I just saw an article at UM Reporter titled, “When Kids Leave the Church: Experts site reasons for departing.” It covers the usual stuff about youth dropping out of the church when they go to college, our inability to be relevant to youth and young adults, and the fact that 18-35 year-olds only make up 5% of the United Methodist Church. It was this part of the article, however, that stood out:
Charles Harrison, CEO of the Youthworker Movement—a group launched in 2005 to connect United Methodist youth workers with those in other Wesleyan traditions—believes many churches have not provided consistent Wesleyan leadership. Instead, many youth leaders take kids to events hosted by nondenominational parachurch organizations, where they absorb a reformed, rather than Wesleyan theology.
This was something that always bugged me when I was a youth worker at various UMC churches before I entered campus ministry. Each year a number of Christian youth ministry organizations offer conferences for youth groups to attend. They are loaded with hip looking speakers and the hottest Christian bands. When teenagers see how cool these events look, compared to the usual United Methodist events we take them to, they would rather go to the event that has rock concerts every night. The issue is that these events also include speakers who are pushing a much different theology from Wesleyan theology. I inherited a youth group at one point that already signed-up for a non-denominational youth event. The overall quality of the event was pretty slick and the youth were totally into it. The messages from the speakers, however, were definitely more reformed in their theology, and while that led to some great discussions with the teenagers, I was sad that we could not offer them something as high-quality that offered Wesleyan theology. Now I don’t think we need to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars to put on events with lots of flashing lights and rock bands; however, we do need to focus on what we are teaching our teenagers and how we help them experience Christ.
This issue has definitely bled into campus and young adult ministries. I’m starting to meet a lot of United Methodist 20-30 somethings that LOVE listening to Mark Driscoll, a neo-reformed Calvinist. Again, I’m not sure that it is Driscoll’s message that is compelling, but he has a cool rock band, wears cool t-shirts, loves mixed martial arts fighting, and has a cool wardrobe. Oh yeah, he cusses during his sermons too. I’m not really offended by any of that but I don’t think he would have such a huge following if he wore a suit and tie and never said anything controversial.
So how can we work with our United Methodist youth workers to help them differentiate between Wesleyan and reformed events and theology? How do we offer training and resources that helps our youth workers stay relevant and engaged with our teenagers? It’s sad when I meet a life-long United Methodist young adult who can’t tell me what prevenient grace is, but they can quote lines from the latest Mark Driscoll or John Piper sermon.
