It is no secret that the Church is struggling to hold onto young people. While many return to the church later in life, only one out of three Protestant church attendees continues to attend through college. Overall, church attendance has been declining for years, and the pandemic marked an even steeper drop-off. If there ever was a time to ask what teenagers need out of church youth groups, it is now.
The model of youth ministry which involved entertaining young people, pressing them for a faith decision, and warning them of college immorality has not met the needs of young people or produced in them Kingdom fruit. Young people need more (and frankly they always have). Other challenges are revealing the need more clearly.
Teens are at a place where their minds and bodies are becoming adults, but their experience, wisdom, and skills are still developing. How can we offer our teenagers at CPC a way to belong, grow, and serve God? How can we help them engage in church life in such a way that they don't feel the need to leave?
Young people need real community and relationships with their peers. Young people are intensely relational. They need relationships like our bodies need water. Because relationships are hard, they can default either to unhealthy sinful relationships where they can quickly get off track through peer-reinforced decisions, or to isolation where they avoid most relationships and slowly wither in loneliness. Being in a church with other youth gives an opportunity for relationships, but it does not guarantee them. Young people need instruction and encouragement in sound (biblical) relationships and coaching on how to develop them. The Gospel makes it possible to have relationships founded on grace and truth.
Young people need sound teaching and need to see responsible handling of difficult issues. They are starting to think for themselves and yearn for an environment where they can ask hard questions and can learn not only what we believe, but why we believe it. Our culture has moved further and further away from biblical assumptions, and students will soon be in places where they may be the only person standing for what is right. We need to equip them to do so.
Young people need to explore their spiritual gifts and callings. We often don't know what our gifts are until we are placed in the crucible of ministry. Young people need to actually do ministry, not just witness ministry. They cannot know the joy of serving Christ by hearing about the joy (which they'll experience at some future date) but by experiencing the joy firsthand. This does not come from only being “assistants” to those actually responsible but being responsible themselves for substantive ministry. It's ironic that an eighteen-year-old can be trusted to direct a 50-million-dollar jet onto an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, but many churches relegate that same person to helper roles only.
Related to exploring their gifts, young people need to know their contributions to ministry are consequential. If their ministry is solely for “their own good,” and not for the good of the Kingdom of God, why does it matter if they show up? If all of their ministry work is low-risk, low-skill, and low-impact, they will question whether it is actually consequential.
Young people also have a need to take risks. Teenagers are known for indulging in risky behaviors. Often this is considered a problem, and the solution is to help them avoid risk. This is not a great plan. Teenagers don't need to avoid risks; they need to take the right kind of risks. Risks that we take in seeking God's Kingdom are good risks. Sharing the Gospel when we don't know how someone will respond is a good risk. Taking a mission trip when we don't know exactly what it will be like is a good risk. Caring for someone who is sick, even though we don't know whether they will recover or how we will feel is a good risk.
While a church youth program cannot “make” a young person do anything, it can make space for these experiences to happen. It can offer opportunities for training and engagement. It can hold up the standard of living together biblically and seeking the Kingdom passionately. We can be willing to engage with hard things as we encourage young people to do hard things. Youth Ministry is a microcosm of the church, not a holding pen for young people waiting to be adults.
