Tuesday, November 10, 2009

What are we inviting our youth to?

Wow. From Ministry Questions comes the question that our student ministry has wrestled with for 3 years:

"How do you get youth from Wednesday to come into Sunday?

Our church is looking to get the youth involved in Sunday services. Currently, we're running about 25-30 youth on Wednesday. However, on Sunday our morning and evening service have maybe 5-10 youth on average. We are hoping to see this number grow some but not sure how to encourage them to get more involved than just one night a week. Any suggestions?"

And this PHENOMENAL ANSWER.

"What are you hoping to get the youth involved in on Sunday? If you're trying to get them to just be in the service and be part of the worship and listen to the sermons, there isn't always a lot to do."

Man, oh, man. Why in the world would we bring kids to Sunday mornings to simply consume? What are we expecting? Why would we expect this? What's more...are the adults in our churches doing anything different than consuming?





2 comments:

hey_smile_its_me said...

I've heard it many times. "Do I have to go? It is sooooo boring." As the eyes roll and the heavy sigh follows.

"Why can't they make it more like CIY, or camp, where worsip means something? I don't even FEEL God working or moving at church like I do during youth events. And by the way the adults appear, they don't even seem to enjoy the 'worship' either."

"Bill is awesome, but the word isn't on FIRE or ALIVE like at CIY. How come we can't have something MORE?"

Grabs Bible and reluctantly gets in the car...I feel bad, because I have no answers to these questions, because I have answered them several times to no avail. Also, I have in my own heart thought the same things.

John Mulholland said...

I'm sorry I missed this comment earlier. How could we dialogue about this without revealing who you are?

How about I re-post this as a blog post next week?