Youth in church

 I wonder if all churches have the same problem ours does; that is, where are the youth?  Well, OK, many youth during the school year are away at academies, or so you would hope.  But in reality, at most only a few families have chosen to send their youth to boarding school.  This school year, we have one from our church go to the academy; we had only one last year and that was only part of the year.  Does that mean we have a small church?  No, we are one of the five largest congregations in the state!  So, where are the youth?

Working at summer camp?  Well, possibly, but camps don’t run all year.   So, where are our youth?

In the case of our congregation, they simply don’t come, or if they come, they wander around the church or gather in the parking lot to talk; they don’t participate in the church service.  Why?

The answer is simple.  There is nothing that attracts them.

Sad.

In our church, what few youth we do have in our congregation tend to migrate to other Adventist churches which have dynamic youth leaders with great programs.   That is all well and good, and I’m glad to see they are welcomed and appreciated, but what about OUR congregation.   Even I have had to keep very close eyes on my son and redirect him to the church service at hand when he is distracted by his disinterested friends (on the few occasions they do come to church.)

Have you encountered “I don’t deal with youth well.”  Or “So-and-so can do it, I just don’t have the time.”  Or “my kids aren’t that age, so I have no interest.”  Or “I’ll help if someone else leads out.”  I thought so because not only have I encountered it, I must admit, I have said it.

So what we have done to change that?   My family and I have begun using video cameras and young people (pre-youth age) as our camera crew.   About six or seven years ago, the church purchased a couple of cameras and a camera switcher (known as the Tri-Caster).  For six months, those cameras remained unused until my husband pushed the church board into providing additional funding to wire the church so we could connect the cameras to the Tri-Caster and use them for our church services.

After a few trial and errors, and a lot of desperate attempts to recruit adult help, I finally turned to our pre-youth young people.  They were eager and excited!  I did have to convince a few very skeptical board members, but with the head elder on my side, we moved forward.  Very quickly I had more kids than positions, so I set about making new positions!  Over the course of two and half years we’ve been using kids, it has been amazing to see what has happened.  Families are becoming more involved.  One family (and this is a story in itself)* is now involved with Pathfinders and teaching Primary.  Another young person, now a youth, is in academy at her request after spending all her previous school years in public school.   Our camera crew kids include those who were naughty and troublesome before, but now are striving to become leaders and positive role models.

And…

Our congregation is giving each of these crew members not only the video skills they are gaining, but also leadership, organization, accountability and, most importantly, a feeling their church accepts them and loves them.

So, what are you doing to keep your youth, or youth-to-be in your congregation?

*  That family that is a story in itself?  I didn’t even intend to ask that boy at the time, but I did due to a misidentification.   You see, we had two kids, siblings, whose dad had recently passed away.  Our head elder had asked me to specifically ask these two kids to be a part of the crew to help them deal with the grief of their dad’s death.   As requested, I asked the older girl if she wanted to be a part of this and she agreed.  Then I turned to her (or so I thought) younger brother and asked him.  He agreed.  A few seconds later I realized my mistake.  I couldn’t really unask the boy, so as promised, after church, I went to the mother and explained what we do, not saying a word of my mistake.  Her reply stunned me and convinced me that in those few brief seconds, God blinded me as to the true identity of the boy I was asking.  She told me, “Thank you so much for asking.  We were about ready to go to another church which had more activities for him.”

Today, not only is this boy a dependable and hardworking member of our crew, but because of his involvement, the whole family is involved with Pathfinders, Sabbath School, and in other offices of the church.  And, that boy was recently baptized all because of a mistaken identity.  The family freely admits it is because their boy was asked to be part of our camera crew.