Time magazine’s recent look at youth ministry in American churches concluded that during the past 20 years or so youth ministers have figured the way to attract teens to their groups was to package biblical content in pop-culture gimmicks.
Time magazine’s recent look at youth ministry in American churches
concluded that during the past 20 years or so youth ministers have
figured the way to attract teens to their groups was to package
biblical content in pop-culture gimmicks.
The magazine then identified what it calls a new trend in churches to offer more Bible-based truth than entertainment.
“Their conversion has been sparked by the recognition that sugarcoated
Christianity, popular in the 1980s and early ’90s, has caused growing
numbers of kids to turn away not just from attending youth-fellowship
activities but also from practicing their faith at all,” Time said Oct.
31.
Scholars have said the spiritual drift among young Christians can be
attributed to a lack of knowledge about their faith, the magazine
added, and now churches are trying to “reverse the flow by focusing
less on amusement and more on Scripture.” As a result, Bible-based
youth ministries are enjoying great success these days.
Allen Jackson, professor of youth education at New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary, said the Time article “doesn’t seem to allow for
the notion that a healthy youth ministry is balanced between fun and
intense Bible study, fellowship and mentoring, age-appropriate activity
and inclusive activity.”
“As I got into the article, I felt like the author identified correctly
that youth ministry needs to have solid doctrinal foundations and
teaching but at the same time needs to have a ‘fun’ aspect,” Jackson
told Baptist Press.
“I believe that the title of [Young Life founder] Jim Rayburn’s book
sums it up: ‘It’s a Sin to Bore a Kid with the Gospel,’” Jackson said.
Jackson added that Southern Baptist seminaries have been teaching balanced, intentional youth ministry for years.
“If anything, I believe that the title of the article was a little
misleading,” he said. “It is not so much ‘either/or’ as it is
‘both/and.’”