We’ve all heard the statistics. Depending on which Fuller Youth Institute Article, Barna Research Study, or friend’s Facebook post you read, somewhere between 50-70% of students are leaving the church after they graduate high school. For some, that means leaving the faith. For others, it’s leaning away from the organized, spiritual oversight of a local church. But any way you slice it, those of us in youth ministry have long considered what it takes to get students to stay.
The Mistake Youth Pastors Make
In an effort to keep students connected, many youth pastors make the mistake of catering to the comfort of their older students. We try to create events where they’ll have fun. We beg them to let youth group cut through the clutter of their increasingly busy schedules. Or, worse yet, some of us just give up on them.
The thing is: if we want teenagers to stay, we need to push them to go.
Often, the reason older high school students walk away from faith and church isn’t because church wasn’t fun or because they didn’t learn. It’s because church wasn’t more than fun and learning. As they mature, teenagers begin actively looking for ways to contribute, lead, and grow. So if your youth ministry isn’t set up to challenge and stretch your older students beyond the walls of the church, it’s more likely they’ll spend their young adult years outside of the walls of the church.
The Solution? Connect Learning To Living
If we want students to stay, we need to encourage them to go. To do this, you must incorporate regular faith challenges into your discipleship strategy that forces teenagers beyond their comfort zone. Some examples of these kinds of challenges might be:
- Lead the youth Bible study next month
- Invite an unsaved friend to attend youth group
- Share the story of what God has done in your life with someone
- Ask someone at school who’s having a hard day if you can pray for them
It doesn’t have to be earth-shatteringly difficult. You don’t need to turn every high school student into the next Apostle Paul. But when a teenager’s experience of faith boils down to going to church, reading the Bible, and praying, it becomes a far less compelling worldview to stick with beyond high school.
A Gospel Lens For Sending Them Out
When we structure our youth ministries to send students out, we reflect the gospel to our teenagers and love them the way God loves us. There is an infinite gap in our knowledge when it comes to knowing God. There is so much that every one of us doesn’t understand about God.
Yet, despite the fact that God knows everything, and even though knowing Him deeper is valuable, God still chooses to orchestrate our lives in ways that make us uncomfortable instead of calling us to just sit and learn. God calls us to go—sometimes before we even feel ready—because He knows that real-world experiences with Him will lead us to stay.
Let’s be bold enough to reflect that gospel reality to the teenagers in our ministry. If teenagers don’t go, they won’t stay.
Bio
Mike Haynes is a youth ministry veteran and the creator of G Shades Youth Ministry Curriculum. A vibrant contributor to the youth ministry landscape, Mike’s passion is to help students and youth pastors alike see life through the lens of the gospel. He and his wife Anna have five kids spanning elementary, middle, and high school. Find Mike @mikeehaynes on Instagram.
