Is your church youth-friendly?

Most church members would probably answer “yes”—a typical church has some sort of youth ministry program and probably a few mission trips or other events for students to participate in. But beyond the presence of those programs, does your congregation do a good job of welcoming young people and students into the full body of the church?

An article at Legacy Youth Ministry Resources by Steve Miller looks at a recent study that asked 10,000 students to rate the ten factors that most influence their commitment to church. The results are worth considering and not always what you’d expect—high-tech entertaining worship and music rank much lower on the list than compelling teaching and good old-fashioned quality relationships with the pastor and other church leaders.

Next up is an essay at StudentSoul.org about helping students get to church—there’s a lot your church can do to help students physically get to church, and once they’re there, to help them get connected to what your ministry is all about.

Take a look through these articles and ask yourself how your church would rate against these criteria. And if you want to do a bit more reading on the topic, see Youth Ministry Exchange’s review of Choosing Church: What Makes a Difference to Teens, a book that delves much more deeply into the question of “what attracts young people to a church?”

By: Andy. This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 4:18 pm and is filed under church, Youth Ministry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.