That has been a driving philosophy for half a century in many Christian denominations. Despite attempts to make religion fun, however, youngsters are not sticking with the Christian church, as the membership slide in mainline U.S. denominations continues to show.

But a new movement is beginning to build in youth ministries, fueled not by peppy leaders but by prayer.

Andy Dreitcer, 42, co-director of the Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project at the San Francisco Theological Seminary, is one of the key people behind this movement. He hopes the prayer project will give young people a more substantive foundation for their faith and a key tool they need to stay connected to their churches for a lifetime.

"There's been a way of doing youth ministry," Dreitcer said."First you have to find a charismatic leader, someone young and attractive, sort of a Pied Piper to youth. That always seemed to work very well. The problem is, when that person leaves - and that happens often, the average length of employment for youth workers is 18 months - then the entire youth ministry is gone. The kids who are attracted to that person are lost."

"(If) that's their only way of being connected to God, and without all the flashy stuff, the kids just fade away," he said.

That reality drove Dreitcer and Mark Yaconelli, the other project co-director, to search for a better way. What they decided was that young people need clear connections with God, and one way to maintain that link was to teach them how to pray.

With an idea firmly in mind, the pair appealed to the Lilly Foundation in Indianapolis and received $650,000 to send people to San Francisco for instruction. First, they trained a few critical leaders in the techniques, and once the adult leaders were on board, they began sending youth to San Francisco this summer for weeklong seminars.

"The young people need the resources and they need the spiritual discipline and ways to be connected to God," Dreitcer said. "They need mindfulness so that when the youth group or ministry goes away, they still have the resources and the contemplative attitude that says in every place, in every time, `I am connected to God.' "

During spiritual exercises, Dreitcer said he was impressed with young people's willingness to try something new.

"There's an openness and reliability to exploring ways to be with God," he said. Their fears are not built up against it," he said.

Chris Berthelsen, youth leader at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Bayport, Minn., was one of 15 specialists chosen to participate in the San Francisco project and has been involved for the past three years. She says the invitation to participate came as a surprise.

"At first, I thought it was just a fluke, but now I think it was the Holy Spirit," Berthelsen said. `All of the congregations are a part of mainline denominations that are dying. We believe that listening to God can make a difference, and that's all this program is - learning ways to listen to God."

Yaconelli said two prayer strategies seem to emerge as favorites. The first Bible based.

"It's the way people read the Bible in ancient monasteries as a way to encounter God," Yaconelli said. "The Bible is seen as a love letter from God, where God and I are going to meet in the reading of this passage. So you choose a short passage and you read it over and over and you spin one word out of the text. And then you meditate on the meaning of that word for (meaning in) your life."

The second technique is Ignatian Awareness Examen, which concentrates on longer stretches, Yaconelli said.

"You look over a day or a period of time, and you ask God to help you identify where his grace was that day. Then you choose one of God's graces that opened the day for you. You identify where the barriers and the blocks were that kept you from God," he said.

"All we want to do is pray and discern what God wants us to do. So we're just helping adults pay attention to God as they seek to pass their faith along to young people," Yaconelli said.

For members of the youth group at Bethlehem, the focus on prayer seems to be catching on.

Christian Brekke said his transformation involves building prayer into his daily routine.

"I had a pretty good prayer life," the 16-year-old said. "I'm a pretty faithful kid. But I hadn't been in a prayer habit. Usually I would pray when I was frustrated and everything was too much for me.

"I like to spend time quiet time just reflecting on the day and writing down my prayers," Brekke said. "I try not to be too materialistic but sometimes I do - it's tough."

Jenny Sneden, 16, spent a week in San Francisco studying prayer, and said she believes the techniques have given her a new focus.

"I think it's something that, when teen-agers really get involved with it, I think it will really work," Sneden said. "It really works with me but we've been thinking about bringing younger kids in and teaching them about this stuff - like sort of a mentor program. We think, that will also work."

Berthelsen said prayer has become a focus of her life as she leads the youth at Bethlehem Lutheran and studies for the ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. Some days she takes time for a long meditative walk and carries a picture of the youth she serves or pictures of her husband and family. Other days she shuts the door to her office, lights a candle and spends a few minutes in meditation.

"Sometimes we just use silence," Berthelsen said. "And sometimes we repeat the Jesus prayer over and over - `Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.'"

"My prayer life was haphazard and sporadic," she said. "And of course, it is possible to do my job as youth leader and never open a Bible."

Clark D. Morphew