Ok, so I was surfing around this morning...

...and I followed a link on Hall Young's blog to Scott Brown's blog and found this article:

The Success of Youth Ministry

Over the years many studies have documented the staggering number of youth who leave the church after their high school years. I know many who have concluded that the failure of modern youth ministry is no longer disputable.

Mike Yaconelli, one of the founders of the modern youth ministry movement, and founder of Youth Specialties stated it this way just before his death in a 2003 edition of "Youthworker" magazine,

"The success of youth ministry in this country is an illusion... So let's be honest. Youth ministry as an experiment has failed. If we want to see the church survive, we need to rethink youth ministry."

I found this interesting because when our oldest daughter was approaching junior high age, we made the decision to keep her out of the youth group. There were many reasons for this, one of those reasons was because, while the youth department said their job was to support the family, we felt they were going about it all wrong. In fact, it seemed as though their unintentional results were actually fragmenting the family.

This was evidenced by the fact that almost without exception, within a few weeks of graduating into the youth group, we witnessed a marked change in those young people. Some of those changes were:

1. A radical change in their dress style trying to conform to pop culture almost without regard for Biblical modesty or appropriateness.
2. Going from sitting with their parents in church to sitting with their peers and a lack of interest in the service.
3. A change in their character from sweet approachable young person to someone who didn't want to have anything to do with adults.

We were not about to accept this. Instead, we got Crysta involved in ministry to teach her the importance of serving others and God. She did a great job and does not regret not being in the youth group.

Here's the rub:

It's not the youth pastor's job to train your children in Godliness. It is the parents job to disciple and train their children. Now, this means you must have the kind of relationship with them so they will listen to you. This comes partly from training and discipline but mostly from spending quality time building your relationship bit by bit. There is NO substitute for time spent with your children. The all-to-common excuse of "it's not quantity of time but the quality" is a lie of Satan. There, I said it. If you're offended, well, take that as a hint.

By the way, Crysta is now in a youth group. Although she doesn't just do everything they do. In order for her to participate in her youth group activities the activity must be in line with our goals for her life. Oh yes, and partly as a result of our teaching her the value of ministry and serving God, she has spent this summer teaching neiborhood children about God and salvation and has had the blessing of leading many children to Jesus this summer.

That's enough for now.