Why do most people get converted in their youth?

Recently I posted a blog about our emphasis on the Gen Y and the Youth Culture at the expense of the older people in our church. Here are some more observations of what I see is an imbalance which the churches needs to consider. (In saying this I am mindful that I am as much guilty as everyone else). So some observations.

1. It’s interesting that when we consider hiring staff, invariably one person we want to employ will be a youth worker. Very rarely do I hear of someone being hired specifically for equipping and empowering the 50+ group for evangelism and growing the church. When we do employ someone for this group it is usually with a view for “Caring” for them rather than mobilising them.
2. Because the young are often seen as the future of the church, a healthy church is often measured by the size of their youth group. On the other hand, churches consisting of merely older people are often seen as churches waiting to die. This way of thinking is most clearly seen in a church that is constantly losing the young people due to the cost of living in the area. Because of this many leaders feel very uncertain about the future of the church. However while many may cry over the lost of the young, many fail to see the potential and the enormous harvest to be reaped amongst the older people.
3. While there is a lot of guidance and opportunities for the young to serve there seems to be less for the older generation. This is even more tragic if a person becomes a Christian at a later stage in their life. Because there is generally very little by way of encouragement and equipping for the older generation, this only further enhances a retirement mentality. I saw this particularly with one ministry that wanted to focus on training those in their early 30′s (OK I’m using young in a very broad sense) and under. When the challenge was put to consider training the older it was flatly rejected. Now every ministry has to make a call as to what it wants to focus on. Fair enough. Yet we still need to ask why focus on the young given the opportunities, the enormous potential and opportunities amongst the older, many of whom are waiting on the sideline to be asked to play the game.
4. It’s worth saying again that the publicity and the shear number of ministries and institutions dedicated to reaching the young and equipping them far exceeds what is available for the older generation. In this I mean ministries and institutions that are more than “caring” ministries but ministries  dedicated to training and empowering 50+ guys.
5. While many of our training institutions are “open” to 50+ to signing up for training, there is no concerted effort to specifically recruit this group. On the other hand there is a massive concerted effort to “Target” and recruit the next generation.

OK these are just a few observations. So why such an emphasis on the young? Why so much energy and resources directed to this group? One explanation is the commonly held  perception that most people are converted in their teenage years. This was the message that was certainly conveyed to me at one conference I attended a few years ago and repeated again at another conference.  So if this is true, it’s not surprising that we should be strategically throwing on we can to reach them. However I wonder just how true this is? In a lecture Dr Don A Carson gave at St Barnarbas Broadway in Sydney, some years ago,   he was challenging this commonly held perception. His argument was that, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, the high conversion amongst young people can be reasonably and easily explained as a function of the shear amount of resources we direct to reaching this group.Think about it. We have organisations  like Scipture Union, Crusaders, Ferver, Youthworks, ISCF, KYLC (aka NextGen). Sydney Missionary Bible College runs an annual conference for those working amongst the youth. In recent times we have the rise of ministries like RICE. I’m sure there are many many more ministries like these dedicated to equipping our leaders to reach the youth of Sydney. So given the scale of our engagement is it any wonder why most people get converted in their younger years. But when it comes to ministries dedicated to reaching the 50+ let alone equipping our members to reach this group, I think we’d be very hard pressed to come up with a few. And those that are around usually run as a “caring” ministry rather than a mobilising or equipping ministry.

Back to Carson. Given his reflections, he decided to redirect his  time, money and energy, NOT to the young, but to reaching a different but difficult group ie the Men. And surprise surprise he found many many men coming to know the lord. Now obviously it is God who gives the growth, nevertheless it needs to be said that there seems to be an undue emphasis in equipping and evangelising this group at the expense of the rest of the body of Christ. The unfortunate consequence of this is that a major part of God’s church is not being utilized to grow his church and a major sector of our community is not being reached with the gospel.

We are in a time in Australian society where our population is aging very rapidly. Maybe it’s time to give more time, energy and money to equipping those in our churches in the prime of their life to reaching those outside the church.

Growing your youth group vs. reaching the schools?

I’m now an old man but I have the privilege of overseeing the youth ministry at my church. Anyway I’ve  been thinking about how to grow our youth ministry because I think, as with all ministries, it can run the danger of plateuing, so I rang up some of the young people in my church and asked them some of the difficulties they have in bringing friends to church. In saying this I need to let you guys know a bit about myself if you don’t already know me. I serve in a Chinese Church in Sydney, which means that our members come from all over the world. What this means is that, like many other ethnically based church, it is not a local church ministry but a regionally based church, meaning that people generally travel about 30 mins to get to church. Ok that’s all you need to know.

So what were some of the obstacles?

• Time: everyone is busy with homework  (Huh – we’re talking about kids being busy?)
• Distance: too far
• Other commitments eg sports, tuition, parties
• Not knowing anyone
• Not interested
• Parents
• Too early in the morning (10:00 am apparently is too early for some)
• Too Asian (ie too many black heads)

I’m sure there are many other reasons, but these were the ones  the kids gave me. All of this helped me to realise that  we’re really fighting an uphill battle to grow our  youth group. But maybe, as we so often do, we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe it’s not so much about how to grow my youth group but how do we reach the kids in the school. If we think like this it changes the whole game plan radically.

I was speaking to a friend involved in youth ministries in the schools and he tells me that, of all the schools in Sydney, only 20% have some Christian group, or religious education. Now it’s easy to be impressed by this but don’t. When you realise that many of these schools only have a handful of young people going to them, either to scripture classes or to the Christian group, it is nothing to be proud of. In short there are literally 1000′s upon 1000′s of young kids who are not hearing the gospel. This is scandalous. Therefore the bottom line is that we need to think about how to reach the schools rather than grow our youth group.

In this I think we need to think outside the normal route of employing more scripture teachers or school chaplains. I think we’re going to have to be more creative than this. The reason being that scripture teachers are limited in what they can do. They cannot go out to evangelise the school. They can only teach the kids who come to them, and often this is merely a small handful. Where once the default position of the school was that every student had to go to scripture and needed the parents permission to get out of it. These days the default position is that everyone goes to non-scripture unless the parents requests otherwise.

Things are worse in QLD. There is no policy which allows scripture teaching in the local schools. In short, we’re not going to reach the schools simply by getting more scripture teachers.

So what do we do? We need to recognise that the schools are a mission field to be reached, but who will reach them if not the scripture teachers? I think the best evangelists and missionaries are right in front of us in our youth groups. That’s right – it’s our kids. They are the  one’s who have the networks, the relationships and, strangely enough, the language skills. It’s bizarre when you think about it. The new missionary paradigm is to train up the local to reach the locals. Well why don’t we apply this to reaching the school? Our kids are spending  6-7 hours a day, 5 days a week with their friends in the local school. Our kids are the school locals, so it stands to reason that we should be training up the locals to reach the locals.

To put it bluntly, I think we need to stop thinking about how to grow our youth groups and think about how to reach the schools. So what does that mean in practice? It means that we see the youth group, not only as place to grow the young people in the faith, but also as a place to equip them for ministry. In other words our youth group becomes a ministry/missionary training centre. Now please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that we ignore the spiritual development of the kids. I’m not saying that we get the kids to do something they are not ready for or equip to do. I’m not saying that we ignore their need to keep growing up. I know all this. All I’m saying is that we can look at our youth group in a different light. We need to change the youth  group from merely feeding the kids to also equipping and empowering the kids, and I think the church is best positioned to do this.

So what would this look like? Hmmmm. Here are a few thoughts.

• make it a point to regularly pray through the different schools represented in your youth group
• For some, train them to be preachers
• For still others train them how to start a ministry in the school and how to grow the ministry
• For some train them how to lead a small evangelistic bible study group

I’m sure there’s a lot more you can do. However at the end of the day it’s more than just a program, its about a way of thinking about our youth group.

Having said, one common reaction is to think these kids are just kids! In response I think I wonder if we hold back our kids too much. I’ve been to some open days at my kid’s school and I’ve heard some 10 year old kids give speeches that would put some preachers to shame. I’ve seen a 6th class kid chair public meetings. It is interesting that in the schools the young people are given more responsibilities but in our churches we tend to hold them back too much. I think we need to know that our kids can do more than we give them credit for, and with a bit of encouragement, mentoring, equipping, I think we will see our kids do so much more for the gospel and for his kingdom than we could have imagined.

So I think it’s time to stop worrying about how to get more kids to come to our youth group and to start thinking about how to get our kids to reach their schools for Christ.

Oh and by the way, if we do this, the side benefits is that we may actually see our youth group grow.