Youth Ministry Get Serious... by Sam O'Neal

Conventional wisdom says teens don't like church because they find it boring. So they must be lured in with entertainment. Apparently, that strategy failed. A study published the Barna Group shows 61 percent of American twentysomethings attended church as teens but no longer attend, read the Bible, or pray.

"The point (was) not to do anything too weighty that would turn kids off," Chanon Ross, youth director at Knox Presbyterian Church in Naperville, Illinois, said, challenging the concept in an essay titled "Jesus Is Not Cool." The old goal was to "keep it light; keep it fun … while simultaneously conveying a positive, family-friendly alternative to things like MTV." Ross blames this for the exodus. In that environment, "teens don't need Jesus to be crucified and raised from the dead in order to have positive outcomes and pursue family-friendly alternatives to MTV."

Even more alarming, many teens are now unable to differentiate between the gospel and the pop-culture box they receive it in. In Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, authors Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton identify most church teens as "at best only tenuously Christian." Instead of worshiping the holy God of the Bible, most teens follow "a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist"—someone to solve their problems and ensure happiness. They call this belief system "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism," and claim it is rampant among American teenagers.

Going Hard Core
To reverse the trend, Time reports some churches are focusing more on teaching. Ben Calmer vetoed the purchase of a pool table after he became youth pastor of Shoreline Christian Center in Austin, Texas. The teens don't seem to miss the entertainment, as attendance doubled to 160 in the 18 months Calmer has been on the job.

When Chris Reed failed to convert a single student during a 12-month span as youth pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Bellflower, California, he decided to make a change. Reed restructured his program around heavier doses of doctrine and adult mentoring. Youth rolls expanded from 70 to over 200 in a period of 6 years, with 64 teens accepting Christ in a single year. More important, his students are growing spiritually.

"Teens have so much to give," he said. "People need to realize that youth are not the church of tomorrow; they're the church of today."

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