Developing a Powerful Youth Program

Studies show that 64% of those saved received Christ as their Savior before they turned 18 years old. I think the reason that we are experiencing a decline in church attendance and in the spiritual condition of America is that over the past 20 or so years, we have failed to reach the younger generations for Christ.

My studies are not scientific, nor are they even in depth. In fact, I am basing my hypothesis on a few anecdotal instances that I have witnessed.

It seems that youth ministry in regard to churches have followed one of two models. Model A consists of a program that is extremely entertaining, gets kids involved, gets them to singing praises and even sitting down for lessons and preaching, but failed to incorporate enough scripture to disciple and lead the kids to salvation. Model B, so afraid of becoming Model A, went the complete opposite direction, and shunned anything that could be construed as entertaining. Model A drew numbers, but failed to disciple. Model B ran the numbers off, and maybe discipled one or two.

Then came the parachurch youth ministries. Many of these actually competed with local churches for the hearts and minds of the youth. They convinced the kids that only this particular ministry truly cares about you and want you to be involved. The result of this is a spirit of rebellion that was fostered, leading many to believe they could be just as close to Christ, and walk as close to the Lord outside the church as they could in the church. This approach inadvertently fed into the "I can worship at the lake on Sunday as well as I can in church."

None of these approaches intended on the consequences generated, but the consequences were generated none the less.

The vision of Grace Pointe MBM, regarding youth ministry, in Brownwood is to successfully disciple youth by incorporating doctrinally sound teaching programs, mixed with just enough entertainment to fill that need in the lives of the young people.

This vision will be kicked into action with a series of public evangelism events that are currently in the developmental stages at the mission. I have seen these events successfully executed, and am now getting the resources needed to be able to execute these events through Grace Pointe. Look for exciting things over the next two years in Brownwood.

By the way, we had 18 last night at AWANA... our best night ever in terms of attendance. We had two first-time visitors and all of our core group present.