youth

Who's Waiting for Your Kids?

Brett Kunkle — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:29:22 -0700

In a few short years, students will leave our homes and graduate from our churches. They'll head off to college. Who's waiting for them? What kinds of people will they meet? And are they ready?

Transforming Little Heretics

Brett Kunkle — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:54:37 -0700

“God is like a three-headed dragon,” offered one high school student. “I think God is like a Transformer,” blurted out a junior higher in the front row. I had just asked students at this summer camp to give a brief definition of the Trinity. They reached for all sorts of analogies to explain God’s nature. Heresy soon followed (Disclaimer: no heretical students were burned at the stake).

Next, I asked for biblical justification. “What Scripture tells us that God is a trinity? Where in the Bible do we find the word?” Students began thumbing through their Bibles, searching for the elusive verses. A few went straight to their concordances. Several minutes passed. No verses were offered. Finally, a female underclassman ventured a guess. “There is no Bible verse that uses the word Trinity, right?”

After watching students struggle, their youth leaders were frustrated. But the failure of these young Christians to explain an essential belief like the Trinity was to be expected. After in-depth research, sociologist Christian Smith found “the vast majority of [American teenagers] to be incredibly inarticulate about their faith, their religious beliefs and practices, and its meaning or place in their lives.” When students aren’t systematically trained, heresy becomes habit. So these young believers needed some patient, yet thorough theological instruction. And after seeing their own inability to explain an essential of the faith, they were eager and ready.

I started with James White’s concise, yet precise, definition of the Trinity: “Within the one Being that is God, there simultaneously exists three coequal, coeternal, and distinct persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” There are three divine persons—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—in one being—God. Simply put, there is one “what” and three “who’s.” I explained to students how all analogies end up being heretical, even though they may be helpful at first.

Next I offered a biblical case. There is no single passage to cite. Instead, I showed students how to build their case for the Trinity on three foundations (see White's book, The Forgotten Trinity). First, the Scripture clearly teaches there is only one God. I took them to Deuteronomy 6:4, Isaiah 43:10 and 44:6-8, and John 17:3. Second, I showed them how each person is divine in nature. John 1:1 says “the word [Jesus] was God.” In John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” clearly a claim to deity when you examine the context. And the Apostle Paul echoes this in Philippians 2:5-8. In Acts 5:3-4, lying to the Holy Spirit is equated with lying to God. Thirdly, I showed them how the three divine persons are coequal and coeternal, citing Genesis 1:26, Matthew 28:19, and a host of other verses.

It was a bit of a theological workout but students consumed it. And enjoyed it. This was the kind of in-depth training we offered students during each session at camp. Feedback from the counselors was unanimous—students told them it was the most challenging church camp ever. Again and again they expressed their thankfulness for being challenged. I guess they were glad to move from little heretics to budding theologians.

But I didn’t leave the Trinity in the realm of mere academic theological exercise. We discussed its implications for worship. I showed students how worshipping God is no longer the worship of a distant ambiguous being. The word “God” now had very specific content for them. They were worshipping the Trinitarian God of the Bible—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—who has existed from all eternity. A God unlike any other god. The one true God. And that theological truth is transformational.

How Should Youth Leaders Prepare Students for College?

Brett Kunkle — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:00:35 -0800

Last week I posted troubling statistics about the amount of churched youth who walk away once they're in college. CPYU has been interviewing college students as part of their College Transition Initiative. They've asked students, "As you reflect on your church youth group experience, what are some things you wish your youth group would have done more of to prepare you for college?" Their answers are instructive for parents, pastors, youth leaders--any of us who teach youth in some capacity.

Alysia at the University of Illinois said:

My youth group was fairly useless in preparing me for college. A short course in different religions helped me, but what helped me more was attending Worldview Academy for two summers. The challenging of my faith and teaching me the apologetics, leadership, and evangelism helped the most--especially by helping me determine why I personally believed in Christianity and by giving me the tools to help share that with others...My youth group was a place where the leaders were trying everything from games to parties to entice people to come, but they wouldn't dive deep into any theological or social topic. We were treated as intellectual babies and thus never grew to understand the importance or the relevance of the Christian faith.

Daniel at Erskine College said:

I wish my youth group had done more to prepare me for the academic challenges to Christianity instead of focusing on high school drama. I was fortunate to make great and knowledgeable friends, but I have known others who have turned away because of professors and students raising tough objections. I wish my youth group had taken things more seriously and done more apologetics and less of worrying about the drama of high school.

And Gabrielle at Chatham University said:

I was in several youth groups in high school and unfortunately found that youth group was too “soft”—we played a lot of games and had a lot of fun retreats, but rarely learned about the fundamentals of faith, why we believe what we believe, and what it is that we do believe. Now that I am in college, my faith is under constant scrutiny and always being tested by scientific concepts and the secular slant of most universities. I wish I had been equipped with a more solid justification for my faith: knowing how to answer the tough questions, how to respond to arguments, and how to stand firm in what feels like a storm against my spirituality.

In hindsight, these young people realized that much of the substance of youth ministry left them ill-equipped for challenges in the university. It's not entirely sufficient for holistic discipleship but deep theological and apologetic training is certainly necessary. Failure to give them such training is a big reason many eventually leave Christ and His Church...oftentimes for good.

How Many Youth are Leaving the Church?

Brett Kunkle — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:38:00 -0800

If you discovered about half of the students in your church's youth ministry were going to walk away from Christ after entering college, would you do something about it? I hope so. That's not a very good retention rate.

But whatpercentage of Christian youth are actually leaving the church? There’sbeen some debate about the actual number, with some saying as little as 4% will remain Christian, while others suggest there’s virtually no exodus. Christian Smith tells us that evangelicals have been "behaving badly with statistics"and quickly dispenses with the 4% "panic-attack" stats. But can weget some idea of the percentage of youth leaving the church withoutbeing irresponsible with numbers?

These are the most recent and most cited studies that I could find:

88%: The Southern Baptist Convention's Family Life Council study in 2002 (unfortunately, I can't find the actual study and methodology)
70%: LifeWay Research study in 2007 (LifeWay also found only 35% eventually return)
66%: Assembly of God study (again, I can't find the actual study, only references here and there)
61%: "Barna study in 2006 -- "Most Twentysomethings Put Christianity on the Shelf..."

The LifeWay and Barna studies include research details. I’m no sociologist but from what I can tell, their methodology seems sounds.

Here are some related studies:

"Spirituality in Higher Education": The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA found that 52% of college students reported frequent church attendance the year before they entered college but only 29% continued frequent church attendance by their junior year.
College Transition Project: The Fuller Youth Institute's current data seems "to suggest that about 40-50% of students in youth groups struggle in their faith after graduation."
"The Religiosity Cycle": A 2002 Gallup Poll study found that church attendance “drops during the teen and young adult years.”

Conclusion: It's safe to conclude the church is losing a signficant portion of itsyoung people for some period of time. Even if we take Barna's lowernumbers and then cut 10% off to be extra conservative, we're stilltalking about losing half of our young people.

Is that acceptable? And if not, why are we losing them and what needs to be done?