I don't mind telling you that I'm proud of my children, and the young men they've become, and I won't apologize at all that we took our children to church, taught them about Jesus, and gave them an opportunity to find where they belong in God's family.
Yesterday, my oldest son put up a post on Facebook that he has accepted a job in the worship ministry in his church. His mom and I couldn't be more proud of him, and are humbled to know that he is pursuing a career path of serving the Lord. In his post, he wrote something very interesting, and it is a concept I've been stressing for many years as it relates to young adults in the church. He wrote:
"I have been actively participating in Church services since I was 11 and have spent far more Sundays in church than not."
Notice he did not say, "I have been going to church since I was 11..." No, he said he has been "actively participating in Church services" since he was a young boy. (Not to contradict him, but he's actually been involved since he was 8. But I'm not here to nitpick!) He is a musician, and as a worship leader/participant myself at our home church, I put him up on stage as soon as his talent level allowed him to participate in the service without being a distraction. First, it was auxiliary services, like Wednesday nights, and so forth. But it didn't take us long to see he had the talent to jump into our regular Sunday morning services with the "seasoned" musicians.
From that moment on, he has spent the subsequent years of his young life as an active member of Sunday morning worship teams. He did so throughout high school, and when he left for college out of state, his first inclination at college was to not only get involved in the campus ministry group, but he sought out a church where he could play in the worship team.
Notice again I did not say, "He sought out a church home." I said he looked for, and found, a place where he could land and immediately get involved using his talent. Within just a couple months of being away at college, he was not only playing worship with the campus ministry team, but he was playing regular Sunday morning worship at a local church.
You've seen the statistics, and its an epidemic problem the church as a whole has faced for generations. Young children grow up in the church, get involved in youth group, and then when they leave for college, they leave the church. The numbers can be staggering. Depending on the poll you search, the numbers get placed anywhere from around 50% to upwards of 80%. Kids who grow up in the church, and then leave when they graduate high school. And that's the kids who grew up in the church. We're not even talking about children who never went to church to start with.
I did a Google search "Young Adults Leaving the Church." And up popped all sorts of articles trying to explain why this happens. "Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church" and "New Stats on Why Young People Leave Church." And many more like that. They all say pretty much the same thing, and they've been saying the same things for at least the last 25 years or so. And I can tell from reading those article and countless others like them over the years, mostly, they're wrong.
Sure, they bring up good points that our church needs to be cognizant of, and issues the church as a whole needs to address, and many issues they would do well to fix. But on the whole, most of the reasons you'll read flat out miss the point. For the most part, God's church hasn't changed. Society has changed, but the teachings of the Bible that have been sound and true since God spoke them into existence aren't all the sudden failing in the last several decades. Society wants you to believe that is the case.
It's not.
No, young people leave the church primarily for one reason, and one reason only: Because we, as adults, never helped them find their place in the church. We never gave them a chance to actively participate in the ministry of the church as a whole.
Youth group doesn't count.
DON'T HIT THE PANIC BUTTON! And please, hear me out. I'm NOT saying youth group isn't important in the life of a young Christian. I'm NOT saying youth group doesn't play a vital role in a young person's growth in Jesus. And I'm NOT saying a vibrant, active youth group isn't vital to the growth and health of the church.
DON'T HIT THE PANIC BUTTON! And please, hear me out. I'm NOT saying youth group isn't important in the life of a young Christian. I'm NOT saying youth group doesn't play a vital role in a young person's growth in Jesus. And I'm NOT saying a vibrant, active youth group isn't vital to the growth and health of the church.
What I AM saying is that youth group alone doesn't help a young person find their place in the church as a whole. Far too often, youth group is a social club for kids. As adults, we continue to buy into the idea that kids "need a place to go," or they "need a place to be" that's safe and healthy and isolated, and yadda, yadda, yadda. So we send them to youth group.
What youth groups do well, for the most part, is teach kids about Jesus and give kids a place where they can go and open up and be real around peers without the heavy hand of their parents on top of them all the time. A place where they can go and feel comfortable.
But what far too many youth groups do is isolate kids away from the rest of their church. Sure, it gives them a place to go, but it also takes them away from what I like to call "the big boy church." We think that if the kids get together every Friday night for pizza at the youth minister's house, and if they have their own isolated Sunday school class and Sunday night church service, then they're doing great.
During the summer, we ship them off to a camp for a week, and a couple of youth conventions. They take a trip to an amusement park, and a precious few head out to a missions trip for a week or so. Maybe they get a Winter retreat over Christmas break.
Please hear this: all those things are great, and important. And they can, and often are, life-changing experiences for a young person. A good number of Christians can look back at one of those experiences or something like it and tell you that was the moment they became a Christ-follower, or made a decision to serve the Lord, or any number of other life-altering decisions. They're great. (Ask me sometime to tell you about a Petra concert I attended back in 1983!)
But they're not enough. And in many cases, REALLY miss the boat on providing opportunities for kids to find their place in the church AFTER youth group. Far too often, we plop kids down in youth group, and youth group is the only thing they ever know about the church. And other youth group kids are the only people they ever know. And when youth group is no longer an option, they don't know what to do. We kick them out into the real world after high school and they are often ill-equipped to deal with it. They no longer have a "place" in the church, and so they flounder around and often succumb to the secular world.
And it is for these same reasons that many "young adults" ministries fail to fix the problem. Because too often, their goal is simply to provide another "place" for young adults to land, maybe with a "young adults" themed class, or a "young adults" get-together or outing every now and then. And the only people they hang out with is other young adults. And they don't do any better job at getting someone plugged into the church than youth group did.
Let's jump ahead a few years. It's fairly common for many kids who left the church after high school to come straggling back in several years later. For a variety of reasons, but mostly after they've had some life experience and mature to find out there isn't much out in the real world for them either. Life experience brings maturity, and many grow to realize that being in the church of Jesus is a far better place for them than wandering around out in the secular world. Often, it is after they've started their own families, and they're now searching for a place to land their own children.
If you are a believer, think about your own walk with Christ. If you are thriving in your church family, it is probably because you've gotten involved in the ministry of the church. You're volunteering, or leading a small group, or teaching a class, or playing worship, even chaperoning youth group events, or in some other way giving your gifts and talents back to the Lord. It's likely that someone in the church helped you recognize your gifts and talents and showed you there was a place in the church to use them to help bring people to Jesus. That's exciting and energizing, and when people have ownership over what's happening in the church, they tend to become very active.
If you're floundering, and just showing up each Sunday and filling a pew, then the church isn't doing its job well enough to help you understand that you're needed just as much as everyone else.
My son learned from a very early age that he had a place in the church. And not just among his peers, but in the "big boy" church as a whole. He learned that his gifts and talents were vital and needed, and not just in the youth group. And when it was time for him to move out into the real world, he naturally set about to find that place where he could plug in. It was second nature to him. He didn't wonder if he belonged, and experiment to find his place in the world. He knew his place, and set out to find where he could be used.
We didn't do anything magical. We're not super-parents. There's no secret, or special formula. We simply recognized the gifts our kids had, and made sure they found a place to use them in the church. Truth is, if our worship minister had told me my son was "too young" to participate in worship, or any other such nonsense, I'd have probably left our church and found another home right then and there. Fortunately, our worship minister -- a wonderful, Godly man who will remain nameless here, but knows who he is -- was wise enough to see the same thing I saw, and holds the same views I hold about getting people involved. My son, and that church, was the better for having that man there.
Kids leave the church -- and so do adults -- for one primary reason: because they don't feel like they belong. They don't think they have a place. They don't feel like they have any ownership in the ministry. They don't think anyone needs whatever it is they have to offer. If we, as a church, want to fix that, then we have to be intentional about helping people plug in. Especially young people and children. We have to help kids find and identify their gifts and talents, and then help them see there's a place for them in the church as a whole. Sure, those gifts can change and evolve with age, but it doesn't mean as their leaders that we can't instill in them the concept of plugging in, and help guide them along that path to make sure they stay plugged in.
If you want young kids to stop leaving the church, you have to give them a reason to want to stay. It is natural human nature to want to belong. And they will seek to belong to wherever it is they feel accepted -- wherever they feel NEEDED. We must help them understand, at a young age, they are needed in the church. If we don't show them that outside of youth group, then they will leave when youth group is over.
It is that simple.
And it is for these same reasons that many "young adults" ministries fail to fix the problem. Because too often, their goal is simply to provide another "place" for young adults to land, maybe with a "young adults" themed class, or a "young adults" get-together or outing every now and then. And the only people they hang out with is other young adults. And they don't do any better job at getting someone plugged into the church than youth group did.
Let's jump ahead a few years. It's fairly common for many kids who left the church after high school to come straggling back in several years later. For a variety of reasons, but mostly after they've had some life experience and mature to find out there isn't much out in the real world for them either. Life experience brings maturity, and many grow to realize that being in the church of Jesus is a far better place for them than wandering around out in the secular world. Often, it is after they've started their own families, and they're now searching for a place to land their own children.
If you are a believer, think about your own walk with Christ. If you are thriving in your church family, it is probably because you've gotten involved in the ministry of the church. You're volunteering, or leading a small group, or teaching a class, or playing worship, even chaperoning youth group events, or in some other way giving your gifts and talents back to the Lord. It's likely that someone in the church helped you recognize your gifts and talents and showed you there was a place in the church to use them to help bring people to Jesus. That's exciting and energizing, and when people have ownership over what's happening in the church, they tend to become very active.
If you're floundering, and just showing up each Sunday and filling a pew, then the church isn't doing its job well enough to help you understand that you're needed just as much as everyone else.
My son learned from a very early age that he had a place in the church. And not just among his peers, but in the "big boy" church as a whole. He learned that his gifts and talents were vital and needed, and not just in the youth group. And when it was time for him to move out into the real world, he naturally set about to find that place where he could plug in. It was second nature to him. He didn't wonder if he belonged, and experiment to find his place in the world. He knew his place, and set out to find where he could be used.
We didn't do anything magical. We're not super-parents. There's no secret, or special formula. We simply recognized the gifts our kids had, and made sure they found a place to use them in the church. Truth is, if our worship minister had told me my son was "too young" to participate in worship, or any other such nonsense, I'd have probably left our church and found another home right then and there. Fortunately, our worship minister -- a wonderful, Godly man who will remain nameless here, but knows who he is -- was wise enough to see the same thing I saw, and holds the same views I hold about getting people involved. My son, and that church, was the better for having that man there.
Kids leave the church -- and so do adults -- for one primary reason: because they don't feel like they belong. They don't think they have a place. They don't feel like they have any ownership in the ministry. They don't think anyone needs whatever it is they have to offer. If we, as a church, want to fix that, then we have to be intentional about helping people plug in. Especially young people and children. We have to help kids find and identify their gifts and talents, and then help them see there's a place for them in the church as a whole. Sure, those gifts can change and evolve with age, but it doesn't mean as their leaders that we can't instill in them the concept of plugging in, and help guide them along that path to make sure they stay plugged in.
If you want young kids to stop leaving the church, you have to give them a reason to want to stay. It is natural human nature to want to belong. And they will seek to belong to wherever it is they feel accepted -- wherever they feel NEEDED. We must help them understand, at a young age, they are needed in the church. If we don't show them that outside of youth group, then they will leave when youth group is over.
It is that simple.
