- The dead church
This will be my most controversial blog. So be prepared.
I read a headline at the Barna Group, pew research analysts, that said that teenagers were the most spiritual of all age groups.
You can see it in their t-shirts that proclaim Christ or a Christian camp logo, and you can find it in the youth groups at your church.
A dead church is a church that does not have teenagers. The church in my illustration died because the teenagers quit going to church. One girl, Sarah was her name, was 16 years old and still came most mornings to ring the chimes. Sarah came and rang the chimes and left. The morning I was there, there were no teenagers.
Many years ago, someone must have figured this out because suddenly every church had to hire a youth minister, or find someone to volunteer with the youth. When I was in a youth in church, we didn’t have a youth minister. But we had parties, and wiener roasts, and youth events. Call it by any name, your church must have youth attending.
Now comes the dilemma. Our sons and daughters quit going to church when they leave home. Suddenly this spiritual group finds other outlets, and so far, most have not returned to church.
These youths will some day be the young couples who used to bring children to church. Children would become teenagers and the cycle would begin all over again.
The chain has been broken. We are talking about today’s churches, and not churches some time in the distant past or the first century churches.
The teens live in a bubble at church, and receive very little actual spiritual help to live in the real world. When they leave home and encounter the real world, they are unprepared to deal with the sciences and technology and as a result, discount everything they learned while a teenager as being old-fashioned, naïve, and out of touch with their world. George Barna, pew research analyst, said that teenagers see church as old-fashioned when they leave home.
The church has prepared our teens for their afterlife, but have failed to prepare our teens for the afterlife of their teen years. This is the church’s responsibility, not the sole responsibility of parents.
Instead of leading our girls on in church and allowing them to believe they can serve God as He calls, girls must be told frankly and honestly that if they want to be a meaningful part of their church life, then they must enlist family, and friends, and pastors, and make it happen. I have a friend who thought when she was called to the ministry at age 16 that the church would support her in this decision. The church would have packed her bags and raised money for her to go to the foreign mission field, but will not lift a finger to help a girl who is called to pastoral ministry.
Teenager’s Christian music may not be your thing, but get over it. It is their thing, and you will be handing down the church to them one day – if we don’t alienate them first.
Each church must determine how to keep its youth. That means changes must happen in each church individually.
- You start by giving the teenagers a Bigger God. We have narrowed down God so much to fit in our own little head boxes, that the teenagers reject it. They hold in their own hands phones with more power than we give God.
- You give the teenagers a Bigger God who has the capacity to love all people.
- You give the teenagers a Bigger God who is not limited to 24/7 and who is not lying to us when we discover his treasures hidden in the earth.
- You give the teenagers a Bigger God who made the heavens that even the Hubble cannot find the end of.
The church must accept modern day science and thought and give God the credit for His creation. We cannot keep the mysteries of the earth and creation and the unlimited galaxies away from our children. They are going to learn of these things, and if we have spent our time denying God’s power to create the earth as He chose, then they will reject our concept of God.
God has given us knowledge that our recent ancestors had no concept of, and we have rejected it and denied that God did it His way.
Create in us a new song where we accept God’s vast creation, and deny Him nothing that he has created in the way He chose, and open our minds to ALLOW GOD.
bWe Baptist Women for Equality's Blog 
Good points. But I think the problem is the institution itself. We are meant to be a community but instead we have made it into a business or club. Teens and young adults may leave such things but still know where their “family” is. What we really need to do is ditch the institutional paradigm, and a lot of other problems would solve themselves.
I’m not sure what you’re saying about “science”, but I just hope you don’t take the same view of YEC as the people at Wartburg Watch do. 😉
LikeLike
I don’t have any idea who that group is or what they believe. By science, I meant the study of fossils, and geology, and the vast galaxy which has no end. I mean a God that is older than 12,000 years. A God who has some idea of what eternity means because he is timeless. A God who created the earth and human beings in his own way and in his own time. Does that help? I may have used the wrong word and given the wrong impression by science. I am not radical, but the subject is controversial, as I know many or most Christians limit God to a creation period of 24/7. >
LikeLike
They loathe YECs with every fiber of their being. 😉 Being a YEC, I find their judgmental attitude disturbing.
LikeLike
What is a YEC? I’m really ignorant here. I have no idea what that means.
LikeLike
Oh, sorry… Young Earth Creationist, i.e. God did it all in six literal earth days.
LikeLike
Ok. If you are one of those, that is fine with me. I’m not, but all my family and friends are.
LikeLike
Some are ill prepared for the diversity of ideas that can be found outside the church. In my brush with the evangelical world, it seemed that ideas differing from what was taught/learned in church–when acknowledged–were treated fearfully rather than considered and discussed. What is so scary about presenting views that others believe and talking with kids about them? I believe that doing so contributes to their ability to think things through and decide for themselves what they believe, once they are outside of the control/guidance of their parents…
When sheltered young Christians find out that other people think/believe different things altogether than what they were taught in their religious life (whether in a church or not), and that the world “out there” does not match up with what they were taught that the “outside world” was like, it’s easy for them to presume they were lied to about Christ himself.
LikeLike
Fortunately, not all churches are without youths. My daughter is a youth minister taking care of 60(?) youths. I told her B4 she started, that youth ministry must also be parents’ ministry. Unless parents are supportive or involved, you’ll fail miserably. She sends out regular newsletters to parents with contemporary topics (e.g. who is lady Gaga & what she advocates), inform the parents the list of study topics for fellowship such as premarital sex, pornography, homosexuality, and other controversial topics. She has a parents’ class where she discusses parents’ communication with their teenagers. She has a facebook page, listens to their music, take them to movies and discuss the movies, visit troubled families, etc. She trained youth leaders one semester, got the parents to commit to taking them to church 7:30am on Sundays ($50 penalty for tardiness)and memorize a ton of bible verses. Everybody went through the program with no incident and all bible verses memorized. She did baptismal classes and baptized youths and adults. I am not singing her praises per se, just that we need to hear some encouraging news once in a while. The only thing she didn’t have is a title. She is minister, not pastor. Other than that, she does everything, the youths love her and the parents support her.
LikeLike
Thank you all for your thoughtful replies.
LikeLike
I go to a vibrant church where the official policy is that there is no official policy on any secondary doctrine. The pastor is a young-earth Creationist; I am not. This is a non-issue.
We have a huge youth group. Young people are encouraged to think for themselves, not told what they have to believe. The pastor is a man of deep humility without a controlling bone in his body, who sees himself as submitted to the elders, who represent the congregation.
It’s a healthy, growing church– and it preaches the divinity of Christ, the necessity of the Atonement, the need for repentence and turning away from sin. No primary doctrine is fudged or watered down. No secondary doctrine is treated as if it were primary.
LikeLike
That sounds great! I think where the challenge comes is in practice. Are there female elders at the church? Whatever the case, there will be some people who find the norm there to be not the best understanding of Scripture.
It is so awesome that the youth are not told what to believe but encouraged to think for themselves. I worry about my nieces for this and other reasons. I have expressed elsewhere on this blog that I believe it can be risky to spoonfeed doctrine to youth rather than teaching them to think for themselves.
LikeLike
Kristen, thank God you found such a community.
LikeLike
Yes, I’m thankful too! No, there are no women elders allowed. But the children’s minister is a woman and is called a “minister” just like the pastor.
Women are allowed to lead Bible studies, serve communion, baptise, lead prayer from the pulpit, give a short teaching prior to the serving of communion, collect the offering, and be on the financial board. They are not allowed to preach the main sermon, be the senior minister, or be elders.
BUT — the pastor is willing to read egalitarian books, and I’m hopeful that as time goes on, there will be more change in this area (all the women’s activities listed above didn’t use to be allowed either, but the pastor is humble and willing to listen and yield.)
LikeLike