I mentioned in my last post that this week has been a thought provoking week. You can read my last blog to find out why.

Weeks like this I love because it forces me to think on a specific issue.

I watched the movie Divided, and if the purpose of the movie was to get me thinking that youth ministry has failed, it didn’t work. It did however, get me thinking of ways to close the gap of high school graduate to college goer.

There is no doubt there are students who are leaving the church when they go to college. Allow me to be an avocate for youth ministry for a bit. We need to be cautious when it comes to the point of blame on a specific venue of the church. I don’t agree the way to solve this issue is by taking away “youth groups”.   Let’s examine first and foremost the culture we live in.  There are issues facing teenagers today that, let’s be honest, aren’t dealt with from “regular church”.  A 45 year old man is not struggling in the same way way of the 16 year old girl (if he is, then he’s got issues). A ministry surrounded by  people dealing in the same issues growing together is healthy.

I have trouble with people saying that the word youth group is not in the bible.  Let’s not forget the culture differences of bible times and the present. In addition, my personal thought is Jesus preached to the children. I believe he did set times to talk to the younger ones.  Do you agree?

It’s interesting to me that the deeper I look into this,  the students who stopped going to church moved out and went to college. Is this true? The students staying home are still attending church and active, in  most cases.  (If you have students leaving your student ministry who are not leaving to go to college, I think it’s time to examine really why that’s happening) Many of these students are leaving their church, friends, family, their roots. They meet new friends and start establishing possibly a new way of living.  The more I think of it the more I yearn to see thriving college/university campus ministries.

I would love for college campus ministries to partner with local churches. Is this happening?

Student ministry also  needs to be partnering with parents.  But we need to remember that for many youth groups, these youth come from unchurched broken homes.  Many of these parents aren’t believers and without believing in Christ most parents have a different value system that could very well be contrary to the church. I agree that parents could do a better job of raising their teens in the ways of the Lord, and we do need need to partner with them to help guide and encourage them.  But at the same time, it’s a cop out when we say it’s not the student ministries job to raise teens.  And to some extent that could be true, but when a student comes from some of these homes, youth pastors are becoming the Godly “parent” in that life.  What a great way to pray with the student for the parents to come to church, to accept Christ and follow Him. It’s at that time we partner with the parent to encourage and equip. (There was a time a student accepted Christ and his mom was not a believer. We fasted and prayed together for almost two months. I’ll never forget the look on “Jacobs” face when his mother walked in when the serviced started. I might have cried with joy as did he.)

These are only a few of my thoughts, what are yours?