Our church is currently facing a crisis. It is as if someone has yelled “fire,” and now our young people are jumping ship. It has been estimated that eighty percent of young people age sixteen or older will leave the church, and only thirty percent of those will one day return. What is happening, and why aren’t our efforts in youth ministry more effective?
I believe that the cause of this crisis is itself rooted in our youth ministries methods. During the industrial revolution, children were working in the factories every day of the week except for Sundays. Robert Raikes felt that these children deserved an education and so he began what became known as the Sunday school movement. These “Sunday schools” taught the little factory workers to read, write, and do simple arithmetic and also gave them basic religious instruction. It was not long before religious leaders began to see a fundamental danger in these institutions. The Reverend Thomas Burns wrote, “Be that as it will, I repeat it again, my great objection to Sunday schools is that I am afraid they will in the end destroy all family religion…” His fear was that the parents would leave the religious training of their children to the Sunday schools rather than training them and mentoring them at home.
Since then, the education field has been transformed by the work of men like John Dewey (an American psychologist and the “Father of Modern Education) who were influenced by evolutionary theory. They theorized that just as man had "evolved over time," students evolved through their education, and that the “less-evolved” lower grades should not jeopardize the evolution of the more advanced students. And so began the reign of the age-segregated classroom. These methods of education began to creep into the church to the point that children are no longer worshiping with their parents in the worship service but are again separated from their parents and stuck with a group of youth their own age and maturity level, thus continuing a pattern that has perpetuated itself all week and the week before that.
Yet, when we look for youth groups and age-segregated ministries in Scripture, we find a very different pattern. Instead, we find parents taking responsibility for the training and shepherding of their children; we see the children under the constant mentorship of their parents. Deuteronomy 6:6,7 reads, “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be upon your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” (Italics added) Furthermore, Scripture puts the burden of religious training even more specifically on the shoulders of fathers when it says, “Fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” (Eph. 6:4) We are even told in Spirit of Prophecy that it was only because the parents in Israel were neglecting their duty to God and to their children that God commanded Samuel to institute the schools of the prophets (Education 45,46). Had parents discipled their children as God had commanded them, there would have been no need for such schools.
Could it be that the ministries that were designed to keep our young people in the church are the very reason that they are leaving? Could it be that because our church has all these fancy programs, parents no longer feel the need to take personal responsibility for the spiritual development for their children? Why is it that rather than follow the plan that God himself gave for the spiritual training of our young people, we have taken up the methods of men who gave no consideration to the ways of God? When Israel asked for a king it was because they wanted to be like all the nations around them instead of being God’s “peculiar people,” and as a result, they faced the same hardships that the nations around them were facing. Let us as a church not make the same mistake. Let us follow the pattern that He has given us and not follow after the world’s methods.
