Faith@Home Youth Ministry Challenge

Mark Holmenwww.faithathome.comTwitter: @markholmen

Pastor, author and missionary to the Faith@Home Movement

Mother 81% 74% Father 61% 50% Pastor 57% 44% Grandparent 30% 29% Sunday School 26% 26% Youth Group 24% 25% Church Camp 20% 28% Retreats 11% 17%

Male Female

Voddie Baucham quotes/comments

The current youth ministry model, where the goal is to evangelize teenagers, disciples teenagers and equip them to go out an make a difference is…•UnBiblical•Antithetical to the Biblical model•And it doesn’t work

Alvin Reid, Raising the Bar

Over the last 30 years we have seen the largest increase in the number of professional youth ministers and youth ministry degrees being handed out and parachurch organizations designed to reach youth AND YETWe have seen the greatest decline in youth baptisms ever during that same 30 year span.

Voddie Baucham quotes/comments

In our goals for youth ministry we never mention parents or that our youth ministry program exists to equip the parents to evangelize, disciple and equip their children to go and make a difference in the world.

The response of Youth Pastors is, “But the parents aren’t doing it.”

And that’s because for 30+ years we have been saying, “We’re trained professionals, give us your kids and please don’t try this at home!”

A Faith@Home Focused Youth Ministry Is…BOTH•Evangelizing & Discipling Youth•Equipping students to be 24/7 F@H followers of ChristAND•Engaging & Equipping Parents AND•Part of a Greater Faith@Home Strategy

Mark Holmenwww.faithathome.comTwitter: @markholmen


Step 1 – Personal Commitment

Step 2 – Raise Awareness

Biblical

Statistical

Deuteronomy 6:3-7aDeuteronomy 6:3-7a

3 Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase

greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you.

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are

to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children.

Deuteronomy 6:7-9Deuteronomy 6:7-9

Talk about them (the commands of God) when you sit at home and when you walk along the

road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the

doorframes of your houses and on your gates.


Talk about them (the commands of God) when you sit at home and when you walk along the

road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the

doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

20 In the future, when your son asks you, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and

laws the Lord our God has commanded you?” 21 tell him: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt,

but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 Before our eyes the Lord sent

miraculous signs and wonders—great and terrible—upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. 23 But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised

on oath to our forefathers.


We need to gather together the impressive data showing that the parent is the primary determinant of a person’s faith, and present it over and over in every way possible until we convince parents of its validity. Until we

do so, parents will continue to visualize themselves as adjuncts to the faith process.

Adjuncts do not necessarily become responsible.

Dolores Curran, “Family Ministry”

A study conducted in 1980 called Young Adolescents and Their Parents involved a national random sample

of eight thousand adolescents whose parents were members of congregations in eleven different

Protestant and Catholic denominations. The study showed that “God, the Bible, or religious things” are

seldom discussed in church homes. Only 10 percent of church families discusses its faith with any degree of

regularity; in 43 percent of the homes in these denominations, faith is never discussed.

Merton P. Strommen and Irene A. Strommen, Five Cries of Parents (Minneapolis: Youth and Fmaily Institue,

1993), p. 134.

A similar study conducted in 1986 involved 7,551 students from 196 randomly selected Catholic

schools. When asked how often their family talks about religious things, only 17 percent of the

student claimed to discuss such topics at least once a week.

Peter L. Benson, Catholic High Schools: Their Impact on Low-Income Students (Washington, DC: National Catholic Educational Association [NCEA],

1986), p. 99.

In 1990 a national sample of youth and adults from six major Protestant denominations was asked the same question. Their response was no better: 35 percent of the youth, ages sixteen to eighteen, said they rarely if ever talked about faith or God with their mother, and 56 percent reported not ever having such discussions with their father. When asked how often they have

devotions or worship as a family, 64 percent reported that their family rarely or never did so. Only 9 percent reported holding family devotions with any degree of

regularity. Peter L. Benson and Carolyn H. Eklin, Effective

Christian Education: A National Study of Protestant Congregations (Minneapolis: Search Institute, 1990),

p. 46.

We discovered that in a typical week, fewer than 10 percent of parents who regularly attend church

with their kids read the Bible together, pray together (other than at meal times) or participate

in an act of service as a family unit.

George Barna, Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions, Gospel Light, Ventura, CA, 2003, p. 78.

61 percent of today’s young adults in their 20’s, though they were churched at some time in their

teen years, are spiritually disengaged in some form or fashion.”

The Barna Group www.barna.org/barna-update/article/16-teensnext-gen/147-most-twentysomethings-put-christianity-on-the-

shelf-following-spiritually-active-teen-years

The Southern Baptist Convention reports they are currently losing 70-88% of the young people after

their freshman year in college...and may never come back

T. C. Pinkney (Vice-President of Southern Baptist Convention) reports that 70% of teenagers involved in church youth groups stop attending church within two years of their high school graduation. (T.C. Pinkney, Report to the Southern Baptist Convention Executive

Committee, Nashville, Tennessee, September 18, 2001).

In another study from the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life, they found 88 percent of the children raised in evangelical homes leave church at the age of 18, never to return. (Southern Baptist Council on Family Life report to Annual Meeting of the Southern

Baptist Convention, 2002, www.sbcannualmeeting.net/sbc02/newsroom/newspage.asp?

ID=261)

In one study, 90% of youth active in high school church programs drop out of church

by their second year of college

Reggie McNeal, The Present Future (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, 2003), p. 4.) citing youth ministry specialist Dawson MacAlister

As is obvious from these percentages, faith sharing is not happening today in most

families of the church. It seems as though parents do not recognize their role in the

faith growth of their children.

Merton P. Strommen and Richard A. Hardel, Passing on the Faith, Saint Mary’s Press, Winona,

MN, 2000 p. 14.

27%

•Percentage of churched youth who view their mom as being “very religious”.

48%

•Percentage of churched youth who view their dad as being “very religious”.

23%

•Percentage of churched youth who have experienced EITHER family devotions, prayer or Bible reading in the home.

Search Institute ECE Study

•Percentage of churched youth who have experienced a family service project.

29%

•Percentage of churched youth who have talked with mom about faith.

28%

•Percentage of churched youth who have talked with dad about faith.

13%

Together, parents and churches have settled into a destructive codependent relationship. Parents,

with little inclination and few high-quality resources to devote to the spiritual nurture of their

children, have largely abdicated the job to the church. And the church has readily taken on a

task that was originally mandated in Scripture to the parents of children. Jack Eggar in his Foreword for Rock Solid Kids by Larry Fowler, Gospel Light,

Ventura, CA, 2004, p. 8.

The statistics show the increasing number of parents—mothers and fathers alike—who renounce their responsibility to be spiritual

leaders in the home. This lack of responsibility comes at a high cost not only to children being neglected but to society

as a whole. Merton P. Strommen and Richard A. Hardel, Passing on the Faith

Step 3 – Develop a Methodology

Right & Wrong Way

Weave It Into Your Youth Ministry

Step 4 – Maintain It

Annual Assessment & Evaluation

Keep on Keeping On

Tools To Help

Awareness – Church + Home & FB@H Mom/Dad

Methodology – Take It Home & FB@H, Devotions, Prayer

Maintain – F@H Network & Small Groups

Mark Holmen


Keys

1.Language

2.A part of the mission/vision/strategy

3.Where your treasure is commitment’

4.Long term commitment

5.Connection to children’s ministry

6.Sr. Pastor/Pulpit support

Traps

1.It’s messy business

2.It starts slow

3.Expect resistance

4.It’s hard to measure/evaluate

5.I’m not experienced enough or old enough