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I can’t give a review, but after reading SL Trib article and hearing a bit about this before, it is on my “to buy and read list” (page 3, still not even finished with page 1) Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome: A Memoir of Humor and Healing – August 18, 2015 by Reba Riley
http://www.amazon.com/Post-Traumatic-Church-Syndrome-Memoir-Healing/dp/150112403X ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.amazon.com/Post-Traumatic-Church-Syndrome-Memoir-Healing/dp/150112403X The Trib article mentioned that about 60% of Christian youth leave the church as they move into adulthood. Wow!
I recently went to an Episcopal church as the friend was part of the service and I wanted to support her. I noticed there were almost no young adults an a surprisingly small number of youth. I could almost see this church with it’s quite nice chapel in the process of dying. It made me sad. It made me realize that Mormonism does a great job holding on to it’s youth. Of course they consider the standard 100% of the youth and anything less is a partial failure. Other churches would love to have the participation that the Mormon church does.
LH- Quote:I could almost see this church with it’s quite nice chapel in the process of dying. It made me sad
I remember touring these sweet parish churches in Europe and just wanting to cry. Most often in some tucked away room a handful of participants, usually older, were gathered together praying or singing latin hymns. I asked once why they were off in a corner and it was so they could keep the church open for tourism. It really broke my heart.
Quote:It made me realize that Mormonism does a great job holding on to it’s youth.
Yes, in comparison to so many other denominations, it does. The numbers still are discouraging inside the LDS Church, but when compared to almost everyone else . . .
I have quite a few friends who attend a lot of different churches, and they would praise God enthusiastically if their activity and retention rates were what ours are. Theirs depend almost entirely on the charisma of the local leader and his or her ability to connect with the youth – and most have almost given up on getting the youth to church on Sunday for a traditional worship service. They are focusing almost exclusively on getting the youth to activities on Wednesday, generally.
What confuses me is that there is a ton of research on the needs of young learners — how to engage them at school, for example. The same is true with adults. My confusion is this — why don’t we apply that to our Sunday experiences with youth? I know that the best learning experiences are active, interactive, and do NOT rely on the one-way transmission model we get in Sacrament meeting. If I did that every day in my job as a teacher I would be so bored going to school every day. I’d probably get fired due to low student evaluations. And I would hate my job. The real juice in learning is when people try to apply what they have been taught, or try to self-teach themselves. Then I become especially relevant. And the best lessons I have taught are when I create infrastructure in which people can learn on their own. And after it’s over we do a post-reflective session.
If I were to re-invent church, I’d keep the opening exercises and sacrament portion Sacrament meeting and skip the talks. I’d consider service projects, field trips, active experiences as my learning and teaching tools for youth, and we’d have an hour of this each week, more if that’s what the topic required.
Alas, I can do little to change those things.
SilentDawning wrote:What confuses me is that there is a ton of research on the needs of young learners — how to engage them at school, for example. The same is true with adults.
My confusion is this — why don’t we apply that to our Sunday experiences with youth? I know that the best learning experiences are active, interactive, and do NOT rely on the one-way transmission model we get in Sacrament meeting. If I did that every day in my job as a teacher I would be so bored going to school every day. I’d probably get fired due to low student evaluations. And I would hate my job. The real juice in learning is when people try to apply what they have been taught, or try to self-teach themselves. Then I become especially relevant. And the best lessons I have taught are when I create infrastructure in which people can learn on their own. And after it’s over we do a post-reflective session.
If I were to re-invent church, I’d keep the opening exercises and sacrament portion Sacrament meeting and skip the talks. I’d consider service projects, field trips, active experiences as my learning and teaching tools for youth, and we’d have an hour of this each week, more if that’s what the topic required.
Alas, I can do little to change those things.
To do my best Ray impersonation…The newer youth sunday school lessons are supposed to be more interactive and more of the students participating.
Now back to being a cantankerous sliverback.
I have seen it nudge just a bit towards an improvement. But not all teachers are good enough teachers to take the skeleton framework given and put enough around it to make it interesting. And eventually all the videos are shown and the kids have seen them all.
Many years ago, we have someone from the General Sunday School Board come teach the leaders on our stake. One of the things he discussed was the research the church had done on retention of youth. The church was trying to figure out what made a difference.
Boy Scouts does not
FHE does not
Regular Sunday attendance does not
The list went on of all the things that didn’t make a difference.
The one thing that made a huge difference was social pressure and social relationships within the youth.
He stated that one youth who was a social leader, if he/she made lousy life choices, he/she often pulled the entire group down too. The opposite was also true. One truly excellent youth could work wonders within a youth program.
There was a study 20 years ago that said the biggest correlate with activity was sacrament meeting attendance. Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk
Quote:The one thing that made a huge difference was social pressure and social relationships within the youth.
THIS! I would hypothesize that retention in the “mormon” belt is higher than in outlying areas (please chime in to contradict if you like). This is because the social group revolves around the Church. Yes, Church may be boring and YW/YM activities pointless but if your peers are doing it, you will as well. I would recommend Judith Rich Harris’s “The Nurture Assumption” for anyone who would like to explore these ideas more fully.
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