Take a look at this outline. Does it seem to hit at what roles how we do youth ministry might play in this crisis? There are obviously many factors at play and there certainly are lots of individuals who come to lasting faith through youth ministry. But, why do we lose so many?
Here is my outline.
Leaving Youth Group, Leaving Faith
(We can rescue the vanishing generation in the church. We just have to change most of how we think about youth ministry).
What needs to change?
We are great at weddings, and not so good at marriages.
(Looking at group numbers and para-church conversions, youth ministry looks to be in great shape. Where are these kids 10 years later?).
Giving black and white answers in an increasingly gray world.
(Leaving students ill-equipped to deal with the questions, doubts and challenges to faith that come after high school).
Orphans in their own home.
(We have students deeply immersed in the culture of your youth group or ministry, but with no sense of their place in the larger body of Christ and the larger working of God in history).
Bait and Switch. Selling grace, delivering legalism.
(Kids come into faith through our beautiful presentations of grace and leave when they fail and feel our judgment).
Just another narcissistic fix.
(Preaching a self-centered Gospel instead of Jesus’ message of ‘reconciling all things’).
The Myth of Superman.
(We project and certainty and perfection when our students are yearning for transparency and honesty).
What do you think?
A lot of us are pretty skeptical of authority in general. For that reason I very much resonate with your last point of transparency and honesty.
ReplyDeleteThe other thought I have is that in looking at the numbers, they/we leave the church but still have a strong sense of belief/spiritual desire. In spite of that, we're still generally doing church the same way (a building, sunday mornings, etc). Why can't we scrap the old system of church spirituality and embrace a new idea of what communal faith looks like? There's a lot of headscratching going on regarding how to fix the problem (taking a population who isn't interested in consistently attending church and making them interested). Maybe it's not as much of a problem as we make it out to be...maybe it's just a generation being itself.
Taylor, I think you are correct on the generational lack of interest in institutions and youth ministry, and church ministry in general has yet to really come to terms with that. That said, I DO think there needs to some way for 20somethings to find a home in the church. Long term, free floating spirituality is going to need to have some anchoring in the life of the church (both for the good of individuals and for the future of the church). What that looks like, is a great question.
ReplyDeleteThe phenomenon I'm describing though, is less folks dropping out of church but still pursuing Christian spirituality on their own, but young people leaving faith all-together.