Cornerstone Church of Alexandria, MN
Saturday, September 04, 2010
Connect, Grow, and Serve

Losing a Generation

Currently we are losing our youth in the Evangelical Church in America to the world at a 75% - 88% clip.  We believe that the reason why, is that we have not followed God's blueprint in ministering to our youth over the past 40+ years.  God's Word clearly teaches that the family is to be central in the evangelism and discipleship of the next generation.  We at Cornerstone are seeking to reform our ministry to youth according to God's blueprint.  What follows in our vision of going back for the future.
 
Where have we gone wrong in youth ministry?
  1. Too Many Age Divisions.  Over the past 40 years or so we have followed the world down the pathway of age divided ministry.  These divisions, instead of calling our youth towards greater maturity in Christ, have breed immaturity because they hinder younger people from associating with and learning from their elders - especially their Fathers and Mothers.  We have created in our country and our churches a seperate youth culture in which young people pursue youthful lusts rather than flee them.
  2. The Herd Mentality.  When young people are allowed to set their own standards as they interact with one another a herd mentality develops; they follow in the footsteps of one another instead of those of parents and adults.  When we in the church and Christian families allow this to happen we are helping to create the infamous generation gap.  Negligent or apathetic parenting prompts youth to form herds and seek to get from their peers what God designed their family to give to them.  Peer interaction is good within its proper boundaries.  The Lord never intended for youth to be trained by their peers but rather by their parents within the context of family (Deuteronomy 6; Ephesians 6).
  3. The Dumbed-down Factor.  We have dumbed down our teaching to yourh.  Just take a quick look at most youth curriculum and this will be obvious.  We have been taught to believe that yourh can't handle deep truth about God or that it will bore them.  But God calls us to teach to youth the whole counsel of God - including deep doctrine and hard teachings.  We believe that we have bored our kids by withholding God's truth from them and not challenging them to go deep with God.
How can we regain lost ground?
  1. We must know that as the light of the world we cannot pattern ourselves or our ministries after the world (Romans 12:1-3).
  2. We must re-think biblically the whole idea of 'youth ministry'.  The youth ministry model we have been using over the last 40 years is not biblical and is not producing committed followers of Jesus Christ among the next generation. 
  3. We must repent of our worldliness and our man-centered ministries and methods toward our youth.
  4. We must ask and then biblically answer this question: How do we want our kids to turn out?  What are our goals for our children?
At Cornerstone our top five goals are... 
  • A deep, living, growing understanding and love for GOD [Father, Son, Spirit]!
  • A deep, living, growing understanding of God's Word!
  • A sharply defined Christian world and life view!
  • A profound and healthy fear of the Lord!
  • A life of passionately pursuing GOD and godliness!