Megachurch Killed the Youth Group

The Buggles 1980 hit, Video Killed the Radio Star debuted at 0:01 on August 1, 1981 and a more appropriately titled song could not have been selected. Given the technology of the day, everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the much more appealing world of television would permanently transform the music world. In the same way, the megachurch era with all its flashy, consumer-driven production is inadvertently changing youth ministry in America.

A recent study by the Barna Group received a lot of attention from the national media this month. The headlines read ‘Forget Pizza Parties,’ Teens Tell Churches and so on. According to Barna, teen participation in youth group is down across the board. I spent almost a decade working in youth ministry in the local church and this statistic does not surprise me and frankly, it does not bother me either. At its face value, it is easy to blame the recent decline (over 20% in some areas) on lack of deep, spiritual teaching by youth pastors as some have suggested. But to be honest, over-programmed youth groups and shallow teaching have been happening since before I was even in high school. For decades, youth pastors have been paid to entertain teens by trying to see how many marshmallows they can fit in their mouths, asking them to make emotional decisions at camp, and holding iPod giveaways. Granted, some really good spiritual lessons have been taught and every youth pastor can point to dozens of lives changed. But as a whole, youth ministry has not changed from the awkward mixture of fun and discipleship that has been its trademark for generations. So why the decline lately?

I blame the megachurch.

Without getting too much into philosophy of ministry, the youth group exists in a church to offer a fun, hip and exciting alternative to regular church for teenagers. The irony is that most youth group gatherings have the same basic elements as the “adult service” (which can be a horrifying term to the unchurched, btw): music, teaching, announcements. The announcements have little to no spiritual value, the teaching has always been deeper in the main gathering, and the music has always been more vanilla for the adults. Take the Southern Baptist church I attended when I was in high school for example. In my parents’ worship service, they sang a strange mix of hymns and “contemporary” songs (have decided what that means yet?) and the sermon was always expositional and relatively serious. On other side of campus, I was worshiping with guitars and drums and listening to a topical message about taming the tongue.

Over the last two decades, the megachurch movement has dominated the church world.  Music has gotten hipper, sermons have become more watered down (ahem, “relevant”), and overall the “show” has become fine tuned to maximize the Church Attractional Quotient (CQA – I just made that up). Things have changed so much in so many churches that many main services resemble large versions of really hip youth groups from the mid 1990s.

Youth ministry has not changed, the rest of the church has.

The one thing that has not changed is that churches still give the youth budget the Heisman and youth pastors have to piece together a hip worship gathering with few resources. Meanwhile, the church is pumping more money into paying musicians with skinny jeans, state of the art projectors and cool lighting.

Today’s American Christian teenager is left to choose between a hand-me-down hip worship gathering in the youth group or a state of the art worship gathering in the main service. The song selection is the same and the teaching requires the same level of cognitive ability. Even if all things were equal, teens always want to feel and be perceived as older than they are. What better way to accomplish this than to forgo the silly immaturity of the youth group by attending “big church”? Perhaps the most interesting stat is that the smallest change was students attendance in church. A small dip followed by a subtle rise seems to support the idea that teens are choosing church over youth group when compared to other stats.

I do not deny the stats. As a youth pastor, I embrace them and realize that youth ministry needs to adapt and change. The youth pastor of today needs to come up with a new ministry model that includes encouraging students to attend church with their parents and then get something else from the youth ministry. As a person who spends a lot of time in the church communication world, I am indifferent about these stats. If there is truth to my assessment, it means that churches are rolling back the level of maturity that they are calling their crowd to but it also means that they are trying to attract noobs, which is a good thing. I am still uneasy with the consumer-driven approach to church, but have yet to hear or come up with another way in our culture.

The most discouraging thing about the Barna study as far as I can tell is how sharp of  decline there is on the chart asking teens about how often they share the Gospel… 21% decline over the last 2 years. This is the a huge part of the Christian life, but somewhere between youth group and main service we stopped teaching our students that.