uses of their time, and better models for their moral code.
I’m not sure that there is much evidence that people are becoming less religious- just less attached to the traditional church. Like it or not, indications are that religious belief appears to be hard-wired into humanity.
Anon: What models are you using that are so effective seperate from the life of Christ and Scripture? Especially since our more “informed, logical, rational society” has more hatred, violence, and discard of human life than ever before?
A good point! Our increasingly secular west does not seem to be becoming either more humane or a better place to live…especially for our children living in the giant increasing swaths of poverty.
first, your response to anon that statistically it is not religion per se, nor ‘spirituality’ that people are fleeing, as much as institutionalized forms of the above is correct. again, whatever side you may land on, relating correlation to causation is always a tricky business.
however, it is debatable as to whether the West, or even the world is becoming more violent: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/22/world-less-violent-stats_n_1026723.html
that is only one article and done in a popular mode, but the numbers involved in the decrease in violence over the last 10 to 15 years is particularly striking for violent crimes in the USA. i know this seems counterintuitive to the daily news, but these are rather strong statistical records tracked by agencies that often have a vested interest in those numbers not going down in order to continue to be on the receiving end of funding.
The data that I reported on says that people are fleeing church. Other studies show that people are reporting being “spiritual” at similar levels as has been historically true, but that they are exercising that drive in “disorganized” ways. Any decrease in crime is a good thing.
I do have two questions: 1) You said, “Data gathered by those who have a vested interest in numbers not going down.” Pinker is a Harvard guy. Why is Harvard interested in violence?
2) In the interest of correlation not being causation: What did you think of his assertion that violence is decreasing because we are smarter?
did not know that about historical levels of individuals claiming spirituality remaining the same, quite fascinating.
as for Pinker, its the data sets that he cites. i apologize if my statement led you to believe i was referring to organizations in favor of strife. i was instead trying to emphasize that certain groups have a vested funding interest in strife. not that they approve of it or are desirous of it.
just interesting when even groups like this are reporting an overall drop in global violence. they are technically working themselves out of a job.
as for the claim to being ‘smarter’ i can only guess that he means literacy and access to media of various sorts along with overall education trends. smarter maybe, maybe not. however, it does seem that the more that individuals and groups are exposed to views opposing their own the less willing they are to act out violently against them.
closer to home i think we can see this in our national struggles first with racism and then with homophobia. its hard to fear something when its your neighbor playing with their kids outside and they show up on tv as normal every day people.
also, anecdotally, this is a common complaint of more insular families when their college educated children and grandchildren return home. they were educated out of their particular worldview. not because of some singular class or professor, but simply because of the overall exposure to so many varying viewpoints and individual lives.
so if smarter equals overall education levels and exposure to worlds outside one’s own, then i would agree.
equivocally 🙂
Our black, gay, and women friends all beg to differ.
i wish you had perhaps given that a more ‘generous read’, when you perused the link. i don’t believe that either pinker or myself deny that violence still occurs. instead i think many are surprised at the dramatic decrease and are hoping and working for a world where that continues to be a trend.
Has anybody asked the people who left ‘why? ‘. I am a 3rd generation Christian, but no longer attend church. None of the reasons listed were my reason.
I’m Intriqued. Tell me more.
I was angry at so called Christians growing up. As a Pastor’s kid, I felt that many so called Christians were Hippocrates/phony. But could not leave church because of fear and guilt.
In my late 30’s, could not live any longer with this gap inside me I became very ill. I felt an urgency to search for places and people who live completely surrendered to God. No blaming, no complaining, no excluding, no arrogance, Nothing was an enemy, Everything in gratitude, Everything in love.
I found this outside religion. Now I am extremely grateful for my past, churches and Christians and all. Because they have helped through me feeling a desperate need to get out, I have found this place of gratitude for Everything! I have found Love.
P.S. just because the church pews are empty doesn’t mean people went astray from God. Some have found God outside the church. I think this is great. God can be found inside and out!!!
Hi Kei,
Thank you for sharing. I think there are church leaders reading and learning from your experience. I find it tremendously sad when people have not found God in the churches that bear his name. I think most of us would hope that people find God in God’s world, in serving others in extending God’s love and message of grace to the world…but that we would come together in that same grace to worship, be grateful, encourage, support and correct one another. Generally the church has over-corrected and under done the rest of it.
Actually yes, lots of people have been tracking both the numbers (quantitative research) and have been interviewing folks to hear their reasons (qualitative research). Everyone joins and drops things for their own individual reasons.
And yes, lots of people have been tracking the numbers (quantitative research) and have been interviewing folks (qualitative research). Everyone joins and drops things for different reasons.
i suppose it would be better to see the original research. but once again, i would add again that it seems people are confusing correlation with causation.
im by no means defending current christian youth subculture, ive often found it problematic at best.
Hi Carl,
Sorry I haven’t gotten a reply to you yet. You are surely right that correlation and cause are different. I was not aware of people writing about the problems of youth ministry on the church in the 50’s but that it was being written on both before and after the fact. Surely there are larger cultural forces at work. The relevant movement was exactly a movement seeking to speak to those changes. Some people are reacting in disagreement and some in agreement. The cultural shift that has thrown people is 9/11. When you talk to people in the relevant movement, for them the world was their “friend.” For those growing up in post 9/11 the world is not their friend. They are much less interested in a religious experience that reflects their world and more interested in one that is specifically different…but I am giving a commercial for a future post at this point. 🙂
thanks for the response. and i apologize for any lack of clarity on my part. the reference to the 50s was not about youth culture or subculture, but a reference to the coming wave of secularization that was then cresting in europe. im afraid that most folks thought we’d dodged the bullet. but trends like this seem to indicate otherwise.
people i know in their early to mid 20s and some a bit beyond, indicate one primary reason for their lack of interest in church. lack of relevance. however, this is not the definition religious publishing companies have used for so long.
the lack of relevance lies in the fact that it has no connection with their lives. not because of the cultural contemporaenity of the presentation. it lacks relevance for them because they do not live in a world in which ‘belief’ is a primary function of living or doing good in the world. in fact most of them believe that at best ‘belief’ plays a neutral role.
but i’m violating my own desire for scientific standards here by relating pure anecdotal evidence 🙂
Hi Carl,
I cannot comment on your thought about “belief as neutral.” I do not know the data well enough and it was not the question I was asking. I asked “What is the role of youth ministry in the exodus of students from the church when they left our youth group?” Lots of great research has been done by Pew, Barna and the National Survey on Youth and Religion. Other secondary research has been done by Newsweek, Time and Lifeway.
btw, One sailor to another, nice Sunfish pic on your profile.
Very powerful and true. Have you read “Unchristian”? On a brighter note, I am slowly becoming convinced that the decline of the modern version of the Church will in the long run be a good and positive thing for the Church. In the end, the 21st century Church may have more in common with the 1st Century than that of the 20th.
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Is this why my daughter feels that people at church are phoony?
Maybe. What does she say?
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My feeling as I look back on youth group and my feelings as a parent with a new youth group attendee, now in Seventh Grade, almost 13 and in his second year of YG, is that parents are never included. I think the age segregation is one of the most significant factors in the lost youth syndrome, youth who don’t become churched.
My own commitment to Jesus in church came about through His divine mercy in my life and my father’s commitment to the church and my family commitment to preaching and teaching In Jesus. However, I would say most kids from my YG were lost to the church and some to Jesus, and my husband has struggled mightily with his own commitment to the church from a legalistic background.
The common denominator for me in all this, in spite of the spiritual abuse my husband suffered in Bill Gothardism, is that parents need to be included in youth ministry, it should be family-focused, and parents must be included in planning and updates, not treated as though they are intrusive if wanting to know or pray for the youth, hover parents, whatever. God uses families as His main instrument of evangelism in the world, I am convinced.
My most instrumental moments in Youth Group were when my older brother helped out with our youth group and we went on a canoe trip together, and the night they invited parents for a meal and a do-it-yourself melodrama. Knowing my parents were in the audience as I acted the part of the heroine, extremely reluctantly outside my comfort zone (I had to scream out loud, very awkwardly ;)), still made me feel loved and connected to the church and to my parents in a way I’ve almost never ever felt since or up til then. What a simple way to nurture kids, yes, they want to be free, but really, they want to know Jesus loves them through their church and families, and that they are a living part of both family and church, living stones being built into a living Head, Christ. Plus that way the family itself can be nurtured into a witnessing unit, a living chunk of the Body of Christ as a family and collectively as the Church. Margaret Ryken Beaird…..
Thank you, Margaret! It would involve a thorough rethinking to include parents in youth, resource parents and involve youth in the leadership of the big church, wouldn’t it?
I wish I had time to read this all the way through and give a more detailed response, but I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. There’s a couple things here and there that I don’t agree with 100%, but I just wanted to take a moment and say that I think you’ve really hit on some good points 🙂
Matt – thanks for your words which have a great deal of truth in them. My understanding of adolescent psychology, however, is that teens need to be fully citizens in two worlds – the nurturing world of their family (church life) and the exciting, challenging world of their peers. If we don’t provide the latter, we yield that territory to the world. But if we do provide it, I think there is the potential of a missional energy there, a rite of passage to maturity not just endless mindless self-gratifying entertainment.
You might find the 2005 presentation by Thom Black at the National House2House convention interesting … it predicts a massive adult exodus as well and might provide another perspective on this coming problem. It’s here – http://www.disciplewalk.com/Barna_Revolution.html
i keep coming back here and i apologize if i am ‘taking up room’ but one final thought was my own experience as a youth pastor.
when lead for that ministry was given to me i inherited a very typical, love jesus, goto church, once in a bluemoon youth service, style youth group. and dont forget carwashes and summercamp! all of which are fine in and of themselves. but it occurred to me as time went on that we were raising young people who had no ownership of their religious beliefs nor their church.
i changed tacks (sunfish reference 🙂 and ended up with an interesting experiment in youth ministry. we already had a wednesday night youth service. basically an echo of the sunday morning service done ‘youth style’. but i was bothered by the focus on myself as the sole center and provider of entertainment. it not only made me uncomfortable, it seemed an unreasonable expectation. i ran across an approach at the time called the ‘open church’ model and i began to put it into practice, adapted for our situation.
i began to lead worship as i normally did and then at an appropriate moment would ask someone to come forward and share. good times, bad times, scripture verse that struck them, didn’t matter. the point was to get them involved in the actual process of ministering to each other. and it took a month or so. but once they realized i was serious, that this was their worship service, their opportunity to minister to each other, to offer their prayers and their thoughts and feelings–it took off like a shot. soon after youth on sunday mornings and evenings began to take a further role of their own accord.
now, i lost some because the entertainment value went down and some because there are always folks who’d rather come and sit, not prayerfully, but just because its what you do on a wednesday night. but in the course of my year there i went from wrestling with all sorts of inappropriate / unmanageable behaviors to youth who were actually invested in what they were experiencing and who handled each other’s behaviors (exuberance and energy in youth is not a bad thing). they did all this because it was their experience, their moment of worship, their moment of ministry.
it is telling about the youth entertainment industry in the church that when i finally left that church immediately stripped the program out and replaced it with a wednesday evening lecture series for youth. some relevant movies about abstinence, about the end of the world, about the literalness of Genesis 1-3. and it was really, i think, about comfort levels. they weren’t comfortable letting youth find their way to full fledged ownership of their religion.
and that is perhaps why i keep coming back here, because i keep going back there. 20 years later and i still shake my head at the opportunities lost. and the refusal to take inclusivity of worship to its natural conclusion and include children as fully baptized members of the body of christ.
It sounds as if you were doing some really great stuff. You might have just been ahead of your time. 🙂
Prior to becoming youth leaders, my husband and I worked with two different groups which modeled the Titus 2 model—men mentoring boys and women mentoring girls. later, we were asked to lead up the youth ministry dept. and after 7 plus years of working with youth ministries, we have concluded that youth ministries prevents our youth from maturing: spiritually, socially and mentally. I have to add that I did not come to the knowledge of Christ until I was 17 years old. the church I attended had youth group and I flourished in that atmosphere. (peers are cruel and immature–yes, even the believer ones). the help I sought out was that of mature Christians, which often included adults. I was discipled by adults. I am now 43 years old and nothing will shake my faith. (when we (husband and I) attend youth functions, we find youth leaders who are our age and still want to act like teenagers. They believe that to be relevant you must regress in language and maturity. It is easy to get swept away in this youth environment; however, the numbers don’t add up: the fruit is just not there. there is a lot of yelling, Jesus, Jesus Jesus! Nevertheless, they don’t know this Jesus they rant about at concerts. (when bibles aren’t falling apart from use, we simply are only surface deep.) we are creating an environment in which youth belong, but they never believe. This is the antithesis of what makes the true church of Christ; people BELONG because they BELIEVE. God help us!
meant to say that the church I attended had NO youth group and I still flourished in this atmosphere.
I loved this post. Well done! Along these lines, here’s my musings on a recent visit to “The Hip Church” | http://wp.me/pMUrU-Ld
I’m not entirely convinced that what he labels as ’causes’ are not merely ‘symptoms’; youth are leaving because we have done X, he says, but how right is he? Might it not be the other way around, that churches started doing all that extraneous (comment edited) because youth were already voting with their feet? You might as well blame it on cars: if you can drive to any church in a thirty mile radius (and I have friends who go farther than that), then you have a choice, so suddenly church becomes a market, and plays by the rules of any other market.
He also ignores a number of elephants in the room: the church, by and large, teaches nasty things known to be false. That your gay friends are evil and we should discriminate against them, that your atheist friends are evil and we should discriminate against them, that contraception is bad, that you should vote for that loser in the magic underpants that just a few short years ago we warned you was an evil cultist sent by the devil to threaten your soul, and pretty much anything that comes out of Driscoll’s mouth.
The problem isn’t the marketing, it’s the *product*. Read what Josh McDowell has to say: http://www.christianpost.com/news/internet-the-greatest-threat-to-christians-apologist-josh-mcdowell-says-52382/ In short, he complains that Christianity now has to compete in an open marketplace of ideas just like an other idea. He complains that other ideas now have equal access to that market. And he considers this an unprecedented crisis. This is not the stance of salesman who believes in the product.
The church’s ability to apply legal and social coercion has severely eroded, and people have gained exposure to other, competing ideas. Meanwhile the church has–not without exceptions, but in the main–attached itself to an antiquated political and social vision that most young people find alien if not repugnant. The flailing attempts at relevance are a sideshow.
I accepted Christ at the tender age of 8, sitting beside my Mother in a revival service. I had the opportunity to ask my mother to explain to me (in terms I could understand) what the preacher was talking about. I am so thankful that I had not been ushered away to some “children’s church” sing and dance party. What our children today are not learning is reverence. We were taught that God’s house is a place for reverence and respect, not play time. When my own children were small, I refused to allow them to leave the service to attend Children’s Church. Since I serve as Music Director, this was a challenge, as I was often unable to sit with them throughout the entire service, and my husband’s job often kept him away from church. I made sure a trusted adult sat with them to keep them behaved and answer any questions they might have. As a result, they learned reverence that their own peers did not.
By the time I was a teenager, our church had begun a youth group. I remember our youth group doing fund-raising for a so-called “mission trip” to the beach in Florida. They did small odd-jobs for several elderly people in the church, soliciting ridiculous monetary donations for the amount of work done. Many of these elderly people lived on very limited incomes themselves, and the kids played around more than working. The elderly gentlemen often had to clean up after them or redo the job themselves. Even though I was only 15 at the time, I was totally disgusted with the youth group’s taking money from these limited-income elderly people under the guise of a “mission trip” so that they could go play on the beach! I was extremely disappointed that our youth minister allowed this to happen, and left the youth group (and the church) shortly thereafter. Too many youth ministers want to be the youths’ “buddy”, rather than admonishing them and leading them to follow God’s commands rather than the pleasures of the world. My current church’s solution has been to make the youth a part of the regular worship service by making them ushers who pass out bulletins before the service and take up the collection during the service. Our youth responded by literally taking a front row seat. They are leading by example and sitting at the front of the church, listening to the preacher! All they needed was to be included and valued for what they could contribute in God’s service.
I think people are just tired of “religion” all together, and this is why the “church” is failing, it really isnt even about the Love of God, and frankly I think God is tired of it also, hes moving on and taking alot of us with him…Peace!
Hello LDR, I hear you that lots of people have felt burned by the church. There are great churches trying to help people draw close to God. And what is great for one is not necessarily great for another. Church, when done in love is a great place to connect with God, celebrate his love and goodness, and organize to make a contribution to the world out of gratitude for the good in our own lives. I am sad that you have not found such a place thus far. I will pray for such a home for your heart in the future. Thank you for the blessings. I return them to you. 🙂
Mr Marino,
While I think that most of your post is a spot-on indictment of the last 30 years of evangelicalism (and especially of youth ministry), I think there’s an important tension in what you’ve written: viz. your rejection of the ‘relevant’ but inclination toward the ‘contextual’. Cultural relevance and communal contextualization have significant overlap, if they’re not entirely coextensive. (I take it that for you at least, ‘relevance’ connotes pandering to self-indulgence.) You write: “Where we have opted for a relevant, homogenously grouped, segregated, attractional professionalized model; the early church did it with a multi-ethnic, multi-social class, seeker INsensitive church. Worship was filled with sacrament and symbol. It engaged the believing community in the Christian narrative.” You’re troubled by the ‘homogenously grouped’, but the sort of sacrament and symbol that you seem to have in mind is the sort that isn’t particularly contextualized; it’s the sort of thing that makes various worshiping communities appear cut from the same liturgical cloth, rather than indigenously distinctive, and earlier in the article you bemoan precisely such centralization. There’s a delicate balance between contextualization, on the one hand, and induction into the tradition, on the other–lest contextualization collapse into mere pandering to the culture, or lest induction into the tradition set the practices of one culture’s Christian practice into stone, and treat local culture as the enemy of discipleship.
In short, it seems to me that Relevance and Contextualization are cousins, not enemies.
Hi Phil,
Thanks for adding your voice to this. I agree with you that relevance and contextualization are not by nature opposed. I was reacting on two levels: 1) The current divorce of methods from those of either Scripture or historic Christianity and 2) the slippery slope this has caused to make the message equally malleable. I have a friend who also attended a service at the church the “Mormon Bishop” post of yesterday refers to. It was an Easter Sunday. There was a sermon about “The Warrior.” The friend swears that Jesus was never mentioned by name at a day that celebrates his resurrection.
Christianity has always maintained a tension between ancient text and current culture. My concern is that many places seem to be dropping that tension and making decisions by focus group…and that they learned that from their days leading the youth ministry.
Youth-oriented programs last only through youth. Perhaps we are so focused on talking down to children and youth and infusing programs with pop culture that young people consciously or unconsciously think of their faith as something they need to grow out of, just as they grew out of the latest pop culture fad. Do churches that are more successful in retaining youth involve them in adult worship instead of segregating them, teach them to deal with serious questions (even elementary school children have serious questions) instead of feeding them only sugar-coated Bible stories, and give them real responsibilities other than an annual token “youth Sunday”?
I would think so. As would many of those who have responded.
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“What God has ordained let no man tear assunder”
“first take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly how to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye”
People are being saved by this “cool” church. I have seen it with my own eyes. Lives changed.
Un-church or churched: are we not all a part of the invisible church of Christ? Why are we so legalistic and putting barriers between the visible churches? We are a family, “cool” churches and the “un-cool”. Maybe -that- is the real reason we are faltering. We’re picking ourself apart, one church at a time.
Too divided to see the lost and helpless.
Hi Lily,
Thank you for weighing in.
I certainly have seen people meet Christ in many “relevant” model churches. I have also seen many not meet The Lord who wanted to at other places where the message has had the gospel watered out of it….churches where Jesus’ name is not mentioned on Easter.
Again, I am questioning no ones motives. I am questioning methods. When we divorce our methods from the biblical and historical purposes of “church” we skate on thin ice. We end up with shallow, partially formed people whose lives have no measurable qualitative difference from their neighbors. Many mega churches are beginning to ask these questions. A good example is The Church at Brook Hills.
Lily, I have led youth programs with 500 students per week. I am not casting stones, I am pulling the log out of the model that I participated in and trained others to imitate. I do so out of love for the youth minister, the student and the adult church those people might join when they grow up.
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Hello,
Excellent points of view here! I do NOT agree with you 100% but i DO agree with most! I am giving you a link [below] to my blog on the same issue, from the point of view of someone saved and discipled in that system, now deeply involved & like you sense something way out of balanced.
Click to access pacifer_youth_ministry_onemarcus.pdf
After reading that you’ll hear what i am struggling through with this same issue. However, I’m not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater, i don’t believe its all Bad. One thing i would like for you to consider is your pastoral filter. For instance when you contrast a service looking more like a night club than “church” i would love to see the picture in your mind of “church”
See, I come from the club world, i DJ’d for several years, and wont go too deep here, but to say that as God began to Disciple me (through more than one place) I would see in scripture that heaven looked more like the clubs, than boring (other end of the spectrum) church service. In the Bible, every time we get a glimpse into the throne room, we see a few things there.
1. music (holy holy holy)
2. glory “cloud like a mist”
3. crazy light show / Daniel says the light around God is that like a rainbow.
Honestly, I doubt our laser shows do it justice but you get where i am going.. heaven might look more like that. Further, I thought to myself, where did the devil get his model? The devil doesn’t have the power to create so he imitates and perverts. The club world (my expertise) seems to have some key components that give false comfort directly opposed to what the presence of God holds. Imagine a light show like none other, music that moves people to get out of self and lose inhibitions (usually with alcohol) then buddy up to the bar and confess the trials of their day. the DJ is the worship leader, and the the bartender is the pastors ear… mean while we (church folk) (at least use to) fight against anything that looked like that. [but some argue our “traditional” services are wrapped in just as much pagan culture, its just Constantine influenced.]
Let me say where I think we agree, the power is in the Gospel, (not persuasive speech) and if our “service” was actual service, what we stand for would be heard loud and clear. Lets not chase “cool” for cool sake, and resist the desire to be uber-relevant just for relevancy”,(so that we feel relevant and cool). I agree we DO NOT need to copy the world at all, but what if some of us are not copying the world, but instead stepping into the fullness of the original? I mean too often to many use God as an excuse to not have to go the extra step and speak to a community in its language. We use God as a cop out to not give creative excellence, when we are from the “Creator” we should be “Creat-ive”! On the other hand some use the “creative liberty” and “show” elements as a guard against actually living lives with people.
I believe in reaching with everything short of sin. unfortunately like you have clearly noted, some have exchanged the Gospel for event christianity. hopefully this discussion can help create some spirit and truth balance… i didn’t want to read your blog, but now i’m glad i did! 😉 -onemarcus
The problem is that the local church has become a business, and the common person realizes that the employees of the church are more concerned with the survival of their business than they are concerned with others experiencing Christ apart from their business. I am sure you and others who make a living from the local church will disagree with me in public, but deep down I suspect you realize I am far too close to the truth. thad.crewsii@wku.edu
Hi Thad,
I don’t think anyone needs to go too deeply down at all to see what a business the church has become…or institution at the very least. I have some friends building big churches. They are very upfront that they need to grow in order to afford to do the things they want to do…for God. Very few get the privilege to start a church where the money goes to the needs of people rather than the staff. I am one of the rare people that is true for…because I have a salary from another location. We have a few people on staff that are paid but it is because they have a limited ability to self-support (either by education or by citizenship status). Last year more than half of our total income went to people rather than programs, buildings or staff-even with moving expenses. That is pretty rare and only works because we don’t have to pay a building or clergy salary.
Matt, I applaud you and your local group of believers. If you met in my community, I would certainly support you, and would probably meet weekly with you for worship and teaching. As for your friends who believe God is calling them to build big churches, I think they are not hearing His voice very well on that issue, and it makes it hard for me to believe they are hearing His voice on other issues as well. If they were to ask me “Why don’t I attend (their) church” I would honestly say I don’t respect them. … And I think there are lots of others out there who think and feel the same way I do.
About your observation of segregating youth leading to demise of church attendance/membership and thus influence on the individuals, their families, and society at large.
What is our purpose?
If separating by age categories, we get one kind of result. By not segregating we get a different result. By having as a thirt purpose: to help youth “separate from parents” and parents to “separate from youth” and also help youth and parents reconnect on a different level could bring a different result. More complex and I admit more difficult to pull off, but is not our purpose in ministry to facilitate persons deveop integrity of self, soul, and life with a theology appropriate to that stage?
As an example, I’m aware of Young Life mission through its early years. My wife (who died in April this year at age 80) knew Jim Rayburn who started Young Life. Barbara became a believer as a teenager thru work of Orv Mitchell (president of Mitchell Manufacturing) starting a Young Life club in the small village where her family lived outside Dallas, Texas. Orv focused very clearly on their mission and hit their target. He had a passion for high school aged youth and their relationship to the Lord. He was highly skilled as an administrator. He was easily verbal in talkling about the Lord with all ages. I met and admired Orv Mitchell before Barbara and I married and had several conversations via mail with him. Years later while a pastor, I was able to go on two winter retreats with three busses of Young Life teenagers and counselors. I wanted to experience how they did what they did. It was incredible. They were sharply focused on their mission and how it was to be managed. I observed how they related to the students, and how students sought to integrate the Gospel into their lives in their daily life, including family relationship. I was able to incorporate numerous things from those trips into my own thinking and work.
On the other hand, I have seen churches select multiple goals of which youth work is a segment. In seeking to reach those goals, sometimes persons entangle and conflict with one another. The processes become ambiguous, unfocused, and often unmanageable. Often a congrgation scatters its energies like a 12 gauge shotgun. Adults as well as teeneagers want what they want when they want it. Results can be disheartening.
Who am I? I am a retired (age 82) minister: 23 years pastor, then overlapping years as hospital chaplain, family therapist, educator, and professor of psychology of religion in Univ. of Oklahoma College of Medicine.
I am sympathetic with plight of pastors and churches, but continue to have a lover’s quarrel with the church for its lack of focus. It continues to seek to be all things to all people, an impossibility. This is not new. The Apostle Paul had to deal with the same thing. Example: While at Ephesus for three years helping that church get stabalized, he also was called to deal with church problems over at Corinth while simultaneously managing the movement of several of his assistants going from one place to another for similar acts of mercy.
Modern Systems Theory has revealed at least two unchanging principles:
(1) There are always results of some sort to organizational efforts; sometimes good, sometimes not so good, sometimes incredibably bad. This often is not recognized as a given.
(2) religious organizations often fail to plan, monitor and correct the processes of its efforts. This comes from numerous venues.
Only change of leadership mindset, education. experience, and skill development bring hope for changed results. From my personal efforts, failures, learnings, and ultimately personal growth I am convinced it can be done. But it is not an easy achievement. But life is continual problem solving! Executives of one large corporation are hired to solve problems. They have as their motto: “No problems, no profit.”
Pastors of all age groups will have to understand how systems of individuals and groups actually function. They may need training to learn how to manage their own position in the many interlocking systems of a religious organization. Likewise, they need to learn to think of each individual as “part of family.” And each individual is at a different developmental stage of life from every other individual. And the family of that individual likewise is at a life-stage with all that entails. Complex? Yes. But that is reality of life.
I salute you all for your efforts to address and hopefully influnence the many problems we humans face today. I wish I could sit and dialogue further but perhaps this will light a spark in some serious thinking about ministry. I wish you well. Grace, mercy and peace.
Hi Raymond,
I was on Young Life staff for 17 years. It is a great organization. And, I think you are spot on-their strength is staying locked onto their mission. We are merely getting out of the system the outcomes we should expect. Creating age-appropriate groupings is always appropriate. Our problem in the modern relevant movement is that we are not taking into account the problem that utterly separating, not resourcing parents, building programs based on “come to our thing” rather than going to them in their world (Young Life’s model), and relegating Christian formation to the background.
Thanks for weighing in. It is always fun to hear stories of the YL beginnings.
blessings,
Matt
Seems like the “time set aside for worship” ought to be every hour of every day, not a couple hours on a Sunday. I agree with Tina that we have an opportunity, which many times just happens to be on Sunday, to show them we care and want to share the greatest Message with them. The Gospel itself is “an offense” so we must not be offensive too but speak the truth in love. Part of our love must be the way in which we share the truth: in such a way that your average person of our American culture can most easily understand it. And yes, it is important that we go to great lengths to communicate it in the most effective way possible… Which can be easily labeled marketing. Marketing happens to be a tool by which our culture has learned and communicated effectively. Should we apologize for not using antiquated methods of communicating the most important Message on earth? I say this in love and with respect for all who have commented. Blessings.
Hi again Dan,
I am not sure why you think what I wrote about the gathering of the body of Christ for worship and discipleship rather than evangelism has to do with using antiquated methods? If we buy the model that Sunday worship is to be the Finney revival crusade where do Christians get fed? Is it really progress to move from the 2000 yr expectation that Every Christian shares Jesus in the world toward an expectation that the pastor does all the evangelism?
I guess I don’t see how that is being taught, sir. The churches I have been associated with have been very active in evangelism training and it is the people who are sharing Christ with their friends and family, not leaving it to the ministers to do. I would agree that this probably is not the norm in most churches today, but has it ever really been the norm? Can we honestly say that we have ever seen a huge effort of our churches to be awesome in their evangelism efforts and especially in the results of those effeorts? Again, I am speaking in a broader sense…
Sorry I didn’t answer the first question: “where do Christians get fed?” I believe we as ministers feed them but it is a biblical truth that it is also our responsibity as ministers to teach them how to feed themselves. And can we honestly say that one hour on Sunday is enough for that to happen? What about bible study, small groups, … There are so many other ways to be “fed” than a sermon delivered by a preacher. So many churches today have a “feed me” mentality when they ought to be doing the feeding and in many cases are knowledgeable enough and doctrinally sound enough to be doing it.
Hi Dan,
I agree with you that our job is to “teach men how to fish.” When you point out the “feed me” mentality of people, I would shout, “AMEN!” I believe we created that with youth segregated from the adults. See the post on the conversation with the Mormon bishop: https://thegospelside.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/mormon-bishop-to-the-mega-church-thank-you/
His point was how we make “takers” rather than “givers.” It was a very interesting perspective.
Blessings to you as you prepare for tomorrow.
Matt
As a parent of a youth….my concern with this “if they don’t stay for forever, then we don’t need them now” thought is “If they never come to begin with you have NO – ZEO – NADDA – chance of them ever staying forever.” In my youth (the 70’s) the Methodist Church was against “bringing in the kids to play basketball”, but the Baptists did. Guess where the kids went? Life goes in cycles. This is just another one. Like another poster wrote – a lot of correlation, perhaps not causation.
Hi Chip,
Having spent 25 yrs doing young life, I would never suggest not having fun with students. I am just saying that when we intentionally segregate them from adults and refuse them the opportunity to serve as a giver to the community rather then exclusively as a taker we create a dynamic that continues through life. That is a statistical reality that is undisputed. While those of us in the mainline watched kids leave for the evangelical churches 30 yrs ago, today’s 20 somethings have dropped us for…nothing.
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Good morning:
Your article is on-point and speaks to the verse in a popular song: “You can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need”
My experience has been: most “churches” do not speak scripture in a functional sense, most churches speak scripture in a form sense
The flock is in need of pulp: stories of people they know instead of stories from a canned E-mail
Peace be with you
Hi TJ,
Thanks for weighing in. I am not sure exactly what you mean by “pulp” and “canned email” but the expression made me laugh. I am intrigued. Can you say more?
I am in this category that is being spoken of. Mid twenties and on the verge of leaving ‘institionalised’ church (but not God) my brother also mid twenties did so some years ago. I was 7 when I accepted God’s call to friendship and 15 when I was baptised. As a teen I became quite involved with church in various ways, including organising christian dramas and kids clubs. As soon as I left school I went to Bible college for 4 years. Spent two years in youthwork for the church overseas. Now I’m a high school chaplain in a public school.
This is what I have learned from my experiences. This world (including the christian world) is full of pain, hurt, anger, agony, loneliness, despair, fear, anxiety. Most people come from broken homes where they have never experienced real love or healthy ways of dealing with issues. Most people their way to live is with alcohol. Wanna celebrate? alcohol. Angry? Alcohol. In pain? Alcohol. Let’s socialise!! Alcohol. I need to relax. Alcohol. And in some cases, go to church (communion). Alcohol. Or if someone is angry and frustrated they don’t know how to say it or express it healthily, so they punch, hit and belittle others.
One of the main purposes of the church in my understanding is to be Christ to the community, until the community can know God for themselves. It is to be a safe haven from the distress of their own lives, people looking out for people. A place of hope and love. And when you read of Christ’s ministry, it was exactly that. He went to them and cared for them as individuals. He showed them there was a better, healthier and happier way to live. He promised a brighter future, things will not always be the way it is now (even if that change didn’t take place until they left this world and entered heaven). He took away their guilt instead of instilling it in them. He acknowledged their pain and struggles. He healed them, fed them.
He only ‘preached’ to them when they asked him to. Then he ‘preached’ in a language they could understand. He only ‘rebuked’ the ones who thought they knew better than God. He never judged. He always included, in spite of the fact he knew their hearts weren’t pure. He never tried to control others, in thought, word or deed. He never manipulated them in any way. He was just….. himself. And perhaps the most important thing he did was LISTEN to them.
When Jesus did ministry, pastoral care came first, the preaching came last. In today’s church (generalised), pastoral care comes last or is non-existant and preaching comes first. ‘Evangelism;’ usually preaching, is pushed and pushed. Church excludes (different denominations treat each other more as enemies and competitors than as workmates and brothers and sisters- in order to be accepted you need to be like them, think like them, act like them and speak like them). The church has blocked out its ears to the pain, loneliness and fear all around them.
Perhaps if the church was more interested in teens and young people. Didn’t tell them how evil they are or expected them to rebel. If it showed them a better way to live, showed them Jesus. Didn’t judge. If they listened to the questions they asked, if they listened to their pain, their struggles in how to become a worthy adult and leave childhood behind. If the church taught them all areas of being in a church community- each teen according to their gifts and passions (including pastoral visits to others, sharing of testimonies, giving Bible studies to each other, taught them how to preach, to be deacons, how to lead a worship service, leadership in various church ministries- allowed them to be innovative and creative in starting new ministries) and all without judgement then perhaps you wouldn’t find a mass exodus of youth in their twenties (they can leave now their parents aren’t forcing them to go).
For how long would you stay with a bunch of friends who through their actions are always saying, you aren’t worthy to do that. I don’t trust you. You aren’t good enough. You don’t know any better. The things you do are evil. They weren’t willing to listen to anything you say. And they wont let you fail, in order to learn resilience and success.
Hi Misty,
I can hear the pain in your email. I am very sad that your friends profess a healing that they don’t experience, mask the pain chemically and then judge. Then on top of that, that the adults will not listen and honor the gifts God has given you, refuses to give you a voice and a seat at the leadership table-well that just sounds incredibly frustrating. We actually started a church plant in Phoenix in order to train up young leaders and give the thing to them.
I was a part of a youth ministry for decades that really sounds like much of what you were looking for: people who really loved teenagers, had a vision for their lives and believed them into new lives in Christ, helped them surrender to a new narrative of God’s love for them rather than their inability to measure up to a church’s standard. We didn’t do a good job of helping those people be part the other adult’s in the church’s lives (which was why I wrote that post), but there really are thousands of people doing youth ministry in the church who are working and serving in kindness and faithfulness to teenagers. I wish you had known some of those people. They are not impressive, just ordinary folks who love others well.
Perhaps God has you working as a chaplain specifically so that you can create a better experience for the students? For me, high school was a time of deep emptiness. I think a desire to make sure others had a better teenaged experience than I had propelled me into youth ministry.
God bless you, Misty. I will ask God to help you find a group that loves you and others unconditionally.
I am a mother, a wife and a former Catholic school elem teacher. I would add where are the parents of these teens and preteens? I am in a BibleStudy with 10 women, other mothers, like myself with adult children. Out of those 10, 8 are former Catholics, who say they are Catholics, but don’t attend Catholic Church. Being who I am I curiously asked why, and as with my answer to the same question, it centered around the politics of their parishes, rich vs working poor; attention to the Biblical teachings of Jesus and a general feeling of isolation from the church as a whole. None had abandoned God or their faith in Jesus, they had abandoned a church building or group as a whole. I find it very sad that we can’t save the young people in our churches, yet, don’t even try to bring their parents or people between 30 – 100 back either. The church as a building and group may have lost, but God has won in this area of the world.
Hi Cathy,
Way to go on the Bible study! Is it Bible Study Fellowship? The Episcopal Church is seeing lots of those people disaffected at the politics, social divide and isolation arrive at our doors-although we have a host of our own problems as well. I can certainly understand the frustration. I would encourage you all that God really “wins” when what He is doing in our hearts translates into change in and out of our churches. Reformations start that way! Franciscans, Jesuits, Protestants…lots of good things start when people of prayer and Scripture have a prophetic vision for what could be.
I wish your ladies were in Central Phoenix. I would invite y’all to church. We could sure use 10 passionate, Scripture grounded, sacramentally understanding women in our little church plant. 🙂
No, it is a non-denomination church that shares its space with us. Most of the women are moms who drop their kids off at “Awana” children’s bible study, and then join us. Having been born and raised Catholic, 12 years of Catholic school, and then moving to a town that the churches were divided by Germans descents in oneside of the tracks and Irish deyscents on the other…..money on one side, non-money on the other, along with priests who used that method as a teaching tool turned me off to Catholic CHURCH as a building forever. I have found more of Jesus’ teaching in this group of people than anywhere in the Catholic building churches. It is very sad, very sad…..but in the youth level, the adult level, the Church in my opinion had better get back to basics, and read what Jesus taught, and is still teaching us today. Why is it that each youth I talk with each adult that I talk with who have left the Catholic Church haven’t left God, but the building…why because they say God’s teachings aren’t being taught there. After years of searching for the right answer for me, it was being Catholic/Christian but NOT being that within the confines of the building and for that I praise God.
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Hello Deacon Matt,
I just read your blog post. Your summary of me was better than my actual article! Thank you. I summarized that a bit myself in another post, “Is the way we are doing youth ministry emptying the church?” I am not sure we are actually ruining young people on the church, but the one-eared Micky Mouse model is so obviously flawed that I am surprised at the uncritical adoption it has gained in the large churches. The uniform consensus of the data demonstrates that we are doing nothing that builds a lasting commitment to the church in youth ministry. Any of us should have been able to see this coming…I even had a conversation with a Mormon Bishop about the very same thing: https://thegospelside.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/mormon-bishop-to-the-mega-church-thank-you/
Having poked around on your blog, it seems that we have very similar backgrounds and journeys into Anglican Christianity. Blessings to you as we walk our parallel paths. Perhaps we will run into one another as the youth people in all of the various Anglican jurisdictions (TEC, ACNA, AMiA, REC, Anglican Canada, etc) have committed to working together to form liturgical, Reformed, evangelical disciples of God’s one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.
Is it true that young people are leaving the church and not returning, like never before? Isn’t this normal? It was for me and my generation (late boomers). We “left” church in our early 20s and returned when life’s milestones were reached; marriage, babies, funerals for our parents and other loved ones led us back. Perhaps, a redefinition of “youth” would be helpful. We anticipate that young people will stray from organized religion in their late teens and early twenties. We should look to a season in life when people are looking to gather in communion with others in similar life situations. I suggest, “youth ministries” should be formed for people in there late 20s and 30s. This is the time when people are looking to meet with people of a similar age, with similar needs, in similar economic and social circumstances. Churches should look to bringing young adults back as much as looking to keep young people in.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the comments. Many churches are indeed trying “young adults” ministers. I have a post coming about a young adult ministry in Phoenix that is drawing 1000 20 something’s twice a month.
The disturbing data is that they are leaving in greater numbers and fewer are returning. This has been the subject of lots of research and every survey is coming back with more of the same.
One factor not mentioned in my post is later age of marriage, and people engaging in “starter marriages” so they don’t plan on children until even later…so where your generation married in early 20’s and had kids in mid-20’s, today’s young adults may not have kids for another decade or more. They have then been out of church for 20 years rather than 5. That is a difference.
Today’s young adults go to church at 1/2 the rate my generation went to church and 1/4 the rate of my parents at the same age. So It is definitely different.
After 30 years of preaching this to students, churches and families, let me just say, you hit the bulls-eye!
Thanks, Jeff. Coming from you, that is very encouraging feedback.
A very well written commentary on a (not so) contemporary issue. I began working with teens while at Nyack College, 1968 was the year. It was not long before I sensed some of the things described in this article and saw these things beginning to occur. By the time I moved from a mission agency and was called as a youth pastor in the early 80’s I saw all eight issues present and growing stronger. I worked hard to disciple and not simply add numbers to the roll. It was and remains a real challenge. The lights and glitter of the mega church or youth ministry continue to be a strong but shallow draw. Today, almost 30 years later the growth of the church and decline of the faith are a direct result. More than ever we need revival, a true rebirth, repentance from all this and return to Christ and The Faith.
I might also add that I see this as a part of an overall self indulgence on the part of an over programed and facilitated church. Millions being spend on facilities, programs, staff and entertainment. Too few dollars to mission and being the men and women God intended. True witnesses of Christ, His exemplary followers in a needy world.
Thank you, Art.
Wow, you have seen this from the beginning. I am glad to find out I am not the oldest youth guy around. 🙂
I grew up in a traditional Protestant church. My family later moved to a non-denominational church with a nationally-known pastor at the bleeding edge of the emergent movement. When I came of age it dawned on me how empty and foundation-less it was. The empty pandering and exciting of base passions just to keep people in the pews…the sugar water theology…the appalling understanding of sacraments. I went on a journey of discovery and two years later I was chrismated in the Orthodox Church.
I have experienced the entire spectrum of Christianity, and I must say I have never felt more fulfilled or secure in Christ than I do now. The music is ancient and foreign, the call to be perfect as Christ is perfect is real but not burdensome, and it’s just…true. I believe this is how it is supposed to be.
The Church is for everyone. There is no “this church is for young people”, “this church is for seekers”, “this church is for milk”, “this church is for meat,” “that church was for yesterday,” “this church is for today.” There is one Church and it’s for everyone, in all places, and in all times.
The Church will only look like the Church of our forefathers in its spiritual power, unquestionable authority, rock-solid faith, and even miracles when Christians stop pandering, stop chasing after passions, and start being singularly faithful to the Faith that established the Universe.
Age, that is a really great response. Thank you for adding your voice to this conversation. I am glad you have found your home in Orthodoxy. I had a similar journey that led me to Anglicanism. Being a part of God’s one, holy, catholic and apostolic church has a rootedness that is both a comfort and a challenge in a rooted and unchallenging age. One person posted, “The last thing any of us needs on Sunday is to have ourselves handed back to us.”
As someone that has been all across the board when it comes to non-denom, mainstream denominations, High School Youth Groups, and College Fellowships, I completely agree with this article. I’m now an Orthodox Christian because in all the other churches I went to, I kept seeing the same things. Separate Sunday Schools happening at the same time as Church services, entertainment services instead of worship services, fancy lights, praise bands, etc… And in the midst of it all, people “being saved”, only to stop coming to Church 6 months later.
My generation (20-30 somethings) craves the spiritual, dare I say the Mystical side of Christianity, and you can’t find that in an hour service in a place that has an atmosphere more like a rock concert than a cathedral, and only Worships on Sundays. Even moreso, how can anyone expect children to follow the faith, when they’re taught Christianity in a Church School, rather than experiencing the Faith in the Liturgy and receiving the Body of Christ in the Eucharist from their youngest years, to their death bed?
Hi Samuel,
For many who are in this conversation, your words are foreign. Many would sense that hey have recognized their experience in your first paragraph. Would you mind describing for them what you mean in the second about “spiritual” and “mystical”, “experiencing the faith in liturgy” and the value of the Eucharist?
Thanks!