We haven’t done a great job at reaching college students, but we are trying.  One thing that we have done is to start a college small group that meets off church campus throughout the week.  We planned this small group around the schedules of college students by meeting from 8:30pm to 10:30pm.  They’re up late anyway!

I wouldn’t say that we have been real successful, but we are keeping many who would have dropped off.

“Another hallmark of Christianity is that salvation is not individualistic—it’s not something one person receives for himself or herself. Salvation is the reign of God. It is a political alternative to the way the world is constituted. That’s a very important part of the story that has been lost to accounts of salvation that are centered in the individual. But without an understanding that salvation is the reign of God, the need for the church to mediate salvation makes no sense at all.”—Stanley Hauerwas

Wendi,

You said… “I’m ashamed to say that their inward focus grew out of their parent’s inward focus during the time we were busy raising our family.”

I am so glad to hear someone say that. Not that I am joyful of your shame or the shame of someone else, but that someone is realizing that an inward focus is damaging to students who will live outward lives when the go to college/the work force.

As a youth pastor and a former staffer with Youth For Christ (YFC) I too found that the normal church youth ministry is hard for students who have been wounded by life and decisions to fit into. The look different, have had different experiences and are told by adult leaders and some very churched students that..."you engage in a lifestyle of sin that is shameful...”

I think there is an over arching problem in our churches that virtually ignores Jr. High and HS students as it pertains to the body. Sure, we hire qualified (hopefully) people to care for them and create almost an entirely different church for them. and then we expect them to want to be a part of the church that has not wanted them to be a part until they are adults.

Then entire time the church is full of older christians who are disconnected from the younger culture and their needs. I think it’s ironic that the claim is that youth ministries are failing. In fact I believe it is the church as a whole that is failing, and not YM.

If we really want to reach the younger generations then we need do more to reach out to them and make them as though we want them and all of their thoughts and ideals, regardless of how much they give. We are too busy trying to make older people who give happy by doing church their way.

Mean while the younger generations are leaving the church in droves, and the older believers are scratching their heads because they think everything is great.

Frustrating.

If the kinds of things we are teaching these kids are things like the necessity of believing in a 6-day creation or that the KJV is the only Word of God or other legalistic things that aren’t endemic to the day-to-day living of the life of a Christ-follower, then I’d want out, too.

If we are teaching them good spiritual habits (disciplines) and the importance of staying close to Jesus as opposed to following all the right rules… then they might not fall away.

Is it possible that few of us are doing that?

CS

Uh oh, I think we might agree again.

I think the issue is many sided.  Some of it has to do with what I was once convinced of today many of our kids simply believe.  It is not a conviction in their life but rather an untested belief handed to them by parents, pastors and other people.  Those beliefs can hardly stand in a friendly world much less a hostile world. 

Another issue is we have not taught students to love the church.  We actually designed the church to service kids but not built ministries that help students love the church.  Senior leaders must fix this. 

Another reason is the huge unhealthiness of youth ministers today.  So many youth guys/gals and volunteers today simply cannot take kids to where they are not so they end up pointing the way instead of leading the way.  I come across more ministers who do not spend a daily time with God than do.  I come across ministers who harbor bitterness, resentment, hatred in their hearts towards authority, towards parents, towards their lead pastors and wonder why kids do not stick around. 

I am an 18 year veteran of youth ministry and still travel across the country speaking to students and youth ministry teams.  One reason so many students are leaving is there is no real plan to keep them.  Once they graduate they are literally on their own.  There is not a clear process or thought process of the kind of student they wish to produce and then a strategic and well conceived plan to build a ministry that produces this student. 

Churches do not seek to develop younger leaders all that much.  So there is no real place to go once you graduate high school except for the few college ministries that are around.  Many of which are glorified high school ministries. 

One final piece and then I will get off my box.  We lack any real concept for disciple making today.  There are very few students who are in intensive disciple making relationships. I wonder why we have so few becoming disciples?

Another reason, I think is that we’ve separated out the youth from the life of the church.

That goes with not teaching them to love the church.

I know of churches that hold their youth classes during church, so the youth never even attend church together with the adults.

Others allow the youth, but don’t include and embrace them.  It’s not THEIR church, it’s the adult’s church where the youth are tolerated.

We have an interesting thing happening in our church, where the youth are truly leading the adults.  They are sharing their faith weekly, passionately studying the word and today before reading this, I was commenting and counting how many new adults have come to our church as a direct link to the youth attending.

I think in a smaller congregation like ours, it is easier to think mult-generationally.  So, we have youth taking offering for instance, giving testimonies, helping lead worship etc.  And I think they own the church is theirs. But I don’t think in my 46 years of attending and serving in churches I’ve ever seen a church do this.

I don’t think these statistics are any suprise to me.  I’ve noticed this trend over the last 20 years, that the youth leave and then start returning when they get married and have children.  Then they come to the realization that they want their kids to at least know church.

I can think of many of my friends who did this.

I can also remember feeling displaced myself as a young college student, going from an exciting and ministry focused high school youth group to a lacksidasical college group where nothing much was happening and most discussions were based on very basic Sunday School type questions and answers.

My solution was to immerse myself in ministry and not even attend the college group.  I wanted more so I went out and found it.  But I think a lot of kids this age group just step back and then move on.

We need to challenge youth and they will rise to the occasion.  If we do not engage them and embrace them, we will lose them.

Andy:

“I can’t believe in all these comments, (some of them with good points), no one has stated the obvious: the reason these people don’t want to go to church is because they’re not saved!”

You’re right.  I alluded to this slightly when I remarked about how 27% decided to walk away from the church selfishly.  In saying, “I wanted a break from church,” they might as well have said, “Forget God, I’m going to be me-focused here.”

I witnessed yesterday to a group of kids, and you should have seen their eyes when I spoke the true Gospel.  Some were on the verge of tears, others eyes shined with that, “I get it!” look, and many walked away, true to the Word.  There was one girl who professed to be a Christian, who could tell me all 66 Books of the Bible, yet was smoking, cussing, and talking about fornication like those acts were second-nature to her.  She said she was actively involved in her church’s youth groups, and it made me wonder what they were teaching her.

Then again, like I mentioned above, these youth groups are often more about playing Guitar Hero than they are about caring for the souls of the kids.

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CS

Have we as parents and church leaders invested in young people at an early age so that they are invested in the church?  Have we asked them to serve and to give of themselves in ministry?  Have we shown in our own lives that church is a priority?  Have we made church relevant to modern life?  Have we shown why the Bible and church are significant and why they should care?

GR Guy said:

Have we as parents and church leaders invested in young people at an early age so that they are invested in the church?  Have we asked them to serve and to give of themselves in ministry?  Have we shown in our own lives that church is a priority?  Have we made church relevant to modern life?  Have we shown why the Bible and church are significant and why they should care?

Uh, to answer your questions: Yes, Yes, Yes, who cares, and probably not biblically.

We’ve been hearing these same issues for decades, with the same supposed solutions.

We can teach kids to be invested in the church, serving, and giving the church priority, but without being born again it becomes no more than works righteousness. As a matter of fact, I’ve found that young kids like church a great deal, and adults can keep them interested until about 7th or 8th grade when the world holds more excitement for them than church.

As for making the church relevant to modern life, that is mostly an invention of the last 100 years. For the great majority of Christian history, claiming faith in Christ meant being hunted, persecuted, and even killed for your faith - and it still does in many parts of the world. (pretty relevant, huh)

The answer is still the same, and it applies to adults as well as young people: Those who are truly born again by God - those you can’t keep away from church and fellowship with other believers. Those who are not born again have very little interest in the things of God - and you’d have a hard time dragging them to anything spiritual. (Except of course the American version of entertainment driven me-church)

Have you considered that young people may be leaving the church not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a lack of faith in the church?

I walked away from church in my youth, not because I didn’t believe or have faith in God, but because I too “needed a break from church”.  The church I grew up in taught many things to the young people there, some good and some of which I came to disagree with as I grew, things like racism and the idea that women’s only purpose was to bear children and be subservient to men.  Being raised by a progressive thinking single mother those things did not seem right to me.

I continued to believe in God and study scripture, as well as other religions and philosophies, and I believe God played an active role in my life, but I did not have anything to do with “church” again for over twenty years.  I did not believe church had anything to teach me, church was irrelevant to my life, until I discovered there was a different way of doing church than I had grown up with.  Getting married and starting a family, at the ripe old age of 44, also helped make church relevant to my life again. 

GR Guy asked: Have we made church relevant to modern life?

Andy answered: …who cares? 

And I think that right there is a big part of the problem, young people at that stage in life don’t see the church as relevant in their lives and many of the people running the church(es) don’t care if (young) people believe it’s relevant and don’t believe church needs to be relevant.  Some people see the church as timeless and don’t believe it needs to be relevant to life today. 

You hear adults say “Church is my life”, but you don’t hear many young people say things like that.  Young people need to understand how church can be relevant in their lives without having to be the all-consuming center of their lives.  If young people stay connected to church when they leave home they are much more likely to have church as a core part of their lives later on in life.

Some young people may be leaving the church because they indeed do not believe, there are so many things calling for people to believe in them that it is easy to lose one’s way.  Some may indeed not be saved, yet.  And some may be inwardly focused.  But I think many young people leave church not because they don’t believe in God or don’t have faith, but because they are disillusioned with the church.

DanielR:

Your story is, sadly, pretty common, with churches that do not speak complete Biblical truth.  Sorry to hear about your rough younger years.

“I continued to believe in God and study scripture, as well as other religions and philosophies, and I believe God played an active role in my life, but I did not have anything to do with “church” again for over twenty years.”

Just curious, would you have considered yourself “saved” or “born again” during that time?

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CS

What ‘s more relevant to the souls of men and women than the unchanging message of forgiveness of sins, Jesus Christ, and eternal life?

That’s what we need to be focusing on, and not having motorcycles jumping over pastors, having a better sex life, or Guitar Hero night.

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CS