I. At Issue: “Youth Faith Drift - Congregations Who Buck the Tren

Most Christian denominations are experiencing dramatic drops in the percentage of older adolescents and young adults involved in worship and ministry. The Roman Catholic and mainline churches experience the drop-off after young people have been confirmed. Many youth and parents see Confirmation as the culmination of religious education and most parishes struggle with youth ministries targeted for senior high young people. Baptist and other evangelical churches find that young people are dropping out of the life of the church during or directly after high school.

Conventional wisdom has it that this is a natural, temporary, drift from the church, caused by life transitions and social experimentation. For many church leaders this drift has not been cause for great concern because of the expectation that young people will return to the church when they get married or, if not then, when they have children. Indeed, the myth of returning to church during these stages of young adulthood has been debunked by research that reveals most don’t return and if they do, many return to a different faith tradition than their own (Martinson 2000; Barna 2001; Olson 2003).

As challenging as the overall picture remains, practitioners and educators know from experience that there are remarkable exceptions to this trend across denominations – vibrant, thriving youth ministries and young people exist for whom faith is a deep commitment. Might one be able to accurately describe this “vitality of faith in young people?”  Might the congregations where such youth exist or have existed in significant numbers for six, eight or ten years be identified? Might a possible relationship between the youth ministry of the congregation and the faith vitality of the young people be explored? Might one discover and describe congregations with exemplary youth ministries?