talking to teenagers

I was invited to speak to a group of about 20 Christian high school students at 6:40 this morning. Ya, I said 6:40 in the morning and alluded to a large group of teenagers. I know I'm your hero.

The girl that called me (two days ago) asked me to talk about evangelism and why it's important to share your faith. Easy enough.

I did a little research to verify that the numbers swimming around in my head haven't gotten mixed up. Numbers like:

- 1 in 12 teenagers will attempt suicide this year.
- About 2000 of those teenagers will succeed.
- About 40% of teenagers have experimented with self-injury.
- About 48% of high school seniors are sexually active.
- 1 in 3 teen pregnancies is aborted.

Standing in front of them this morning, though, my answer to the "Why?" could suddenly only be, "Because the Church in America is not doing it."

I stood there with three years of experience in youth ministry, about a year's worth of research, and more statistics than I could have recited in 20 minutes, and pleaded with them to reach out to their peers because most local churches right now are struggling to keep up with the new society that is being birthed around them. The Church will catch up, as she always has in the past, but it's my fear that a generation will slip through the cracks in the meantime.

Now to you. How is your student ministry? What are you doing to keep on top of social trends and digital technology (because that's how they learn and how they communicate)? Are you speaking to Millennials/Digital Natives/an Emerging Generation? Is there space for them in your building, or are they using the leftovers?

Mark Beeson made a comment about their children's space at Granger Community Church at the 2007 Innovate conference. He spoke about how, when someone walks downstairs, no one needs to tell them this is a place that loves kids because that space is cool. It's obvious that a lot of time and money and planning and effort went into that because they love and value kids. What about teenagers? What about your church's facilities obviously took a lot of either time, money, planning or effort just because you love and value teenagers?