I believe that a biblical student ministry understands that it is the call of both the church and the family to disciple students and thus present all people complete in Christ. Some would argue that biblical student ministry is an oxymoron. That may shock you–but you may also be unaware of the current state of student (or youth) ministry in American evangelical churches. I don’t think the answer is to get rid of student ministry altogether as some have suggested. However it is clear, as the statistics that follow are quite alarming, that student ministry must change if it is to honor the Lord and succeed in making disciples of Jesus Christ.
The current youth ministry statistics reveal that there is something wrong with youth ministry today:
- According to recent research somewhere between 70 and 88 percent of Christian teenagers are leaving the church by their second year in college (Voddie Baucham, Family Driven Faith, 10).
- Over 80% of teens who claim to be “born-again” do not believe in the existence of absolute truth (Baucham, 11).
- A recent Barna survey focused on finding out how teens beliefs differ from their parents found that:
- 63% don’t believe Jesus is the Son of the one true God
- 58% believe all faiths teach equally valid truths.
- 51% don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead.
- 65% don’t believe Satan is a real entity.
- 68% don’t believe the Holy Spirit is a real entity (Steve Wright, Rethink: Is Student Ministry Working?, 34). The vast majority of those polled claimed that they and their parents were Christians. It is clear that these statistics do not square up with John 14:6 where Jesus says, “I am the way the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me.” The sad reality today is that most of the people in our churches, especially our youth, do not possess a biblical worldview, so that when they get to college they are not prepared to defend the faith as they may or may not even believe defending they faith is necessary. It is clear that youth ministry needs to change!
- In a recent survey of parents by the Barna Group, it was found that the number one goal parents have for their children is that their children would get a good education (Baucham, 19). Only half as many parents considered their children’s having a relationship with Jesus Christ as important as their child’s education.
- Another recent study focused on college freshman found that:
- Parents play an extremely important role in developing the religious attitudes and practices of their offspring.
- Parents of students who did not leave the church emphasized religion twice as much as those who students who left the church.
- Students who stayed in church through college said that the first thing they do when they have doubts or questions was to talk to their parents and then read their Bibles (Wright, 48-49).
These statistics may seem shocking, but they shouldn’t given the direction that most youth ministries are headed today. Most youth ministries pull students away from the family rather than equipping and encouraging families to raise up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. God created the family and intended for the family to be the avenue in which faith is passed on from generation to generation (Deut. 6:7-9; Eph. 6:4). Parent’s must teach their children “diligently” to love the Lord with all their heart, soul, and might (Deut.6:4-7). There are some stunning correlations here-the majority of students who graduate from our youth ministries are abandoning the faith by their second year of college and most parents see their child’s faith as less important than their education. Perhaps even more profound is the fact that God created the family and commands for it to be the primary avenue of discipleship and the students who are sticking with the faith through college are those whose parents are spiritually engaged in their lives. In other words put the Biblical data together with the current youth ministry statistics and we find that youth ministry is failing at its stated purpose to build up and equip students to be passionate disciples of Jesus Christ.
So here is briefly what I propose:
Parents are essential to effective student ministry. It is the parents who are called upon in Scripture to oversee the spiritual upbringing of their children (Deut. 6:6-7; Ps. 78:1-8, Eph. 6:4). In fact the Scriptures have much more to say about parents meeting the spiritual needs of their children than it does about pastors. I believe that if student ministry is to be biblical, parents must be the primary disciplers of their children. If we are to be faithful to God’s call to disciple the young people in our churches, we must begin to restructure our student ministries so that they encourage, build up, and partner with parents to disciple their children in the home.
In posts to follow I will give a more detailed plan of action and address the inevitable question–”What about student’s whose parents are unbelievers or unchurched?”
Drew, I agree with your assessment and the basis for your proposal. In fact, I would also say that there would be similar statistics if you used the same questions for polling students at the majority of American Christian colleges.
However, for too long, parents have seen youth ministry and sending their kids to Christian colleges as the best answer to discipling their children rather than taking the responsibility on themselves to disciple them.
If I were a youth pastor, my top priorites would be: 1) the gospel, 2) the Word, 3) the family, including teaching the family, involving parents, and letting them know that their kids need to learn from their parents.
Look forward to your follow-up posts.
I will be MIA for a while probably after I post another article on Galatians 3 on Monday or Tuesday.
Kevin
” . . . partner with parents to disciple their children . . . ”
Great post! I totally agree with you. The key term here is disciple. Too often students leave our ministries without the spiritual depth and maturity to continue to make their faith their own in the real world of independent thinking.
- Greg from http://FaithFirstFitness.com
Thanks for the feedback Greg!
I think you are right and I think what is so often missed is that youth pastors cannot pass that on to students by themselves. Youth pastors can’t spend the kind of time necessary to teach and disciple student sufficiently. That is why youth pastors must partner with parents–because parents spend much more time with their children and are fare more influential!
[...] to not adequately promote the family as the primary avenue of discipleship (see my previous post: What is Wrong with Youth Ministry? Some Stats and a Proposal). Youth ministry must begin to not only equip parents for ministry in the home but also value, [...]
[...] Parents are essential to effective student ministry. It is the parents who are called upon in Scripture to oversee the spiritual upbringing of their children (Deut. 6:6-7; Ps. 78:1-8, Eph. 6:4). In fact the Scriptures have much more to say about parents meeting the spiritual needs of their children than it does about pastors. I believe that if student ministry is to be biblical, parents must be the primary disciplers of their children. If we are to be faithful to God’s call to disciple the young people in our churches, we must begin to restructure our student ministries so that they encourage, build up, and partner with parents to disciple their children in the home. In posts to follow I will give a more detailed plan of action and address the inevitable question–”What about student’s whose parents are unbelievers or unchurched?” link [...]
This is great! I recently became a youth leader and I liked the idea of getting the parents more involved. Thanks for the post. :) God Bless you!
This is my first time viewing this site. I was simply Googling youth church stats when I came across this one. I am almost 30 years old I am currently working with one youth group while working with another church to help them create and build a youth outreach ministry, as the Pastor has a passionate heart for the youth.
I, in honest terms, have absolutely no clue what I am doing. When I got saved 6 1/2 years ago, then 4 years ago became very passionate about my faith, I never thought that I would be in youth ministry. So it was never an option, nor was it a focus. In the last year of my life, God has made several changes. After developing a strong desire to teach on sexual purity, drugs, alcohol and the role they play in our lives and society (exactly the life God pulled me from), I found myself becoming more and more concerned about our youth. In fact; I’m scared for them. Having two daughters of my own, I am afraid to see the world they will live in in 10 years.
I am unafraid to hit the hard topics head on. As I am finding most churches won’t even go there with adults. But how do I do this? It was encouraging and helpful to hear about parents and their role. Maybe I should start there and talk to the parents of my youth. What do you suggest? Thank you, and I will check back soon. Feel free to email me anytime. In Christ’s Love
I see my role as a youth pastor as being a pastor to parents just as much as to youth, if not more, because the Bible calls them to disciple their children not me. That doesn’t mean my role as a youth pastor is irrelevant, but it does change things and certainly there are kids who don’t have solid Christian parents that we need to really reach out to as well, but in the end–your youth ministry will generally ride on the backs of parents. What are parents doing in the home? Most parents today haven’t even thought about it, too often they just franchise out their spiritual responsibility to youth pastors.
Encourage parents, talk to them, challenge them, take them out to lunch, pray with them, ask them how you can help, hold them accountable to teach the things of God to their kids at home. That is a start at least. Try some of these thing and let me know how it goes!
Thanks for stopping by, I love to hear from brothers out there who are seeking to serve the Lord in ministry!
Hi,
Thanks for your work on this subject. Do you have a link to the Barna stats, or a book reference?
Thank you!
Matt
Thank you for your insight . And I have begun to do just that. I am a gospel song minister. My recent project was designed have the family listen and have worship expirience together. I plan to pass the information along and alert parents too.
P.S I didn’t see the fallowup page
Good stuff. I’ve blogged a few posts a/b this at allennelson4.wordpress.com. Have u read:
reThink by steve wright, shift by Brian haynes, partnering w/ parents in youth ministry by Jim burns, or family-driven faith by voddie
bauchum?
Again, I totally agree! God bless…
My bad, I actually see now that u already quoted some of those books!
Possibly you’ve already addressed this in subsequent posts, but I don’t think it’s enough to just say we need to, “encourage, build up, and partner with parents to disciple their children in the home.” Moreover, it’s not just the job of student ministries to do that, some of the responsibility also falls on adult fellowship ministries (maybe there needs to be more of a partnership between those two areas of ministry within local churches) to equip and encourage parents to disciple in the home. Having been in youth ministry for 11 years this statistic and the alarm that come with it is old news, and many youth ministries are trying to resolve this problem. Therefore I don’t think its so much an issue of teaming up as it is do we really even know what kind of disciples it is we are producing. Especially when you consider that two-thirds of the 70 to 88 percent that leave eventually return.
My own observation has been that many of the defectors return either when they get engaged and need to find a church to have their ceremony (which often requires attendee status if not membership), and when they start having children of their own. I reckon the majority are the latter which suggests their motivation for coming back in the first place, and thus their vision for youth ministry in the life of their family. They don’t want their kids one day being as bad as they were. They want their kids to be good. What better place for their kids to be encouraged to be good, obedient, law abiding citizens than the church (that’s a rhetorical question, let’s not open that can of worms).
Being a disciple was never an issue of good and bad. It is an issue of whether or not you believed that Jesus, his life death and resurrection, was God’s plan to redeem mankind and begin the process of restoring all of creation back to Himself. If being a disciple is simply about being good and bad then those who have left are ahead of the curve. Cause if that’s it then church has no more value than the YMCA, Boy Scouts, or a mosque. Cause any of those and other social institutions can assist in helping people shape their lives around the issue of good and bad. Only the church can assist someone in shaping their life around God’s plan of redemption and restoration. When the defectors return we need to re-educate them to see that Jesus didn’t save them so that they could be good people, but that he redeemed them so that they could be restored. Or as the father in the parable of prodigal son said to his eldest whilst complaining about never being rewarded for being good, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”
My name is Joseph McDonald I was just wondering if there was any one who could show me where I could out the source of these stats i understand that they where in a book but i need to know how many students where in the survey where they were located and maybe an age range im working on a project called current event and i wanted to do it on youth ministry and my instructor is goin to ask me all of those things please let me know thank you and God bless
could some one please send me the source of theses stats like how many were poled where they are from age ranges maybe thank you God bless
Hi Joseph,
Sounds like your instructor wants you to do some real research. So here is what I would do. Try contacting the authors of the books personally.
I know Steve Wright. He has written several helpful things for youth ministry. You can easily find his website by entering “Steve Wright” and “ReThink” into a Google search. Voddie Baucham also can be easily found on Google. Check them out. You’ll probably be able to find ways to send out an email or ask them personally about the stats they mentioned — making your sources primary rather than secondary.
Your instructor would be impressed, I think!
Kevin
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Great Blog! Everything you said is truth. Parents must be the primary source of discipleship!
Good blog. I fear that we have failed to move youth ministry beyond “don’t have sex, cool music, and pizza”. After 25 years working with teens, we underestimate how deep they are thinking, and that they are asking the BIG questions – why am I here? Purpose? why evil? what is the evidence for God?, etc…. they are looking for a Christian philosophy and we take them to waterslides. There’s a neat ministry that works to deepen faith for teens and make it there own called Worldview Academy. There are some others too…keep up the good work.
I have just published a book called, “What Would It Take For Youth To Come To Church?” with the subtitle, “Social Innovation Within The Church.” With Drew’s permission, I have made a reference to this blog as significantly addressing this problem. This book is intended to help Youth Pastors in particular and church leadership more generally. My research was in the streets interviewing hundreds of youth and then later attending hundreds of churches to come to understand how youth see church. There is a distinct perception reality gap on both sides. This book addresses those issues and provides numerous suggestions on how the church could innovate socially and behaviourally to actually help youth find a path to Jesus. This book is now available through: http://www.volumesdirect.com/detail.aspx?ID=4817 and/or http://www.faithmentor.net
Wayne
@Wayne Townsend,
Sure Wayne, feel free to reference this post! In fact I am honored!
Blessings in your endeavors!
We went to a church for many years and watched it go from a thriving baby boom youth group church to a empty nesters church. And everyone stood around scratched their heads and wondered why. It eventually closed.When we went to the next church we saw the same pattern of children growing up and leaving the church. My husband and I decided to pray and search scripture so that we might avoid making some of the same mistakes. As we search scripture we discovered the picture of child disciplship in the Bible looked nothing like what we experienced in the church. When my oldest was only 8 years old (before we had ever heard of family integrated churches) we pulled her and my son out of sunday school and junior church began discipling them ourselves. We are still at that second church which is now a empty nesters church again except for my five children age 12 to 25 and another family who choose to pull their two children out as well because of our counsel. Some of those children did go off to college but most just walked away from their faith.Instead of looking to man’s wisdom and the pattern of this world for guidance did you ever think of consulting God’s word for why youth walk away from their faith? Did you ever consider that plan B is just not as good as God’s plan for discipling children? Maybe that is why God is not blessing youth ministries. Deut.6:4
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PRAISE THE LORD,,,
HELP ME TO SPREAD THE
GOSPEL IN BARREN LAND
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My wife and I got the call to youth ministry two years ago. I should say discipling youth. The last two years has been a time of preparation and a time were we have asked and thought of thousands of questions. We have come to believe that the above article is very true. Parents are the most influential people in a childs life thus being said there will never be any better teacher to a teen than their parents. The unfortunate truth about this is that the parents of today are being deceived and they are passing these insecurities on to their children. This isn’t a youth leaders calling. This is the calling of the head pastors. Until our pastors start preaching absolute truth and stop being cheap politicians, us as youth leaders will stuggle with the question ” What do we do now?” God was very clear to me early on that I wasn’t to be a baby sitter, a sports coach or ativities cordinator. I was to take the truth and teach our youth how to be strong, secure Christians who knew who they were as a Christian. That being a Christian isn’t something to be embarassed about, but something to be excited about. That their is honor, glory and peace that comes from trugging this road. It isn’t the popular theme in today’s society, but we are seeing fruit. Good fruit. Fruit that is going to bare more fruit. If I can say anything to others that are involved with the youth ministry. Don’t be a sell out! Trying to grow the biggest group as fast as you can. The bible tells us that fruit must good. So it is quality not quantity. We would’nt have these alarming statistics if some one had of been discipling my father intead of feeding him a “if it feels good do it” message.
Thanks Tod. I appreciate your commitment to biblical discipleship. My name is Kevin, and I’m one of the administrators of this site. We basically closed our doors a few years ago due to other commitments, and only check this site every so often. That’s why it’s taken a while for one of us to get back with you. I’ll be praying for you this morning as I pray also for my own ministry. Have a good day!
Kevin
[...] sending them to a gathering of Christians, but not a gathering for Christian growth. One survey reports 80% of Christian teenagers don’t believe in absolute truth; another notes 63% don’t believe in [...]