The first half of this post was taken from ChristianityToday.com which posted a thought-provoking article titled, “Is the Era of Age Segmentation Over?” Read the Article here.

Youth Segregation

The statistics are grim. Rainer Research estimates that 70 percent of young people leave the church by age 22. Barna Group argues that the figure increases to 80 percent by age 30. The Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest denomination, recently observed that growth in their churches is failing to keep up with the birth rate. Taken together, these findings suggest a startling fact: not only are we failing to attract younger worshipers, we’re not holding on to the ones we have.

As executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary and a former youth pastor, Kara Powell has her eyes on the youth drop out trend. She is currently in the midst of a three-year College Transition Project, a study that involves over 400 youth group graduates and is focused on understanding how parents, churches, and youth ministries can set students on a trajectory of lifelong faith and service. Though research is ongoing, it is already revealing a promising pattern: youth involved in intergenerational relationships in church are showing promise for stronger faith in high school and beyond.

Leadership editors Marshall Shelley and Brandon O’Brien spoke with Kara about her research and what it means for the local church.

The following response is from: Pastor Julio Guarneri, Getsemani Baptist Church.

This is indeed a good article.  I believe that there is much value in having an intergenerational approach to church not only for youth but also for children for the reasons stated in this article and for other reasons as well.

I don’t think the answer is to “cancel youth ministry” per say, but to balance youth ministry.  I do believe in the value of age-grading in some aspects of church, such as Sunday School, but I have regretted the extreme segmentation that some churches have where everything that the children, youth and adults do is completely separate.  It’s almost like having three different churches.

Some of the things we at Getsemani are doing in this area are:

• insuring that Sunday morning worship is intergenerational; (i have fought against children’s chapel!  we provide extended session care for babies through 4’s, so 5-year-olds and up come to worship)
• use youth in the regular praise band and tech team on Sunday mornings;
• use youth and singles as ushers (last Sunday, for the first time, we used an extended family as ushers);
• our Sunday night experience combines singles and other adults; (singles are an important link to youth ministry in our church since they do several things together and since many of the youth workers come from that segment)
• we are involving more parents in youth ministry, in addition to the singles who are youth workers;
• our weekly Wednesday night ministry provides a worship experience for youth & singles (called “fusion”) and a separate venue for adult prayer meeting; however, once a month, the adult prayer meeting joins the youth & singles venue and we have what we call “total fusion;”
• we are starting a one-on-one mentoring ministry for new comers where one adult will be matched with one youth, and, in some cases, where one older youth will be matched with a younger youth;
• our new comers class is intergenerational;
• we celebrate events in the lives of individual youth in worship, the printed prayer list of the church and the church bulletin.  this allows adults to know names and to be aware of what goes on in the lives of youth;I’m sure we still have a long way to go, but so far, by God’s grace, we are able to retain a great majority of our youth beyond high school graduation, and many beyond.

Comment on this topic with your own reflections below.  We would be glad to comment there too!

• Hispanic Youth Ministry