The biggest problem Youth Ministry is experiencing is that after our high school senior graduates, he or she will most likely not attend church. Bottom line after a student graduates college they will never return back to Church. Given that some denominations, “estimate that over 50% of their youth group graduates fall away from either their faith or their faith communities upon entering college…” (Laurie Goodstein, “Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers,” The New York Times, October 6, 2006.) Troy Murphy argues that 80% of high school students walk away from their faith. (Not sure where he got this statistic? He did not provide a bibliography)

Why is this?

My suggestions:
• Students go to a public university and get blindside with philosophy and evolutionary biology that essentially undermines everything they were told at youth group. And the student does not know how to confront the intellectual intensity going against their system of belief.

• Students do not fully participate in “Big church”. It is essential students feel included and welcome. Also it is imperative a student learn how to respectfully sit in a service for a hour without their ipod or cell phone.
Jim Burns of Youthbuilders and Mark DeVries of Family-Based Youth Ministry stated: “The degree to which students will stay in the church, get involved, and make significant life decisions for Christ is directly dependent on their sense of belonging to the community. The goal of any youth ministry must be that students see and experience themselves as participants in God’s family of faith.”

• Parents hand down their faith to the student. The parents will force their Christian convictions on the student while giving them an ultimatum of they cannot drive or get allowance if they do not believe what they believe. Student need to own their faith. They need ownership to why they believe what they believe. Student need to land on their convictions for themselves, not their parents.

• Students do not know how to walk in their faith without youth group. Basically students do not know how to listen to God’s voice without the structure of youth group. Students do not know how to experience the spiritual disciplines by themselves.

© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

In the next 4 weeks our high school group will be addressing sexuality. One of the teaching topics we will be dialogging about is homosexuality.

I have tried my best in the past 3 weeks to get my hands on any scientific, theological, psychological, and philosophical content that adequately handles the homosexual issue in relation to the Christian faith.

How do we respond to homosexuals that are Evangelical Christians? (and if you do not know any and/or you do not believe that they can be “Christians” you need to expand your theological world view!)

Homosexuality can be broken into two categories: 1) homosexual orientation and 2) homosexual behavior. Homosexual orientation is not a choice. Homosexual behavior is a choice.
Although this raises the question of: How can God simply deprive a homosexual from his sexual and emotional expressions? ( I am still grappling through this question.)

Homosexual Evangelical Christians are torn not only between their sexual orientation and traditional biblical interpretations, but also between the homosexual community. I have found that Evangelical homosexual Christians can act in celibacy while acknowledging their sexual orientation.

The funny thing is that Jesus never condemns homosexuality. Jesus only condemns the judgmental religious people who look for sin in the lives of others without dealing with the sin in their own lives (Matthew 23). hmmmm….sound familiar to a brand of Christianity?
Jesus responds with love, respect, and dignity to everyone.

The Torah illustrates that homosexuality is wrong (Lev 18.22, 20.13, & Deut. 23 17-18). It is the Torah’s goal to clearly define the moral code (10 commandments) and purity code (eating shell fish, sexual behaviors, etc).

The Pauline perspective talks a bit about homosexuality and immoral sexual acts (1 Tim 1.10-11, 1 Cor 6.9, and Romans 1.26-27).

I argue that God designed human sexuality to be expressed only within the loving bounds of a monogamous, heterosexual marriage relationship. However in reference to the homosexual issue: I recognize the consistent biblical teaching that homosexual relationships are not a part of God’s design for humanity. Homosexual expression is not a viable lifestyle for believers. At the same time, I do not believe it is biblical to elevate any particular sin above the other, and it is essential to provide a redemptive, healing, experiential, and safe community for those who struggle with any thing: same sex attraction, anger, self image, depression, identity, and the list can go on and on.

My question to you is: Can homosexuals enter the pearly gates? Can one honestly say Jesus will not let a homosexual in? Based on your answers, what are the implications for the 21st century church in how we respond to homosexuals who are in church?

I have a hard time saying that Steve, who is struggling with his homosexual identity, will not get the nod into the gates, while me, Jeremy, who is deeply struggling with an anger issue, will get the nod into the pearly gates.  Thankfully, I don’t have to play God.  I will leave the judgment up to God.

I would love to hear any perspective and feedback. If you disagree with me, I will beat you up. ; )

© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

At Fuller Theological Seminary, the notorious pop culture theologian  Barry Taylor offered a theology class titled:  Theology of U2.  I never had the privilege to take it, but I had a few friends who did and we had many conversations about the theology within U2.

Bottom line:  I am convinced (from my very brief studying and listening to U2), that U2 creates an emotional space for individuals to contemplate the spiritual life.  There is something just in the music and in the lyrics that takes you somewhere. And it should be the goal for youth ministries to have the ability to do the same as U2.

Bono rarely comes out and makes overt Christian messages in their songs, but at the same time their music is directly inspiring people to connect with God all across the world.  Inherently there is something spiritual in their songs. Bono has greatly achieved at getting Americans to do what Jesus taught us to do more so than all of the pastors in this country combined.

I think some times our youth ministries are overly direct in always trying to proclaim Jesus.  Obviously, our youth ministries reek Christianity every which way, which may be hurting us.  Seemingly, we are trying too hard to be spiritual in our teachings, YM philosophies, small groups, and programmatic structure.

I think some times it is safe and wise to adopt the U2 type of methodology in how we talk about the spiritual life with Jesus.  What if youth groups some times created spiritual spaces that facilitated a spiritual transformation and experience?  There would be no speaker directly giving a salvation talk.  There would simply be a space for students to emotionally and spiritually engage and reflect about the themes of God.

I think it is really interesting that Bono doesn’t explicitly state he is Christian, but yet he is a remarkable prophetic spiritual leader and voice for the American church.  U2 uniquely is spiritual and is contributing to the spiritual conversation of the world.  What if youth group functioned like this?  What if youth group created and facilitated such a sacred and emotional environment for students to align with God without directly broadcasting “WE ARE SPIRITUAL”?

Mike Yaconelli makes this beautiful statement in Messy Spirituality:  Spirituality rarely looks like what we think it looks like.

Unfortunately the label of “being Christian” has many negative connotations, which many American youth ministries and youth pastors only reinforce and add to.  In my experience I have found that an atheist student who starts to smells the Christian label, will immediate detach and not be open to Jesus.  So how do we be followers of Christ that lead youth ministries, without fueling or adding to the negative Christian label?

Because something is “Christian” doesn’t necessary mean it is good and true.  And it especially doesn’t not mean that all followers of Christ claim it as good and true.   There is a lot of cheesy and crappy Christian stuff out there.

My point:  Youth pastors–lets learn from U2 methods.  U2 has the amazing ability to use metaphors to tell a redemptive story and to create an emotional space for its participants to engage in the spiritual life.

© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

Democracy Matters by Cornel West. West’s central thesis is that America has three reoccurring distortions.

First, the free-market fundamentalism has an overwhelming power and influence in the economy that puts fear and insecurity in the hearts of workers to meet the corporate goals of profit. The free market encourages sleep walking robots to see that the false prophets are handsomely rewarded with money, status, and access to more power.

Second, is that America is obsessed with aggressive militarism. West comments that “violence is deployed by those who cloak themselves in innocence–those unwilling to examine themselves and uninterested in counting the number of innocent victims they kill.” (6)

Third, America has an escalating authoritarianism problem. The authoritarianism is rooted in our understandable paranoia toward potential terrorists, our traditional fear of too many liberties, and our deep distrust of one another. West goes on to illustrate how these three distortions play out in the American identities of the Jewish, Islamic, Christian, and youth population.

In the youth chapter (ch. 6), West argues that many of the American youth have been the direct target by corporate America for consumption. This produces an adolescent to be fragile, which does not enable them to withstand the emotional trauma generated by the fast paced capitalist culture of consumption that confronts them. The youth of America are being bombarded by consumption, which leads to consumption addiction. Adolescents become addicts of alcohol, sex, video games, popularity, technology, success, and fashion. These addictions leave them with little room or time to become mature and to become concerned about others and or politically engaged in social change. Who knows a 20-something year old that is living at home and still leaving off of mom and dad’s money who is liberal?

I would argue that the late adolescent (19-24) population of America are extremely upset about how they were disillusioned by American adults who shoved consumerism, militarism, and authoritarianism down their young throats. I think this is why so many late adolescents are so anti-adult world, because all they know of the adult world is depravity of morality, egocentricity, and greedy tendencies.

West communicates that late adolescents long for energizing visions worthy of pursuit and sacrifice that will resurrect their old consumed souls in a story bigger than themselves and locate themselves in a narrative greater than themselves. So, it is imperative to engage the youth in something that is outside of themselves, but we must first break the consuming psychological strong holds. If they even sense a fake adult authoritative power, they are out of there.

For the last two months in youth group, I have been requiring that every single youth (jr and sr high) that walks through the door turn off and turn in his/her cell phone and ipod in the designated basket. At first, they hated me and gave me much resistance. Now, I have them trained like dogs. It was my small way to confront the distractions and consumption mentality in their life. Youth group is one hour and 30 minutes, students can easily go that long without music, text, or talking on their phone. And who knows God may get their attention since they are not glued to their cell phone? I have actually sensed an increase of attention and engagement since my cell phone/ipod policy. But seriously, that basket is like a mini earthquake. Every other second a cell phone is vibrating.

Last weekend our youth group was a part of the 30 Hour Famine. It was a major success! The students were deeply moved by the 29,000 kids that die a day of starvation and malnutrition. I was floored because some of my major party students showed up on both Friday and Saturday night. I asked them why they decided to skip out on the rager to come starve for the hungry in Africa? They first said that there is a real power in part taking in something much larger than their own private-self absorbed world. They also said if there is a great cause, they are willing to make great sacrifices.

As a youth pastor it is my dream to break through the adolescent consumption mentality and their misconception of unmoral adults. I want my students serving God and serving outside of themselves while feeling no desire to buy things. Lastly, I want them to feel that adults are safe and trustworthy and adults genuinely care for who they are.

© 2008 – 2010, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

Adolescents and alcohol–that is a bad mix. If a youth pastor is honest, probably 45% of his/her high school youth group is experimenting with liquor. Alcohol is a huge problem in America’s private (yes even “Christian” schools) and public high schools. Partying leads to drinking and drinking leads to sexing.

What does a youth pastor do? Obviously every great high school youth group student knows that drinking is not only illegal, but theologically wrong. The quit drinking sermon may not exactly work…..so what will work?

In Chap Clark’s book HURT, I learned that if there is a group of students (a student cluster), there will be at least a few students (if not all) drinking.

I realized that the desire to party goes beyond just getting drunk. “Drinking is not about drinking; it is about community” (164). Adolescents see being in the party scene not only as a social ritual, but also as a place where they can be involved and be accepted. At the core of every adolescent is the longing to belong.

The reality of the party scene, described in HURT, was not surprising, but affirming. It would be silly to deny the research, to not address the problem of adolescents and alcohol. The abuse of alcohol is a difficult problem without a simple solution.
How did I address the alcohol situation in my high school ministry? Honestly addressing the alcohol problem in a youth ministry is a step by step process. There is no perfect program, no overnight fix, or insightful teaching that will automatically get adolescents to stop drinking. It is imperative to remember (although I forget a lot) the transformative power that the Holy Spirit brings, not the youth worker! I handled this alcohol situation with three different techniques.

First, I needed to assess the alcohol usage in the high school ministry. I needed to know when the students were partying and who exactly was partying. I started by asking students a lot of questions both individually and collectively. I also spent time on their MySpace and Facebook pages. MySpace and Facebook are our friends! They give a firsthand perspective of what happens on Friday and Saturday night. At times I wonder if they add to the stories to glorify their alcohol consumption. I had access to the pictures, bulletins, and commentary that described the party from the night before. Oddly enough, my students did not have a problem sharing their alcohol experiences and party stories with me.

For the last segment of my alcohol assessment I gave a survey where each student anonymously answered questions (either in open ended or multiple choice format). Some of the questions were: Where do you get alcohol? How many parties are there in a week? How much are you likely to drink at a party? Why do you drink? Do your friends drink? Walking away from the assessment I realized that 65% of the kids in my group were “partiers” and they were partying on Friday and Saturday nights.

Second, I taught a series on the “Realities of Our Identity.” The goal was to communicate that who we are should not determine what we do to gain acceptance. We are the children of God; we already belong to the Heavenly Father. My students need to put value on their identity in Christ, rather than putting value on the identity imposed on them from the party scene. It is my desire that these students are authentic in who they are as followers of Christ.

Third, our high school ministry team orchestrated a variety of weekend activities that encouraged interaction and connection between the many student clusters. The students also had a chance to spend time with adult leaders. It was important to find adults who genuinely cared about the students; whom the students felt comfortable with. It was clear to me that student clusters party because they love social interaction, connection, and excitement; and these gatherings gave the students those outlets–without the alcohol. My amazing adult leaders were willing to open up their homes and their Friday and Saturday nights to be with the cluster that they were connected to. Whatever the clusters enjoyed doing, the adults would do it with them. For example, clusters could go paint balling, bowling, to the arcade, to a baseball game, to the movies, etc. The intention of these weekend nights was to demonstrate what authentic, sober connection looks like (with their friends and other adults who care for them outside of the church).

Above all, there are no overnight remedies to the alcohol problem. The problem lies not with the alcohol alone, but with a genuine longing for community. Assess your students’ alcohol consumption. Simply accept and lead the partying students from where they are at. Give them opportunities to find a place to belong apart from the party scene. Remember that the change must move from the inside out. We have to trust that God is at work inside of their hearts.

© 2008 – 2010, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.