I love the Church of Jesus Christ. I love the Lord we worship, I love the people, I love to reach out to those outside of Jesus Christ. I fully and completely embrace the mandate given by the Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and the implementation of that mandate in the Book of the Acts. Ever since the Day of Pentecost, Christians have been doing just what we have been commanded, which is making it plain that the blood of Jesus Christ washes away ALL sin, and any and every sinner, regardless of deed, can and will be forgiven when appropriating what Christ did at the cross to themselves by faith (John 3:14-18; Ephesians 2:1-8).
The Church (the Body of Christ) has grown, and down through the years, for all of our issues, backbiting, hypocrisy, apathy, etc., has also remained consistent, and this is only a testament to the grace of God, whose will and power overcomes all, even His own people's obstinacy.
In American cities there are churches virtually on every block, be they store-front, "mid-size", or megachurch-size, and the Gospel is preached within many of these churches, and various ministries go beyond the sacred walls with the good news of the Cross of Christ to poor souls that have been hurt and bruised and broken by a cruel and dark world.
However, I have noticed another mission field come to the fore recently. But that mission field I am referring to is not skid row, or "the low end" (for all my Chicago people), or the "hundreds"; the mission field I am referring to is within the American Church and it is comprised of the youth.
I know, I know; I can hear someone saying, "I don't know what you're talking about; my church has an awesome youth ministry and a great youth pastor." I don't dispute that. My church also has a youth ministry as well as an exceptional minister—an Elder in the church—charged with the affairs of that ministry. However, as the Lord continues to call more and more of the broken souls out of darkness, many of whom are young, the Church has to be in a regular state of examination and evaluation of its efforts as it ministers to this particular demographic. Churches (generally speaking) are becoming older. And many churches have adhered to a time-tested, time-proven method of ministering to the youth of the respective congregations. However, as the issues that plague families and society continue to both intensify and change, I truly believe that some of those traditional methods of ministering to the youth either need to be discarded of subjected to complete overhaul.
And just so we're clear, I am not advocating abandoning preaching and teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, repentance and holiness out of the King James Bible when I mention "change". What I am referring to is changing, or adjusting, some of the methods and mannerisms in which we administer the Gospel to the youth of the church, who've heard much "church talk" and "church jargon" but perhaps never the Gospel.
Especially in the Pentecostal and Apostolic churches, issues of sex and sexuality have not been topics of regular discussion. And that was perfectly fine for the World War 2 generation and the "Baby Boomers", but now, with the children of "Generation X", that's not so fine, mainly in light of the unspeakably pornographic and hypersexualized and ultra-violent nature of contemporary American culture. For my generation it was The Benny Hill Show and the dirty magazines we had to go out of our way to get; for the next generation it was B.E.T. Uncut and "big pimpin'" and cough syrup; now, it's Molly and Xanax, cell phone pornography, "sexting", Empire and Bad Girls Club. Think about the hours upon hours of television and radio and internet and music and secular (essentially atheistic) public education our youth are subjected to. We can't fool ourselves into thinking that a couple of hours of church on Sunday (7-8 if you're Apostolic or Pentecostal) is enough to counteract the (roughly) 162 other hours of the week basically devoid of structured worship. Those things that the youth are plagued with today would have been unimaginable to a child of the nineteen-thirties or forties.
Henceforth, as the youth have more and more media and electronics to become ever-increasingly self-absorbed in, the Church must employ the means through which to pull them from extreme self-absorption, sexual confusion, perversion, and promiscuity, drug dependency (and tendency from addict parents) from birth, not to mention the power of the music that many listen to which is more programming than entertainment.
The hopelessness that rules the day currently is taking an exacting, demoralizing toll on the youth, for the combination of joblessness, disease, violence, and the breakdown of the family is forcing upon them a worldview with which the only way to cope is with a "nothing to lose" mentality which values nothing, expects nothing of lasting, true worth. I realize, of course that there are outstanding exceptions to the rule, but what I'm trying to say is the magnitude of the youth's issues can no longer be sufficiently dealt with with the regular routine, without directly and aggressively addressing the specifics of their ordeal in reality and in the light of Scripture.
Those of us that are older need to reassess our interaction with the youth within the Church, that is, if we are interacting with them at all, as many don't. My own pastor has admonished us about sometimes treating the young people of the Church as if they're invisible. In many churches, the youth aren't even engaged. That is a tragedy; it is also a church's death sentence, for a Biblically sound youth must carry on the work of the Gospel Ministry in subsequent generations.
We need to "reeducate" ourselves so that we can understand their language, find some common ground, step out of our comfort zones and, frankly, the rut many of us have fallen into as we've gone about "doing church". In addition to some real reassessment, I believe there is sin we need to repent of so that the most important component of engaging the youth is powerfully present in us, namely, the Holy Ghost.
Perhaps the reason we're losing our youth is because sin is in the midst of many churches and we can't be led by the Holy Spirit in this matter because of it. We must shed all hypocrisy. Many church youth are greatly turned off by the hypocrisy of their parents and church leaders who live one way inside the church but another in the home or outside of the church. Many of us are living very compromised, powerless lives and we wonder why so many leave the church and don't return for many years, if they return at all. I praise God for the youth in my church that do return of their own volition, because their parents have deposited the Word of God deep within them and they have reinforced the validity of Scripture with lives in the home that have proved their own belief in the Scripture. At the same time though, I grieve over the many others that do not return, who embrace the world rather than Christ, in part, because they were never properly engaged and discipled, as Apostle Paul discipled Timothy; as Elijah discipled Elisha; as Moses discipled Joshua.
Discipling requires the discipler and the discipled to get to know each other, to spend one-on-one time with each other consistently and it takes the leading of the Holy Spirit. Discipling requires a great deal of transparency, and if the discipler is living a life of sin then he or she will be exposed and will lose the disciple. Large group teaching has its place, but if the Church is going to reach the youth, who are being attacked ferociously by the Enemy, our sin must be repented of and we have to get back to the business of discipling in this harvest-ready mission field.
