Why Church?
You’ve likely read the alarming stats that as many as 80 percent of teens leave the evangelical church and don’t come back. Honestly, that’s a hard number to pin down with any accuracy. Still, it’s fair to say that most churched teens eventually walk away from church.
Even harder to pin down are the reasons for that. It’s easy to have a blamestorming session and take aim at churches, students, the culture at large, and—oh, yes—the parents. But answering the “why” question isn’t our task today. What we’re hoping is that some of the questions below will encourage a good conversation with your kid(s) now about the point of church.
We’re pulling our talking points from, among other sources, Acts 2:38-47. Over at the PlanetWisdom daily devo this week, we’re going back in time to the infant church and noticing how they “did church.” It’s interesting to compare and contrast, but we see great value both in helping your child see your own heart for church—and well as taking the time to understand his point of view about the purpose of church and your family’s experience of that in the real world.
Talking Points
- What do you like best about going to our church? What don’t you like about it?
- How would you define “the church”? Who would you say our church is for?
- What are the five most important things we “do” at church? Why?
- How do you feel about our church’s Bible teaching?
- How do you feel about our church’s musical worship?
- How do you feel about our church’s sense of community? Do you feel like part of a family there? If not, do you wish you felt more connected to the people at our church?
- How do you feel about our church’s outreach to our community, especially to people who are not Christians?
- How do you feel about the kinds of service our family helps with at church? Are there things you would like to be more involved in helping with?
- If you still live in this area after moving out of our house, do you think you would continue to go to our church? If not—or if you moved away—what kind of church would you imagine yourself going to?
- Some statistics say that most teens end up leaving evangelical churches and not coming back? Do you think that’s true? If so, why do you think that is?
- Do you think there are things churches could do better—or that students could do better—to stay connected together?
- Do you think church really matters for Christians? If so, why is it important that Christians be part of a Bible-believing local church? [Parent: Two possible reasons can be found in Hebrews 10:24-25 (to encourage each other to love and good deeds) and Romans 12:1-8 (to use our spiritual gifts in service to each other).]
- Acts 2:42-47 describes how Christians “did church” when the New Testament church first started out after Jesus went back to heaven. Our church doesn’t have to be exactly like their experience of the church. But how do you think we do at the following things they did:
- being devoted to the apostles’ teaching (understanding and living by God’s Word)
- being devoted to fellowship (connecting with other Christians)
- being devoted to eating together
- being devoted to prayer
- being impressed by the power of God and what He’s doing in our lives
- spending lots of time together
- sharing our money and our stuff
- meeting each others’ financial needs
- spending time in each others’ homes
- having glad and sincere hearts
- praising God
- making a good impression on people in our neighborhoods and community
- How could we do better at some of those things? Do you think we need to try to do better?
- If you could suggest some changes to the leaders of our church, what would they be? What could you do to help make them happen?
- Are there things our family could start doing right away or our own to make our church—or our experience of “doing church” with other Christians—better in some ways?
Back.
