Youth Groups: A Good Idea or a Bad Idea?

You’re probably right, Aaron. Based on the comments, I’ve realized that I’m not necessarily speaking about the same thing as some. For me, youth group conjures up images of an almost separate entity from the church that is very program driven. Most often, the interaction between the teens and the adults of the church are limited and infrequent.

We have separate Sunday school classes for middle schoolers and high schoolers at my church. And we encourage parents to help foster friendships between the teens. Other than that, as a church, our energy and budget is geared towards fostering discipleship in ways that keep the teens near the adults - being reformed Baptists affects our ministry philosophy in this area, too.

My experience with youth groups was very positive. When I was a teenager there were no Christian Schools (at least not in the northeast) so I went to a public school. I started going to a Bible believing Baptist Church when I was 15. I got saved there after attending for about a year. We did have some fun outings but mostly we got together with other like mined youth groups for preaching, food, and fellowship. I loved it. Most of my dating experience was at youth groups. Of course there were some kids who were just there for the fun stuff but I saw a real revival in our church that started in the youth group. I’m sure there were some kids who faked salvation but it was very real to me. Our church was very evangelistic but definitely not easy-believism. A lot of young people got saved through our youth group.

I’ve seen the contact with adults thing overdone in both directions…. too much too little… Or just not good quality interaction regardless of the quantity.

What I like to see now, I really didn’t adequately prioritize back when I was “doing youth ministry” — teens and adults serving together.

Nobody does youth discipleship perfectly.

@Sarah, thanks for sharing that. My own experience growing up in church wasn’t that good but overall was still very positive .

One thing a distinct “group” can provide is opportunities for leadership while still too young to lead in adult ministry.

“Nobody does youth discipleship perfectly.”

That’s a statement I’m in 100% agreement with. Because of that, I thank God for brothers and sisters in Christ who strive to disciple teens well, even if we disagree on some of the specifics.

I was a youth minister - but the situation was quite a bit different than the typical American youth group. I was in a Chinese speaking church where the young people spoke English and their parents spoke Chinese (with some broken English). So if you want to observe problems between parents and children, that was the place to do it.
I did what I knew - teaching the Bible, meeting with people, practicing hospitality and getting close in the lives of the people. I have never been big on games and activities. I never was that kind of guy. And I agree with you that youth ministry (with few exceptions) does more to separate people out of churches than it does to bring churches together.

I did it out of linguistic necessity. And out of that small group, as far as I can tell (I haven’t kept track of all of them) - only one openly practices anything similar to biblical Christianity. But the one was worth it.

I was surprised by something that was missing from John Ellis’s initial post. I was saved at 19, so I missed youth groups. My oldest is 12, and is one year from “youth” activities. So, I have no direct experience with them. My wife however experienced “hell on earth” not being in the “in group.” I have witnessed this with the youth groups of churches I have attended (the ones that had them) as well. If you are “cool” like John Ellis apparently was, you experienced what he wrote. What about the youth that didn’t act like that? The ones he did love God. Who did obey their parents. Who did listen to the sermon. I have seen them, and they are often rejected by the “in crowd.”

The “in crowd” problem is something exists with or without youth groups. The same thing happens at school or anywhere else youth (or adults, for that matter, though less frequently) gather.

In my experience, an organized youth group with godly leadership has the opportunity to confront this problem far more directly than is possible in a less structured setting. You can literally break up the cliques and team cool people up with not-cool people etc. The key to a healthy youth culture though, is godly student leaders. When you have a few strong teens who respect everyone, that tends to spread.

I’ve seen it happen more than once (and saw it fall apart later after the student leadership graduated or moved away.)

Most of the non “cool” kids, the ones who listened to the sermons and didn’t rebel, are either progressive “Christians” or they no longer identity as Christians.

The “cool” kids (I wouldn’t describe my junior and senior high self as cool) didn’t really ostracize the non “cool” kids. Frankly, there weren’t very many of them, to begin with. My youth group, the youth groups we partnered with for activities like skate nights, my Christian school, and the Christian camp I worked at were mostly populated by kids who rarely listened to the sermons, secretly listened to rock music, and basically lived for themselves (the majority would be pulled in and out of overt rebellion, and they were often conflicted).

The non “cool” kids couldn’t be trusted with certain information about our activities, of course, but we considered them our friends, too. Interestingly, the group that has proven the most faithful to God over the years as a group were the majority middle - the kids who listened to the sermons some time, felt conflicted about things like the music they liked, and believed that there was a behavioral line they shouldn’t cross even if they crossed it from time to time. All of that would be interesting to explore further, I think.

A lot of the discussion in this thread is merely anecdotal. I’ve been involved in very small churches pretty well all my life, except for a brief sojourn in Mecca. It’s really hard to generalize from individual experiences to come up with wise advice for anyone in leadership.

For our part, we work at encouraging disciple-making in the Sunday school and home, and we try to provide ways for Christian kids to have fun as kids in a Christian context. We’ve lost some over the years, and kept probably the majority. But we aren’t talking big numbers either way.