One of the great adventures currently going on in my teenage daughter’s life is youth group.  She is 17 and had never been in a youth group and this year one of her friends (now former friends) invited her to come to youth group with her … she has even ventured out on a mission trip with them.  Nonetheless … she is a youth group outcast.

Through her adventures I am coming to a number of realizations about youth group … I might add realizations that I was totally and completely blind to in my 6 or 7 years of volunteer youth work.

Unhealthy high school socialization (aka survival of the clique, the popular and the bully) is alive and thriving in youth groups … and youth leaders with their training to ‘connect with the kids’ and ‘act like kids’ continue to do virtually nothing about it … just as I did nothing about it. 

At many youth group meetings across this country, some kids who came seeking hope and connection leave instead victimized and demoralized as a result of youth group socialization.  Sorry Christ Jesus was not at the assembly tonight …

While teenage girls may be considered more mature than teenage boys, they can certainly be vicious and backstabbing to other girls … I call it the mean girls syndrome.  Please … this is not intended to be an across-the-board criticism.

A girl one-on-one is totally different than a girl in-a-pack.  Once a clique is established … an impenetrable wall is established and the big guns are top-mounted and aimed at any  and all within sight regardless of whether they are a threat or not and without regard to their value as a child of God.  Every shot fired makes the clique wall stronger and serves to inflate the ego, pride and bully characteristics of the clique and those within even more.

Please don’t take this as girl bashing.  I have 4 daughters and 4 granddaughters and I love them all.  But I am sensitive to what they endure … and also what I have seen them inflict.  And it is radically different than boys.   Boys and men tend to be either Lone Rangers or relationship impaired or maybe even both … and that is a confession of sorts.

As youth leaders we are often so focused on an end result we totally miss the objective of the ministry God has given us.  Maybe it is getting more kids at a meeting or event, maybe it is completing a service project, having the perfect meeting, putting on a play possibly, getting the kids to bring visitors, etc. … and we miss the entire point of the ministry.  Our goal is not achievement or expectation … in fact those things push the kids away … and it pushes them very hard.

Our goal … and our desire IN Christ Jesus is to love one another.  And in the midst of our striving and our achieving and our expectations in ministry, loving one another often takes a back seat … or maybe even ends up in the trunk or in the trailer or home on the dresser. 

And Jesus finds himself in the co-pilot seat … or even worse, the church or ministry is put on auto-pilot with history and routine being the satellite charting the course on our religious GPS.

There is a lot of talk right now about kids leaving the church when they graduate from high school.  Some surveys even report it happens much earlier.  One book I have recently seen is titled ‘Already Gone’ and found a pattern that suggest kids who attend Sunday School are more likely to leave the church than those who don’t.

The suggestion for resolution: we need to re-embrace the authority of Scripture and do more bible-based teaching.  All well and good … actually essential … but …

There are greater points that are being missed in the midst of these surveys.  Being in church is not the same as being IN Christ … for the most part, these kids are not leaving Christ … because they never met Him … they are leaving the religious, political, service and moral expectations of churches and parents because they NEVER saw or experienced the love of God or personally met the Lord and Savior Christ Jesus or sensed the indwelling convicting and leading presence of the Holy Spirit.  The love of one another that Jesus intended to draw people unto Himself, the oneness and unity He intended to be His witness … are both often MIA.

Unfortunately Christians, especially those in leadership positions, often feel it is their responsibility to change people vs. trusting Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit in fulfilling their responsibilities of regeneration.  And to make things even worse, we start the religious change-and-fix program before that person even knows and is known by Christ Jesus.  Get ‘em saved or get ‘em moral … sometimes it doesn’t seem to matter which one happens.  And I have served in churches where if the kids weren’t moral, the church parents didn’t want them there … we must keep church SAFE.

We are so busy thinking about how we believe they need to change and who we believe they need to become, we fail to seek and sense what God is already doing in their lives and who they are and who He desires them to become – THERE IS NO COOKIE CUTTER.  Too often we seek to repair those who are simply in the midst of God’s plan, purpose and timing of becoming a fully reconciled, realized and loved child of God.

One final point:  I tip my hat to youth pastors and youth leaders.  They take on an extremely difficult job that really is not part of God’s design … raising someone else’s children from a faith and spiritual perspective.  As church members and attendees we place extremely unfair and unbiblical expectations on both our youth pastors and our senior pastors when we think they should raise our children or the children of others.

Another taboo I have encountered is ‘Don’t invest too much time (aka disciple) in kids whose parents don’t come to the church.’  I kid you not.  Quite frankly if the parent is in the church, then their children probably don’t even need to be in youth group – Dad do your job (Hello mirror!).  The kids with Christless parents need youth ministry far more than the church kids do.

That position and responsibility for raising a child in the faith belongs to parents.  And quite often we partially or totally abdicate that parental throne.  Many parents have chosen (or neglected to choose and have simply allowed) their children to be raised by public education, by media and culture, by their money and jobs, by their peers, and in some circumstances along with all these forces the children simply raise themselves.  Need we discuss the results?

Suddenly this passage makes a lot of sense …

Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. 1 John 3:18 (NASB)

Sounds like we need to burden our children with less lip service and fewer expectations … and pour out more of the love of God in deed and truth.

Simply love them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

End of rant …