Reciprocal Church

Becoming a Community Where Faith Flourishes Beyond High School

Sharon Galgay Ketcham

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780830873883
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

The church faces an unprecedented loss of rising generations.Young adults who were active and engaged in the local church are more frequently leaving the community behind after high school. What can we do?Responding to these concerning statistics, Sharon Galgay Ketcham reflects theologically on the church community and its role in forming faith. She exposes problems in the way leaders conceive of and teach about the relationship between personal faith and the local church, and offers fresh solutions in the form of values and practices that can shape a community into a place where faith will flourish in those both young and old.

PART 1

A THEOLOGICAL
VISION FOR THE
RECIPROCAL CHURCH

1

EATING MELON
ON TUESDAYS

YOUNG PEOPLE AND FAITH

THE FAMILIAR REPORTS ARE LOUD AND CLEAR. We hear the news on Facebook, in our Twitter feed, and through the mainstream news. It’s the new mantra. Youth ministry practices are not consistently supporting a sustained faith beyond high school.1 For those of us who have worked with young people for decades, this news is difficult to swallow because we see God working powerfully in the lives of teenagers. In fact, we can see familiar faces forming a collage worth celebrating.

Anthony has no religious background. Because his parents feel pressured by their own religious upbringings, they want to raise Anthony without any religious baggage. They live down the street from our church but don’t know anyone who goes there. Anthony admires the old, stone frame of the building and its dominating steeple. Every time his family drives by the church, he quietly prays, “God, are you in there?” As he describes it, one day God answers and beckons him inside.

I meet Anthony that day. He comes into the worship service late and sits in the back. After a polite name exchange, he says, “God told me to come here.” Anticipation fills his eyes and tears roll down my checks. For the next three years, Anthony responds to God’s invitation, which brings him right to Jesus. He encounters God’s deep love and a community trying, even if imperfectly, to demonstrate this love to him. Anthony is part of everything—Bible studies, service to the community, and teaching children’s Sunday school. If it happens at the church, Anthony is part of it. Twenty years later, Anthony continues to respond to God’s invitation as a social worker caring for foster kids. Anthony defies the latest reports.

So does Cassandra. She is a lively middle schooler who is always ready to tell a funny story. As long as she can remember, her family came to the church. She knows every crevasse of the building and thinks it is a second home. Her face shines a constant smile, sometimes in delight and sometimes in mischief. In any case, her joy is part of the church’s wallpaper. Then there is a messy divorce, and the secure foundation beneath her feet cracks. At first, all she does is cry. Her image of a benevolent God who gave her a happy life is gone. Poof. Over the next year, she wanders around the church as if looking for something, which she is. She is lost.

One night after youth group, a youth leader invites Cassandra to follow a simple guitar chord progression on the piano. With years of piano lessons in hand, Cassandra soon joins him leading music at youth group. There are no deep talks or heartfelt exchanges. But there is companionship as the two of them coordinate their chords. Reflecting back, Cassandra describes how learning to lead people in worship provides space to grieve, heal, and reimagine God in the messiness of life. Today, Cassandra is a pastor. She still leads worship from the piano and preaches powerful sermons full of compassion and hope amid life’s disarray.

Perhaps you too can identify faces that would similarly fill a collage of young people who grow up to be maturing followers of Christ. These individuals know life’s challenges, but they persistently follow Jesus. Their stories make us want to deny the reverberating news reports, because their lives testify to God’s transforming work among us.

Add to this the long list of deeply committed adults who devote tremendous time, energy, and resources to young people. Over the past century this dedication has led to rapid growth in the field of youth ministry. Church and parachurch youth ministries of all stripes (some with hefty budgets) have multiplied. Youth workers are increasingly well equipped, some earning specialized undergraduate and graduate degrees. Curriculum and training events are widely available. No longer are these events primarily selling games and techniques. They also offer deep insight and prompt thoughtful and entrepreneurial ministry initiatives. Scholars in theology and the social sciences publish in academic journals focused on youth ministry. All of this sounds like clear, even measurable, success. With our collage of faces in hand, we want to reject the recent reports.

Unfortunately, there is a second collage filled with important faces. Here we see young people, many now adults, for whom we had every hope. They had transforming encounters with Jesus, participated in lots of programs and events, and now appear disinterested at best, antagonistic at worst. Sadly, this second collage confirms the reports. Eduardo is front and center in my collage.

Like Cassandra, Eduardo’s parents raise him in the church, and he comes to everything we do. He has the gift of evangelism and brings packs of friends to youth group. Eduardo loves to tell people about Jesus’ love. He is a deep thinker and easily engages in nonthreatening conversations about faith and life with teachers and classmates at school. Moved by Jesus’ compassion, he reaches out to high school friends who live on the margins. People’s lives are touched by his thoughtfulness and care. Eduardo inspires us all.

Then he goes to college and never looks back. Eduardo decides that the people at youth group have encountered Jesus, but he really has not. It was all just a phase. Christianity is no longer on his radar. The news reports are talking about Eduardo—and Ava.

As a teenager, Ava has a quiet presence as if she is taking it all in. Ava chooses small groups over the big events. She wants close friends and authentic relationships. The same personality traits show up in her faith. Ava loves to pray. She prays for her friends, for our troubled world, and to hear God’s voice. During her senior year, Ava’s dad is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and dies within four months. We walk every step of the road with Ava, especially the dark months of grief.

Somewhere along this agonizing journey, Ava stops praying. Today her Twitter feed is filled with links to articles or posts that mock Christianity. Her real encounters with God now live in a history she denies. Ava validates the reports.

Even with our collages filled with maturing Christians and youth ministry’s measurable successes, the reports confirm, at least in part, what we know to be true: Youth ministry practices are not consistently supporting faith beyond high school graduation.

It is like we are standing at the edge of cliff overlooking a ravine. We have resource-loaded backpacks and arrive at the scene committed for the long haul, but there is no bridge to get across. Often we are left feeling defeated and even blamed. Why is there such a deep divide between our increased effort, devotion, and resources, and numbers of young people leaving the church behind?

PLENTY OF SOLUTIONS

We don’t lack for solutions. In fact, youth workers are at their best when we need creative problem solving. I see four models among the present solutions: the physician, the archaeologist, the engineer, and the coach. First, some tackle the problem like physicians who hope to identify the illness. This group stays on top of recent social science research to determine key problems or vulnerabilities. Once discovered, they write a prescription in light of the data. This approach helps adults know what to avoid, stop, or supplement.

The second model is similarly tied to the data but functions more like an archaeologist. Instead of looking for what is wrong, they dig around for what is right. They ask questions such as, When young people maintain a maturing faith after high school, what are the contributing factors? Upon discovery of hidden artifacts, creative programming seeks to make the findings relevant.

A third model involves acting like an engineer. Since present practices in youth ministry appear ineffective, this group is solution oriented. The situation requires ingenuity so they can remodel youth ministries around a specific theory or ideal. Rebuilding from the ground up is the task.

Finally, there are those who choose the coach model. They declare the problem is not what we are doing but a lack of training. This group blows a whistle and calls us to action. Increasing our effort, ability, and commitment based on what we already know will ensure we win the game.

Each of these models is helpful and offers us valuable insight and resources. We do need to diagnose the problem, discover key artifacts, redesign ministries, and train according to what we know. Yet each also has inherent problems.

MELON CONSUMPTION

The physician and archaeologist depend so much on the data that the social science lens takes precedence over the theological. Here’s an exaggerated example. Imagine researchers demonstrate that young people who eat melon on Tuesdays are among those with sustained faith. In response, ministries focus on increasing melon consumption. Small groups move to Tuesdays. They serve melon balls, melon smoothies, and melon pizza. The benefits of melon become the focus of leader training. Parents receive melon samples to take home. Books about creative ways to integrate melon eating on Tuesdays line the youth worker’s bookshelf. Budgets shift to allow for the purchase of large quantities of melon. Curriculum is available and can be downloaded weekly. Here’s the problem. Did anyone ask what eating melon on Tuesdays has to do with Christianity?

Melon eating might just align with the faith, but the gospel is likely to shape why or how we eat melon. Yes, a silly example. But I bet you can fill in the blank with popular data findings we grab as if they solve everything. The information we gain from the data is important, but decisions based on this information must undergo theological reflection.2 What we learn from the social sciences needs to become a point of reference for us to imagine the faith in our day, rather than adopting the information without regard to our theological convictions.

Additionally, the physician and archaeologist tend to ignore the postmodern emphasis on context, the specific setting we all live in. When we follow the goal of modernity and try to universalize answers, we miss the uniqueness of the particular. For example, if we place every leaf we see in the category “leaves,” we show what is common among all leaves. There is truth to this since most grow on trees or bushes and fall to the ground in autumn. But if you have ever seen New England in the fall, you know this minimizes the brilliant array of colors among the leaves. To put leaves in one category diminishes the brilliant yellow of a hickory, the vibrant red of a sugar maple, and the earthy orange of a white oak. Similarly, the physician and archaeologist look for answers that morph into a universalizing answer. We already know that one-size-fits-all programs do not work and can potentially be destructive. The best program rises out of the specific community rather than being imposed on the community. The ingenuity of engineers inspires us. When they remodel ministries according to new theories, this generates hope and excitement. Yet often new models don’t take past achievements seriously. Instead, time-tested youth ministry principles collapse amid the demolition rather than being integrated into the remodeled ministry. Important factors such as the prevalence of adolescent subculture, the importance of age-appropriate learning, or the variety of church traditions are often forgotten.

Unfortunately, the coach’s rally cry, although genuine, is hard to hear and feels a bit like denial when real faces continue to fill our collages. Yes, we have done many things really well in youth ministry, and there is much to celebrate. Yet the anxiety-producing labels filling our newsfeeds require attention: the dones are simply fed up with Christianity, the nones claim no religious affiliation, and the spiritual but not religious welcome the divine but have no use for the institutional church.3 Each label represents a family member or friend we care about. For some of us, these labels are us. Simply trying harder or committing more resources is not the solution.

A CALL FOR THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION

Amid the present solutions, other areas of research are taking precedence over the theological. When this happens, churches end up eating melon on Tuesdays and miss the opportunity to reflect on our theology and its influence on ministry practices. How might our beliefs be shaping, maybe even causing, the worrisome reports? There are multiple theological questions to be asked once we begin ...