Category: Mission

What Exactly Are Students Walking Away From?

We’ve all read the numbers.  We all get a little panicky when we think about how many students are walking away from church.  If the numbers are true, we’re facing a very serious problem because what we’re doing as parents and youth workers is not working.  We must grapple with one very difficult question:  why are students walking away from church after high school?

Maybe I’m over simplifying the issue but I think the answer is very easy.  Students aren’t walking away from church.  It’s not that the statistics are wrong.  Barna and Fuller have their numbers right.  That isn’t it at all.  And yet, I believe that students aren’t walking away from church.  They never belonged to church in the first place.  They’re walking away from something else entirely.

 

WHAT IS CHURCH?                                    

What is church?  That’s a really good question.  Personally, I think it’s best to define church by what I read in the New Testament.  Church is the Jesus community.  It’s a people bonded together by the presence, love and mission of Jesus.

The church is marked by the presence of Jesus.  There is something to be experienced in the church that cannot be experienced anywhere else.  The experience is different because Jesus is Immanuel.  The presence of God is with us.  Lives are being transformed.  Light is shining into darkness.  Life is breathed into death.  Hope is breaking forth in the midst of tragedy.

The church is defined by love.  The Jesus community shocked the world and overthrew an empire with love.  The Jesus community transformed the world in a few short centuries through inclusion, radical service, and care for the oppressed and forgotten.  Where the Gospel is preached and lived the world can never be the same.

The church is defined by the mission of Jesus.  The church is inviting people to follow Jesus.  It’s not asking people to join a club.  It’s not trying to fill seats in a building.  It’s inviting people to follow the most compelling person who ever walked the soil of this planet.  The church is inviting people into the restoration of the world through the Gospel of Jesus.

 

WHAT ARE STUDENTS WALKING AWAY FROM?

This is the church.  Students aren’t walking away from this.  People don’t walk away from the church.  It is far too magnetic.  The true church—defined by the presence, love and mission of Jesus is incredibly compelling.  It transforms lives, communities, cultures and nations.   Our students are walking away from something else entirely.

Maybe the problem is not that students are walking away.  In fact, they might be doing us a favor by pointing out the real problem.  Perhaps the problem is that we aren’t being the church.  Maybe we as parents, pastors and church leaders need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves some hard questions.  What exactly are we doing anyway?

 

Dynamite and Sledgehammers

img_drilling-1957-with-new-rig

I come from a long line of water well drillers.  My family even has a picture of my Great-Great Grandfather drilling a well with a horse.  Now that’s old school.  I worked in the industry off and on for over 10 years and enjoyed most of it.  I’ll be honest; working outside during the winter in Michigan was not my favorite.  Also, I’m kind of a sissy because I was developing tendonitis of basically every joint possible.  In 2003 I transitioned out of water well drilling and into student ministry.  I know that I’m exactly where God wants me as a student pastor but there are some things I love and miss about drilling.  The biggest thing I miss is just that…”things”.  There is a huge difference between working with people and working with things.  Let me explain.

When you’re repairing an old well it is perfectly acceptable and often necessary to beat the heck out of it with a sledge hammer.  This is especially helpful when the repair is not going well and you need to let off some angst.  With my children, we call this throwing a tantrum. Let me just say that I throw an excellent sledge hammer tantrum. I’m guessing it would be frowned upon to unleash the sledge in the church office.  When you get upset in the church office you have to do something constructive like take a walk.  Lame.

Secondly, dynamite. Yes, I’m being serious. Back in the day, water well drillers would regularly obliterate underground obstacles with dynamite.  I cannot adequately put into words the euphoria a person experiences when touching off a half-stick of dynamite. I’m still trying to figure out a way to incorporate dynamite in student ministry…

As much as I fondly remember working with things rather than people, I’ve chosen a different path.  I’m a student pastor and not a well driller.  I don’t work with things. I work with people.   Although I often miss wanton destruction I have to admit that for me, only student ministry stirs my soul.  God has wired me in such a way that only people can bring me to tears–both out of sadness and joy. Only student ministry and more specifically, students and volunteers bring out the passion that God built into me.

I’ll always be grateful to the people who pointed me toward my life’s passion.  I’ll always be thankful that God guided me to the mission He designed me for.  Sometimes people drive me crazy but I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

I know there are days when you want to throw in the towel.  Sometimes people can break your heart or betray your trust.  Maybe that happened today.  In these moments, remember what it is that stirs your soul.  The fact that you as upset as you are betrays how much you care.  You’re right where you’re supposed to be.

How Realism Can Damage Faith

Have you ever had a genius idea that went south? I’m sort of notorious for this sort of thing.  In my previous student ministry we were very active in the realm of community service.  We were always looking for ways to jump in and do something positive in our city.  We called our service ministry “splagXnon.”  It’s Greek for compassion—the kind of compassion that comes from your guts.  Well, at least I think that’s what it means.  It’s been about 10 years since Biblical Greek 201.  [Side note…yes, I was that guy who used random Greek words to name everything from bible study groups to Dixie cups.]

So, I got this idea that we would clean up the town. OK, that’s kind of a lie.  The truth is I was really annoyed by how much trash was in the vacant lot across the street from my apartment complex.  I kept thinking to myself, “Someone should clean that crap up!”  Then I came up with the brilliant scheme that my students should clean it up.

So, at our next service project I split the group into teams and told them that whoever came back with the most trash would win something awesome.  And by the way, there was a ton of trash in a specific vacant lot on Snow Rd.  Whoever cleaned up that lot would probably win the competition.  Oh, and it just happened to be across the street from my apartment.  Total coincidence.

Now, in my head I was imagining groups coming back with only two or three garbage bags of trash.  I mean, there was a ton of trash in that vacant lot but only of the paper and plastic variety.  What actually happened blew my mind.  My students came back with couches, tires, discarded recliners, ginormous rolls of carpet, paint cans for days and a quarter million trash bags.  I’m not exactly sure what happened but I’m pretty sure the winning team broke into a landfill.

In the end there was a small mountain of trash decorating the lawn of our church.  Why the lawn?  Well, I may have overlooked the need for extra dumpsters.  I’m the guy who comes up with the big idea and forgets to cover the critical details—like dumpsters for example.  Needless to say, my senior pastor was not a fan of my “splagXnon”.  It probably wouldn’t have been that bad but the “splagXnon” lawn ornament stayed for over a week.  You can always count on trash removal guys to ruin your relationship with your senior pastor.  Psh…jerks.  Worst of all, the students didn’t clean up a single thing in the vacant lot.

Basically, nothing good came out of that experience, well other than that it helped to reshape how I think about students and serving.  I learned that students think big. Not only that but they hope.  Unlike most adults, students still believe they can do something huge–like clean up an entire town or change the world.  In other words, our students still believe that the Gospel can do what Jesus said it could.

There are times when we as youth pastors and volunteers are guilty of forcing our students into a box–the box of what we’re comfortable with.  At some point we stop believing that God really can use us to change the world.  And then we somehow think we’re doing kids a favor by reigning in their passion.  What if, when we do this, we are fighting against what God is doing in that student’s heart?  I wish I had a DeLorean so I could go back in time and change every, “That’s a cool idea Johnny but it will never actually work” into, “That’s a cool idea Johnny.  Go for it!  I’ll be right behind you cheering you on.”

And yet, with all that said, couldn’t they at least have cleaned up that vacant lot across my apartment?