If church is a place where young people should be, why do many of them turn their backs on their place of worship.
We all know stories of young people, brought up in a loving Christian environment, who turn their backs on the church as an institution, their faith, because it doesn’t work for them, or they just feel it isn’t for them because most people are much older than they are.
Complex picture
I have been talking to a number of young people who have ‘jumped ship’ and the picture they create is complex. Rarely is it one reason that drives them away and often they find it hard to explain their actions. Often they say things like ‘it just wasn’t for me’ and cannot give precise reasons for their absence. The start of youth ministry, as we currently see it, came from an awareness (mainly statistical, but certainly anecdotal also) that young people were leaking from the church and the gap must be plugged by employing someone (if we can afford it) to fill the breach in the dam. Many church congregations have no younger people and find it hard to minister to families. There are some ‘hot spots’ where there are young people in abundance but we must look at how we can make that a more familiar scenario.
