How do we engage young people in the faith? What can we do to keep them in the church? What will they be interested in and how can we use that to tell them about Jesus? How can we keep their attention?
We could throw their phones in the sea. Or, if that’s off the table, and I’m no expert in youth work or teenagers, my suggestion is this:
Give them the gospel. Give them the Bible. Give them meat.
This last summer I attended, for the first time, the UK’s biggest Christian Youth Festival, Newday. Around 11,500 people gathered in a Norfolk field for a week, from churches all across Western Europe. Many met Jesus for the first time. Many were physically healed. Many more built deep and important friendships with others from their churches.
It had all the trappings you’d expect, the worship music was occasionally like a rave, the bass does cut through you like a Chinook flying overhead, and the tent all 11,500 of us sat on the floor of was ludicrously large. They love to be silly and laugh at stupid things and prat about to make their friends laugh at silly things. Some of the content leans into that, like you’d expect for something aimed at teenagers.
However, look slightly beyond that and I saw thousands of teenagers joyously singing rich worship songs full of deep theological truth, or often just singing the Bible to each other. I saw thousands of teenagers carefully take notes during long preaching of the Bible (40+ minutes—none of this ‘people can’t concentrate for more than 20 minutes on a Sunday nonsense, please); yes, they were contextualised for them, but we had several serious expositions of the riches of Christ from the Scriptures. Even the messages which weren’t strictly expositional were direct, fierce opposition to the idols that particularly affect that age group. There was no ear-tickling to be found.
That in and of itself is fascinating: they gave them meat. They gave them the Bible. They gave them the gospel.
Perhaps we should do the same ourselves. Maybe the Bible is weird and interesting enough to engage your 15-year-olds. Maybe its weird and interesting enough to engage your 51-year-olds. Maybe if you gave it to them, you’d find yourself calling them all to repent of their cultural idols. Maybe you could do that every week while singing some rich worship songs that lead us to sing the Bible to each other.
It sounds like I’ve invented something very special… maybe we could call it ‘church’?
Newday would be very clear that they aren’t the church, I was heartened to hear multiple explanations of the primacy of the local church and that the listening teenagers needed to work out their response to various things in their local church setting. That’s as it should be.
I’m not even saying that we should learn from Newday: I suspect that level of bass would cause my small town to riot in the streets. I suspect most readers of my blog were already keen to give their churches meat, so there’s not even a lesson here about confidence-raising.
What Newday does provide us with is a wonderful worked example of something important. The demographic that we’re most likely to be told cannot engage in church without some kind of pandering to is our teenagers. It’s nonsense. Do we need contextualisation? Absolutely. So does everyone in your church. Either way, give them meat.
This isn’t a youth work application, I wouldn’t know what to tell you about youth work, this is a church application: give your people the Bible. Give them the Bible in the songs we sing. Give them the Bible in our contributions as we worship together. Give them the Bible in your preaching. Give them the Bible on Sundays, give them the Bible in the week. Give them the Bible.
Don’t shy away from difficult things, talk about them. Talk about them with pastoral sensitivity and with an awareness of how it’ll land, but don’t allow that to lead to nuance yourself away from actually saying anything.
Of course, I could write this differently, because by ‘give them the Bible’ I really mean something else, bigger and deeper and more vital: whatever you do, give them Jesus.
Every part of what you do on a Sunday should preach the gospel. This isn’t just ‘in case there is someone unsaved among us;’ firstly, it’s likely that multiple people who are regular members of your church are unsaved. Secondly, we all need the gospel every week. That isn’t just because ‘some people haven’t really grasped it,’ I need the gospel every week. I need to be offered Jesus as the balm to my soul. That’s what preaching is for. That’s what the church is for. Please, give them meat, by which I mean: give them Jesus.
Photo by Kyle Mackie on Unsplash
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