Notes from the Trail

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Check out Andy’s site overhaul at Live a Big Life, and note the new link! Looks great! (Content even better!)

In a simply wonderful, coffee-slurping, “I-told-you-so” kind of way, David Pogue’s article about Apple and the media is worth reading.

Yet another study, this one completed in just the last month, shows that the evangelical church continues to hemorrhage internally. Churched youth are checking out of the church when they leave home for college, and many 20-somethings who were formerly regular, faithful members of youth groups are opting out of the church.

I experienced this trend first-hand in my 8 years as a collegiate minister at UAM. We consistently saw supposedly faithful members of area youth groups avoid our campus ministries, as well as local churches throughout their college career (and some of them made a career out of college!). Choosing instead to get involved in other forms of campus “life,” many lived profligate lifestyles.

Take it for what it’s worth, but I believe that the high dropout rate is due to the continuing treatment of our teenaged youth as a subcongregation to be entertained. High energy worship settings, mini-sermons, and big events dropped all combine to create a regular attender, but not necessarily a disciple or a true worshipper.

I think churches today need to seriously reconsider discipling their students, beginning as soon as 3rd grade. We should no longer seek to entertain youth by creating a separate youth congregation but rather by modeling, training, and freeing them to do active ministry in the community, church, and regions that we live in. The sit, soak, and shout method has been proven not to work. The Barna study is another resounding alarm to its failure.

David Kinnaman, the director of the research, said:

?Much of the ministry to teenagers in America needs an overhaul ? not because churches fail to attract significant numbers of young people, but because so much of those efforts are not creating a sustainable faith beyond high school. There are certainly effective youth ministries across the country, but the levels of disengagement among twentysomethings suggest that youth ministry fails too often at discipleship and faith formation. A new standard for viable youth ministry should be ? not the number of attenders, the sophistication of the events, or the ?cool? factor of the youth group ? but whether teens have the commitment, passion and resources to pursue Christ intentionally and whole-heartedly after they leave the youth ministry nest.?

May our churches rise up and think deeply about how to stop the bleeding and start the blessing of this generation of youth.

Related Posts:
Scott McKnight at Jesus Creed

I ran across an excellent website on Tuesday that I wanted to promote. Biblical Training has been formed with the express purpose of equipping believers with tools from great Bible teachers to express and communicate their faith in today’s culture. It begins with a basic Who is Jesus? class to more advanced curricula. Even better, it appears to be free!

Some of today’s great Bible teachers are lined up with the site already, including Danny Hayes from OBU and John Piper of Bethlehem Bible Church.

Stop by today and sign up for a class!

I posted the lyrics to Welcome Back, Kotter on Kristy’s blog yesterday and immediately began laughing hysterically at myself as I proceeded to sing them for the rest of the day. Readers of Notes may recall the Blog Hostage Episode where I refused to post again until Carolyn did. I used that song then.

Here are the lyrics for your enjoyment:

Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out.
Welcome back to that same old place that you laughed about.
Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they’re turned around.

Who’d have thought they’d lead ya
(Who’d have thought they’d lead ya)
Back here where we need ya
(Here where we need ya)

Yeah we tease him a lot cause we’ve
got him on the spot,
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.

The song was a Billboard #1 hit in 1976. This was John Sebastian’s only solo hit, though as the lead singer and writer of the group
Lovin’ Spoonful he was responsible for 10 Top Forty hits from 1965-1961. (source)

So what was your favorite 70s sitcom or show? Kotter was definitely one of mine, as well as Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, Three’s Company (when I could watch it - they were living together, after all!), and of course, Gilligan’s Island.