A BATTLE PLAN FOR YOUTH AND CHILDREN'S MINISTRY

The Battlefield

In fact, the percentage of young-adult dropouts has increased from 59 to 64 percent. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. 18–29-year-olds who grew up in church tell Barna they have withdrawn from church involvement as an adult after having been active as a child or teen.

A 2016 Barna study found that 62% of parents would consider moving to another church for a good youth program with 49% consisting of those who “definitely would change churches” for a youth program. Out of this group of parents, 48% would definitely allow their teen to choose which church they attended.

The American Institute for Church Growth

“ministry to youth was the second most important reason people give for joining a congregation in their study.”

Group Publishing “surveyed 553 families in twenty rapidly growing churches….for these families preaching ranked first in importance and youth ministry ranked second.”

“I believe we’re in a crisis of youth ministry”

-Mike Yaconelli, “Where’s Your Passion? (Part 1),” Journal of Christian Camping (March-April): 6.

“Youth ministry is not dead, nor is it irrelevant. But it’s broken, and we need to do what we can to fix it.”

-Chap Clark, Adoptive Church: Creating an Environment Where Emerging Generations Belong (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 31

“The evidence clearly shows that the single most important social influence on the religious and spiritual lives of adolescents is their parents…The best social predictor, although not a guarantee, of what the religious and spiritual lives of youth will look like is what the religious and spiritual lives of their parents do look like.”

-Christian Smith and Denton, Soul Searching, 261

““Research continues to affirm that the best predictor of a young person’s faith is the faith of their parents.”

-Kara Powell, Jake Mulder, and Brad Griffin, Growing Young: Six Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2016), 203.

““[Churches will begin to] build buildings to support segregation—and they will do it with excellence…Both the natural appeal of such buildings and the programming centered there will guarantee teenagers will only experience church life with people almost precisely their own age. Adults will find no ways to bless children, much less even see them. Young people will be cut off from the richness of almost all adult relationships. And, most importantly, they will not see members of their own families until it is time to meet at their cars to go home.”

-Richard Ross, “What Will Church Be Like in Ten Years?,” presentation to the NNYM Executive Council, 2006; This quote was discovered in the following book Timothy Paul Jones, ed., Perspectives on Family Ministry: 3 Views, 9-10.

“There are many churches whose children and teenagers have separate programs for them during the church’s gathered worship service, leading students to never need to join the adults in worship until they graduate high school. In these cases, it is worth asking whether or not these students actually attend church at all.”

-Michael McGarry, Biblical Theology of Youth Ministry, 86.

“Youth and adults alike assume that a youth ministry equals a youth group, so they determine to establish one regardless of demographics.”

- Fred P. Edie, “A Liturgical Re-Imagining of Rural Church Youth Ministry,” 66.