{"id":334,"date":"2010-08-27T17:01:03","date_gmt":"2010-08-27T21:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/?p=334"},"modified":"2011-08-14T21:36:02","modified_gmt":"2011-08-15T01:36:02","slug":"5-things-to-address-with-youth-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/?p=334","title":{"rendered":"5 Things To Address With Youth Ministry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, CNN (that is right, I read the bad guys site) posted a large article on their site about why teenagers turn away from their Christian upbringing.\u00a0 In her new book, Almost Christian<\/strong><\/a>, Princeton Professor Kenda Creasy Dean<\/em><\/a> concludes that we are being too shallow in instruction with our youth and not challenging enough to complement their abilities and desires.\u00a0 If she is right, and she has over 3,300 researched teens on her side, then what could\/should we do differently?\u00a0 Here are five simple concepts churches must begin to address in their youth ministries.<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>, we must begin to address and include parents in their children’s spiritual group activity.\u00a0 Parents are the major influence on children and yet they are often not included in youth ministry planning, youth ministry events, and youth ministry instruction.\u00a0 Although he was fairly untrained in youth work, my papermaker dad was my youth group leader and we learned God’s word through his voice and life. \u00a0Parents need to be very involved.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>, since we have mentioned the importance of parents, why not do some parenting instruction.\u00a0 Maybe it’s time we started to think about investing some serious instruction on what it means to be a Christian parent and also how churches hire good but inexperienced people to be youth pastors.\u00a0 How about doing something radical like canceling entertainment based youth group meetings and replacing them with effective teen parenting meetings.\u00a0 I will bet the statistics of success are on the side of parenting meetings rather than teen meetings!<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>, let’s catechize our kids.\u00a0 Most instruction to our youth is about ‘trusting in Jesus’ and how we can be forgiven.\u00a0 I don’t want us to avoid dealing with the need for an immediate relationship with God but we need to do some basic instruction for daily living that impacts teens lives for the future.\u00a0 Our children need to begin to reflect on life through memorization and doctrinal instruction.\u00a0 If God is a trinity, then we must teach on subjects such as this so that students can articulate them and do so in a framework of personal application.<\/p>\n

Fourth<\/strong>, students need to know how God expects them to live and why.\u00a0 Now I don’t think we want rationality to take authority over the commands of God but I do think students need to rationally understand that their lives are to conform to God’s will.\u00a0 Teens need to learn to obey God and to appreciate what He tells us to do.\u00a0 i.e. When God says that fornication is wrong, it is not just sexual intercourse.\u00a0 I am not certain that Christian teens fully understand God’s expectations for godly living.<\/p>\n

Finally<\/strong>, we need to do some modeling of the Christian faith so that our teens can see real Christian living.\u00a0 As an example, they need to see love in action: financial generosity, kind words, great marriages, etc.\u00a0 This is why we need more than a youth pastor\/leader engaging with our teens.\u00a0 Parents, leaders, and all Christians need to begin to model and seek ways to reveal Christ-like living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, CNN (that is right, I read the bad guys site) posted a large article on their site about why teenagers turn away from their Christian upbringing.\u00a0 In her new book, Almost Christian, Princeton Professor Kenda Creasy Dean concludes that we are being too shallow in instruction with our youth and not challenging enough to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[30],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":520,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions\/520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marklydecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}