Youth Ministry is not the Problem… You are.

The statistics are staggering. 88% of children raised in Christian families leave church at the age of 18, never to return. Only 4% of the “bridger” generation, or Gen Y, will be Bible-believing Christians when they reach adulthood, all while, the 20 something male is almost completely absent in the American church, which seeing the above statistics, doesn’t look like that will change anytime in the near or further future…

The question comes around to then, “Why have so many teenagers and young adults walked away from the church?” 

Many say it’s the “unbiblical” segregation of ages. Some turn to the program itself and say it’s our programmatic rundown, the lack of adults taking initiative in the lives of our students, or simply bad communication from our pastors and parents when it comes to articulating what our faith should look like…

Kenda Creasy Dean, professor and head of the youth ministry department at Princeton Seminary, discusses this topic in her book “Almost Christian” suggests that we actually aren’t mis-communicating anything, in fact we’re communicating quite clearly, she says:

“We are doing an exceedingly good job of teaching youth what we really believe: namely, that Christianity is not a big deal, that God requires little, and the church is a helpful social institution filled with nice people focused primarily on ‘folks like us —which, of course, begs tthe question of whether we are really the church all.”

“What if the blase religiosity of most American Teenagers is not the result of poor communication but the result of excellent communication of a watered-down gospel so devoid of God’s self giving love in Jesus Christ, so immune to the sending love of the Holy Spirit that it might not be Christianity at all?”

Have we watered the gospel down, changed the face of Jesus, re-created what Christianity actually is so much so that nobody wants to be a part of it, that a majority of our teenagers, and young adults have completely walked away from the church?

It seems as if the problem is not necessarily youth ministry (that being our current programmatic model of youth ministry or the segregation of ages) but the problem at hand is our own faith and the lives we’ve modeled as “followers of Jesus”.

Dean goes on to say, “If theological malpractice explains teenagers half-hearted religious identities—then perhaps most young people practice Moralistic Therapeutic Deism not because they reject Christianity, but because this is the only “Christianity” they know… If this is the faith they see lived out by their parents, their pastors, and their churches, how would they know it’s a sham?”

The question no longer remains at, “Is youth ministry the problem?” but it’s now turned to, “Is the church in America actually representative of the church in scripture?” 

I’m not so sure that we should be completely concerned as pastors, about the faith of our teenagers and young adults, but more so concerned about our own faith, and what we’re modeling and communicating to our teenagers through our actions…

Referencing back to Dean, she states, “Lackadaisical faith is not getting peoples issue, but ours… So we must assume that the solution lies not in beefing up congregational youth programs or making worship more “cool” and attractive, but in modeling the kind of mature, passionate faith we say we want young people to have…”

Are you living this “mature, passionate faith we say we want young people to have”? This is definitely a hard question to answer, some might immediately write it off without consideration, but as pastors, leaders, and older adults I want to challenge you to look inside scripture read through the teachings of Christ, and ask, “Have I given everything to Jesus? Do I love him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength?”

(These quotes were taken from Kenda Creasy Dean’s most recent book titled “Almost Christian” if you’re involved in youth ministry in any way shape or form, that being parenting, mentoring, or pastoring this is definitely a must read! You can buy it here.)