If you think about it, I would appreciate your prayers. Presently I am venturing into an important issue at Rooftop, one that perplexes the church of America as well. The issue is "How do we best minister to and train up our children and youth?" At Rooftop this is taking the form of how to shape our forthcoming youth ministry effort. Presently, I am reading Wes Stafford's, Too Small to Ignore and enjoying it. Yet, his conclusions and suggestions fly in the face of typical Western culture and the way most Christians have raised their youth in the recent decades.
I am beginning this venture through reading a number of books, plan on talking to a number of parents, consulting our staff and leadership, and praying a ton. The most daunting statistic that is driving my pursuit is that 90% of church attending teens in recent decades leave the church and potentially their faith, once they graduate from high school. What this means is...what the church and parents have been doing has NOT been working. Only 10% of American youth have continued with church involvement into their young adulthood...that is insane and a horrible tragedy!!!
Interestingly, Julie and I did experience this reatlity firsthand through our struggles reaching young adults and growing the young adult ministry at our last church in Grand Rapids. During 5 years of focused and steady ministry to young people ages 18-29, we had only TWO seniors from the church's high school minsitry transition into our group and stick. This is in a church of almost 3,000 people with 50-100 graduating seniors every year. TWO people, Adam and Michele, everyone else in our group had little or no connection previously to Kentwood before joining our ministry. Is this not crazy???
Well, now we are trying to address this problem from the other end, developing a ministry or discipleship plan for our children to help them avoid being one of these statistics. What this looks like, I do not yet know. What I do know is that it will probably be different from what people experienced themselves or have been used to. With a 10% success rate, we can only hope that it is different. Thanks for your prayers and your interest. Stay tuned for more of my findings and learnings as we continue on this journey...
2 comments:
Jeremy...my name is Chris Genders, and I am currently serving as the Pastor of Adult Ministries at Great Oaks Community Church just outside of Peoria, IL. (www.greatoakscc.org; chris@greatoakscc.org)
Blake Ahrens is one of my small group coaches, and he sent me a link to this post. In addition to my job working with the adults, I am also serving as the Interim HS Pastor. I appreciate you being honest with this aspect of student ministries...it is one I have witnessed for the last 10+ years of serving in the church. Just wanted to throw out a couple of additional books if they aren't already on your list. "The Seven Checkpoints" & "Max Q" by Andy Stanley. We are building our entire MS & HS ministry around eight core values stemming from these two books.
If I could narrow down the success of any student ministry to something beyond God's blessing & involvement, I would say it is dependent on the students being influencers/leaders in the ministry and in their schools. The times when I have seen student ministries succeed during (and beyond) those four years of high school is when you had strong student leaders who were deeply committed and unashamed in their role as influencers for Christ.
Just my two cents...
So true Jeremy. I know we've discussed this in the past. No matter what comes of it, parents have to take a more active role in their children's growth as followers of Christ. I'm anxious to see what God is planning for the church.
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