Truth (and Beauty) Is In the Details

by Rick Lawrence

I think truth and beauty are the same thing, just as Truth and Jesus are the same thing. And in youth ministry, when we play fast-and-loose with the Truth we also tarnish its beauty and camouflage Jesus. This dynamic threaded its way into a Facebook discussion I recently had with Leneita Fix. We were hashing over a Barna research report that warned of massive numbers of teenagers leaving church when they graduate.

RICK LAWRENCE—I’m just a banging drum...When it comes to research—no matter what the source—I always warn people to examine what the research is examining. In the case of this Barna research, it’s good to focus on the indicators of “involvement” they’re tracking prior to kids’ graduation from high school. To be included in the cohort that is considered “involved” you have to have attended church for two months during your teenage years. That means Barna’s standard for “involvement” sets a very low bar, making their later claim that 60 percent of “involved” teenagers drop out of church activities after graduation a suspect claim. If you attended church for two months when you were in 7th grade, but then stopped going, you’re still included in the involved-into-uninvolved stat...

LENEITA FIX—HOWEVER, when we “chew on the meat and spit out the bones,” the point is that twentysomethings are leaving the church. Although Barna’s indicators may be wide of the mark, when I talk to college students they feel like church isn’t “relevant” for them. And if a research report like this one spurs us to help our kids be more deeply grounded in Christ, is that such a bad thing?

RICK LAWRENCE—Leneita, you're totally right that research anomolies shouldn’t stop us from “going deeper” with our kids, but I’ve made the point repeatedly in GROUP that the truth always matters. For example, I ask parents in a two-hour training I do called “Fighting the Entitlement Dragon” if it’s more likely that their kids would get abducted by a stranger or hit by lightning. It’s always no contest—FAR more parents believe their kids are at greater risk of being kidnapped by a stranger. But the facts say their kids have TWICE the chance of getting hit by lightning than being abducted by a stranger.

So, because we’ve embraced something that’s not true our actions are poured into futile preparations and our thoughts are gripped by false anxieties. I believe youth ministries, and really churches, have been using a flawed strategy for “deepening” faith—I call it the “understand and apply” strategy. It assumes people grow deeper in their faith when they understand principles and apply them to their lives. I think that has proved itself to be a marginal strategy, at best, and has weak biblical support. Instead, I suggest, Jesus describes a “deepening” strategy that looks a lot more like “attachment.” I mean, the branch abiding in (attaching to) the Vine.

The ultimate reason kids—no matter what percentage you pick—stop following Christ after high school is that they can. I mean, they're not “ruined” for him, as Peter was when Jesus asked his disciples if they were going to leave him after the crowds had left him. Peter said, in effect, “I don’t understand a lot of what you’re saying, but I know I have nowhere else to go—you’ve ruined me for you.”

LENEITA FIX—I think what has changed is that we used to go to the church as a place of socialization. It was the center of our social structure. We used to take the time to care for one another. Now we have become an indulgent culture. We have become about trying to be “relevant.” We have stopped caring about the people. We have stopped taking time to do life Christ's way and pour into our band of 12.

I think we lower the bar for our students. We don't tell them: “This is how you follow Christ, and now it is up to you.” We're willing to “bounce the bar” for them. The thing about the 12 is that they all WANTED to be there, and we're afraid to leave behind kids who don’t want to be there. In the passage you reference, some who left were called “disciples.” But they weren’t the ones who “got it.” They weren’t the ones that Jesus poured into.

We’re supposed to spend our time with the ones who want to be there—those are the ones we nurture. Instead, we spend our time dragging everyone else along. The Sermon On the Mount was arguably for the 12, with a lot of others listening in. We still reach the crowds and touch the individuals, but our time is spent on the ones that the Holy Spirit is working on. The ones who are grafted in should get our care—not the dead branches... ■

Rick Lawrence has been editor of GROUP for 23 years. Follow Rick on Twitter—@RickSkip.