You know what this is.
You walk into a church and faintly hear the loud drums and guitar coming from somewhere in the background. You look down a hallway and see a dark room with fancy strobe lights shining out of it. Above the loud music you can hear the chatter of a number of people; the conversations aren't really deep and seem to have little to no purpose, but everyone is very animated. You see a 30-something young man in skinny jeans and a v-neck shirt walk into the room with an iPad in his hand.
There's no need to guess what this is. It's obviously youth group.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that when God told the church to mentor the next generation He had fancy smoke and lights in mind and said "You can only teach them if you wear skinny jeans and have a cool hair style."
I've noticed in a number of places that most youth groups seems to look the same. They have cool lights, a cool preacher, a cool band, cool games, all the latest technology. They all scream the same thing: "WE FIT IN WITH YOU!" We're trying so hard to fit in with the culture that we've altered and dumbed down the truth of the Bible and God's standards. We want the kids to come to the church, but have we taught them how to stay in the church? If you look at the statistics you'll find that "70 percent of 23-30 year olds stopped attending church regularly for at least a year between ages 18-22" (according to lifewayresearch.com). We've got to be doing something wrong for the percentage to be so high.
Maybe teens want more than what society--and the church--are giving them. The point of bringing people to Jesus is to show them that there's so much more for us than what the world says. But lately, we've been so desperate to show them that we're just normal people that we haven't shown people the radical love and life that God has for us. Jesus says to be "in the world but not of it", but it seems that in order to get people to come to church we must be exactly like the world; just put an "I love Jesus" sticker over the Abercrombie & Fitch advertisement.
If you look in the Bible the most influential people were never the ones who blended in with everyone else. They were the ones who had intelligence, boldness, and a radical way of living. Their life set them apart from the rest of the world. And the church grew drastically because of it! In Acts 2,Peter spoke to a crowd about the miraculous ways of God and 3,000 people were saved! Peter didn't have the smoky lights, the cool illustrations, the dubstep remixes, or the awesome hair-do and yet people listened to him and accepted Jesus!
I'm not saying that lights and cool hair and skinny jeans are wrong, but maybe we're going about sharing the Gospel the wrong way. I honestly think that if we showed people how the radical love of Jesus can bring them the life that they want and need, they would accept it. It worked for Peter, I'm sure it could work for us too.
