Keeping Teenagers Interested in Attending Church
Keeping teenagers interested in attending church is a hot topic among parents, youth ministry leaders, and pastors (or it should be). Worship services, knowingly or not, target a certain age group. This group is adults. Lets face it, adults are the ones with the money. The sermon is geared for adults. High School age teens are somewhat OK with it too. I am not suggesting that we radically shift the entire focus of the Sunday morning service toward the youth.
However, most Sunday morning sermons bore middle school age teens to tears. That’s why they don’t want to attend. Even the best sermon, if not targeted to that age group, will be way over their heads. Their vocabulary skills and attention span just aren’t mature enough yet.
By ignoring this subject and just forcing the kids to attend what they perceive is a boring service we are convincing them that ALL CHURCH IS BORING. Is it any wonder that by the time they are college age we never see them in the pew again? There are also those who flee their parents.
Here, then, are some suggestions about keeping teens interested in attending and involved in church:
Caught In Between: Engage Your Preteens Before They Check Out
By Dan Scott / Orange / Rethink Group
Today’s preteens are getting lost in transition as they shift from childhood to adolescence, a unique and challenging time when they are not quite one thing and not quite the other. Caught In Between is a comprehensive strategy for engaging preteens well before they make the transition. For leaders in children’s ministry AND youth ministry – because it’s necessary to catch preteens on both sides of the divide.
Six Tips to Keep Teens Interested in Attending Church
The Worship Service:
This is the part of the service with the songs. Not to be confused with the whole service, it’s sometimes called the Praise Service. Make sure the worship leader is mindful of the younger members of the audience. Do a song or two in their age range every Sunday. You might even encourage the kids to come up and sing with the band occasionally. Prearrange this with the Sunday School teacher before hand so they’re not uncomfortably surprised.
Dismiss the kids to their own Sunday School class during the sermon.
Do not lump them in with “Children’s Church”. Visit my page Growing Your Youth Ministry for more on this. Teens actually are hungry for Bible study but they need it tailored to their level. The teacher does not necessarily need to be the youth group leader or youth pastor. You may find that you have some talented teachers among your older attendees. Equip them with my lesson plans to make teaching easier.
Feed them breakfast or a great snack.
Don’t dismiss this off hand. The logistics aren’t really that hard, Many kids come to church without breakfast. Trust me, they’ll really appreciate it. Trust me: Food will help keep teenagers interested in attending church
Feed them spiritually:
Teach them the Bible. That’s actually what they come for. They can get games and fun anywhere.
Sacraments, Guests, and special events:
Make sure you communicate well with the teacher so the kids remain in the sanctuary for communion, baptisms, or when you have a visiting missionary or a special event like a slide show of a recent mission trip. They like to be part of that. The idea is not to remove them from corporate worship or exclude them from the rest of the church family but to give them their own tailor-made lesson.
Let the kids sit together
If they want to sit together, let them(as long as they behave). The teacher might even join them.
Family Based Youth Ministry
After seeing appalling abuses of the term ”family-based” youth ministry I need to weigh in on the subject. Some churches have actually scrapped their youth ministry and Sunday Schools in preference of their misinterpretation of the concept of a “family-based” ministry.
In reality this is actually a reaction to the lack of committed volunteers and/ or their lack of commitment to fund a Youth Pastor staff position. These churches now feel justified in shirking their responsibility to train the youth in Christian principles arguing that these separate classes and groups take the youth out of the life of the church body.
In his book, “Family-Based Youth Ministry”, Mark DeVries does make the assertion that the current youth group model we have been following, if that is all a church is doing for it’s youth, fails the youth by not connecting them with adults within the body of the church. Read the rest of this article.
Family-Based Youth Ministry Revised and Expanded
By Mark DeVries / InterVarsity Press
In a culture that worships youth even as it abandons its young, this book gets adults, families and congregations involved.
If you are disappointed with the results from the glitzy programs and entertaining activities you’ve used with your church’s young people, then this is the book for you.
Family-Based Youth Ministry is a multi generational approach that takes seriously the job of discipling teens and building mature believers. This revised and updated edition continues to hold out its bold challenge: Young people belong in the life of their church, and the church belongs in the lives of its youth. Now featured is free curriculum for use with youth and young adults together.
Remember when you were a kid?
Your Sunday School teacher dressed you in your Dad’s white shirt, attached a giant red plastic bow and shoved you on stage in front of the whole church? You were mortified. Then why are these kids, now parents themselves, subjecting they’re kids to the abuse?
Soak up the advice contained on this website to make your Sunday School class fun, relevant, and successful.
The book,”Controlled Chaos: Making Sense of Junior High Ministry'” (shown below) is a good read. Except for the part about discontinuing Sunday School class I could have written it myself. Remember the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result.
Excuse junior high age kids, especially the boys, from the traditional children’s Christmas play. Do not force them to participate in the children’s choir or your churches traditional children’s activities.
Controlled Chaos: Making Sense of Junior High Ministry by Kurt Johnston (Author), Rick Warren (Foreword)
Few areas of ministry are as intense, unpredictable, and chaotic as junior high ministry—but that craziness is probably one of the reasons you’re drawn to it!
Kurt Johnston and Justin Herman are your guides in this revised and expanded edition of a youth ministry classic. Their goal in Controlled Chaos is simple: to share their experience, insight, and a desire to provide a little bit of hope and help so you can effectively serve the middle school students in your church.
As youth ministry veterans, Kurt and Justin know the key to effective junior high ministry: PARENTS + CARING ADULT FOLLOWER OF JESUS + JUNIOR HIGHER = GOOD STUFF
And this book unpacks how to turn that ministry formula into ministry reality:
- Understanding today’s junior higher
- Building an effective team of quality volunteers
- Ministering to and partnering with parents and families
- Pursuing and promoting creativity in your ministry
- Identifying your ministry’s purpose
- Teaching and speaking effectively to young teenagers
- Having fun—yes, FUN—at church
- Becoming a spiritually healthy leader
Accept the mess. Welcome the madness. Embrace the chaos.
Creating a “YOUTH-FRIENDLY” environment in church:
If you watch youth and adults interact on a Sunday morning you may notice that even though they are interspersed in the crowd the adults are ignoring the kids.
This does happen quite naturally because of several factors:
- Adults are taller than most kids. They look right over them;
- People are naturally self-absorbed. If they’re not taught the value of relationships with kids they will simply tune them out.
Christians must be taught the importance of mentoring kids, all the kids.
I have a bulletin insert that is one step. Older people must learn to pass the torch to the younger generation. The daunting task of changing the culture of an entire congregation must be supported by the senior pastor. Here are the suggestions from some members of Group’s web forum on how to do that:
Youth Announcements and Program Updates:
Do the youth announcements during the main service. Better yet, have the kids do their announcements. The point is to keep them in the face of the grownups. Shoot a 1-minute video of the last fundraiser, tell how it went.
Convince the senior pastor to do a sermon on mentoring.
Attend your churches leadership board meetings.
Give them updates on the youth program, progress and needs every time. Have them pray for the youth. Keep the kids in the front of their minds.
Bored with God: How Parents, Youth Leaders and Teachers Can Overcome Student Apathy
By Sean Dunn / InterVarsity Press
In this book, Sean Dunn catalogs what he’s seen of apathy in his ministry to youth. Teenagers can be frustratingly sleepy in their faith, but once these slumbering giants are awakened to a life with God, they can apply virtually tireless energy to the problems of a world bored with God. And their energy is particularly contagious. Dunn offers sympathetic guidance from the Scriptures for keeping apathy from spreading and for shepherding students into spiritual hunger.
Creating a “YOUTH-FRIENDLY” environment in church continued:
Newsletter:
If you have a news letter write an article for every issue. Keep your kids in the eye of your church.
Have the kids pass out the bulletins at the door.
- They could do this with their parents like a team.
Have them be the greeters.
They’ll actually get into this and do a great job. One rainy day I saw them running out to the cars with umbrellas and escort the lady’s inside.
Let the kids be part of the worship band.
This may be a stretch for the worship leader who is more interested in a great performance than ministry. You’ll just have to convince them.
Let them serve:
Kids really want to be involved. Let them help in the kitchen, nursery (accept during class), and maintenance (shoveling, weeding, vacuuming). Encourage them to become active members of these committees with the adults. With the proper attitude from the adults helping the kids feels like full members of the group they will rise to the occasion and really do a good job.
Do not have “special” youth Sundays.
Special implies special-ed to kids. This does not change the feeling of adults towards the youth. It still causes exclusion of the kids the rest of the time. Youth need to be integrated into the life of the church on a permanent basis not just special days. It needs to be a culture shift.
Keeping teenagers interested in attending church is not hard but it will take a shift from isolating the youth ministry as a separate entity to an integrated family based ministry involving the whole church.
Growing Young: 6 Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church
By Kara Powell, Jake Mulder & Brad Griffin / Baker Books
In a culture chock-full of dwindling congregations, in large part due to an increasing number of disengaged young people, how can your church pursue and cultivate a vibrant future? Kara Powell, Jake Mulder, and Brad Griffin offer a strategy any church can use to involve and retain teenagers and young adults in Growing Young: 6 Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church.
Based on groundbreaking research with over 250 of the nation’s leading congregations, Growing Young profiles innovative churches that are growing–spiritually, emotionally, missionally, and numerically–by engaging 15-to-29-year-olds, offering readers both research and practical ideas for engaging and retaining the young people you have, attracting their unchurched peers, and harnessing the next generation’s vitality and passion for Christ. Powell, Mulder, and Griffin demonstrate for pastors and ministry leaders how to position their churches to engage younger generations in a way that breathes vitality, life, and energy into the whole church.
