Three Things Your Church Can’t Afford to Lose
(And Six Keys for Keeping Them)
by Greg Stier
Dare 2 Share Ministries

 

There are many churches that, year after year, are losing some of their most precious resources. As a result their numbers are shrinking, their congregations are graying and their passion is dying. What are these churches losing?

 

The next generation!

 

I’m convinced that if senior pastors don’t take immediate—even drastic—action, the body of Christ is going to lose more than just a handful of teenagers attending their youth groups. They will lose the battle with Satan for the soul of America. After all, ultimately America is not going to be transformed from the outside in (pickets, protests and political action) but from the inside out (revival, repentance and reaching out)! Who better to lead this revival than a generation of young people? The problem comes when we begin to open our eyes to the grim reality that teenagers are evacuating the church. Instead of revival we are seeing what I have come to call, The Great Graduation Evacuation. If the statistics continue to spiral downward when it comes to the retention of the next generation, then we could look like post-Christian Europe in short order.

 

Maybe this sounds a little alarmist to you. But remember that most of the spiritual disasters that take place in the body of Christ don’t usually come in the form of “earthquakes” but “erosion”. The silent, subtle wearing away and walking away of young people from the body of Christ is not as obvious as a sudden mass exodus, but it is every bit as dangerous for the future of the church…maybe even more. At least with a mass exodus we would see the enormity of the problem and would most likely take immediate action.

 

The grim fact is that we are losing the next generation and most pastors are doing little to stop it. Maybe it’s because (and this may sting a bit) many pastors are more concerned about retaining the big givers (who tend to be adults) than they are the small donors or non-donors. But when we lose teenagers out of our churches, we lose more than their current and future donations. When we lose young people on a local church level we lose three things that our churches can’t afford to lose:

 

1. We lose our best families.

 

2. We lose our potential revolutionaries.

 

3. We lose our future leaders.

 

Let’s start at the top.

 

You love your kids and I love mine. We want to send our kids to the best schools possible. You and I would never knowingly send our children to a school where we know that the quality of education they are receiving is below par.

 

What’s true of their education is also true of their spiritual formation.

 

Imagine with me, for a moment, not being a pastor at your church. Would you feel comfortable as a congregation member at your own church sending your teenagers to your youth group? (Obviously if you don’t have kids or your kids are too young or too old for youth group, you’ll have to imagine a little harder!)

 

Time for some hard questions…

 

• Does the youth leader at your church spend more time entertaining than training?

 

• Is it more about the fun, games, songs and pizza parties than truly equipping these teenagers to know, live, share and own their faith in Jesus?

 

• Could the teenagers in your youth group adequately explain the basics of their faith to a non-believer?

 

• Are the graduating seniors in your youth group ready to face off with the Philosophy 101 professors they will encounter their freshman year at a secular college?

 

It may hurt to take an honest look at your youth group, but it is vital that you do. Maybe even make a surprise visit this Wednesday night (or whenever the youth group meets) and watch from the back. Are the teens truly getting effectively trained or merely entertained?

 

By the way, if the answer to this question is not what you want it to be, don’t be too hard on your youth leader. He or she is merely living in a system that has been unknowingly, non-maliciously delivered to him or her by their youth ministry forefathers.

 

The system of youth ministry is broken in the United States. It is based on a 1960’s and 70’s meeting driven, entertainment laden, “truth lite” model. Postmodern teens are way too sophisticated and busy to waste their time in a youth ministry that is, well, wasting their time. They want mission. They want action. They want truth. But to transform from a meeting-driven to a mission-driven approach will take time, effort and a whole lot of wisdom.

 

Are you willing to take the journey with your youth leader, to help him or her build a youth ministry that truly changes lives? At the very minimum, are you willing to get them going in the right direction?

 

If your answer is “no” then realize that the sharpest parents of pre-teens and teens in your church may soon be taking their tithes elsewhere. Because they, like you and me, want only the best for their kids. If you aren’t willing to take action you could very well lose your best families (and their tithes) to the church down the block that is challenging and equipping their teens.

You could also lose your potential revolutionaries.

 

Before you write off the teens in your youth group as potential spiritual revolutionaries consider this: In the last 300 years EVERY major spiritual awakening in America has had young people on the leading edge.

 

As a matter of fact, I’m convinced that Jesus himself used primarily teenagers to launch the early church. Check this passage out:

 

After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn't your teacher pay the temple tax?” “Yes, he does,” he replied. When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own sons or from others?” “From others,” Peter answered. “Then the sons are exempt,” Jesus said to him. “But so that we may not offend them, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”            
-Matthew 17:24-27

 

I find it interesting that it seems that only Peter and Jesus had to pay the temple tax, yet all the disciples were there. What’s the significance of that? According to Exodus 30:14 this tax was only for those who were twenty years old or older.

 

What does this mean? It means that there is a good chance that most of the disciples were teenagers when they began to follow Jesus. It also means that, in a sense, Jesus was a youth group leader with only one adult sponsor (Peter) and one really bad kid (you know who).

 

With this small youth group Jesus, quite literally, transformed the world forever. He did this all without a worship band, a youth room or a budget.

 

Jesus has used teenagers to change the world from the inception of the church. And he wants to use them today. He wants to use your teenagers to make a difference. Maybe that’s why I love 1Corinthians 1:26-29.

 

Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.

 

If that’s not a case for youth ministry, I don’t know what is. God loves to use the unlikely, the ignoble, the foolish things to accomplish his purposes. He’s been doing that for thousands of years.

 

You and I have both heard stats floating around about how many teens are evacuating the church. While some of these numbers may be inflated there is no doubt that there is a huge problem.

 

But the problem is not just after they graduate. It starts long before. As Mike Yaconelli (founder of Youth Specialties) wrote years ago, there are more freshman in the average youth group than sophomores and more sophomores than juniors and, you guessed it, more juniors than seniors.

 

Why? Because the average teen in the average youth group is not being challenged and equipped to transform their world for Jesus. Instead they are being entertained with games and being taught harmless devotionals that don’t really challenge their minds or their lifestyles.

 

On the positive side, I truly believe that there is a sleeping giant in our midst. I truly believe that if we cast a vision to our young people, equip them with significant theology (while showing them how relevant it is to their everyday lives) and unleash them to reach their communities and campuses for Christ, then we could see a true awakening of Biblical proportions sweep our nation and then our planet.

 

But for this to happen, it’s going to take your involvement. Truly effective youth ministry starts, not with the youth leader, but with the senior pastor. The pastors usually determine who the youth leader is going to be, the kind of philosophy they are going to run by and the budget that they are going to have.

 

If you sweep youth ministry under the rug and delegate (or abdicate) it to the youth leader, you may be putting a nail in the coffin of potential awakening in your community.

 

And not only will you lose your potential revolutionaries today. You’ll lose your future leaders tomorrow.

 

Too many pastors I know live in the now. But we are compelled by Scripture and the example of the Apostle Paul, to be pouring into the “Timothys” that will be running our congregations when we are off the scene. Jesus poured into the young revolutionaries of his day (we call them the disciples) and they shook the world when he was off the scene.

 

My challenge to you is to be a pastor to your whole church (adults, teens and children alike)! Shepherd the entire flock.

 

Does that mean you have to become a youth leader? NO! It means that you must become a leader to your youth leader, that you must work with him or her to develop the model of ministry that is going to produce fully developed young disciples and unleash these revolutionaries today!

 

How?

 

I actually wrote an entire book on the how called Ministry Mutiny…a youth leader fable. Using the power of story, Ministry Mutiny provides a window into the life of a young youth leader named Ty who is drafting his resignation letter because, in his words, he has “become the babysitter he promised he never would be.” He puts the letter in his pocket and goes to one last youth leader network meeting to mentally say goodbye to his buddies before handing his resignation letter.

 

But at the network meeting he encounters Tony, a twenty-six year youth leader veteran. Tony becomes Ty’s confessional. After a few hours of hard, gut-level talk, Tony challenges Ty to learn how to commit “ministry mutiny,” an uprising, not against his pastor or church, but against the system of youth ministry delivered to him by his youth leader forefathers. He offers to mentor Ty and help him explore the six key principles of ministry mutiny. Here is what they cover:

1. Listening for God is not about waiting for an audible voice from him. Ty learns that it’s about listening to God everyday as he reads the Word and stays in tune with the Spirit who will guide him through the mud and crud of ministry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the way, although I’m the president of Dare 2 Share and spend the majority of my time training and equipping teenagers to know, live, share and own their faith, I was a church planter and preaching pastor for ten years. We used all of these principles at our church. As a result 65% of our congregation came to Christ through our church’s efforts. And guess what? The youth group has always been a big part of bringing this excitement and raw-edged evangelism into the lifeblood of our entire church!

 

But I’m sharing these principles with you, not just as a former preaching pastor, but as a guy who was deeply impacted by his own senior pastor when I was a teen.

 

I thank God for Pastor “Yankee” Arnold. As a teenager growing up in his church, it was obvious he had a special fondness for youth ministry. He was hands-on involved in the spiritual development of everyone in church - teens, children and adults. He mentored the youth leaders and equipped them how to lead us toward the Great Commission. He helped identify potential pubescent preachers in his church, had us go through Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson (while we were in seventh grade by the way) and gave me my first opportunity to preach in a big church, although my voice was a few years away from dropping an octave or two. And I’m not the only one he impacted. My best friend and cohort in ministry, Rick Long, now pastors the church I used to preach at, and he too was equipped by Yankee and others while still in junior high school.

 

My hope and prayer for you is that your church explodes and grows through an infusion of fresh, young blood, that you keep your best families and that you unleash an army of revolutionaries through your youth ministry that will change the way we do ministry now and for the next generation!

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Greg Stier is the President and Founder ofDare 2 Share Ministries in Arvada, Colo., where he works with youth leaders and students, equipping them to be effective in sharing the gospel. Dare 2 Share has impacted the lives of more than 300,000 teenagers across the country.  With experience as a senior teaching pastor and in youth ministry for almost 20 years, he has a reputation of knowing and relating to today’s teens.  Greg is widely viewed as an authority and expert teen spirituality.  He is known for motivating, mobilizing and equipping teens for positive change.  For more information on Dare 2 Share Ministries , please visit www.dare2share.org.