Bad Article on Youth Ministry

Several days ago (10/22/13) I read an article titled “Youth Groups Driving Christian Teens to Abandon Faith” which came across my Twitter feed. The article found in Charisma Magazine (full text here) critiques a study done by the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, which has supposedly produced ground-breaking research that proves what the article’s title purports; that youth groups are driving Christian teens to abandon the faith. Since it has hit Twitter and made an appearance on the wall of a couple of my friends’ Facebook pages, I thought I would take a harder look at it myself.

The article has huge problems and is completely flawed. Why? Let’s analyze it. First, it is a "five week, three question survey". The survey has problems. It asks three leading questions with unquantifiable multiple choice answers. You can find it for yourself here. This is not how real quantitative research is conducted. How can you quantify anything, let alone come to the sweeping conclusion that youth groups are not just driving young people away from church, but are the source of their abandonment of the faith when you only ask a select group of young people three questions that demand answers like "It's complicated"? That is very poor research. Secondly, the surveyors are biased and are in search of data to confirm an established conclusion they already hold. The survey was conducted by the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, a group that is biased against youth groups, Sunday Schools, etc.; anything that, in their philosophy, separates the family. Their theological bias in this arena will not be entertained here, as it is a tangled web that is not easily unraveled. Additionally, every “survey participant received NCFIC Director Scott Brown's e-book entitled Weed in the Church: How A Culture of Age Segregation Is Destroying the Younger Generation, Fragmenting the Family and Harming Church as well as access to a 50-minute-long documentary entitled Divided: Is Modern Youth Ministry Multiplying or Dividing the Church?” according to Charisma Magazine. This is nothing more than blatant propagandizing of your own base. Suffice it to say, they came at this with a highly biased agenda. Thirdly, NCFIC predominantly surveyed young people in "family integrated/family only" churches - the survey was not made public outside of those circles until Charisma Magazine published their article on 10/22/13. Thus, they garnered biased responses from a base which was already in agreement with their conclusion, for the most part. Fourthly, they misrepresented the Barna Group's research. They cited a statistic that states that "61 percent of today's 20-somethings who had been churched at one point during their teen years are now spiritually disengaged". While Barna’s research may be more accurate, not even Barna concludes that youth groups are causing teens to abandon their faith. NCFIC made an unfounded leap from poor research to the hastily generalized and sweepingly condemnatory assignment of blame on church youth groups. NCFIC factored out a host of other mitigating circumstances, which Barna took into consideration.

There are an insurmountable pile of factors why it seems that such a high percentage of teens who were once active in their churches become “spiritually disengaged” in their 20’s. Trying to ascertain why Barna’s number is so high would take further focused and specialized research; research much deeper than NCFIC’s three question quiz. The end game of NCFIC’s “ground breaking research” is evident; it’s poor research of the worst order. NCFIC put forth that they have done legitimate quantitative research, but have misrepresented themselves with unquantifiable data that does not support their hasty generalization and sweeping conclusion, but is perfectly fit to uphold their illegitimate bias. Church youth groups are not the end all ministry that will save our young people and ensure lives of total dedication to Christ, but then again, neither is abandoning them. Youth ministry is an ever-changing monster that is continually morphing and reforming to meet the needs and reach an ever-changing youth culture. Good youth pastors are hard working ministers who strive to know youth and the youth culture in which they minister. Stripping our churches of youth focused ministry with the naïve belief that youth groups are the “evil queen” of the modern church, let alone that they are the cause of young people supposedly “abandoning the faith” is nothing short of ignorance with a healthy dose of self-absorption.