LOST - and not the tv show

I just spent a week at a Baptist church in the town I live in doing a Disciple Now weekend. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's probably better off that way. Sufficient to say it invoves mass amounts of sugar, college students leading Bible study sessions at host homes, crazy games, and a speaker/band or both. For once I was not leading a group, but rather was simply one of the drama crew (I've done a number of these; it's a wonder I've survived). However, it wasn't that difference that prompted me to write this. The noteworthy happening this time around was in my observation of the frustration each of the leaders expressed about their groups. We had this break room, which I seemed to claim as I was not responsible for anyone but myself, and every time someone entered, we went thorugh another round of tears/sighs/screams of frustration and stories of students not paying attention and acting their age - scary stuff, I'll confess. Once or twice, you'd almost get the sensation that we didn't want to be there. This was the hardest part - WE DID. We love those kids, and as I'm writing this from the safety of my home those leaders are still out there with their groups, trying desperately to make a difference. Here is my observation, and its subsequent burden/application:

You cannot disciple the lost.

There, I said it. Burn me at the stake of youth ministry, which seems to hold either pizza or discipleship as its standard. But hearing so many stories of kids not caring about learning about the Bible is beginning to impress upon me a huge need - and it is not for better programs or more fun activities/retreats/enter-your-youth-ministry-idea-here. Rather, it is the power of two things: prayer and relationships. Prayer - I literally sat in a room full of young people and for the first time realized that the statistic that says 80-92% of students who enter college will fall away from the church, never to return, may be more correct than we realize. We, no I, must be on my face for the youth in my own church and the up-and-coming generation of young people as a whole. Only 4% of my peers (18-26 year olds) go to church - and we were the generation that churches spent millions on. We must pray for awakening in the hearts of millions of young people. Secondly, we must do something about reaching them. Standing in a room full of lost kids was scary; it's very different from standing in a room full of lost college students. There's a feeling that something isn't right, that somehow these kids have been robbed of their childhoods, of their innocence. We must be there for them - relationships. THE RELATIONSHIPS WE MAKE WITH STUDENTS MUST MATTER TO US.

I was part of a generation that experienced and rejected almost every attempt at youth ministry, from pizza crusades to concerts to huge weekends and camps to emotional guilt-trips. Look at us now. If the up-and-coming generation is worse, then we have a problem. No amount of money or "cool" will reach these kids - only Jesus, and Jesus though us.