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Mark Twain famously said, ‘There are lies, damned lies and statistics.’ We’re all aware of the cautions we need to take when it comes to looking at statistics. However, cautions aside, these results are at least a little… intriguing? For example, more young people are regularly attending church than youth group. Why might that be?

If we look at the summary of their experiences of both, it’s clear that youth group is a place where all the fun happens, and it’s encouraging that a third of the respondents experienced a sense of family when they met together. But should we be surprised or concerned that only 15 per cent felt that youth group was primarily a place to connect with God? Could it be that some youth groups, in their commitment to be ‘culturally relevant’, have lost what makes them distinctive compared to the secularly run youth club down the road? Conversely, 46.3 per cent of young people attended church because it was a place to connect with God.

Of course, they had to select only one option from each given list, so if they could’ve ticked more boxes then perhaps a different picture might’ve emerged. But whatever the data is or isn’t telling us, maybe it at least provides a moment for us to pause and reflect.

Having fun is certainly an important cultural value for young people today. It might be the ‘thing’ that attracts them to come for the first time. But fun alone won’t keep them. This is a ‘been there, done that, got the T-shirt’ generation, and so a commitment to continually surprising young people with the next great fun idea sounds like a recipe for exhausting a youth leader.

This is what Mark Yaconelli calls ‘anxietydriven youth ministry’ in his classic book, Contemplative youth ministry. Yaconelli challenges us to create times, spaces and places where young people can connect with God – whether they are Christians or not. As we’ve embraced more contemplative moments in our weekly youth group, I’ve been amazed at what has happened. We’ve had 60 teenagers – most of whom weren’t Christians – lying on the floor doing a meditation where they are imagining having a conversation with Jesus; what they would say to him and then how he would respond to them. Of course at the start there were giggles and the inevitable breaking of wind. But slowly and surely, things settled, and for three powerful moments they personally and individually engaged in a spiritual exercise that helped them to notice that God just might be present. As we reflected afterwards in small groups, we were encouraged by the feedback from the young people. Bearing in mind most of them live life at 90 miles an hour, the least the whole group felt was a sense of peace and calm, some experienced something more. Some of the things that they felt Jesus say to them were profound and I dare to believe that he actually did! So how can we create more moments in our youth groups where we help young people connect with God? How can we help young people see that God is as much present in the fun games as he is in the prayerful moments?

There’s a second challenge I feel when reading these results, and that’s the challenge of being family. We had a 24-hour taster residential with some of our young people a couple of months ago. Even 24 hours has a profound effect in terms of deepening relationships with God and each other. As we drove home with young people packed in to our cars, one of the young people turned to me and said, ‘Urban Saints is like my second family’. I smiled. Wonderful! And surely it should be.

Paul reminds us in Ephesians 1:5 that we are the family of God. What might it look like if we really embraced a commitment to ‘be the family of God’? For you to recognise that, before being a youth leader, you are a son or daughter of Father God, that Jesus is your brother, the Holy Spirit your constant companion and your fellow leaders are brothers and sisters in Christ – and then to see your young people as part of the family? You’re not replacing their parents by any means, but you feel a sense of spiritual parenting responsibility – just like Paul felt for Timothy, Titus and as he expressed to the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 4:14-17. With over one million young people today having completely lost touch with their fathers, surely this is a moment for the Church of Jesus Christ to embrace being ‘the family of God’ in a deeper way.

So let’s have huge amounts of fun in our youth groups and churches. The kingdom of heaven is a huge party after all and if anyone should be showing the world how to have fun it should be the people of God, right? But let’s not stop there. My prayer is that our gatherings with young people will be rooted in opportunities for them – and us – to become aware that God is with us and God is for us, right here, right now. My prayer is that we will embrace being the family of God – sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mum and dads – who love one another, accept one another, support one another, inspire one another, encourage one another, confess our sins to one another, forgive one another and so on.

A Christian psychologist once said, ‘I am thoroughly convinced that if Christians practiced the “one anothers” to any degree at all, 90 per cent of my Christian clients wouldn’t need me – and all the others – Christian or non-Christian – would flock to the church where it was happening.’ May it be so for youth groups and churches, for the sake of this generation and for the glory of God.