There is a documentary out right now called Divided and it details the struggles of youth ministry and the objective failure in retaining youth within the Church. The movie is available for free viewing online until September sometime, so if you work with youth as a youth minister, pastor, parent, teacher, clergy or just care about youth in the Church, sit back and take an hour and watch this movie. It is worth your time.
We have been discussing this reality in Orthodoxy as well and the root causes are quite similar. When parents are not living and teaching the Orthodox Way of Life in their families no amount of youth ministry can overcome that drag on our Churches' youth. I would agree with much of what this movie has to say and I could suggest that the problem of departing from the Scripture Tradition of ministry has been directly related to the departure of the Holy Tradition of Orthodoxy! In cases where the Orthodox Church has adopted Protestant models for ministry, the result has been the same......youth departure. It's time for us to WAKE UP!
What this movie doesn't recognize is that the Scriputre Tradition they mention also mentions a deep Orthodox way of life and worship that Protestants have left behind in their anti-tradition mentality. In every case where Orthodox Christians have departed from the same way of life - fasting, prayer, confession, almsgiving, Eucharist, and the rest of the sacramental life - the results have been exactly the same. How can we continue to teach children in Sunday School about fasting when parents don't even attempt to fast? How can we preach about Confession and the Eucharist when parents don't event attempt to make these necessary elements of Christian life central to their way of thinking and living? We can't......
Now sit back and watch the movie...
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