Prayer the cornerstone of a new philosophy
aimed at attracting kids to the church
You've got to be flashy to attract the kids. Forget religion,
dump the dogma, ignore the rules. Then later, in some cases much
later, the youth group may get around to something pious. 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
Posted For September 25, 1999