USA Today: 'Forget pizza parties,' teens tell churches

This is a good article to ponder:

"Bye-bye church. We're busy." That's the message teens are giving churches today.

Only about one in four teens now participate in church youth groups, considered the hallmark of involvement; numbers have been flat since 1999. Other measures of religiosity — prayer, Bible reading and going to church — lag as well, according to Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., evangelical research company. This all has churches canceling their summer teen camps and youth pastors looking worriedly toward the fall, when school-year youth groups kick in.

However, we need to consider any stats that are available (and always look into how they were found), then remember our mission as the Church: to tell students about Jesus and see them in a growing relationship with him. I'm glad that this kind of thing gets some press in national news sources. However, we need to do some deep theological work that takes up more space than a few lines of print in the USA Today. I recommend taking a look at the Barna research referenced in the article:

In several ways, teenagers are much less inclined toward spirituality than were teens a dozen years ago. The study assessed nine different forms of teenage involvement; six of those religious activities are at their lowest levels since Barna Group began tracking such teen behaviors. These included small group attendance, prayer, Sunday school participation, donations to churches, reading sacred texts other than the Bible, and evangelism by Christian teens (explaining their belief in Jesus Christ with others who have different faith views).

David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group and the director of the research, pointed out that some of these changes may go unnoticed by church leaders because the most visible activities – teen church attendance and youth group involvement – have not changed much in recent years. Bible reading was also roughly on par with previous Barna tracking of teenagers, further confounding a clear picture of teen faith.

Kinnaman commented on the findings: “While there is still much vibrancy to teen spirituality, it seems to be ‘thinning out.’ Teenagers view religious involvement partly as a way to maintain their all-important relationships. Yet perhaps technology such as social networking is reconfiguring teens’ needs for relationships and continual connectivity, diminishing the role of certain spiritual forms of engagement in their lives. Talking to God may be losing out to Facebook.”

The reality is that we have some tough theological and sociological work to do as youth workers. This may be an over-generalization, but perhaps 10, 20, and 30 years ago, relating to youth and being able to draw them to church was pretty much seen as the only requirement for a youth pastor, beyond being a Christian. (Note that I'm 30 years old as I write this, and that I've been a Christian for barely ten years.) Today, we need youth pastors who are pastors. Pastors who are shepherds and understand the importance of equipping the body of Christ--especially teenagers--for works of ministry (Ephesians 4:11-13). I'm not advocating professionalism in the sense of having one pastor up front doing all the work. I'm advocating for equipping and raising up youth pastors who actually know that youth ministry is more than pizza and parties and who are passionate about being shepherds to their flock. But you knew that already.

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