Stand up for Youth:
A Special Report

Church Needs to Meet Youth
Where They Are, Teens Say

by Sharon Sheridan

The church is a place of safety, community and moral development. It also can be intimidating, exclusive and irrelevant.

That's how a sampling of young adults from around the nation describe what's best — and worst — about the institutional church. Their solutions for making churches more welcoming to young people include increasing liturgical variety, expanding opportunities for youth participation in worship and planning, and relating religion to everyday life.

How adults view and interact with teens makes a big difference.

Often, adults underestimate teens' maturity level, said Audrey Korte, 17, a parishioner at Trinity Episcopal Church on-the-Green, New Haven, Conn., and a freshman at the University of Kansas. "It's really difficult to go to something and be treated like you're 10 years old, still."

Many church youth groups talk about Bible passages but not about daily issues affecting students, she said. "They fail to work with the students on making connections between what's going on in the prayer book and the Bible and what's going on in Columbine [High School in Colorado]," where two students shot 12 other students and a teacher to death, then killed themselves.

"Teenagers need to see that God is relevant in the world," Korte said. "They need somebody ... to work with them on issues of everyday life, and they need somebody to show them how God kind of fits into those issues, and that's where I think the church is lacking big-time in most of the places that I've been. It can't just be about pancake suppers and talking about the Bible and your annual hiking trip with the youth group."

The church can be "a sanctuary for some kids that are having problems, a place where they're listened to — and that's definitely a place where the church is lacking," Korte said. "It's not a place where kids are listened to, for the most part. And that's something that congregations have to work on."

That's something the Diocese of Minnesota does well, said Hawthorne, Wis., resident Andrew White, 18, who attends St. Andrew's Episcopal Church by-the-Lake in Duluth, Minn.

"I know in a lot of places, youth feel like they're only partial members of the church," he said. "While that still happens in Minnesota, I think that a lot of youth have been feeling much more empowered over the last four years because we do have a diocesan youth advisory network."

The group, composed mostly of young people, takes an active role in planning youth ministries at the state level, said White, who also served on the national Episcopal Youth Event design team. The adults on the diocesan committee "take a very low-key presence in the meeting — just kind of a grounding mechanism for us."

This surprised him, he said, noting that in school organizations "the adult advisers have taken a very assertive role in making sure things are done their way. In the church of Minnesota, they don't do that."

He'd like the church to address issues of concern to teens, such as premarital sex and homosexuality. He sees the church's role as facilitator: raising issues and offering guidance on how to answer them on a faith basis. Being allowed to discuss issues openly "just makes for a healthier atmosphere."

Churches also should offer lots of fun youth activities, said Kate Kelly, 18, who belongs to Trinity Episcopal Church, Newport, R.I., and led the junior choir at St. John's, Barrington. But end meetings with a Bible study or compline, she suggested. "If you have an evening meeting, it doesn't have to be all fun stuff. You can talk about God."

Encourage participants to bring their friends, she added. "If it's something fun and cool that kids want to do, they won't be ashamed to say, 'I'm going to church.'"

Kelly believes it's being young at heart and able to relate to teens that truly counts. "It can be [someone] older as long as you're willing to goof around and have fun and act like a 15-year-old and remember what it was like to be a 15-year-old."

"It's important to have adults around you who aren't your parents," she noted. "Your parents are supposed to say they love you and they support you."

Camp counselors, clergy, youth group leaders or other church parents can provide Christian role models. But adults must make the effort, Kelly said. "Unfortunately, the junior high school kids probably aren't going to approach you."

Churches also should let young people participate in worship — for example, as lectors, chalice bearers or acolytes, teens said.

Korte recalled becoming an acolyte in third grade. "It made me feel so important when I was in church because I had this job to do."

"There's so many jobs in church, and almost all of them teenagers and people in their early 20s can do perfectly fine if they're given the chance," she said. "People get stuck in 'the adults have to do this.'" Many church committees are "very excluding of young people," she added.

Some churches let youth group or Sunday school students act out the gospel or give the sermon once a month, Korte said. People generally are positively surprised with the results. "That's one really cool thing that I think places can do."

At a Lutheran Bible camp this summer, "we did skits to music," said Jessica Johnson, 20, of Green Bay, Wis. "That really seemed to have an impact on a lot of the kids. They'd be crying in their seats. I think that's the kind of stuff, for kids anyway, it reaches them more than a sermon would."

A sophomore at Luther College in Iowa, Johnson grew up attending a Lutheran church but prefers the contemporary church service on campus. "You can just go as you are and praise as you want, and it's totally accepted. That's what I'd like to find in a church," she said.

Johnson's classmate, Episcopalian Arianna Williams of Goehner, Neb., said she enjoys traditional church services but thinks churches should offer more liturgical variety to attract young people.

"A lot of times people don't like church because it's so traditional," she said. "I think a lot of churches are just afraid to try new things. I think a lot of people ... because when they were young they weren't very interested in church, they think it's just a phase that people go through. ... I think that's completely the wrong attitude."

"Teenagers are trying and are hard, but I think it's more important to try to get them to come now rather than wait," she said. Instead of assuming young people don't have anything to offer, churches should "use their enthusiasm and direct it toward something," she said.

One suggestion White has heard for attracting youths is opening churches for an after-school coffeehouse, providing a safe place for students to hang out and "get people used to the idea of being in a church, so it's not as frightening. The church to a non-churchgoer can be a very intimidating thing."

Teens need to feel welcome, Kelly concluded. "They have to feel welcome in their Sunday-school classes and in their churches. Even if they're 14 years old and they walk in without their parents, that should be OK. I think it's really important for kids to feel comfortable because I think that junior high school and high school are such a time for feeling uncomfortable."

Sharon Sheridan of Flanders, N.J., is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Episcopal Life Newspaper.