After spending many years leading teenagers in the church I found this article at The Resurgence really interesting. Whilst I think good has come out of all the programming and youth groups that I have been part of I am not convinced that much real long term faith growth has been accomplished in many of the teenagers.
In our current setup we have a teenagers bible study for the dozen or so teenagers we have at our church. I reckon we do more meaty work there in a month than would be achieved in a year of other programming. We hit the scriptures and some deep theological issues hard. They ask tough questions we debate the answers and in it I believe, Jesus is glorified and little by little these awesome young teenagers are growing in maturity of faith!
The challenge is to get leaders in churches out of the ‘that is the way it is done’ mentality. That’s tough to do. I know. I was one of them and it has taken me a long time to fully realize that many of the models that worked (or didn’t) in previous generations need to be rethought.
My hope is that we’d be immensely creative, Spirit led and Jesus honouring so that we’d produce fully devoted followers of Jesus. That means getting out the box, rubbing a few stuck-in-the-mud folks up the wrong way – but ultimately it will mean doing what Jesus wants us to do: to glorify him in all that we do by living our faith out daily and helping others to do the same!
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