Growing up during the past few years, I've found a very different perspective on Christianity than the one I had when I was a child. I've learned new things about the world, new things about my friends, and new things about God. When I studied the Bible and looked at my Faith, I began to move my attention from the common controversial topics like Evolution and Homosexuality and took a much deeper look at Love, Life, and everything God wants from me. Lately, I've also taken to looking at the way my friends and I are maturing, and the way we think of the faith in which we've grown up. There are a number of different issues that Christian teens think about, and a number of helpful and harmful aspects of Church and Youth Groups that Youth Pastors/Ministers often don't understand.
Basic Faith and Open-Mindedness:
I remember a while ago I was at a friends house eating lunch, and we began discussing aliens. That is, life outside of Earth, not the illegal kind. My friends began to suggest compatibilities between theories on life outside of Earth and the Bible. By the end of the discussion, one of my friends jokingly remarked, "Wow. Poor Jesus. How many times did he have to die"?
One part of us was joking around. The other part really wanted to know what everyone else thought about the issue.
It's this sort of conversation that Christian teens are using to think about theology, at least on the rare occasions that they do feel like talking about theology. Inside a Church building or a Bible/Youth class, you will find a quiet group of people that answer the "right" questions each time. What kids say in most Church buildings is rarely an indication of what they think. Because of this, many Youth events or classes I've attended have avoided any potential for open-minded thinking. That's completely fine. There is nothing wrong with simple, absolute truths. However, there is questions inside of a teenage mind that are always brewing, and they are often unable to find the answers to these questions.
Even separation into small, youth-lead groups within the Church doesn't fix this problem, thanks to the (often true) stereotypes about the Church that open discussion is wrong and that they will be punished for speaking openly about touchy subjects. Because of this, teens are left with a gaping void in their lives where they once had a desire to talk about Christianity from unique perspectives.
Bible Class/Youth Groups:
I currently consider myself to be a member of two different Youth Groups at two different Churches. I've found that each one has it's own struggles, but I am most familiar with my older Church and it's nature. We've gone through a sort of changing process as of late, and put emphasis on making class Youth-lead. To do this, we've had groups of students form groups (with one adult) and plan different weeks for class. In almost every case, the success of the class depended on the speaker(s) chosen to teach class. There were a few classes taught by well known and respected men and women, and a few by people who, while still respectable, weren't considered as "Churchy" as the others. What I found after asking my fellow students for input was that there was absolutely no relation between the speaker's status in Big Church and their standing with the Youth during class. One of the classes that the Youth enjoyed most was one where we had several different speakers from very unique backgrounds. Most of these speakers had been in prison at one time or another, and hardly any of them were "popular" Church members but their message really hit us.
When you move Church down to a younger audience, the rules suddenly change.
It's no longer about teaching something that the World wants to know. It's no longer about hot-button issues or following a pattern. From a spiritual perspective, Christians want two things in class: Relevance and Realism. I've found that adult speakers have difficulty finding a balance between the two in class. I would attend Sunday morning Youth gatherings where a speaker talked honestly and effectively about a topic, but was unable to give real-life examples that impacted the youth. Then, on that same week, I might go to an evening Youth gathering on Wednesday, and find that those teaching class gave examples that almost exclusively applied to Youth, but felt very fake and forced. "Love thy Neighbor", wasn't a very easy concept for the Youth to grasp, and "Share the Gospel with your friends and they will become Christians", seemed like a ridiculous, unrealistic, and unhelpful statement.
Good classes always had a speaker that was capable of finding the sweet spot between relevance and realism.
Worship and Spirituality:
Youth trips and retreats have a nasty tendency to force spirituality on the kids. I once went to a Winter Retreat that lasted one day (We left Saturday and returned Sunday), and by the end of Saturday night, everyone in the Youth group was in a position where they felt obligated to engage in a deeply spiritual and life-changing worship, followed by a symbolic activity. As always, I asked around for the opinions of my peers, and the response was always the same: "Yeah, it was cool and everything, but it was like they were trying to make it too 'deep and spiritual' and stuff, even though we didn't feel like it was a big deal."
I can't count the number of times I've been sitting in worship at a Youth event for something like an hour (even if it was good worship) and looking around to see everyone tired and ready to be done, only to hear the words "If you feel compelled by the power of God, stand up!".
The most religious experience we had that night was the pseudo-telepathy of hearing everyone else's mind echo at once "Oh, great, now we ALL have to stand up". Part of this might have been because it was so obvious what we were thinking that we might as well have been reading each other's minds, and part of it might have been because my friend actually whispered to me as we were standing "Oh, great, now we ALL have to stand up".
It's not that teens don't like spiritual experience. It's just that, like I had mentioned above, we value realism and relevance. When teens are forced to pretend they are feeling a spiritual high, their opinion of Youth, their Ministers, the Church in general drops like a rock.
A large part of this comes from the impressions left by lengthy Christian Summer Camps. Youth Ministers and retreat leaders want desperately to mimic the experience given by those camps, but it is simply impossible to do on a two-day retreat or a single Sunday morning worship.
These are the things that, from my experience, Christian teens are feeling and thinking about the world. It's typical for those in charge of Church Youth to think that Church must seem "cooler" for teens to appreciate and understand the message of Christ. On the contrary, we often take this sort of perspective as an insult to our wisdom. As the Christian world begins to fizzle out among teens, a deeper, more serious problem needs to be addressed. Dumbing down Faith for teens isn't going to help. The perpetual shallowness of the world needs to be addressed with depth, not more shallowness.