I’m a Survivor

Today was my first day back in the Sunday school classroom where I have the privilege of teaching a handful of youth between 7^th and 12^th grade. Because of my five-week hiatus for a cross-country motorcycle escapade (more details here), I’ve been a little out of the loop and any routine or momentum previously established was more or less halted. So today was spent reorganizing ourselves a little and recasting a vision for our youth group, specifically the time we have together on Sunday mornings.

As I reflected aloud on my own personal involvement in a youth group (more than 6 years ago now), I was reminded of the culture created in such a ministry. Unfortunately, this culture—as well as our expectations—was characterized more by ski trips, summer camps, D-NOW weekends, amusement parks, game nights, choir tours, and lock-ins than anything remotely central to the gospel. Now, to be fair, there were certainly elements of the gospel present in some of these opportunities (particularly summer camps or D-NOWs), but overwhelmingly absent from my time as a teenager in the local church was true discipleship. Overwhelmingly absent was any teaching of why and how I should follow Christ in obedience. Overwhelmingly absent was a recognition of how sinful I am and how scandalous Christ’s love is for us in spite of that.

But, as no one would deny…it was fun.

I shared with my youth this morning a statistic concerning the percentage of students who return to church upon graduating from high school. Many were shocked how few actually do choose to remain active in their local church (statistics vary from the doubtful 4% to the more realistic, yet equally discouraging 20-25%), yet it provided us the opportunity to discuss why this was probably the case and what we could do about it.

My humble observation—not as a researcher, but merely as someone who has experienced a traditional youth group firsthand and one who has worked with several different groups over the last few years—is that many youth abandon the local church after graduation for one simple reason: failure to understand the gospel and relevance of Scripture as a whole.

Somewhere along the way, I truly believe that youth pastors (and parents, too) became less concerned with students growing up as disciples of Christ, learning how to faithfully follow our King and serve our neighbors in humility and more concerned with preserving the morality of their children. While it is never acknowledged or admitted, “survival” is the primary focus of today; and when survival is the focus, our priorities look more like this:

• If we can just keep our children abstinent, we’ll be satisfied.
  (Well, maybe not even abstinent…just not pregnant.)
• If we can just keep them from using drugs and consuming alcohol, we’ll be happy. (Well, maybe some alcohol, but not too much, because then they might get drunk and…well…pregnant.)
• If we can just get them to _______, we’ll be content.

So if I happen to be right, and the “survivor” mentality has inundated youth ministry, we are fundamentally teaching students to live in such a way that meets minimal expectations of basic morality, and in doing so…you’ll be considered a good Christian.

What does the gospel say to this?

–Andy

~ by Andy Metzger on July 5, 2009.