Many “Christian” parents do very little to disciple their children in the faith. It is a tragedy. One group thinks that the church has done a disservice to parents by developing youth ministries. In their opinion, youth ministry (as well as any age-related ministry) allows parents to shirk their responsibility as the primary spiritual leader of their children. They have produced a video called Divided. While I found several problems with the movie, I’ll point out two: 1. It is clearly fake. It pretends that some kid is on a journey, when he clearly has already come to these conclusions from the teaching of his parents and pastor. No problem that he has come to these opinions, but he pretends like he is still truth-searching. I am guessing this will be revolting to most thinking individuals. 2. It does not portray youth ministry for what it really is. It makes it look like youth ministry is all about entertainment or trying to usurp parental roles. Like most propaganda (and dare I say even conspiracy groups), it has a lot of truth in it, but throws in slight twists to bring the audience to conclusions which are illogical and unfounded. 80% of children/youth leave the church by the time they go to college. I’ve never been a fan of such a statistic. In fact, I want to see that percentage go to zero. But as bad as that number sounds, it may not be as “bad” as it appears on the surface. (Of course that number is bad, but let me explain.) I think this number has always been the case. Even in Jesus’ ministry, the vast majority who followed Him did so for only a time. Regardless of our ministry techniques, I think we have to be aware that most simply won’t follow Jesus all the way. If you have a drastically different number for your church, I question if you are truly following Him or have watered it down. It’s so easy to water down the Gospel. One way to water it down is to stop reaching the messy, hurting world out there–just take care of yourself and your family. Youth ministry says, “No, we will not isolate...

I remember several years ago having a conversation with a youth pastor when I was helping out in his youth ministry. The church was in a very rural setting and had a van that would go out each week to pick kids up for youth group. Most of the kids who came to youth group came from very broken homes and were the victims of poverty. These kids were not stable, and trying to keep control during youth group was often a struggle. During this conversation, we talked about how we wished we could have a youth group like other churches in the city, where the majority of kids who showed up came from strong, Christian homes. Those youth groups had kids heavily involved in Bible Quiz, mission trips, small groups, etc. Things were happening in those other youth ministries! Those kids had it together, and as a result a more vibrant youth ministry was possible in their settings. In our setting, just getting kids to show up w/out body odor and to keep quiet for five minutes would literally have been a divine miracle. We had a feeling that this was going nowhere, because we didn’t have those solid, Christian youth in the group. I remember thinking during that conversation that perhaps we are doing more “real” ministry than the other churches. I may have even vocalized this–I can’t remember. The reason I’m not sure is because at that time part of me questioned the validity of that statement. If you were to compare our youth ministry with a more “normal” youth ministry, it would be hard to say we were doing more ministry. After all, even though you could argue that the other youth groups may not have much transformation with all the glit-and-glam, what transformation could we see in our own group? If you look at those churches who are “successful” today, most of them have an arsenal of middle-aged, middle-class Christian families who have a pretty stable life. These families can contribute healthily to the ministry not only financially, but also as volunteers. They are committed to the church’s cause, and the pastor can rely heavily on them to help carry out the mission/vision/agenda of...

I’m no longer a youth pastor, but I’ve been recently reflecting over my tenure in youth ministry. It hasn’t been all happy thoughts. In fact, much of it has been disappointing thoughts. I think being in youth ministry is one of the hardest areas of ministry, because you’re working with people who are usually not at all mature. Not only are they not mature in faith, they aren’t mature as people in general. They’re not stable. You can’t rely on them for very much. Yet you pour your life into them, looking for fruit, only to often find quite a bit of frustrating and disappointing results. I think with technology today, it makes it even harder. In the past, you could pour your life into kids, and just pray and hope that it would make a difference in their lives as they grow older, not knowing how their life would turn out. But today, with things like Facebook, you stay connected with them. I look at my friends on Facebook from both churches I youth-pastored at, and I am often extremely disappointed to see their attitudes, lack of faith in Christ, poor life-choices, etc. Part of me wonders if it was really worth it. Did Christ really do anything in their hearts? That’s why near the end of my tenure at my last church, I became increasingly aware that the best way to really disciple youth is to see their parents become genuine disciples of Christ. Too many parents think that being a Christian is just going to church and volunteering somewhere there. It’s been called “churchianity.” The parents do very little to teach their children what it means to follow Christ. They do not know very much about the Bible themselves, nor do they know how to lead someone to Christ. They struggle being able to even share with someone how to become a Christian and what that really means. On top of this, there seems to be very little eagerness in adults to change this. They don’t seem very willing to change. It’s a large reason why I tried to focus on working with teenagers, rather than working with adults. As a result, I shouldn’t be surprised...

H2O, the youth group at Wellspring Worship Center, invited me to speak this past Wednesday night. What a great youth group! Not so sure about the youth pastor, though… Actually Josh is a great friend of mine, and I appreciated him and his group inviting me. Josh, you guys have an awesome youth ministry! I was touched by the passion for God coming from the youth and the leaders. I had a blast–I hope everyone else did as well. When I arrived, I learned they made this video in honor of me, and I am honored to share it with you and the rest of the world. You guys are hilarious–and even somewhat talented in some twisted kind of way… This Wednesday, I’ll be speaking at Valley View Baptist Church youth group! I feel like a traveling evangelist. Now I just need a TV gospel show that takes old people’s money. Until then, enjoy this quality piece of...

I heard something great on the radio yesterday. The guy was talking about how us parents don’t effectively discipline our kids–except that he said he doesn’t like the word “discipline,” because it brings up the imagery of simply reward and punishment. Instead, he says it’s our job as parents to disciple our kids (same root word). He thinks that word better connotates the role and responsibility of parents. I agree with him. Over the years of serving as a youth pastor or being involved in youth ministry, I’ve realized that the vast majority of them do not know much of the faith by the time they reach youth group–even if they’ve grown up in Christian homes. For example, if I were to ask the average youth person, “Name me three things about the guy Abraham in the Bible,” they wouldn’t be able to do it. And Abraham isn’t a nobody in the Bible–he’s the father of the faith. The more I contemplated this, the more I realized that this was probably true for the vast majority of parents in the church too. The reason why their kids didn’t know Abraham is that their parents didn’t know who he was either. Or in some instances, the parents knew it but didn’t fully realize their role as disciple-makers. Instead, I think many parents and churches abdicate their responsibility to mentor children and youth, and simply dump that responsibility on the children/youth pastor. When I shared these ideas with Genesis, my former church, I was excited that they embraced the idea of addressing this problem and changing it. I drafted a proposal of how to change things in our church along these lines–a process that would take at least three years–and they were on board. I really appreciated their willingness to step forward in this–many churches are not so open to considering alternative ways of doing ministry. But I think more and more churches are realizing that the old model of doing youth/children’s ministry doesn’t produce very sustainable, effective, or healthy ministry in the lives of youth and children. Turnover rate in these fields is so high, but parents and church members are there for the kids the entire time. On top...

I haven’t posted anything for a bit, but that is because my family has been going through a pretty difficult process of leaving our church of 5+ years. Through this process, we have been stretched in our faith, beliefs, and ability to show restraint and kindness when chastised for leaving. As a result, I feel great! Thankfully, most people kindly showed their appreciation toward us, and we will miss everyone there! I am thankful that now the process is over, a sense of peace is here. It was extremely hard to leave the youth group, knowing that they have many questions. We love them dearly, but have had to place them in God’s hands. We started the youth ministry from scratch, and enjoyed seeing God grow the ministry and the youth. They are the best, and I’ve never felt closer to a group of teenagers than them–I look forward to how God will grow them into His purposes and plans. Surprisingly, I feel great peace that God will take care of things no problem! Now we must start to look for a new church family. We will try our best not to “church shop,” but instead try to understand where God would place us. The next couple of weeks, I plan to share what God has done in my life as a result of this change, and I’m sure I’ll also reflect on the journey of finding a new church. Pressing forward in...