youth ministry

Ex-Christians 101

Drew Dyck — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 12:46:01 -0700

"Why are young people leaving the faith?"

Since I began writing a book on the topic of reaching young ex-Christians, I’ve faced this question repeatedly. The embarrassing truth is that I can’t answer it. At least not simply.

Ask most Christians the question, though, and the answer is easy: they leave because of moral compromise. A teenage girl goes off to college and starts to party. A young man moves in with his girlfriend. Soon the conflict between their beliefs and behavior becomes unbearable, and they drop their faith commitment. They may cite intellectual skepticism or disappointments with the church, but don’t be fooled. These are just excuses, smokescreens designed to hide their real reason for going astray. “They change their creed to match their conduct,” as my parents would say.

However, after interviewing dozens of young people who have left the faith, I’ve come to the conclusion that this assessment doesn’t tell the whole story. While moral compromise often does play a role, it’s usually more complicated than that. Young ex-Christians report leaving for a host of different reasons—and they’re not all smokescreens.

Some of the “leavers” I interviewed had been hurt by people in the church. I heard multiple stories of young people who had been verbally or even physically abused by older Christians. For many of these victims, retaining their faith meant swimming upstream against a current of painful memories.

Others expressed real intellectual doubts. During high school and college while other Christian friends were growing in their walks with God, doubts were multiplying like weeds in their minds, choking off their faith. Worse, when they voiced these doubts, they often received trite responses or even hostility from Christian leaders or parents. One was literally slapped across the face. Almost to a person, the ex-Christians with whom I spoke reported being shut down (often brutally) when they expressed doubts.

There was a sizable minority who were lured away by alternative spiritualities such as Wicca. For some, the decision to leave was a naked assertion of autonomy, sheer “spiritual rebellion.” Yet even in these cases, prior Christian experience played a pivotal role. As I probed their stories, I concluded that many had probably never been real Christians in the first place. They had embraced a watered down version of the true Gospel, devoid of its powerful claims and radical demands.

In short, talking to young “leavers” made me realize that understanding them involves more than examining them. It also means examining ourselves. It involves taking a hard, uncomfortable look in the mirror. It demands that we listen to their stories, acknowledge our mistakes, and apologize where we’ve failed them. Only then will we earn their trust, and begin to have the kind of conversations that will ultimately light their way back home.

The Death of Youth Group

CJ Casciotta — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:22:51 -0700

Ok, so that was just a provactive title to get you here. I’d like to start off saying I don’t have all the answers. I’m only 23, I don’t have a masters in theology, and I’m not a youth pastor. I have been in youth ministry leadership for a number of years, have had the opportunity to meet and dialogue with some forward thinking and innovative Christian leaders, and have been a “youth group kid” since puberty first reeled its awkward head in my life.

In my conversations with people who are thinking about ways to aid and engage the next generation, the same theme always seems to permeate our dialogue:

We need to move away from creating systems and events and begin seeing people more as individuals. In short, mentorship is a much more effective way to foster and grow young Christians….but it’s also a greater sacrifice.

Think about someone you know who’s just a stellar Christian. They’re passionate, live a life of integrity, and allow that life to spill generously to others. Maybe that’s you. I’ll bet you anything they attribute their lifestyle to someone that once stepped outside their busy schedule and personally invested in them, someone they could tell anything to (even their deepest, darkest junk). I have a friend who told me with a straight face once that she felt so comfortable around her mentor that she could tell her something as horrible as she just murdered someone without feeling judged or condemned.

So after all these conversations, here’s a summary of what I’m starting to believe:

Perhaps the reason why youth ministry can often be ineffective is that it emphasizes “the event” far more than it understands the importance of mentorship. We go to Christian camps, host Christian concerts, invest in Christian coffee houses… all safe alternatives to the drug and alcohol driven events most high schoolers attend on the weekends. The tendency is to create this safe playpen for churched teenagers that doesn’t allow them to realistically engage the outside world with their faith (the world they have to live in the majority of the time they’re not sitting in youth group).

I’ve grown so tired of the “just try harder” talk from speakers at youth camp. “You know, last year at camp you probably decided to get right with God, but I’m guessing you’ve done some backsliding since. Well, now it’s time to get right again. As the worship band comes up….etc, etc.”

Of course they’ve “done some backsliding!” Have you been to high school lately?! You got to be Rambo to survive. David Kinnaman calls it “the fractured generation.” Kids are cutting themselves, killing themselves, having casual sex in the bathroom, throwing up in the bathroom so they can look attractive enough for the causal sex they’re going to have later, taking advantage of the porn available to them on their cell phones, experimenting, tormenting, struggling, abusing, all the while desperately hanging on without a seatbelt to a chaotic hormonal rollercoaster.

We can’t keep spending money on blow-up games and new wings in our churches for coffee houses cleverly titled “Higher Grounds” without backing it all up with some serious substance. We all need people in our lives older and wiser than us: people who won’t BS us, people who will kick our butts when we need it (never when we’re down), people who refuse to give up on us, and people who will constantly point us toward Jesus.

...And that takes effort, investment, sacrifice, space, and time... .all those things we love to hear we need more of.

Those of you who know me know I’m REALLY good at doing all that above stuff.
But I’m going to start making this a priority. Maybe you’re thinking you can’t mentor someone because you don’t have your own stuff together. I used to think that for a long time, but then I look at every leader in the Bible (Moses, David, Peter, Paul to name a few) and all their screw-ups and I’m encouraged.

A pretty successful author/speaker/pastor recently told me that on a particular day, he had the opportunity to either speak to 1,000 people about his new book or hang out with a couple of young guys at Starbucks just to talk and be available….he chose the latter….We need more guys like that... a lot more.

People and Organizations Committed to Mentoring the Next Generation:

Donald Miller: The Mentorship Project
Deadly Viper Character Assassins
Project Hangout

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?