“I love Jesus, but not the church.” We often hear this expression from young people who have dismissed the church, have been deeply wounded by the church or are convinced the church is dying.

Is it really possible to love Jesus and not the church? Is the church really dying? Not according to the four experts to whom we spoke.
 
Professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, Kenda Creasy Dean is a veteran youth worker who worked on the National Study of Youth and Religion. She’s also the author of several books, including The Godbearing Life and Almost Christian.

As the Youth Gathering Director for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Heidi Hagstrom coordinates a national event held every three years for more than 35,000 youth that’s designed to help them grow in their faith, understand their vocation and articulate their beliefs.

After serving as a local pastor for more than 20 years, Dr. Dick Hardel became the Executive Director at The Youth and Family Institute, now known as Vibrant Faith Ministries. He’s also co-author of Passing on the Faith.

A veteran youth worker, Mike King is President of Youthfront, an organization committed to creating holistic, missional environments for Christian formation. He serves as the Executive Editor of Immerse: A Journal of Faith, Life and Youth Ministry and is the author of Presence-Centered Youth Ministry.

YouthWorker Journal: Why is the church important?

Kenda Creasy Dean: The church is the primary community in which we learn to recognize God. It’s a place where God reliably encounters us, where young people experience God’s activity through practices, rituals and seeing how God is stirring others into a faithful life. It’s a place where youth belong. Youth may belong to other communities, but Christian communities that represent the love of Christ are a different way of seeing people.

Heidi Hagstrom: The church is one institution that brings together all generations, something critical for youth as they explore who they are as people called to live God’s compassionate justice.

Mike King: Christ died for and instituted the church. The church is Christ’s body. The church is important for co-operating with God’s mission, bearing witness to the glory of God and the succession of faith from one generation to the emerging generation of children and young adults. It also helps families move beyond a western view of family and embrace a broader relational vision for family.

YouthWorker Journal: Paint a picture of the church today. Who’s involved in it? What characteristics define it? What role does youth ministry play in it?

Kenda: The church is an abstract category. Congregations are concrete; they take on particular characteristics. If we’re comparing congregations to where they were 50 years ago, they’re reflective of the demographics of the community that founded them; but they have fewer members, youth and professions of faith. Theologically, they’re in flux. The one consistency is their variety. The church is in transition. It’s moving from more to less homogeneous; from more to less vital. The tension comes from communities that hold on to what they once were without recognizing they’re in transition. When the ground shifts beneath you, you grab for something to hold on to tightly. Sometimes the best advice is to let go. You’re less likely to break bones that way.

Dick Hardel: The church is a mosaic of the people of God active in living out their faith. The church as the body of Christ in action is made of all generations. Younger people are more interested in being the church than talking about it. Youth play a vital role by the passion, energy and questions they bring to the body. Because they’ve grown up in a highly technical culture, they know ways to connect with others and communicate. They’re not afraid of change because it’s happening so rapidly.

YouthWorker Journal: Now paint a picture of the future church. Who’s involved in it? What characteristics define it? What role will youth ministry play in it?

Kenda: The church of the future will be more intentional. It will be smaller and intimate. If you feel anonymous or purposeless in a community that’s changing, there’s only so much you can stand before you’re out of there. The church either will be younger or older. Older church communities may wind up being strong because people are deeply invested in them and don’t leave. People who are young are on the other end of it. They’re deeply hoping to make it their own. They’re reinventing things. In the future, I’m not positive that youth ministry will be primarily addressing church groups. That’s a big shift.

Heidi: The church of the future may or may not include a building, but people still will gather together because God created humans to be in relationship. The coming together might be in homes, other public spaces or even in nature; and it may not be weekly. There will be communal activities such as reading Scripture, singing, praying and sharing a meal. The leadership of such gatherings will be shared and will function according to a gifts-based economy. Another vision might include utilizing a traditional church building in new ways that make it possible for those gathered to see each other, leading to a more intimate feeling of closeness. Included in this space will be movable furniture such as an altar and cross. The design of the space will be chosen as music is chosen to create an experience. Those gathered will leave that space renewed in spirit, mind and body, ready to serve God’s purpose in the world.

YouthWorker Journal: What does the most recent research suggest about the health and sustainability of the church—especially in regard to youth?

Dick: From the research on American youth and religion in Christian Smith’s book Soul Searching, it’s clear the church has been failing to nurture and pass on faith and make disciples of Jesus. Most American teens are not leaving Christianity, but waiting to go deeper into the faith. Problems of a youth’s connectedness to the Christian faith and life in a congregation are connected to the home. If parents are active in faith and the life of a Christian community, youth will be also.

Mike: The book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us by social scientists Robert Putnam of Harvard and David Campbell of Notre Dame discusses issues related to the current state of the church in North America. The authors discuss the dramatic and disquieting disengagement of young people with institutional religion. Close to 40 percent of young adults claim no religious affiliation today compared to less than 10 percent making that claim around the beginning of the new millennium.
 
YouthWorker Journal: How can youth workers help young people connect to Christian communities for a lifetime?

Kenda: When kids leave the church, they’ve got a point. It’s a critique of our wussy theology, our unintentional practices, our inability to take risks. If our only hope is that young people are in church, we’ve already lost. What we want to hope is that young people are in the conversation about what church is and why it matters. If they’re in that conversation, then they’ll be part of the church that matters.

Heidi: Young adults aren’t connected to the church in traditional ways, but they’re actively living their faith in the world. If the church is about sending God’s people into the world, then its leaders need to go where the young adults are and not expect them to be attracted to church. For example, one pastor holds a Bible study in a bar on Sunday nights. That’s where the young adults were hanging out, so he went to them. They might eventually join the congregation, but that isn’t the ultimate goal.

Dick: Parents remain the most important influences in the faith and values of their children. If you want to have faith-filled youth, then you need faith-filled adults committed to Jesus and a life of witness and service. Youth ministry must connect with the home and be intentionally cross-generational.

Mike: We must engage in deep theological reflection concerning the reality that late adolescents are disengaging from church. This isn’t a youth ministry problem; this is an ecclesial problem. As youth workers, we can’t ignore the problems in our church by thinking all we need to do is get youth to believe and do the right things. We must help youth see the church as the people of God who are family, who value the entire body. We must develop organic, intentional and systematic catechesis of youth and nurture environments that allow young people to wrestle with issues, question norms and be honest about their doubts, without leadership panicking about fixing them. We must ensure that youth are heard and valued by their congregations.

YouthWorker Journal: What do you think the prevailing attitudes of youth workers toward the church are? How does this affect young people’s attitudes toward the church?

Heidi: Youth workers hope for the church to be its best, but aren’t surprised when they’re let down. They help youth wrestle with the church’s sinfulness in light of God’s grace, while giving youth tools to claim their voice within the community.

Dick: Youth workers today are blinded from the vision of the church by what many have experienced in congregations where the emphasis has been on keeping youth interested in coming rather than helping them grow deeper into the cross of Jesus and live as disciples.

Mike: There’s a right and wrong way to critique the church, especially your own. There’s a groundswell of youth workers convinced of the need for a more theologically vigorous approach to youth ministry. Many of these youth workers sense a vocational calling to encourage the church to be true to God’s mission in and for the world. This helps youth see a broader vision for what God is up to in the world and how they can cooperate with God’s work of restoration. It’s also essential to help youth understand how they can be a part of their church in ways that align with their unique gifts and passions. Making music, creating art, working for a better environment, serving the poor and working for justice on behalf of the marginalized are not only things that young people may be passionate about, but are things the church must be about.

YouthWorker Journal: Churches can be places of healing and places that wound people. How can churches better care for those who serve them?

Dick: Wounded workers in a congregation must go through healing before they can take youth deeper into Christ. Such a step often is interpreted as a weakness in a person. If a youth worker expresses a wound, he or she might be asked to leave. Folks get so caught up in the busyness of a congregation and in survival that they create a very unhealthy environment for those who serve the congregation. A healthy congregation is defined by and sets clear boundaries. It attracts and supports healthy leaders. It develops a prayer team to pray for the youth worker and to ask, “What’s happening in your life, family and ministry?” A healthy congregation understands the need for a Sabbath in the life of a youth worker, encourages it and provides for it.

Mike: One of the most important roles in the church today is for people—leaders and pastors—to nurture the environment of our churches, creating space for diversity of personalities and opinions. Learning to seek first to understand before being understood helps us bind together through our diversity. Creating a healthy environment of diversity helps us to be open to others. Humility, hospitality, inclusion and valuing the differences in one another create an environment of belonging.

YouthWorker Journal: What else do we need to know?

Kenda: The future of the church does not depend on us. The success of our ministry is not because of us. The objective is not bigger, stronger, faster, but smaller, weaker, slower. God works through the least of these. We need to know what the Christian tradition teaches about the source of hope. As long as we hope in anything other than Christ, that hope will be disappointed.

Mike: Jesus is for me, you, the young people to whom you minister and your church. While many expressions of church are quite discouraging, I remain an optimist about the future of the church. I love the church.

Recommended Resources:
Benson, Peter L. All Kids Are Our Kids: What Communities Must Do to Raise Caring and Responsible Children and Adolescents (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers) 2006.

Dean, Kenda Creasy, Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing) 2004.

Hardel, Dr. Dick. Vision and Spiritual Leadership for Vibrant Faith Formation (Columbus, MT: FaithWell) 2009.

Roberto, John. Faith Formation 2020: Designing the Future of Faith Formation (Naugatuck, CT: LifelongFaith Associates) 2010.

Smith, Christian with Melinda Lundquist Denton. Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford Press) 2005.

Smith, Christian with Patricia Snell. Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (New York: Oxford University Press) 2009.

Strommen, Merton P. and Hardel, Richard A. Passing on the Faith: A Radical Model for Youth and Family Ministry (Winona, MN: St. Mary’s Press) 2008.

Root, Andrew and Dean, Kenda Creasy The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry (Nottingham, UK: IVP Books) 2011.