What makes a Cast Away Christian? Reason #4

So we are down to my final reason that Yong Adults are distanced from religion and that is The Episcopal Church itself. Youth in our church are told that they are the future of our church. They are made to believe how important they are to the life of the church. They are coddled and given everything. Parishes will bend over backwards to help them pay for their ski trip or mission trip to Mississippi to help out hurricane victims. Parishes let them preach and even have a youth Sunday to show how important they are. Our Diocese even has a delegation of youth that allows one youth from each convocation to vote and be a part of the governing body of the church. They have retreat weekends, provincial and national gatherings to go to. I know that all sounds great, but as I have said before, every positive has a negative side effect.

The negative I see is that we are spending so much time "doing" things for our youth, that we are not equipping them with the skills needed to do it on their own. Very few of our youth have been given leadership training, so when they get to college or young adulthood, they have no idea how to act in the church. They just wait for someone to give them something to do, and most of the time the church doesn't do that so they are left to be a lonely pew sitter. We are good about giving money to youth groups, but most of our college ministries can't even afford a meeting space. Most parishes have a youth room, some young adults don't even have a spiritual guide they can talk to. They are left to go to a parish where they know no one and sit quietly in the back until someone notices them and says something. And when the going gets tough, one of the first things to go is that college ministry or the youth/young adult priest starts concentrating on the youth. It sends a message that the church really doesn't care about us. It says that unless we are willing to put ourselves out there and ask for help that we are going to spend the next years lonely in our faith. Even worse, we wonder why when young adults have kids they aren't coming back to the church. They aren't coming back because they were thirsty and we had no time to give them water. And if we are not careful, there wont be anyone who wants to come back.

All these factors lead to a generation or two who are lost. They have no family near them, superficial friends that they communicate with mostly on the internet, no church to run to when times get tough, and actual friends who are only there for them if they don't bring God in to the conversation. That is what I mean when I say Cast Away Christians. I have faith and hope that one day young adults will find a way to stand up and be heard, that parishes will know how to hear them, and that youth will be turned into leaders that know the right language. It is possible, we all just have to be ready to work together and figure it out so that the generations after us don't have to feel lost and cast away by the church.