Student ministry leaders assess their efforts

Baptisms of Southern Baptist teenagers have been in steady decline for three decades, reaching an all-time low with slightly more than 80,000 12 to 17 year olds baptized in 2006. It has been more than 20 years since Southern Baptist churches collectively baptized more than 100,000 teens in a year.

The situation is cause for alarm, a youth ministry expert at LifeWay Christian Resources says.

“We’ve taken a hard look at ourselves and youth ministry and have come up with a question that challenges our thinking and will shape the future of what we do,” said Scott Stevens, LifeWay’s director of student ministry. “And that question is this: As student ministry continues to mature, are we developing students, or student ministries?”

The task of reversing some alarming trends is daunting, he said. Two studies conducted by LifeWay Research this year reveal at least two significant challenges. In one study, the majority of church-going teens, when asked, could not clearly define that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. In the second study, 70 percent of 18 to 22 year olds who regularly attended church during their teen years dropped out of church for at least a year and 35 percent of those said they would never return. Both studies are available at www.lifewayresearch.com.

According to “Transforming Student Ministry: Research Calling for Change Information,” a LifeWay PowerPoint presentation that includes data from the National Study of Youth & Religion:

• Rather than rebellious, the lives and faith of most teens closely reflect the lives, faith, culture and institutional settings of the adult world they inhabit.
• The majority of teenagers raised in Christian homes are inarticulate about faith, its practices and its meaning in their lives. They find it almost impossible to put basic beliefs into words.
• Teenagers are “functional deists.” They believe God exists, created the world and set life in motion, but the only time He becomes involved with them in a personal way is to make their lives happier or to solve some problem.
• Church teenagers have not resisted the influence of those who want them to be politically correct and “tolerant” in all their religious conversations and in fact are incredibly well trained in using “correct” language so they will not offend anyone in public. Away from church, they cannot bring themselves to say that Jesus is the only way to God.
• There is strong evidence that many evangelical teens do not understand grace or the basics of salvation.
• It is not true that teenagers in the church are no different than teenagers out in the community and religious practice does indeed make a clear significant difference in adolescents’ lives. (BP)