Wow.

 What a fantastic response — overwhelming — to yesterday’s post. Ministers from Fresno, California and Marble Falls, Texas and Manhatten, New York have posted the entire article on their websites. Our youth group here at Legacy discussed the article and the comments at last night’s Bible study. Your comments and emails in response to the post are heart-felt, sincere, and provocative. And they reveal an intense desire to prayerfully consider the issue and act in ways that are best for our kids and best for the body of Christ as a whole.

Thank you.

Today, I’d like to clarify a few points from yesterday, especially as they relate to your comments, and then narrow the focus down to one particular part of the discussion that I think impacts all of us.

First, it is a very complex issue. There are no easy answers. The solution isn’t going to be some simple fix or four-step plan or better program. It goes much, much deeper than that. Jason and Lance, our youth ministers here at Legacy, and I will visit with each other over these very issues at least once or twice every week, sometimes for a couple of hours at a time, and come away frustrated. It’s so deep and so complex. And we wrestle with it together. And we don’t know what to do.

You’ll notice I don’t blame the teenagers. I don’t blame them at all. It’s not their fault. Look at the way we treat them and the way we model “church” in front of them. I don’t blame them a bit. And I don’t blame youth ministers. Not a one. At least, not any more than I blame all the rest of us. This is a parenting and a church issue. It’s not a youth minister issue. It’s not a teenager problem. I applaud Jason for his desire to move Youth Ministry here at Legacy into more of a Family Ministry model, much like the one Paul oversees at Woodwark Park in Fresno. I appreciate his attitude about all of this. He recognizes all the same things we all do.

But youth ministers are caught in the middle. They’re in a no-win situation here. They’re obligated to the teens. They care for the teens. By virtue of their job descriptions and the relationships they’ve nurtured, the teens are the main priority of the youth ministers. And rightfully so. But when they’re moved to take their programs in a different direction or to stress more church-wide or even inter-generational emphasis in an effort to show our kids a more big-picture view of God’s church, they’re re-buffed by the parents and the church leaders. It seems that if the teenagers buck some kind of a change or directive, regardless of the stated intention or anticipated goal of the change or directive, parents and church leaders slam on the brakes and tell the youth minister to do what the kids want to do.

It’s not that teens shouldn’t be able to voice their opinions or concerns and have them taken seriously. It’s not that at all. I pray that a young person would feel comfortable enough, and loved enough, to speak openly with any elder or church leader about anything. But teenagers don’t have the maturity or the big-picture view they need to make all of these kinds of decisions for themselves. Seriously. No offense, but they’re teenagers! It’s impossible for them to have the experience and the judgment necessary for a lot of these things simply by virtue of their age. They’ve only been around for 13 or 14 years! It’s not their fault. That’s where parenting and the church comes in. And I would hope parents and youth ministers could work together on these things with the spiritual health of the teenager in mind — his spiritual health for the long-run, not necessarily his social or relational health in the here and now.

As for the issue of entitlement, yes, we are all entitled by the grace of God to share in the glory of Jesus. We are heirs of the Father and joint-heirs with the Son. But only by God’s grace. It’s a gift. The very definition of the word “entitled” conveys the meaning of “gift.” It’s not earned. I’m not entitled by my age or my income bracket or my diplomas or my behavior. I’m entitled as a son of my Father because he chose to give that entitlement to me. Teenagers are just as entitled to the joy of our salvation as any of us. And they’re just as entitled to be a part of the Lord’s body. But not more so than anybody else. We shouldn’t raise them above the others. Their opinions shouldn’t matter more than others’. And, again, I don’t think the teens take that entitlement from anyone else. I think we give it to them. To their detriment and the detriment of the church.

And I cannot agree with any concept of adapting to our culture. The posts today and yesterday are purely insider issues. We’re talking about Christians and the church, not outsiders. So I’m not really sure how adapting to the culture fits in this conversation. But I do hold to the imperialistic claims of Scripture. The Gospel doesn’t want to speak to the modern world; the Gospel wants to convert the modern world.

OK. It’s not a teenager issue. It’s a parenting and church issue.

Let’s narrow the focus to concentrate today on what I see as the number one problem: bad-mouthing the church in front of our kids.

You want solutions? There are no easy ones. But I think everything, all of this, changes in very positive ways if we’ll just all stop talking negatively about the church in front of our teens.

 When the only time our kids ever hear us talking about church is when we’re bashing it, why would we not expect our teens to leave the church and start looking for something else? Our kids aren’t stupid! They can connect the dots. We teach and preach one thing, but they see and experience something different. They read in the Scriptures one thing. But they hear something different. They know we’re called to something more. They’re convinced that God’s church is a loving, united, nurturing community of faith that puts others’ needs ahead of our own. But when they see their parents gripe and complain and threaten to leave if things don’t start going their way; when they hear their parents slam song leaders and song selection and elders’ decisions and Bible class teachers; when they experience the tension in the arguments and the gossip and the backstabbing; how can we blame them for wanting something else? Don’t you think this has a huge impact?

I’ve been very, very disappointed in some of the magazines and websites and blogs out there that angrily tear apart our brothers and sisters in the Lord’s body who don’t believe or practice every single thing the exact same way we do. Labeling preachers as wolves and denouncing entire congregations as heretical based on personal opinions or personal comfort levels is wrong in every way. And damaging. So very damaging. Some friends of mine made a vow almost two years ago to stop reading that stuff. Even if it’s just for information’s sake, for the sake of amusement or entertainment or even curiosity, stop reading it. It’s damaging.

And now I see preachers and teachers on the other side, the ones who’ve been labeled as wolves and heretics, the ones who preach and teach unity and love and fellowship, engaging in the exact same practices. There’s just as much, if not more, hate and anger and selfish enmity and hostility than was in the old school stuff. It’s repulsive. One brother commented on one of these preacher’s blogs recently, in response to a criticism of a Church of Christ program that espoused some fairly rigid views, that “pretty soon they’ll all be dead, including ________, and the problem of traditional Church of Christ’ers will snuff itself out.”

And he mentioned the older preacher by name.

It was as if this brother would personally delight in slashing the throats of all his brothers and sisters who disagreed with him if he thought he could get away with it.

And we don’t see that this kind of thing has a tremendous impact on our kids? That man’s blog is no longer on my list of things to read every week. No way. There’s no place anywhere in our Christian faith for that kind of attitude to be thought, much less articulated in a public forum. I’m embarrassed and ashamed and saddened by the way we treat each other. God, forgive us. Have mercy on us.

 It’s not ACU. It’s not youth ministers. It’s not the kids. It’s us. It’s the church. It’s the parents.

Is complaining and griping and ridiculing the church in front of our children the biggest part of the problem? Can it be stopped? Would it matter?

Peace,

Allan

We’re losing our kids. We can’t keep our young people. Our teenagers are leaving the church. Ever increasing numbers of our children are becoming more and more disenchanted with our faith and our faith traditions. There’s no “brand loyalty” among our offspring.

So in an effort to win those kids and hang onto our young people and keep our teenagers and encourage our children and indoctrinate our offspring we throw more programs at them. Give them more to do. More activities. More ministers. More money.

Have we ever stopped to consider that our current model of Youth Ministry, an unchallenged and undisputed and powerful force among our churches for about 40 years, is part of the problem?

I have two observations, maybe three, on the issue of our teens and the widely perceived problems of them leaving the church. This may take a while. It may take all week. I encourage you to read this and reflect on it and pray about it. Especially if you’re a parent.

There’s a member of my family who, many years ago, decided to move God and his church way down on the list of priorities. None of it is very important to this person anymore. This person, whom I love dearly and pray for every day, is not a member of a church anymore. This person’s spouse and children don’t care about any of it at all. It doesn’t matter to them. And it breaks my heart. It grieves every other member of the family. And we make a concerted effort, as a family, to never, ever, ever speak negatively about the church in any way any time this family member is around. We don’t discuss “church issues.” We don’t complain about policies or gripe about worship. We don’t argue about doctrine or in any way air the church’s laundry when this family member is around. When this person is in the room, we talk only about the good things in the church. We speak about relationships and love and support. We talk about people and families this person knows. We communicate what God is doing in and with his church and the people there.

That’s just common sense, right? You’d have to be a fool to think that speaking negatively about the church and communicating all the things that are wrong in the church would ever win this person back to our Lord.

So how in the world do we justify the way we talk about the church in front of our kids? We wouldn’t do it in front of the lost. Why do we think it’s OK in front of our children?

We’re raising entire generations of kids — two or three in a row now — who, the only time they hear their parents and their parents’ friends talk about church, hear their parents slamming the church. We complain about worship. We gripe about policies and practices and personalities. We threaten to leave if things don’t change or go our way. We talk about the church, in front of our kids, as if it were a burden or a necessary evil. We communicate to them that we don’t like very much about it at all. What young person would want to dedicate his life to it after listening to that for 12 or 13 years? Who wouldn’t be on the lookout for something else? Some of them, I don’t blame for wanting to leave.

OK. That’s observation number one.

Here’s the second: I’m afraid we’re communicating unscriptural ideas and planting ungodly seeds when we unflinchingly cater to the wants and whims of our teenagers.

We tell our teenagers that they are the single most important group in the church. They matter more than anybody. We tell them to separate from the rest of the body for worship. We tell them to separate from their families, sit together as a youth group, right down front, so we can look at them. 

We laugh at the absurdity of someone thinking they have their own pew in the sanctuary. We joke about a visitor walking in and unknowingly taking someone’s pew. Yet we block off entire sections of our worship centers for our teens. Seriously.

We encourage them to do their own thing, sing their own songs, express themselves in their own ways. And if we’re not comfortable with all that, we send them away to do it by themselves. We build them elaborate youth facilities for their own use. They make up less than ten-percent of our congregations but they get all the attention, two or three full time ministers, and a huge unbalanced chunk of the budget.

How can we change worship to meet the needs of our teenagers? How can we tweak our meeting times and places to satisfy our kids? What songs can we sing that our youth group will enjoy? How can we provide our young people with more fun activities? What will the teenagers think? What do the teenagers say?

When’s the last time anybody asked the 55-year-old couple in the back, the ones who’ve been members at your church for 20 years, what they thought?

Here’s the deal: a kid in our churches feels a sense of entitlement. Our youth programs and the attention we pay them naturally foster it. If those same kids go to Christian colleges and attend big churches with successful college programs that treat them the same way, it only gets worse. And by the time that young person graduates at age 23 or 24, he gets a job (hopefully, right?) and begins searching for a church home and realizes, maybe for the first time in his life, that it’s not all about him.

Nobody’s catering to him anymore. He’s having to sacrifice and submit and consider others maybe for the first time in his life. Suddenly, he and his age group aren’t the most important people in the church. He’s just as important, or unimportant, as everyone else. And he goes into shock. Vertigo. Disorientation. And I think it’s only natural. What other result would we expect? Does it surprise us that it’s at that age, 23-25, that our kids leave the churches of Christ or drop out of church altogether?

Related to that, I think, is the fact that the parents of today’s teenagers, men and women in their 40s and 50s, are the very first generation of Church of Christ members raised in the current youth ministry model. And these parents are changing churches based on their kids’ preferences. Parents are choosing churches only after their children have signed off on the youth program. Parents are taking complaints from their teens to ministers and elders. The kids have the reigns. The kids have the power. The kids have the control. They have the final say.

And we’re the ones who gave it to them.

Last thing. And these are all related. Why are we afraid to correct our teenagers? Why are we afraid to give them direction?

I was interested last week to attend a series of roundtable discussions at the Abilene Christian University Lectureships entitled “The House Divided: Discussing Differences Within the Church.” It was part of the ACU student-led Lectureship track, described and promoted as church leaders discussing ways our members can “maintain unity despite significant differences.” The stated goal of the class was to “dream with our students of a future together in unity.”

There were over a hundred people in the room each of the three days, fairly evenly split between college students and older church leaders. The discussion each day was moderated by a three-man panel of ministers and professors. And not once was the view of a teenager challenged or corrected. Every view of every student — regardless of how misguided or misinformed or even dangerous — was validated by solemn nods and affirming winks. Several times the panelists reminded us that we were there to listen to the students. And that’s all we did. Listen to the students. When they said they needed this or they needed that or they needed to feel such-and-such, we listened. And vowed to change.

At one point, late in the third day’s session, one young lady exclaimed that she and her friends were “just saying ‘yes’ to Jesus and ‘no’ to the church.” And the panelists nodded in agreement.

And I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I asked for the microphone and gently explained (I characterized my forthcoming comment as a “loving response to my sweet sister in Christ) that saying “no” to the church was not the answer. It’s never the answer. I told her and everyone in the room that Scripture clearly and unambiguously tells us that Christ died for the church. His blood purchased the church. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t cheap. And while many Christians are guilty of distorting the church, even in our own tradition, sometimes to the point of making it unrecognizeable as the church Jesus died for, saying “no” is not the answer. It’s impossible to say “yes” to Jesus and “no” to the church. His death on the cross makes it impossible.

And the panelists took the microphone and corrected me and defended the teenager.

They said we have to change the way we talk and the way we think about the church if we’re going to keep our kids. They said we have to use the language of the outsiders and respect the perspective of the outsiders. And when I observed that this student was not an outsider but an insider in a room full of insiders, I was politely brushed off. Dismissed.

My opinion doesn’t count. I’m 40 and I have gray hair. I don’t have an iPod and I don’t play with a Wie. What do I know?

Maybe that’s right. But I’m saddened that in a room full of elders and ministers and Christian college professors, one of our own kids can declare her response to our problems is to say “no” to the church. And it goes completely unchallenged. It’s actually affirmed as fine and even proper.  

A few minutes later, to his credit, one of the panelists, a youth minister from the Houston area, attempted to encourage our young people to persevere. Challenge the church. Help teach the church. Wrestle with the church. Grow with the church. Love the church. But don’t leave the church. I couldn’t have said it better. I had been waiting for three days for somebody on the panel to actually say something to that effect.

And then the ACU professor on the panel grabbed the mic and said, “But if the Lord is calling you to leave, then you have to leave.”

Nice.

That day’s session was titled “Visions for the Future: God Has No Plan B.”

God may have no Plan B. But this professor does. Just leave. Do your own thing.

Why are we so afraid of correcting our teenagers? Why are we scared to give them direction? Why are we afraid to offend them? Is it because we think they’ll leave? Is it because we want them to like us? Is it because the parents of our teens are treating them the same way we were treated as teens and we just don’t know any better? We haven’t made the connection yet?

Teenagers are not the church of the future. They are the church of right now. Just like the 91-year-old man and the four-year-old little girl and everybody in between. We all submit to each other. We all sacrifice for each other. We all love each other. We all consider others better than ourselves. How can exalting one group within the church over another, intentionally or unintentionally, ever be godly or good?

Peace,

Allan