A few years ago my boss read a couple books and became paranoid—this sort of thing is pretty common around my church. He pulled me into his office and asked me a series of hard questions.
“How many of our graduates are plugged into a good church?”
“Uh, I’m not sure.”
“Where are our graduates going to college?”
“Umm…I know a few are going to [insert college] .”
“How many of our graduates have walked away from faith?”
“Uh…hopefully none?”
“What are you doing to ensure that our graduates will pursue faith beyond LifeLine (our student ministry)?
“Uh…I gave them a book and an appropriate side-hug?”
Needless to say, he wasn’t amused. Then he gave me an ultimatum, “This time next year, I need to know the answers to each of these questions.” That’s how my boss works. He’s a genius thinker but he’s really annoying because he actually makes you do stuff.
Since I need a paycheck, I spent the next year researching, experimenting and finally implementing. Along the way I discovered a passion that keeps me up at night and gets me out of bed in the morning. The question that haunts me is this, “Will my students pursue Jesus after high school?” That was about 3 years ago. Since then we’ve made significant changes to our ministry philosophy and structure. We decided that we were unwilling to continue doing what wasn’t working.
Here my challenge: do you know what happens to your students after graduation? I mean, do you really know where each of them is going to college, what ministry they will connect with? Will you or someone else walk with them through the transition? How do you plan to encourage them throughout their transition? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, (let’s be honest, most of us don’t) then we have some work to do.
The journey starts with an accurate assessment. Ask yourself, what really happens to my students after graduation? Where do they go? What does their faith look like? Take some time to learn the truth and then develop a strategy to respond to what you learn. The good news is that you probably don’t need to reinvent the wheel because there is a ton of great research out there on the issue of transition and faith fade. Keep reading this blog and I’ll share some of what we have learned.
