Our country has an attendance problem.
Data from an organization called “America’s Promise” shows that every 26 seconds, a student in our country drops out of high school. Twenty-six clock ticks go by real fast, much too quickly to thoroughly think through such a decision. The conclusion to quit something so important must come from a seed planted much earlier in life.
A variety of sources indicate that a large majority of Christian students stop attending church after they leave home. Some studies show the number as high as 80 percent. Some characterize this phenomenon as young adults turning away from their faith. Quite a decision many young people make, no doubt another decision that seems unlikely to happen in an instant. Again, the conclusion to quit something so important must start much earlier in life.
School attendance, church attendance—something’s wrong. Let’s look at solutions.
Attend Church
What if helping kids fall in love with church became a new and high priority for children’s ministries? Love so deep that they develop a permanent hunger to attend. Step one toward this end happens when the kids ministry director/pastor/head honcho decides to personalize the issue and own a burden for children to value this critical part of an active faith—one that lasts a lifetime.
Whose responsibility is it for young people to love church so much that they continue to attend when they leave home? Or what about just the year after they graduate from my ministry? When more children’s ministry leaders respond with the word “me,” the problem will start to diminish. No matter how talented or cool your youth pastor is, he or she alone can’t reverse such a large exit trend.
On the contrary, when given an appealing and compelling impression of attending church, kids will move up to the junior high ministry with more momentum. Try working hard for kids to look forward to what’s next. Yes, it’s okay for you to want children to feel excited to leave your ministry, as long as the reason is their anticipation for what will happen in junior high. A conversation with your middle school/junior high pastor about how to make that happen will benefit you both, as well as the kids.
When students arrive in the high school ministry loving an active life of faith rather than waiting for the day when they can leave, then the church can celebrate a successful children/youth ministry program that sends solid young people into the world. If that’s not happening, though, what measure of success matters? I know, this all sounds so easy but remains a challenge to convert into action. It starts, though, with a resolve in children’s ministry.
Attend School
What if churches decided to do their best to help young people in the community avoid that 26-second decision to quit high school? A church willing to help the school system address the dropout rate would make quite an impact.
Just as with church attendance, the time to begin reaching students is much earlier than high school. A school superintendant recently shared with me that a child who reads at grade level in the third grade has a 90 percent likelihood to graduate. Many don’t achieve this proficiency due to social/emotional/economic issues over which they have little control. However, these issues tend to be easily remedied if just one adult will give a child attention and love. What other organization on this planet has more capacity to share simple attention and love with children than the local church? As Rick Warren says, “The Church is the largest force for good in the world. Nothing else even comes close.”
Whether it’s the hour every weekend that kids attend your ministry or an hour during the week that people from your church share with kids in the community, every minute and every second counts. Kids need our help to stay in church and to stay in school.
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David Staal, senior editor of Today’s Children’s Ministry, serves as the president of Kids Hope USA, a national non-profit organization that partners local churches with elementary schools to provide mentors for at-risk students. Prior to this assignment, David led Promiseland, the children’s ministry at Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington, Illinois. David is the author of Words Kids Need to Hear (2008) and lives in Grand Haven, MI, with his wife Becky, son Scott, and daughter Erin.
©2009, David Staal
