Why Christian Students Walk Away From Faith

For the last 3 years, I have obsessively focused on this question.  As a pastor to students, this is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night.

One of our former students and current volunteers shared this article with me and I think it is worth the read.  The article is written by Larry Alex Taunton who is the executive director of the Fixed Point Foundation.  Honestly, I know nothing about him or his organization but the study intrigued me because it offered “members of Secular Student Alliances (SSA) or Freethought Societies (FS)s” an opportunity to share “your journey to unbelief“.  Here were some of Larry Alex Taunton’s observations:

1. “They had attended church”

2. “The mission and message of their churches was vague”

3.  “They felt their churches offered superficial answers to life’s difficult questions”

4.  “They expressed their respect for those ministers who took the Bible seriously”

5.  “Ages 14-17 were decisive”

6.  “The decision to embrace unbelief was often an emotional one”

7.  “The internet factored heavily into their conversion to atheism”

Personally, I believe we are losing students to irrelevant faith and atheism because they don’t find Christianity compelling which is ridiculous because the mission of the Gospel is insanely compelling.  But, this is on us–not them.  Students want to be part of a mission bigger than themselves and if we aren’t connecting them to it they will go elsewhere for meaning.

Also, research shows that many students are walking away because they didn’t have a safe place to wrestle with doubts.  We MUST become churches where it is not only OK but also encouraged to openly wrestle with doubts.

The article is definitely worth a read.  Click here to check it out.

The 5 Best Books so far This Year

It’s June.  Somehow we’re halfway through 2013.  It’s time to talk about the books that have most influenced me so far this year.  In no particular order, here they are…

 

Love Does

 

Bob Goff is an amazing man.  There aren’t many books that can make me laugh, get angry and cry—all within the span of 20 pages!  The first half of this book was so powerful that I could barely stay seated.

I got to see Bob speak at the Orange conference this spring and he is the real deal.  Rarely have I see someone so full of joy and courageous optimism.  I guess there is more than a little Jesus going on inside that guy.

 

BTBFCover

This book didn’t make me laugh at all.  It broke my heart.  If you haven’t read this book, you really should.  The author lived in the slums of Mumbai for 3 years and this book is the story of what she witnessed.

The best word for it is “brutal”.  However it is a story that needs to be told.  There is a cost to development and the cost is usually people who are left in the dust of rapid advancement.

 

start-book

Jon Acuff’s first book was hilarious.  When I read his second book I thought, “This is pretty good.”  While reading Start as fast as I could I kept thinking, “THIS BOOK IS AWESOME!”  If you are stuck, bored, or going through something difficult you should read this book.  This book is the reason I went from thinking I should start blogging to actually starting to blog.  It’s pure motivation.

If you’ve been living in a cave for the last few years, here’s Jon’s blog.

platform

Speaking of blogging—a few months ago I didn’t know jack about blogging and I’ve never been very tech savvy.  Michael Hyatt’s book changed all that for me.  This book is the best “how to manual” for anything that I’ve ever seen.  There’s great stuff in here about building a platform.  If you already know quite a bit about blogging, e-business and publishing you’ll pick up a few helpful pointers.  If you don’t know anything you better get ready for the fire hose treatment.  Platform is a very well written book that I simply loved to read.  If you aren’t following Hyatt’s blog you should be.

Contagious

If you deal with ideas or the spread of information in any way this book is a must read.  The central question of the book is what causes something to go viral?  And, we’re not talking disease.  We’re talking about ideas, You Tube videos, products, restaurants, and blog posts.  It’s a fascination read and the author does a good job of describing how anyone in any field can employ his theories to achieve virality.

 

Honorable Mention

DUCK_C14

Hey Jack!  I know it’s not very intellectual but I just can’t get enough of this show or this family.  They are too funny!  Besides, there are too many odd similarities between the Robertsons and my family…

What books have impacted you so far this year?

Bouncing Back from Betrayal

Some of my most painful moments have come in youth ministry.  I’ve seen terrible things:   eating disorders, abuse, and every sort of family dysfunction out there.  But if I’m honest, nothing hurts quite as bad as betrayal.  A knife in the back from someone you trust is the sort of thing that many people never recover from.

When volunteers, parents or pastors turn against you it’s devastating.  For many who have left the ranks of student ministry, betrayal is what drove them over the edge.  So what do you do when someone close to you—someone you love and trust, throws you under the bus?  Based on some painful experiences and how I managed to pick up the pieces afterward, I have a few thoughts.

1.       Vent

Anger is like poison.  Keeping it inside will corrupt you.  I’ve been fortunate to have close friends with whom I can cry, freak out, and throw things.  I don’t freak out often but when I do I go hard in the paint.

To be in ministry, you simply must have a place to vent.  However, there have been times in which I created more trouble for myself by venting to the wrong people.  If venting is aimed at revenge or winning people to your side of the conflict then you should be careful.

2.       Forgive

This isn’t about the person who betrayed you.  This is about your heart.  You cannot control what people do and say but you can control how you react.  The danger here is bitterness.  Unfortunately, I know many current and former youth pastors who choose to live in an angry darkness.  Somewhere along the way they were betrayed and they never forgave.  Bitter people multiple bitterness in the people around them.  This is destructive and hinders effective ministry.

3.       Protect Yourself

Some people are toxic.  By that I mean that they are emotionally unsafe.  Sadly, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.  Jesus calls us to repeatedly forgive but He did not call us to repeatedly trust.  There is a huge difference.  In some cases you will need to set up boundaries to protect yourself.  But, don’t you dare pawn that toxic volunteer off on another ministry!

4.       Look Around

Sometimes when you are betrayed it isn’t necessarily you who is attacked but rather your ministry.  You’re too serious, too fun, too unorganized, too seeker, too loud, too…whatever.  This happened to me recently and while the accusations hurt I couldn’t help but look around at all the amazing things that happen in our ministry on a weekly basis.  We are pointing students to Jesus and connecting them with adult mentors who love them.  How dare us! When accused, look around and remember how valuable your work is.

5.       You’re in Good Company

Here’s the thing, we come from a long line of Jesus followers who have been betrayed in every way possible.  We shouldn’t be surprised by opposition.  We have an enemy who hates the work of the Gospel.  Be proud.

6.       Jesus

I have to confess that I forget this one far too often.  I vent to close friends and sometimes anyone who will listen and then I forget to take my pain to Jesus.  I’m talking about the Jesus who said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened.”  I’m talking about the Jesus who was betrayed by one of his own disciples—betrayed with a kiss.  So low!

The point is if you’re going to survive the pain and thrive again Jesus is the answer.  Run to Him and rest.  He is the One who rebuilds and restores.  He’s the King of Comeback.  He did come back from the dead after all.  Just sayin.

 

Be Spiritual…Have Fun!

I happen to be an Orange kind of guy.  Our church has a close relationship with the brilliant people over at reThink.  Yesterday, Jon Grunden wrote a great piece for the Lead Small Blog on the importance of fun.

Here’s a clip:

When my students start to wander away from God, or it just doesn’t seem like anybody is paying attention anymore, I have the tendency to run to the to-do list.  The to-do list is safe and it makes me feel spiritual, but most often it just serves to remind me how far I am from where I want to be with my guys.  It’s counterintuitive, but sometimes the most spiritual thing I can do with my guys is have fun. 

When it comes to student ministry, Jon is a genius and he’s a a lot of fun to work with.  He’s taught me at least 73% of what I know about student ministry.  Do yourself a favor and check out the rest of his post.

 

Funniest Video of the Year

Never Say No to Strawberry Sam.  This was our most popular LifeLine video of the year.  In my humble opinion it’s HILARIOUS.

A little context:

  • The video won’t make any sense unless you’ve seen the Panda Cheese commericals.  You can check them out here.
  • The Strawberry Sam costume was discovered in the bowels of the Zondervan Publishing Warehouse and gifted to us.  Best gift ever.

 

Never say no to Sam from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.

Guest Post: Come Cry with Me

I’m a crier.  If something emotional is going on you will find me sniffling and wiping my eyes and trying to pull myself together.  Emotional things might be – worship, testimonies, baptisms,  watching a touching moment between a leader and a student, and those pet food commercials where a guy comes home from the war and his dog is really happy to see him.

I also cry by proxy.  If you’re crying, I’m crying.  I wasn’t always like this.  Before I started working in student ministry I was much tougher.   Maybe I would get a little misty when Bambi’s mom died, or tear up when George figured things out in It’s a Wonderful Life, but that about covered it.

Working in student ministry changed all that for me.  I found very quickly that if I wanted to connect with kids and leaders, I had to be vulnerable and raw with them.  This kind of openness carries a price tag.  Suddenly the pain that a student feels over a rift with a friend becomes my pain, the struggle a leader was having connecting with her small group becomes my struggle.  At this point, it’s widely known that if you’re sad, you just need to find me and we will be sad together.

Often we’re tempted to hit students with truth when they are emotionally vulnerable but sometimes the greatest gift we can give is crying with them.  Empathy opens the way to discipleship.

The good news is that I get to experience the opposite end of the spectrum as well.  When my people have something to celebrate they seek me out and we have one big slamming happy fest.   It’s just important to understand that you can’t have one without the other.    If you’re the guy who loves to celebrate with everyone but is suspiciously absent when students need to talk through some tough issues, you’re also the guy that no one really trusts.  Wading into messy issues requires you to get…well, messy.

A few nights ago was our last high school meeting of the season.  A group of girls I’ve been close with since 6th grade graduated and won’t be back next year.  We cried.  A lot.  We stopped crying, took some pictures and then we cried some more.  Photoshop will take care of all that smeared mascara right?  Sure, I could have saved myself some grief if I had kept them at arms length, but I would have missed out on some of my favorite moments in ministry.  It’s a fair trade.

Christina Thelen has been involved in student ministry for 7 years.  That’s 49 dog years.  For the last 4 years she has served as the Department Coordinator of LifeLine–the student ministry of Ada Bible Church.

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?

4 Traps That Will Derail a Girl’s Dreams

mousetrapThis week my blog has been devoted to a talk I gave to our female high school students during our student ministry’s sexuality series.  The response to these posts has been overwhelming!  So, I decided to add one more post.  This too comes from that original talk.

As I wrapped up the conversation, I warned our girls of a few traps that commonly derail women from what they really want out of romance and relationships.  Here they are:

1.  50% of Guys are Dangerous to Your Dreams

Unfortunately, pornography has become a massive issue in our culture.  Recent studies have shown that as many as 50% of guys are addicted to pornography.  I know that the last thing you want to think about is pornography but it’s important to understand that guys who are addicted to pornography are dangerous to your dreams.  If the statistics are true, this means that half the guys out there are not for you.  Here’s why:

Pornography is toxic to intimacy.  Pornography will corrupt the way a guy views women.  The longer he is addicted to pornography the more women become mere objects.   Let me speak plainly, you DO NOT want to end up married to a guy who is addicted to pornography.  I have seen and heard of so many marriages that were wrecked because of pornography.  If you discover that the guy you are involved with is addicted to pornography dump him and run—even if it’s the day of the wedding.

2.  You Get What You Dress For

Look, I understand that you crave and love the attention that you get from dressing sexy, but there is a cost.  First, there is a danger in viewing your self-worth more and more through the lens of physical beauty.  Eventually this will cause major problems to your self-image.

Secondly, what you really want is a man who will treasure you for all your life.  This kind of man is searching for a woman who is worthy of respect.  Whether it’s fair or not, men make snap judgments about a woman’s character based on the way she dresses.  If you want attention from the kind of man who will treasure you forever, aim for cute and save sexy for the night of your wedding.

3.  If you Want Good Coffee Don’t Go to Denny’s

This one will blow your mind:  You will most likely fall in love and marry a friend.  You will probably meet this friend somewhere that you regularly hang out.  This is how romance works.

You also don’t get to decide beforehand who you will fall in love with.  That’s the funny thing about falling in love—you fall into it.  It just sort of happens.  One minute he’s funny and the next he’s dreamy.  It’s like magic.

So, if you’ll most likely marry a friend who you meet somewhere that you regularly hang out, you should probably pay close attention to who you hang out with and where. In other words, if you want good coffee don’t go to Denny’s.  Go to Starbucks.

Confused?  If you want a godly man who will treasure you forever, hang out in the places where he’ll hang out.

4.  Prince Charming Won’t Change Who You Are

My final warning is this, don’t fall for the trap that the perfect guy will make you happy or complete you.  No guy, no matter how dapper or gentlemanly can love you more than God already loves you.   Be who you are in Christ.  Truly understanding and living out your identity as a treasured daughter of the King is the key to everything.

 

3 Things Girls Must Know about Sexuality: Part 3

Lily 3Piper5Today’s post is the third installment in a series about talking to female students about sexuality.  As I began my talk I asked the girls if I could practice a conversation on them that I planned to have with my own daughters.  If you’re starting to think I’m a creeper you might want to check out days one and two and or check my Facebook to confirm that I do in fact have my own daughters.

If you want to see you dreams come true in terms of relationships and love you must first answer these questions:  “Who am I?” and “What do I want?  The final question you need to be able to answer is this:

How Do Guys Think?

It’s all well and good to understand who you are and what you want but if you don’t understand how guys think you’ll spend most of your time being confused by how we act toward you.

  • We are Physically and Visually Oriented

Here’s the first thing you have to understand about guys: we are visually and physically oriented.  Women, as you already know, are relationally and emotionally oriented.  Let me illustrate how this works in dating.  Imagine yourself walking along the beach during a beautiful sunset with a guy who you are attracted to.  He is looking deeply into your eyes, speaking softly, using words like, “love, “beautiful” and “forever.”  What happens to you in the moment?  You forget where you are, your heart starts to do that butterfly thing and you feel a warmth creep from your toes to your hair and you are completely lost in the moment.  In fact, if you’re not careful you are liable to do something you regret.  In other words, the atmosphere, words, attention and romance sweep you away and make you more likely to do something dumb.

It’s totally different for a guy.  Do you want to know what sweeps him away and makes him more likely to do something dumb?  Two things:  your body and…your body.  OK, that’s only one thing but you get the point.  Look I know it sounds weird or maybe you think it is gross but the truth is, this is how God created us.  We are obsessed with you and specifically your body.  You have power over us.  The more that your body is exposed and the closer it is to us the dumber we get.

So, the moral of the story is this:  if you don’t want to cross your boundaries tell him to shut up when he uses the “L” word and wear as many clothes as you can.  But seriously, just understand the differences in the way we are wired.  When there are candles and he’s speaking to you lovingly, you get dumber.  When your body is close to his and you are kissing him, he gets dumber.  If you aren’t married both of these scenarios can be dangerous.  If you are married it’s really quite awesome.

  • We Don’t Want to be Chased

Here’s another thing that guys want:  to conquer you.  I don’t mean that in any sort of gross or sexual way.  I mean that a guy wants to pursue you and win your heart.  I always tell people that I dated my wife for a full year before she started dating me back.  She played hard to get and that was a really good thing.

All I can say is that, the kind of guy who will treasure you forever is the kind of guy who has the confidence and moral capacity to pursue you.  The kind of guy who won’t love you in the way you deserve doesn’t have the strength to pursue you.  He is a sissy and you don’t want to end up with him.  The reverse of this is also true, the kind of guy who will love you forever doesn’t want to be chased by a girl because girls like that are not worthy of respect.  See also Potipher’s wife.  A man wants to treasure a woman who is worthy of respect and love.  So, if you’re chasing after a guy who you like…stop it.  Trust me.  If he is the kind of guy who is worth your time, he will pursue you.

Tomorrow, I’ll finish this series with a few thoughts on traps that can derail a girl and keep her from her dreams.