Youth Ministry Is Dangerous? A Follow up...

A week or so ago I wrote about a documentary, Divided, that raised several questions about modern youth ministry and it’s connection to youth walking away from the faith.  While I disagreed with the film’s main premise and how they got there, I supported the idea that something is amiss with churches and our inability to enable youth to maintain their faith post high school.  I ended the post with a plea to parents, and their children, to engage in the task of discipleship together.  As I have said before, it takes a community to raise a child.

I have become more and more convinced (a journey which began by reading Will Our Children Have Faith by John Westerhoff) that it takes the entire church to educate and contribute to the spiritual maturation of our children.  If the church does not work in concert – with itself (various age specific ministries, children, youth, college, adults, older folks, and their respective pastors) and with parents – we will never succeed in doing the task to which God has called us.

What are some of the ways we can all work in concert to try, at least, to ensure that our children remain in the faith?  Kara Powell and Brad Griffen offer a few suggestions in the article, The Church Sticking Together: The Vital Role of Intergenerational Relationships in Fostering Sticky Faith, appearing in the September/October issue of Immerse Journal: A Journal of Faith, Life and Youth Ministry.  This article is based on a section of a book entitled, Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids.  Powell and Griffen declare that one of the things that is important to helping youth develop a lasting faith is “intergenerational stickiness.”  Intergenerational relationships are crucial.  The authors go on to suggest that teenagers’ inclusion in all church worship, their participation with the education and care of children, and the church’s support and value of teens as contributing adult members of the congregation are vital to youth keeping their faith. 

Makes sense, right?  A person, teenager or adult, isn’t going to stick around to be a part of a community in which they have had little value or part.  I do not believe that we need to do away with modern youth or children’s ministry, but we do need to find more ways of being the Body of Christ together.  If children and youth are always segregated away from the worshiping body of believers, they will have no connection to the worshiping faith of their parents.  All of this will be for naught if the church at large isn’t doing its job at helping adults, parents, and grandparents become more authentically Christ like.  One of the things I have learned about children and teens is that they see through falsity and hypocrisy far quicker than we give them credit. 

So, where does that leave us?  It leaves us needing to be engaged in an authentic struggle, all together, with what it means to become a Christ like disciple.  Adults can’t do it by themselves.  Children can’t do it by themselves.  Teens can’t do it by themselves.  If it takes a community to raise a child, it also takes a community to make a Christian.