Between the Trees

I keep reading posts about how people, expecially young people, are leaving the church. The thing that worries me is how many evangelicals are going to respond to this. Our big programs and flashy churches aren’t working, we’ll think, so it’s time for bigger programs and flashier churches! Pastors dropping out of helicopters! Fireworks! Even hipper hip youth ministries! That will win them back. I know this is how we’re going to respond because I’ve been in the middle of exactly these kind of Christian pushes, and in my experience they usually do more harm than good.

Thus, I want to take some time thinking about what could actually change in the way we minister, especially to young people. I realize that I have no particular expertise with youth ministry, other than being a relatively young person myself. However, from that perspective, I’ve seen the mass exodus from the church first-hand, so I wanted to offer a plea on our behalf.

1. Give us the Gospel. This is by far the biggest one. While in youth group I learned a tremendous amount about how to fake the Christian walk for the sake of keeping up appearances. I learned how to beat myself up with guilt and use it to motivate obedience. I learned all of the “Christians-musts” - Christians must evangelize, Christians must memorize Scripture, Christians must argue with their science teachers, Christians must keep their hands off their girlfriends.

What I didn’t get was the gospel -  the fact that Jesus really loves me, unconditionally, and that all my debts have been paid through judgment day and beyond. As a consequence, when I failed at all of the Christians-musts (and believe me, I did), it was only by God’s intervention that I didn’t walk away. Heaven knows many of us did

The underlying problem is that Christians seem to think that ministry is about force-feeding spiritual materials to an individual until they reach a certain “point of maturity” at which they can walk on their own. This is well-intentioned, but I don’t think it actually works in practice. Maturity is slow and painful, and it primarily comes from gaining life experiences while living in the grace of God. Evangelicals need to give young people the gospel, the deep and peacemaking and world-shaking gospel, and make sure we understand it over and over. The other things will come as we walk the road with you.

2. Make us the Church. First of all (you know I have to say this), baptize us. Then teach us what it means to be a part of the church. Incorporate us into the life of the body. The main reason young people are leaving the church is because for most of our lives we were never in it.

Let me put it this way: We spend the first 12 years of their lives in children’s programs, the next 6 in separate youth programs, and then (if we haven’t left already) four more in some sort of college ministry, often with minimal church involvement. When we end up walking away from the church, it’s not a loss. We were never a part of it in the first place!

I’m not down on children’s or youth or college ministries. However, they should be secondary to membership in the actual church. We need to learn from a young age how to be an involved member of Christ’s body, to serve it, to live with the messiness and love the beauty. We are never meant to walk the road alone, and we are never meant live with “community” being our equally-young and equally-foolish peers. We need to be taught that we’re part of the church in every possible way so that when we’re older we can actually live as part of it.

3. Teach us the Word. I learned remarkably little about the bible from any sort of ministry, at least until I hit college. What worries me is that I also seemed to know decidedly more than most of my peers. Perhaps the biggest problem is that I consistently got the message that learning to understand the bible should result from my daily devotionals. My youth pastor/worker’s job was not to teach me, but to get me “radical” and “fired up” about my Christian walk.

This just doesn’t work. Teaching has an critical place in Scripture. What I find particularly worrying is how many of us young people not only fail to get this kind of bible teaching in their focused youth ministries, we are also pulled out of the corporate worship services on Suncays as well. I’m convinced that the fact that I sat under the expository preaching of the Bible on Sunday mornings was one of the graces that kept me from crashing and burning.

4. Value our Families. This is, I’m convinced, where the Lord showed me the most grace growing up. If it weren’t for my mother and father’s blatant refusal to buy the evangelical status quo and let me busy myself in isolated youth activities, I’d probably have been just another casualty before I was twenty.

Let me be blunt: too many of us were allowed for years to live in open rebellion against our parents while they are tacitly taught to stay out of our lives and entrust our spiritual growth to someone else (who is probably also a lot younger and knows us less). Those of us blessed with believing families need to be taught to live as a part of then. Those without need to be incorporated even more into the family life of the whole church. Trying to teach young people to evangelize and be chaste while all-but-encouraging our familial disobedience is a recipe for disaster.

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I could go on, but I think I’ve probably already overstated my case. Here’s what it boils down to: young people need to be treated like Christians. This means they need grace, they need correction, and they need the church. We can pile on programs and ministries and outreaches, but when we don’t have the simply fare of Christianity - when we don’t have the bread and the wine - we shouldn’t be surprised that people are starving.