Loosing Battle

I think people at that age, say between sixteen and twenty one, are still figuring out who they are and what they believe. So that might account for the numbers appearing to drop off. They also tend to move away from home, and their home church, as they struggle to find their own identity.

love,

Sopranette

 

Well, then, that would be a good reason to say it is NOT a losing battle, but we should keep reminding them as best we can during this struggle of Christ's sacrifice for them.

love,

Sopranette

 

Tithing is for Believers.
Teaching Sunday School is for Believers.
Discipling is for Believers.

Lost parents are not Believers. I don't expect them to tithe, teach or disciple. That's the responsibility of Believers.

Got to tell you, my friend. It sounds like you view this as a hopeless situation. Even the title of the thread, "Loosing Battle" indicates that there's no hope. The God I serve is the Almighty, all powerful God. This is not hopeless. It might be best for you to take you eyes off the 40 to 1 ratio and focus them on the all sufficient Father.

Where's your faith? Where's your hope? If it is in the 16 million Southern Baptists (which I are one) you will be constantly disappointed. But, we'll never be disappointed in the Father.

 

I agree that there is a problem. I believe that the problem is first off in the homes and second in the church. We can't force parents to raise their children to be Godly young people. We can encourage (and we do), and we can offer to help (and we do) but we can't force. We can't make parents, even Christian parents, do right in raising their children. That's where the church has to step in.

We have to do all we can to reach the children with the Gospel, to try to introduce them to Christ.
We have to do all we can to help them grow in their faith (and the ministry of fun and games won't help!).
We have to do all we can to encourage their parents in their own faith - that they become Spiritually mature.

Yes, I recognize the problem. But I'm more interested in solutions than just continuing to point out the problem. I'd rather look ahead, believing that God will accomplish His plan, rather than only look behind.

I encourage our church to do all we can for the cause of Christ. I encourage them every week to tell someone what Jesus has done for them. But I leave the results in the had of God. He WILL accomplish His plan.


One more thing about those who drop off the radar when they leave the youth group. I've been around long enough to see many of them show back up on the radar later on.

Don't give up!

 

That's not what she's saying. You might want to read her posts again without already coming to a conclusion about what you think she's saying. No one is saying that the fact that so many young people drop out of church after high school is OK. But also, no one is saying that we have to make the lost parents of our young people disciple their own kids.

 

Alright, you've spent a lot of time telling us that we're doing something wrong. But you haven't bothered to offer a solution. Mind filling us in on what you think we ought to be doing?

 

The last seven years in my church...we're "loosing" (it's "losing," BTW) about 30%. That's way more than I'm happy with, but it's about half what Barna claims is happening.

Intensive discipleship, active in missions/ministry, and we do our darndest to reach the parents for Christ.

 

I agree that churches should never be complacent about the way they do things. They should always re-evaluate to make sure that what they do is biblical. However, I don't agree with your analogy of patients dying in hospital.

If a person is not a Christian yet, then they are still "dead in trespasses and sins". Attending church services will not in itself give them new life. I may have misunderstood, but you seem to take it for granted that if a non-Christian young person doesn't attend services, the church will have no contact with him/her.

If a person who is a Christian stops attending church services, that is a different matter. Surely the church leaders will, with loving concern, want investigate if any Christian, young or old, suddenly stops coming to services. If the reason given is something like, "I don't like the way you do things," then it seems to me that something would need to be said about what church membership actually means. The bible talks of it as being part of a body. Also, might not at least some of your 70% have stopped attending services for good reason? Don't young people in America often move away from their home town to attend a college or university elsewhere, for example? And just because a Christian stops attending a particular church, they may be mistaken to do so, but they are not "lost".

 

by the way, let us keep in mind that even Christ Himself didn't "keep" 100%.

There will always be those that fall away.

That doesn't excuse our best efforts to keep them...but we will not keep them all.

 

Praise God for 70%!

There is no perfect way to do youth ministry. In spite of any church's bests efforts, some will still reject Christ. Some parents will still reject Christ. We don't stop trying! We keep pressing on! But we know that we'll never be 100% effective.

 

OK. What's the right answer?
What are you and your church doing right that we'll all doing wrong?
Give us the steps to measure up to your idea of success.

You've been real good about pointing out the problem - how 'bout some solutions.

BTW, I'm not real concerned with "most churches" right now. I'm concerned mainly with my church right now.

 

I was active in my so called youth ministry when I was growing up and had become a leader in it. When I moved to college, I had to make an active choice in college, but I had enough behind me, enough training, enough.... uh....I want to say a word here but it probably would offend some... I had enough internal ability to make the decision to remain in church in college and be active.

I don't really believe some youth have this capability, for what ever reason, and I don't necessarily fault the church. Jesus calls us individually to remain in him, whether youth groups fully teach that or not.

 

When I went to college, I moved 1200 miles away from home. One of the things that helped me stay in church during college what the the church folks met the college students at the dorms and helped us move in. They said they'd feed us that night - even offered to come and get us.

I might have been one of those statistics if it wasn't for those folks.

 

That's so true for a lot of us.

We have 30+ kids that just graduated from high school and almost all of them wil be attending college somewhere else. So we won't be seeing them very often in future -- only during the holidays.

However, one of our youth volunteers has done some great research on each of the universities. She is contacting each student and letting them know the Christian ministries that they have at that school & trying to get them connected into a ministry from day one.