Children's Ministry, Proven Path Ministries

Ten Reasons Kids Leave The Church

April 19, 2013 Nicole Vaughn

Sharing some information from Focus on the Family. Here is their list of the top ten reasons kids leave the church, when momma and daddy are no longer dragging them there.

10. The church is “relevant.”

Normally, “relevant” is a positive term. In this case, it labels the problem. We’ve couched our faith in modern trappings to the point that 2,000 years of history and rich tradition have been diminished. As the article suggests: “What we’re packaging is a cheap knockoff of the world we’re called to evangelize to. In our effort to be ‘like them,’ we’ve become less of who we actually are.”

9. They got into church, but the church never got into them.

Many young adults may have been taken to church by their parents, but the church wasn’t integrated into the fabric of their lives. Church was a Sunday event, not something that impacted the everyday realities of their lives.

8. They were treated as smart by others.

Many students interviewed felt they were spoon-fed a Christian worldview, while professors and others who held atheist viewpoints challenged their intellect and inspired them to ask questions and to use their mind.

7. They were sent out unarmed.

Many youth have mastered Christian lingo – the pithy catchphrases spoken regularly in churches and marketed through popular evangelical campaigns – but they’re ignorant of deeper theological truths. They know what “WWJD?” means, and they’re familiar with how to “invite Jesus into your heart,” but they can’t explain what atonement or justification means or its relevance to life’s realities.

6. They’ve been given a “hand-me-down” religion.

Many kids leave the church feeling like they’ve been asked to accept their parents’ faith, instead of encouraged to ask tough questions, so they can incorporate Christianity into their lives and make it their own.

5. They exchange one community for another.

Our modern faith sometimes places a greater emphasis on community than on God. As a result, many of today’s youth see other people as the answer to their problems instead of God. When they leave home, they often seek out a community of people of any belief system rather than one committed to the God of the Bible.

4. They seek opportunities to “feel” better.

Much of modern Christianity is based on “feeling,” rather than on objective, eternal truth. It reduces the Christian faith to a search for good feelings rather than exhortation to conform our human nature to God’s standard of righteousness.

3. They got tired of pretending.

Some segments of Christianity suggest that being a Christian removes all struggle from life. But that message rings hollow for many kids who try to serve God and continue to face difficult challenges … or who see their parents teach a similar message while succumbing to anger or depression themselves. Many youth feel Christianity leaves no room for authenticity.

2. Christianity is reduced to “do/don’t do” instead of “be.”

Many church kids were taught it’s all about what they do, not who they are. The Christian faith was reduced to a long list of do’s and don’ts. They felt trapped beneath the weight of their own abilities, instead of freed by the work only God can do in their hearts and lives.

1. They don’t need it.

When church is perceived as nothing more than a place to learn good principles for living, or to have a happy marriage, or well-behaved kids… Well, you can find that in most any self-help book. You don’t need a crucified Jesus for that. What kids need is the gospel; what they’re sometimes given is “a cheap knockoff of the entertainment venue they went to the night before.”

~ Jim Daly

Take a long hard look at the ministries in your church… Are you teaching cliches? Are you teaching cute, fun, catch phrases that have no depth or biblical substances? When Jesus stood against Satan, He didn’t quote the latest rabbi rhyme… He quoted the Word of God.

Take a long hard look at the ministries in your church… Are you copycatting the world to entertain and draw a crowd? Do you spend more time planning a fun event or more time studying the Word so that you might teach it?

Take a long hard look at the ministries in your church…

Let me assure you that yes it is hard to keep attention and attendance when what you teach is real. Satan and all the powers of hell are fighting against you. They don’t want kids, students, or adults to learn truth. They want to keep us all treading in shallow waters… If we stay in the shallow waters there is never any chance we will ever even attempt to get in the boat, much less get out of it and walk on water.

I have taught alongside my Pastor for about the past four years. I teach the children the same Scriptures he is teaching their parents. Currently we are teaching through the book of Romans. Thus far Romans has been the hardest book I have ever had to break down in such a way as to explain it to Pre-K through 5th graders, but just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it is impossible. I believe they can get it. With everything that is within me, I believe they can get it. They can handle the meat of the Word.

We start feeding them from the table when they are Toddlers… let us feed them equally spiritually.

I want kids to think and ask questions… and believe me they will. I fear many parents don’t teach their kids the Word at home because they feel inept to answer their questions. Parents, its okay to say, I don’t know, but let’s go dig a little and see if we can find out…

I believe one of the biggest lies in our modern church is, “If they are not having fun they won’t come”

I think we forget that God does the drawing of the crowds… we are to lift up Christ and exalt Him… and trust the crowd drawing to God. Our focus should not be the entertainment of the crowds, but the exaltation of the Son of God.

I led them with cords of a man, with bonds of love,
And I became to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws;
And I bent down and fed them.

(Hosea 11:4)

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No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him

(John 6:44)

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And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”

(John 12:32)

The simple fact is, that if they really belong to Christ… then they may leave for a time… but absolutely nothing on this earth could keep them away for long. Once you are a part of the Body. You are always a part of the Body. Most amputees will tell you that even though that part of their body has been removed… they still “feel” it. Their brain (the Head, Ephesians 4:14-16) still recognizes it as being there.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, orperil, or sword? Just as it is written,

“For Your sake we are being put to death all day long;
We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:35-39

So church let us exalt and lift up Christ. Let us love the Lord our God with all our heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. Let us preach the gospel, and teach the Word, and love others as ourselves… and leave all the rest to God.

Proven Path Ministries

God’s Amazing Grace (Part 4)

April 19, 2013 Nicole Vaughn

In God’s Amazing Grace (Part 3) we began to get into the meat of grace. We looked at some ways grace should be lived out in our daily lives. We saw that grace should be recognized in us by others and grace should be shared with others. We also saw that grace should empower us and build us up. God’s gift of grace is not a light, weak, insignificant thing. It has more power and worth than we finite human beings can fathom.

With His grace comes knowledge. With His grace comes responsibility. With His grace comes supernatural power.

With His grace comes warnings.

Today we will look at five warnings given us in the Scriptures concerning the amazing grace of our ever so gracious God. Get ready. This is serious business.

1) We are not to receive grace in vain

God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. And working together with Him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain—

2 Corinthians 5:19 – 6:1

What does it mean to receive something vain?

The word vain in 2 Corinthians 6:1 is kenos and it means empty, vain, devoid of truth– of places: vessels, etc. which contain nothing- of men: empty handed, without a gift, metaph. destitute of spiritual wealth, of one who boasts of his faith as a transcendent possession, yet is without the fruits of faith. metaph. of endeavours, labours, acts, which result in nothing, vain, fruitless, without effect, vain, of no purpose

If we have received the grace of God… really received it. Then it comes full. It comes loaded with truth. It comes with a gift. It bares fruit. It will have an effect in our life. It comes with and for a purpose. It comes with the Holy Spirit.

So let us stop. Look at our hands. Look at our feet. Look at our days… do we boast of our faith in Christ and of His grace in our lives yet have no fruits of it?

2) We are not to fall from grace

And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law.You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.

Galatians 5:3-4

It was not the law that saved us. It was not our ability to do good and keep all the rules that brought grace into our life. Remember it is a free gift. We didn’t earn it and we can’t buy it. We must be careful that once we have received grace we do not confuse our new power in grace to obey God from the heart with keeping all the rules in order to please Him. We do not gain His favor by works. We already have it. We must do what we do because it is the natural fruit of the grace of God growing within us and flowing out of us. Let us be careful that we do not fall from grace.

3) We are not to insult grace

For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

Hebrews 10:26-29

Oh precious one, this one speaks for itself. Do not keep on choosing sin after you know that you know that you know it is sin… and it was in fact this sin that put the One who by grace died for sins that were not His own… but were ours… on that cross. His blood flowed in place of our own. Remember that we learned in Part 3 that the grace of God empowers us. It empowers us to live a godly life in this present world. The words I can’t help it are a lie whispered to us from the pits of hell. If we have received the grace of God and are His in Christ, then we are filled with the Spirit of God, the very same Spirit that raised the dead, made the lame walk, and the blind see. Let us never insult His grace.

4) We are not to come short of grace

See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many bedefiled;

Hebrews 12:15

Grace is to be extended to others. It is meant to come full circle. If we cannot extend it to others then we never really received it ourselves. The grace of God is powerful enough to save us from death and it is powerful enough to heal us from any hurt and it is powerful enough to give us the strength to forgive anyone for anything.

5) We are not to turn grace into licentiousness

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Jude 4

What is licentiousness?

In the Greek this word is aselgeia and it means unbridled lust, excess, licentiousness, lasciviousness, wantonness, outrageousness, shamelessness, insolence.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary explains licentiousness as lacking legal or moral restraints; especially : disregarding sexual restraints, marked by disregard for strict rules of correctness

This is the warning that I see needs to be most headed in our western church. The grace of God was never meant to give us freedom to live how every we want to… the grace of God was given to us to give us the power to obey God from our heats. Remember that grace, charis, means gratifying, of manner or act, the divine influence upon the heart and it’s reflection in the life. Grace is the hand of God at work in our heart and mind and soul.

It is an ungodly person who claims to know God by the grace of God and claims to be saved by the grace of God but lives a life in absolute open rebellion to what He says is good and right in His Word and claims no shame while doing it.

Especially concerning sexual sin…

We cannot claim to know Christ with our mouth yet deny Him by our actions. What we practice with our bodies preaches louder than our words ever will.

Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you;depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’

~ Jesus (Matthew 7:22-24)

God’s Amazing Grace (Part 5)