Book Review: You Lost Me

*There is a 43% drop off between the teen and early adult years in terms of church engagement (p. 22).

I can honestly say that in the last six years of being a youth minister, I’ve seen the cultural norms and the atmosphere of youth culture change drastically.  For example, it’s no longer the stray teen who doesn’t have their own cell phone, it’s the stray teen who doesn’t have a smart phone.  And the impact of social media on understandings of relationship has been enormous.  So, as teen (and worldwide) culture continues to evolve at a pace unlike anything the world has ever seen, how do we meet our kids where we are to love them, speak truth into their lives, and share Jesus with them?

David Kinnaman, President of the Barna Group, (somewhat) recently published a book called, You Lost Me.  Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church…And Rethinking Faith, wherein he evaluates years of research the Barna Group undertook in relation to the current population of 18-29 year olds in America (who are deemed, “mosaics”).  He identifies three realities of our current culture that have implications for any of us out there working in youth ministry (p. 21): 

1)   Teen church engagement remains robust… (while teens) are not growingup to be faithful young adult disciples of Christ. 
2)   Every story of disconnection requires a personal, tailor-made response. 
3)   The dropout problem is… a disciple-making problem.  The church is not adequately preparing the next generation to follow Christ faithfully into a rapidly changing culture.

So, this means that we must seriously reconsider how we approach youth ministry if we are no longer meeting kids where they are (since ‘where they are’ is an ever changing target).  Kinnaman uses the term ‘discontinuously different’ to describe this ‘ever changing target,’ meaning that the “cultural setting in which young people have come of age is significantly changed from what was experienced during the formative years of previous generations (p. 38).”  They have unprecedented access to information, analysis, relationships, and worldviews, they have unprecedented levels of disconnection (and feelings of alienation) from family, community, and institutions, and they have a changing spiritual narrative that includes a large skepticism of authority.  All of these factors combine to create a melding pot of relativism and poorly defined boundaries to meaning and truth.

Consider: They have been raised in a culture of tolerance, inclusiveness, diversity, and political correctness- ideals that have greatly shaped their generation.  They have a compulsion toward unity, and they prioritize (their idea of) fairness over rightness.  The majority sees the church as intolerable and exclusive.  So what now?

Kinnaman brilliantly explores some of the effects these cultural realities are having on kids’ understandings of Christianity and the church (highlighting science, sex, and doubt), and the book concludes by offering some incredibly pertinent ideas for engaging our current teens in meaningful ways in the body of Christ.  Three important things we can do to serve our kids are:

1) Rethink relationships with them (especially by fostering intergenerational relationships)

2) Rediscover vocation with them, and

3) Reprioritize wisdom with them (as information is a finger-swipe away, but the wisdom of how to interpret, understand, use, and scrutinize that information is something that comes with time through relational and process learning).

I cannot speak highly enough of this book: it is crucial for us to better understand what is happening in the minds and hearts of our younger generations, so that we may better love and serve them as the church.  This book offers an insightful and pertinent synthesis of a colossal amount of research and I recommend it to anyone working in youth ministry!

Liz Edrington previously served as a youth minister at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, VA. Liz presently is pursuing a masters in counseling at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, FL .

Family Discipleship As Law

Christopher Schlect, Critique of Modern Youth Ministry (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1995). 21 pgs., paperback.

Christopher Schlect has written—what many would undoubtedly argue—a “timeless” critique of youth ministry by shifting the burden of training youth in the faith back to the family, especially to the fathers.

Schlect begins by giving various reasons why there exists an age-segregated youth ministry within the church today:  (1) the intentional age segregation of public education in the early-to-mid twentieth century and (2) the rise of para-church ministries that have targeted teenagers, such as Youth for Christ and Young Life.  Churches, to meet the challenges of these “competitors,” developed their own age-segregated and anti-family youth ministries.

He points out, rightly, that youth ministries today communicate an unhealthy message when they entertain teenagers instead of engaging them in biblical discipleship or modeling the importance of family.  Schlect also, rightly, argues for cross-generational ministry, one that places the responsibility of training younger members in the faith primarily on older people, especially parents.

He is also right in saying that parents, and especially fathers, are largely abdicating their responsibilities of raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  He maintains that youth ministers should seek to point students back to their families for godly instruction.

While the above points are helpful, I have four critiques of the book: 

First—and most disappointing—the book is law-driven and offers mere behavior modification as the solution.  There is no gospel.  He offers nothing about the role of justification, imputed righteousness, or the atoning work of Christ that would encourage families and youth ministers to adopt his thesis.  Thus it lacks the proper motivation for family-based youth ministry.

Second, Schlect advocates a Christ-against-culture model of ministry that is foreign to the Christ revealed in the Gospels.  Our task should be about the transformation of culture by the power of the gospel, not complete avoidance of culture—being in the world, but not of it (John 17:11-16).

Third, Schlect offers very little advice (he touches on it briefly on the last couple of pages) for youth ministry with regard to the overwhelming trend of children being raised in non-Christian homes.  Obviously, we should reach out to those families, but are we to wait until those families are saved before “biblical” youth ministry can take place?  I agree that parents have the primary responsibility to train their children in the instruction of the Lord.  But the fact that children are raised in truly non-Christian homes is now the majority report in America rather than the minority one.  The book is nearly 17 years old, which might explain why this element is not drawn out a little more.

Fourth, he seems to de-value the role of the church body.  While he doesn’t explicitly say this, it is implicit in the pages.  Rather than advocating an either-or approach (family or church), it would be better to advocate a both-and approach—one that emphasizes the importance of both the church body and the family in instructing youth in the faith.

Schlect does a fine job at helping us understand the misguided and unhealthy state of youth ministries today.  And his solution is also helpful:  godly parenting.  But the absence of the gospel makes such a call an impotent, moralistic plea.  We are to trust in the merits of Christ on our behalf.  He took the penalty for our parenting failures and gave us his righteousness so that we now, with grateful hearts, are enabled to strive for student ministry and parenting that pleases God.

Brian H. Cosby, the Rooted blog's newest contributor, is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America, Associate Pastor of Youth and Families at Carriage Lane Presbyterian Church in Peachtree City, Georgia, and author of Giving Up Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry from an Entertainment Culture (P&R Publishing, 2012).