“For evangelicals, if children and youth are not enjoying church, it is the church’s fault and evangelical parents either find a new church or try to improve their youth ministry. For liberals, the tendency is the reverse; if youth do not find church interesting it is their problem. Evangelicals are simply more interested and invested in reproducing the faith in their children and youth and their churches reflect this priority.”
While I am glad that Evangelicals consider it "on them" to minister to students, the author does stumble upon--but does not expand on--a problem in Evangelicalism: a consumerist culture that mirror's the broader culture's consumerist tendencies. But that's a post for another time.
For what it's worth, I also see a tendency for mainline church's to be more sacramental in their views on the role of the pastor, which could contribute to Evangelical church's putting more of a stress on student ministry. Here's what I commented:
Having worked in an Episcopal church setting as a youth director and now as a Baptist student pastor, I agree that one of the contributing factors to this is that Evangelical churches value a personal relationship with Jesus more than mainline churches. So, they see a need to invest in ministry to teenagers (more than just a weekly Sunday school meeting led by a volunteer coordinator). However, I see another contributing factor: most mainline churches (especially Episcopal and ELCA Lutheran, but also Methodist and PCUSA Presbyterian) give the pastor/priest a much more sacramental role than most Evangelical churches do. Of course, this is a generalization, but the end result is that a pastor in a mainline church--because of that sacramental role--is far less likely to have a position in a church where his/her sole responsibility is over the youth ministry. A mainline church will more likely hire a layperson to do that, but because it's a layperson, the pay and benefits make it far more difficult to do that as a lifelong calling, and so in many cases it's a part time position, even if there's enough work for it to be full time. In most Evangelical churches that have a full-time staff member over the youth ministry, that person is more likely to be an ordained or licensed pastor than in a mainline church.
