Saturday Night Youth Group! What?!

This past Sunday was Super Sunday and in the past we have usually had a Super Bowl Party in The Loft for our students.  This party did not draw even our average number of students, often well below our average.  I guess many families have their own parties, which I get.  Some students have friends who have big parties.  Some don't come because mom and dad don't want to drive out at night and pick them up after the game.

This year we had a church outreach happen the same time as Super Sunday.   Two weeks each winter our church hosts our local homeless population.  We open our church up each evening, feed them a hot meal for supper and then they have a warm place to sleep and then a hot breakfast and can pack a lunch before heading out for the day.  Several local churches take turns doing this outreach during the winter months.  Because of some past complication and also to respect the privacy of these guests we normally do something off campus with our students on that Sunday night.  This year with the Super Bowl we thought we would try something different.

Saturday night we gathered together and focused our youth group gathering on prayer.  I taught on the model prayer Jesus gave us.  Then we went around to different stations and prayed together.  Following this time of prayer we had an hour of hang time in The Loft as we normally do with some delicious pizza (donated by a local pizza business).


Our numbers were about the same they would have been for a Super Bowl Party.  The time of prayer was awesome.  It is great to hear students pray out loud for each other and for specific missionaries our church supports.  We had some big poster paper and they wrote prayers of adoration on the paper.  It was a really good time together for our core students.  I'm looking forward to doing something similar next year, perhaps focus the whole time on missions and have some different stations like the prayer stations.

Point of all this rambling is this:  Don't be afraid to try something different or something new.  Don't be afraid to kill off an annual event or tradition if that event or tradition wasn't accomplishing it's purpose.  If it works great!  If it doesn't work, well, now you know.

Another upside is for the first time in the history of my family I was able to be home and our family had our own super bowl party.  My kids were excited and we ate some great party food.  We tucked them in at our normal time and then my wife and I had a date night watching the rest of the game.
#forthewin

That Feeling in the Pit of Your Stomach

No!  It's probably not that you are just hungry. 

I was walking out of FCA at a local high school on Wednesday morning.  As I was heading to the parking lot I passed a number of students rushing in so they wouldn't be marked tardy.  Among those students were two guys who used to be faithful attenders at our Student Church.  I of course smiled and said "Hey" to them.  They had big smiles and said hi to me and and asked me how I was doing.  As they each walked away the feeling hit me in the pit of my stomach.  It wasn't the blueberry Dunkin Donut I just consumed in FCA.  It was the questions.

When you come across a student(s) who you haven't seen in a while at youth group do the questions start rolling through your mind?  What do you think when a student walks by you and that student used to be at youth group faithfully every week and went on every event and trip?

I'll be totally transparent.  It bugs the heck out of me!  I don't like it!

Years ago when moments like this would happen I would start to question everything I was doing in youth ministry, even question if I was fit to be a youth pastor.  It would gnaw at me.
You probably ask these same questions:

What am I doing wrong?
What am I not doing?
Does youth group suck because of me?
Am I a terrible leader?
Did I say or do something wrong?
What could I have done to stop this from happening?

The focus becomes self.  We start judging ourselves.  We think it's about us.

Four things to remember youth worker:

• We are not God.
• We are not the Holy Spirit.
• We are not their parents.
• We cannot force a student to be a disciple, it's their choice.

Watching these students reminds me of the parable of the sower in Matthew 13.

• Some students will hear the gospel but they just won't get it.
• Some students will receive the gospel and be excited but never grow deep roots and they wither.
• Some students will receive the gospel but then the stuff of life pulls them away, priorities get out of whack.
• Some students will receive the gospel and grow and flourish and produce fruit in their lives.

What do we do then?

• Keep teaching the Bible, sound Biblical truth and applying it to life today.
• Model a growing, vibrant faith.
• Keep investing in students' lives and building relationships
• Most importantly pray.  Pray for our students by name, specific prayers.
• Don't blame yourself when a teen chooses to walk away from their faith or when a parent doesn't have the intestinal fortitude to say, "this is what we do in our home and as a family."

Stay in the trenches.  Keep ministering to students.  Don't allow Satan to sidetrack you with self doubt about your ability to minister to students.

The bonus is ten years down the road and you run into that teen who is now an adult and a parent and they are actively involved in their church and growing their faith.  You never know what is going to stick and then later help them correct their direction in life.

Mission Trip Prep Time

(When taking care of passports I feel like an international spy who keeps multiple identities in a shoe box under a loose board in a safe house)  

This week my mind has been on our upcoming mission trip.  So I decided that even thought our mission trip is still about 50 days away and with the trip on my mind now would be a great time to work on the trip.

We are traveling to the island of Eleuthera.  Our mornings and mid-days will be spent doing work for Camp Bahamas, helping them with upkeep of the campus.  Our afternoons will be spent at the  park in Tarpum Bay settlement doing outreach with the local kids.



I started with contacting people to join my support team.  In just a matter of hours I have people already joining my support team.  Each team member has to build their own support team consisting of both people who will pray and people who will give financially.

When I got to the office I organized two binders for the passport copies.  Sunday night at our team meeting (meeting about once a month) we collected the passports.  I then made 2 copies of each.  One binder will stay locked in the church office and the other will travel in my carry on.

The passports now have stickers on the back with the individual's first name to make it easy for us to hand them out at the airport and then we collect them later.   When we arrive in Eleuthera we will collect all the passports until the time for the trip home.  Hopefully we won't hear, "I don't know where my passport is."

I created a 6 page document that has all the details the parents and students will need to know:
Travel itinerary
Packing lists
Helpful tips (especially for the newbies)
Expectations
Schedule, etc.

I double checked our airline tickets just to make sure we are good to go.  I then filled out the form that Southwest requires for group travel with everyone's information.  Next I pay the balance on our group rate with them.  Southwest is much easier to work with and a better deal for group travel than the airline we used last year.


I've ordered our pre-trip devotional journals and they should be arriving shortly.  I also ordered our trip journals as well.  Check out LeaderTreks for some great resources for mission trips.

Next up I order Bibles for each person on the team to use on the trip then we will highlight our favorite scriptures in the Bible, write a note to whoever ends up owning it and leaving the Bibles at the camp when we depart.

Luggage tags, craft supplies, snack supplies, game supplies, and food supplies is all we have left to do to prep for the trip but that will wait until another day.

Watch the Calendar

Last weekend was Martin Luther King weekend.  I don't know how it was at your church but at ours we had several families out of town because it was a four and a half day weekend.  Some traveled out of town to go skiing, out of country for a mini-vacation.  So our team was short team members due to the holiday weekend as well as really, really low on the number of students in attendance.

Years ago we adjusted our December Student Church gatherings because the holiday season impacted attendance so much.  After last weekend we will step back and evaluate what we could do differently on MLK weekend to minister to our students. 

So I have put it down on the calendar for next year so when we get closer to the day we can promote what we will be doing.  Good thing is I have several months to think about it and come up with an alternate idea.  Could be an activity like going to the movies, progressive fast food dinner, bowling, laser tag, ice skating.

The point is when there is an obvious conflict with the calendar that could be a great time to do something totally different than your normal youth group meeting/fellowship.  A long time ago I learned to watch the calendar, track attendance around holidays and watch the school calendar when it comes to planning.

What do you do differently when a holiday or long weekend impacts your attendance greatly?

The Response

Problems will happen in ministry.  We are all human and we all make mistakes.  I was thinking this morning about the ways we respond to problems on the staff/team.

The Blanket

I’m guilty as charged!  Blankets are a great thing when you are cold.  They are wonderful to wrap up in on a cold winter rainy night and watch a movie.  Blanket responses aren’t so good.

Sometimes on a team or staff someone does something that is wrong, this person says or does something that hurts someone.  Perhaps they just don’t perform up to a pre defined expectation.  So the blanket response is to tell the whole team, “from now on . . . . “   Or we create an unnecessary policy that is born out of frustration that is aimed at one individual but affects the whole team.

The problem is we address everyone as if everyone is guilty when we have people on the team who are doing what is expected.  I have done this too often.  One person is consistently late so I send an email to the entire to remind them of the importance of being on time,  

The best thing we can do is to use the situation as a moment to help the individual learn from their mistake and help them grow as a leader by helping them overcome whatever it is that caused the problem.  Instead of seeing it as a “team problem” we need to address the individual.  Make that individual stronger in leadership and your team will greatly benefit in the long run.

The Knee Jerk

Have you ever responded to an issue/problem/event with a knee jerk reaction?  For some of us this is a “normal” response because of our personality, because we are emotional creative types.  We just say or do because of how we feel without taking a moment to step back and think.  Then later we think about how we responded and think to ourselves, “did I really say that?”   I know on many occasions I have made a decision or said something responding immediately when the situation called for some thought and reflection before making the decision.

My gauge now (and I’m not perfect at it) is this, I ask this question:
“Is this a true emergency that requires an immediate response?”  In other words, if no one is in physical danger, if the issue won’t send someone to hell, than I can step back and think a bit before responding to the event or issue at hand.

The Blind Eye

The situation calls for attention.  The staffer, or team member, says or does something that is whack.  The Blind Eye response pretends that nothing ever happened.  Looks the other way as if everything is okay.  The problem is everything is not okay and there bubbling under the surface is an issue that may come back to bite you or erupt like a volcano.

This is the easiest response because truthfully none of us enjoy confrontation.  The problem though is the elephant sits in the middle of the room while everyone pretends the elephant isn’t there but at the same time can’t stand the stink of the elephant.  Eventually this “stink” hurts the morale of the team which directly influences our ministry to students.

The next time a situation arises I encourage us to step back and take some time to think the problem through and think about the best way to handle the problem.  Maybe even seek out the advice of someone in ministry that you respect.

Taming the Raptors

This meme is going around Facebook.  It is a little funny, especially if you work with middle school boys.  BUT if this is you then you need help . . . . fast. 

Volunteers - Even in 2015 we still have youth ministers trying to go at it alone.  We cannot effectively minister to students alone, even if our youth group consists of 3 students, we need help and students need more than one adult investing into their lives at church. 

Atmosphere - Does your youth group have rules?  Is it a free for all?  We have "things we agree on" like "no wrestling", "no jumping off furniture", "no making out", etc.  Is the environment you've created amp students up beyond excitement and into the out of control zone.  Monster spiked Kool Aid is probably not such a great idea right before youth group.

Set the Example - I have been to the youth groups where the students all sit in the chairs in front of the youth pastor and the volunteers all line up against the back and side walls like school dance chaperones.  Our team members need to sit in and amongst the students.  This gives opportunity for the adults to set the example and teach students what worship looks like.  This also places students close by which tends to help in crowd control.

The Talk - If the volunteers are doing their job the youth pastor shouldn't have to call a student down during the message.  If a student is a distraction and it seems to happen frequently with him then it is probably time to sit down together and have a chat and explain the importance of what is going on in youth worship and the goal to reach lost students and how the student can help those around them to hear about Christ's love.

The Sabbatical Post

I returned to work on December 1st after a 3 month sabbatical.  I'm so thankful that our church sees the value of allowing pastoral staff (our elders and volunteers can take sabbaticals also) take a sabbatical.  You can read our church's policy in this post.  I wondered this during my sabbatical:  if more churches gave staff sabbaticals would more pastoral staff last longer than a few years at a church?  Some churches go through pastoral staff like a kid goes through candy in a PEZ dispenser.

I decided I would do a post sabbatical post.  Here it goes.  There is no way anyone would read all my thoughts from sabbatical because it would take like forever.

The Detox.
I noticed it took me about three weeks before I quit thinking about Nags Head Church.  For the first week I thought of the church everyday.  The second week it was more sporadic and by the end of week 3 it was out of my mind for the most part.  When you work at the church and for the church and in the church the church is on your mind constantly throughout the day.  You can't turn it off when you walk out of the office at 5:17 in the evening.   So if your church considers sabbaticals it has to be longer than 3 weeks so the sabbaticaling person can have a few weeks of mental detachment.


The Family.
Most important to me on my sabbatical was to spend time with my family.  I took over all cooking duties during the three months.  Most days I took care of all three meals.  I even did some big man-sized shopping runs where you buy like 3 weeks of groceries in one shot so you don't have to keep going back to the store.  And I bought in bulk, 4 of the giant sized cans of frijoles refritos because we eat them at least once a week in our home.  The gianormous box of Cheerios that would last the normal human  a month and it maybe lasts a week in our home because of the Jethro sized bowls my kids eat. 

We home school, OR I should say my wife home schools our kids.  I'm not much involved because I'm usually at work.  During the three months I was able to play the role of principal.  I even helped some with their school work.  I discovered that teaching a kid to read is not in my skill set.  I don't have the patience for it. 

I did some honey-do's.  As with most jobs you don't have time to get some things done around the house and we are the type that like to try to fix things before we call in the pros.  So I caught up on a few of those.  I still ran out of time to complete what I hoped we could do.

We traveled.  We took a ten day vacation to the mountains and to Nashville.  When you live at the beach you like to go to the mountains on vacation.  We got to stay in the smokey mountains at the peak of leaf changing season.  We rode a "it's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" train on the great smoky mountains railroad.  Lots of fun.  We hit Nashville for one day and night for my niece's wedding and that was fun getting all dressed up and spending time with family.  We relaxed a whole lot on porches of log cabins drinking coffee.  Great family time.

We had plans for a family mission trip but our septic drainfield had to be replaced so we just flushed that money down the drain.

When you work as a youth pastor you spend a lot of time with other people's kids and investing into other people's kids.  The three months allowed me to invest into my own kids and spend lots of time with them.  They were probably ready for me to go back to work.  :)  I figured it up last year and I have spent almost a year and a half away from home in my ministry years.

For me, personally, spending time with my family was huge.  I loved t!

The Sleep
After a couple of weeks I realized I wasn't tired.  I would go to bed, get a great night's sleep and wake up whenever I woke up, no alarms.  I think the latest I slept in was 9 and that seems late to me now but not compared to my college days of sleeping till 1 or 2 in the afternoon.  When I was at work I found that after dinner I hit the wall.  I was ready to go to bed by 6:30pm.  During the sabbatical I never had the feeling of exhaustion.  This may have been the most beneficial part of the sabbatical physically.  No exhaustion!!


The Weight
I lost 12 pounds.  Some would say "hooray" but I have much more to lose to be at a healthy weight.  On sabbatical I ate much better at home.  I didn't eat two big meals a day like often do when I'm at the office and go out for lunch.  This was good and it saved me some money.


The Word
My usual habit, I'm not perfect and miss days, is to read the Bible in the morning after I wake up and make a cup of coffee.  Because I wasn't in a rush to get to the office I seemed to get more out of my reading time.  I also found myself reading more and longer.  I also spent time reading articles and blog posts that I found spiritually beneficial.  When I'm at the office I read the Bible a lot but that's because I'm prepping a message or researching something.  There is a difference in reading for your own growth and reading to put together a message.


Ministry
I was able to do some thinking about our student ministry, about our ministry teams, about people who don't serve in their church.  I found myself feeling like I was missing out on Sunday morning at church because I wasn't serving in some way and I wondered how church members can do that week after week?  My conclusion is that serving isn't part of the fabric of their life and they are missing out on the joy that serving others and Christ brings.

I thought about our discipling of our students in our ministry.  This caused me to do some reading, I picked up Duffy Robbins book, Building a youth ministry that builds disciples. Lots of good material in this book.  I thought about taking some things I learned and combining them with our curriculum and resources on discipleship from LeaderTreks and putting them into practice in our student ministry.

The Return
While I figured out on sabbatical that I'll be able to handle retirement just fine I found myself near the end ready to get back to work.  You know that feeling of excitement when you start a new job?  That's the feeling I had.  I was looking forward to work again and I was refreshed and ready to go.  The sabbatical gave me a chance to break away from everything to do with work and then return with a fresh perspective.


The Comments
As with anything ministry related you will run into people who have only negative things to say.  I didn't experience this at all as far as my sabbatical was concerned.  From our church members I only received encouragement and many said they were glad I was able to take this time to be refreshed.  I talked with several other people who serve in ministry as a pastor or youth pastor and the biggest comment from them was, "I wish my church did this.  I could use a time to refresh and refuel."

The Team
Our volunteer student ministry team held it all together.  Several of them took turns teaching.  Everyone jumped in to make sure this time while I was gone was a successful time.  Without the team that we have I'm not sure we could have pulled the sabbatical break off.  I love our student ministry team!

The Next Sabbatical
My oldest son will be 18!  Our twins will be 13!  That's hard to imagine.  I already know what I would like to do during that time but I'll wait to share that until 2021.  

Great Blog Post about Games

Following up on my 3 posts about family church vs. student ministry this is a good blog post.  Often the anti-student ministry crowd points to "just play games" at youth group as one of their defenses for their belief that student ministry is unbiblical and unhealthy. 

About a month and a half ago a young lady, 12 years old, in our community was at an FCA dodgeball event.  At this event she put her faith in Jesus Christ.  The following month she was very active in a local youth group.  Two weeks ago she was riding her bike and was struck by a car.  A terrible tragedy in our community.  Last week she passed away.  She put her faith in Jesus Christ at an event centered around dodgeball!  Don't write off games in student ministry.

Check out this great blog post about games in youth ministry from Dan Colwin.

Family Church VS Student Ministry Pt. 3

If you missed it here is Part 1 and Part 2

 The balance:
The problem with both sides, “family church only” or “we have youth group” is that you can lean unhealthy to one extreme or the other.  The family church has the possibility, if not done right, of boring students away from their faith as well as getting the attitude of “if you aren’t a family church then your church is wrong” attitude.  I’ve even heard some say “you can’t find youth group in the Bible”.  I say you can, Jesus had the first youth group, his disciples.  If you use the New Testament as your model and only what is found in the pages of the NT then your church would meet in homes and not in huge buildings although we do see a mega church in Jerusalem in Acts as thousands were coming to Christ.

Youth groups can go to the other extreme.  Parents not involved or encouraged to disciple their teens.  Pizza parties every week with no time for worship, all games of dodge ball but no scripture being taught.  The youth group where the youth pastor is viewed by the church as more of a “cruise director” and not a shepherd.  The parents who drop their teen off at church and believe it’s the paid professional’s job to teach their teen the Bible.

We strive (we’re not perfect) to find that balance.  Students are an active part of the body of Christ at NHC.  Parents are encouraged to disciple their children.  Students have the opportunity to worship and learn with adults as well as with their peers in two different settings.  We are taking a systematic approach to discipleship, including the  parents, teaching sound doctrine and apologetics as well as incorporating times where we teach topically teaching students how Scripture can greatly impact their daily life.  We may have three events a year that are strictly times to have fun together but there is nothing sinful or Biblically wrong with that.  Our weekly student church is focused on teaching and applying the word.

Sticky Faith and the research that went into it has taught us that students are more likely to stick with their faith if they have had relationships with at least 5 adults in their church.  I’ll be honest, family church isn’t my cup of tea, but if a parent is going to take that route they need to find ways within their church to get their kids involved with other adults who can have an influence on them.  

As a parent I want my kids around other adults in church.  I’m thankful for the adults who invest into the lives of my children every Sunday.  When we have an opportunity to get involved as a family in a church outreach we do because I want my kids serving along side of other adults in the church.  I think back to Operation Backpack at the beginning of the school year, an event where our church supplies people in our community with the school supplies they need.  We turn our building into a distribution center.  My favorite pictures from that event are the ones where my child is serving along side another teen or adult in the church.  When I see my 6 year old daughter serving next to a high school science teacher and they are engaged in conversation that is encouraging to me.  The extreme and the “isolation” occurs when parents think that they and the teaching pastor are the only teaching their child needs.

So I believe that there can be a healthy balance on either side.  Both family church only, and churches with youth groups have to strive to find that healthy balance so that the spiritual impact on their children’s lives is a positive one. 

Family Church VS Student Ministry Pt. 2

You can read part 1 HERE


What we do:

Our students in middle and high school attend Sunday morning worship with the adults.   We worship together.  We aren’t “isolating them from the body of Christ”, they are the body of Christ.  We see the advantage of students worshipping in church with the adults because when they go off as adults it would be quite a shock to go from a youth group setting to “big church” cold turkey.



Our students serve the church in ministry on Sunday mornings.  You stroll into NHC on a Sunday morning and you will find middle and high school students serving along side of adults, serving coffee, teaching children, welcoming guests, helping parents check their kids into Cowabunga Cove, on the tech team, and even leading in worship in music.  So they aren’t isolated, they are integrated.  In fact NHC couldn’t accomplish the ministry we do on Sunday mornings without the ministry of the students.



We offer Student Church.  I know that this causes some in the family church movement to cringe.  We come together on Sunday evenings for 2 hours.  We have an icebreaker so students can get to know each other, some would call it “just playing a game” but their is a purpose behind it.  We have a time of singing together in worship.  We have a time of teaching where the Bible is opened and taught by a teacher/preacher.  We also have a time where students can snack and chat or play a game together, we call this fellowship.  Students building relationships with other Christian students and with caring adults is vital to their spiritual growth and accountability.  We also have a small group time where students get together with an adult leader and discuss questions pertaining to what they learned.

Parents aren’t left out of the student ministry in fact many of our youth leaders are parents of teens.  On Sunday nights during Student Church we have a small group of parents that meet together for Bible study and fellowship.  I see this time for parents to get together as super valuable and helpful for them in their parenting and discipling of their teen.  We also provide a weekly email to keep parents in the loop.  In that email there is often material, scripture or topics to help parents continue the discussion from youth group.  Often we point parents to helpful articles and resources online.  We all know that you can take a person to a buffet but you can’t make them eat.  You can provide resources for parents but that doesn’t guarantee they will take advantage of it or that they will even disciple their kids at home and as they walk through life.

Our mission trips at NHC involve adults, parents, teens and even children.  We just had a team get back from Honduras and the team included parents and their elementary age children.  We will go to Eleuthera again this spring and the team will be adults and teenagers mixed together.

Do we have events and activities?  Yes.  We strive not to fill calendars though and our events and activities have a purpose behind them when they do.  Parents’ and teens’ calendars are already filled to the max so if we do something it has a purpose of exposing students to Christianity or giving our students some needed fellowship time.  It’s good to have fun together.  We make the mistake of picturing Jesus and his disciples as always being serious and never having fun but Jesus created fun and relationships so I’m pretty sure they had times where they laughed together.




Check back in a couple of days for Family Church VS Student Ministry Pt. 3

Family Church VS Student Ministry

I hate reading long blog posts.  Sorry.  But there was no way to tackle this in a few paragraphs, so I’m going to tackle it in a few blog posts. 

The Challenge:
I was recently challenged on Instagram to watch the movie, Divided About Youth Ministry, on Youtube.  The individual who dropped this challenge on me apparently is adamant that there should be no youth ministry in the church.  So I watched the movie. 

There is a movement among some churches where there is no age division.  So everyone from baby to granny sit together in worship together.  If that’s what they feel, as a church, they are to do then that is fine.  The problem is some go overboard and believe this is what every church should do and if you aren’t doing it then you are wrong.

The basis of the movie was that youth ministry is ineffective and students are walking away from their faith when they hit college or even before.  The fix, according to the movie, is that parents be the disciplers of their children.  This, according to the movie, is accomplished by removing the youth group ( or other age/gender divided Sunday School or small groups or women’s ministry, etc.) and everyone sitting in church together. 

How does this approach make the parents the disciplers of their children?  In my opinion a teen can sit in church worship service with their parents and still not be discipled at home.  The answer to parents discipling isn’t “let’s all sit together in church” or “drop the kid off at youth group”.  The answer to parents discipling their kids is to equip and assist parents in the discipleship of their child.  

Statistics, the movie uses statistics to back up their claim that students are leaving their faith.  Yes, the stat is 4 out of 5 will leave their faith.  I would be interested to see a study done specifically among the family churches to see what their stat would be.  This statistic was not given in the movie.  I would think that among the statistic that 4 out of 5 kids walk away from their faith after high school would include students who sat in church with their parents and didn’t attend youth group either because their church had no youth ministry or they chose not to attend youth group.  I sat here and thought about the teens in the two churches I have served in who chose not to attend youth group but were in church worship with their parents on Sunday morning.  Not one of them, to my knowledge, is involved in church today. 

So students who sit with mom and dad in church and students who are actively involved in are walking away from their faith.  What could be the key then?  Could it be that discipleship at home isn’t happening in those cases?  Could be. 

A few of the flaws I found in the movie:

• If this movement is all about the church then why did they interview para church ministry leaders?  If you go to Answers in Genesis’ website they have age divided material/resources and pages.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like Answers in Genesis and there is some good material on their website and their kids page is cool.

• I have heard one of the prominent pastors interviewed in the movie speak on 4 different occasions.  Interestingly enough all 4 of those occasions were in youth group settings. Events where youth groups converged either for a weekend event or for an entire week of youth camp.  So the pastor must not be totally against youth ministry and must see that there is some validity in having student ministry.

• The cutting room floor.  When showing their on the street interviews with teens and young adults they didn’t show any that were strong in their faith, or had the right answers who were actively involved, or were when they were teens, in a student ministry.  Surely there had to be some.  Just because a teen says they attended a youth group or even just because an adult attends church doesn’t mean you are going to get spot on, theologically sound, answers one hundred percent of the time.

Check back in a couple of days for part 2 of Family Church VS Student Ministry