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The lost boys: the Church’s great teenage exodus
When boys hit 12, many stop going to church. How can they be encouraged not just to return, but to develop their own personal faith, asks Rebecca Paveley
 Keeping them interested: a James Bond-themed evening for the youth group at St Aldate’s, in Oxford PA |
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MICHAEL is 12 years old, and does not want to go to church. His mother usually makes him — a Sunday-morning battle doubtless played out in family homes up and down the country. Their church is small, in a semi-rural parish, and Michael is the only boy of his age in the congregation. “Church is too religious. I know it has to be, but it’s just too boring. The music is boring, and there is nothing for people my age,” he says. If Michael was not made to go to church, he wouldn’t, he admits — although he would not mind going to the community church in town, which has a good band. His mother acknowledges that she gives him some Sundays “off”, in the hope that he will not mind going at other times. Several research studies (including some on “tweenagers” — those aged between ten and 13 — by Christian Research in 2002) have shown that 12 is the age at which boys usually drop out of church. Most have started thinking about it before, at just seven or eight years old, but it takes them time to assert their will over their parents. Girls hang around a little longer, not leaving until 13 or 14, although this gap is closing. But there are grounds for hope, and they lie in Michael’s words. He has not had a crisis of faith, and he does think deeply about his beliefs. It is just that he cannot express it through the church activities on offer. If his needs are not met, he will leave, as many others have done. What has to change to re-engage Michael and the thousands like him? Thirty miles from where Michael lives, in the centre of Oxford, more than 40 teenagers meet on Saturday nights for a church youth group. There are games, group activities, music, and worship, as well as discussion and teaching. It all sounds very smooth and polished, but the youth worker, Oli Benyon, says that he finds it difficult at times to keep the boys engaged. “There are so many other temptations and distractions out there. And if we lose the older teenagers, then it has a real knock-on effect on the younger ones.” The key to keeping teenagers involved is finding time for them one-to-one, he says. Girls will usually ask for a chat, but boys never will. “Usually, I will invite them out for a coffee and just spend time with them. If I can do that, regularly, I find I’m more likely to keep them right through, from 14 through to 18. “There was one guy who dropped out at about 16, and I found out a while later he was looking for a job. I got in touch and offered to go round town with him and help him look. He came back after that.” Finding time to give boys one-to-one, and mentoring them through their teenage years, is key to keeping them interested in church, says Sylvia Collins-Mayo, a sociologist and principal lecturer at Kingston University, London. She has conducted extensive research among teenagers, both churched and unchurched, asking questions that probe both their faith and their interest in attending church and church-related activities. “Boys — and girls, too — disengage, usually, because they are bored with church. They have generally got other things they want to do, and are coming under peer pressure to do them. “In previous generations, parents themselves had more religious involvement, but now they aren’t involved to the same extent; so it isn’t part of children’s heritage in the same way. Now, the main family influence in taking children to church is the grandparents.” Mr Benyon agrees. He wishes parents were more proactive in helping their teenagers make choices, although he recognises that many parents fear forcing their children and therefore turning them away from Christianity for good. “But it would help if parents were more involved. Many seem scared to get involved, and so let their children get on and make the big choices themselves. But at 14, or even 16, they still need help and advice.” THE DECLINE in church attendance among young teenagers is not peculiar to the UK, or to Anglican churches. Despite the popularity in the United States of such movements as the “Silver Ring Thing”, research by the US sociology professor Christian Smith found that most American teenagers expressed what he calls a “moral therapeutic deism”. He conducted more than 3200 surveys with teenagers for a study of youth and religion, and concluded that, for the majority of US teenagers, God was a “combination of divine butler and cosmic therapist”, called on when one had a problem and needed to feel better. Dr Smith believes parents are so determined not to indoctrinate their children that children are not getting enough teaching of substance to either embrace, revise, or reject faith. Ms Collins-Mayo discovered a similar lack of depth of belief in her research with young people in the UK. She says: “Children have an ‘I think I believe in God’ approach, but whether that translates into practice, we can’t be certain. But we found that there is a hangover of private prayer, though that might only be that they are reflecting back on the day. “It is largely a look-after-me-and-look-after-my-family type of approach. Family and friends are very important to young teenagers.” Role-models and a good Christian friendship base are critical to keeping young boys and girls involved and interested in church. “It is hard to underestimate the importance of good youth-leaders, and a peer group, in retaining teenage boys in church,” says Dr Collins-Mayo. In the Roman Catholic diocese of Northampton, peer leadership and mentoring programmes have been a great success. Matthew van Duyvenbode, a youth worker, says the schemes have had a big impact. “We’ve had boys on these programmes who go on to share their life stories and faith journeys, and their influence has been very positive on youth groups.” He said that the change in the depiction of masculinity in the media meant that boys were now more willing to open up and share their faith. “There is no longer such a rough-and-ready view of masculinity, and that is positive for boys coming to faith,” he says. But supportive peer groups and youth leaders can be hard to find in rural parishes. Ian Macdonald, the youth adviser for the diocese of Oxford, the most rural diocese in the South-East, agrees that the two are crucial. “Boys need to see guys who are living out their faith, to see inspiring examples of what it means to be male and a Christian. But this doesn’t have to be the vicar, or even the youth worker. And it doesn’t mean that youth ministry should be left to the big Evangelical churches either. All churches need to think about it, whatever their tradition, and whether they have a youth worker or not.” In small parishes, working together with other churches is critical to youth ministry, and helps establish the peer groups that young Christians in rural areas desperately need. The Revd Peter Ball, the national youth adviser for the Church of England, is also a priest in a small rural parish. He says: “We are very aware that we have to work together in youth ministry. Ministering to young people is a collective enterprise. “If you think about where young people naturally gravitate, such as school or, later on, college and work, and focus ministry on those areas, this could be one way forward, instead of expecting young lads to come to us.” Mr Ball’s parish has recently hosted some Christian basketball coaches from the US, who coached a group of boys during their half-term holiday. They also incorporated small-group sessions into the training, in which they talked about their faith.“It was taking the approach of keeping lads through sport, and for some that can be a real ice-breaker,” he says. |
 Different approach: youth celebration at St Aldgate's Oxford |
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Sport, and the increasing prevalence of sports matches on Sunday mornings, has been blamed for taking boys away from church. Many churches have tried to address this by offering services at different times.
Mr Ball says: “More sport is happening on Sunday, and there has been a natural loss because of this. But, in recent years, churches have really worked hard to say ministry is available at all times, and that church is not just on Sunday.”
Although this has helped, many believe that to make any real impact this kind of change has to go hand in hand with further shifts in the style and substance of ministry to teenagers.
Mr Ball says: “Recognising the fact that young men are minorities within the Church is a first step towards it becoming a more inclusive place for them. The nurture and discipleship of young men within the Church, as with all young people, needs to be done in ways that make sense to them in the context of their own lives as Christians living in contemporary society.”
IN THE former tin-mining town of Camborne, in Cornwall, the Revd Mike Firbank has been working closely with small groups of teenagers, offering them the chance to take on real positions of responsibility in the church — far removed from tokenism. At the end of the year-long course, the teenagers were “commissioned” in a special service attended by the Bishop. Some now act as servers, and some preach or do pastoral work.
He believes church leaders have to allow young people to create their own space in church. “Research on men and their church attendance found that they don’t come because they don’t believe they have a space to occupy, and this starts with young boys.
“It’s not us as church leaders who have to come up with the ideas of how to keep young people: they know what they need; we just need to step aside and let them create it for themselves.”
He believes that boys and men need to be allowed to take more risks within the church environment: most junior church is too “safe” and filled with “girly activities”.
When he discussed doing some street ministry recently, he was amazed at the number of men interested — men who normally do not get very involved in church. He believes it is because men and boys are naturally drawn to risk. “It’s a stereotype, but one that has some truth. And we don’t provide enough of these sort of activities to keep boys interested.”
The Boys’ Brigade in his town is flourishing, and has more than 30 boys meeting each week. “They play, they march, and they listen to the gospel message — isn’t that church for boys?”
Alex Taylor, who recently wrote a book for the Scripture Union, No Girls Allowed, agrees that most church activities for children are aimed at girls rather than boys.
He says: “Boys drop out because they find some of the things they have to do in church or junior church uncomfortable, and they start to become aware of what is cool and what isn’t. Perhaps it means they can’t go to football, or none of their friends go. This happens quite early on, and we need to change what is on offer for boys from a very early age.”
The ritual of sitting still for stories and then discussing them is more suited to girls than boys, he says, and this can leave boys feeling inadequate. Also, the pace of church can be too slow for boys — new junior-hurch material urges leaders to be like the children’s TV presenters Dick and Dom: move fast, change from one activity to another without stopping, and plan ten activities an hour instead of one or two.
“Boys can have difficulties in church because they are told to reflect and to discuss. We run the risk in churches of asking boys to behave in a way that we say is a good, but actually displays more ‘feminine’ characteristics, such as talking, reflecting, and sitting still,” says Mr Taylor.
While some churches may be seeing boys disappear through the door, the traditional Scripture Union holidays are still very popular — and among their most popular are their boys-only breaks. These offer ten- to 14-year-old boys the chance “to be real boys”, says Simon Barker, who is responsible for holidays and mission at the Scripture Union.
And although the Scripture Union offers holidays that incorporate new technology, such as electronics and computing, the old-fashioned campfire holidays are still the favourites.
Mr Barker says: “We want to ensure boys don’t lose the ability to play. They may be spending large amounts of time in front of a computer at home, and we want to try and run counter to that on our holidays.” Instead, they spend time in the woods building fires, climbing trees, and generally having old-fashioned, outdoorsy fun.
On these holidays, worship sessions are also run differently. There is less reflection and sharing time and more physical activity, in a bid to tailor them to boys. “Boys have a more dynamic and less cerebral approach to faith, and we try to cater for that in our worship sessions.”
It obviously works. Research carried out for Scripture Union by Christian Research found that the holidays had a greater spiritual impact on boys than Sunday school.
Perhaps churches should learn from that great institution for boys (and now girls) the Scouts, whose membership has boomed in recent years. Numbers fell in the ’90s owing to young people’s lifestyles, says Andrew Thorp, a spokesman for the Scouting Association, but a radical change in 2002 has reaped rewards.
The changes put the emphasis in Scouting on adventure, challenge, and having fun: the membership figures afterwards showed the first rise in 13 years.
This kind of radical change is also beginning to happen in churches. It is apparent in the diversity and energy of youth ministry, in blogs and other online forums, and it is coming through in new material for children’s work — which is now more aware of the need to allow boys and girls to respond to and express their faith in different ways.
But, says Mr Macdonald, we must ask ourselves the right questions. “If we are asking only how we keep boys in church, that’s the wrong question; it is about asking how do boys encounter Christ, how do they encounter faith in a way that is an adventure? It is about listening, not telling; about engaging with them, not holding on to them.’
Jason Gardner, a youth-programme researcher at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, said churches needed to celebrate children’s coming of age, and give them space to make their own decision about their faith. “We need to present a strong reason for following the Christian faith to children and be responsible for discipling young people, but we also have to give them space.
“The Amish people have a tradition called rumspringa [a Pennsylvania German word for ‘running around’], in which teenagers are allowed to go off for a couple of years before making their commitment to the faith and way of life. We need to encourage boys on their faith journeys, but let them find their own place.”
www.scriptureunion.org.uk
www.youthblog.co.uk
‘Having a role to play really encouraged me to stay in church’ |
 | ANDY HUNT is spending his gap year working with St Laurence’s in Reading — a church that is reaching out to the young people of the town. Brought up in Warwickshire as a Christian in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, his parents moved him and his sister from their small parish church to a much bigger village when he was seven, as they realised he needed to have a peer group in church. “There were a lot of people my age in church, which was great. I’ve always been involved in music, and I was really encouraged to take part in worship. Having a role to play really encouraged me to stay. I know some of the boys I was friends with weren’t into music, and didn’t get so involved.” At 17, he made a decision to move churches and youth groups, finding one much closer to his school. “It seemed more relevant to my life at the time,” he explains. His parents stayed at their former church. “They were really supportive: they realised I needed to do this. I really benefited from the cell group I was in; there was some really wise adult leadership.” |
| Now aged 21, Andy is spending time running youth groups and doing youth work in schools. Next year, he will go on to train as a teacher.
‘I needed men I could aspire to be like’ |
 | MIKE BIDDULPH’s parents were leaders of a Vineyard church, which he attended until he was 12. Then outside pressures intervened in the shape of girls, drink, and drugs. “I left church. I still believed in God, but didn’t see how he was relevant to my life. I still went to Soul Survivor, though, each year, and it was the year I was 16 that things changed. “I didn’t want to go to Soul Survivor: I wanted to stay with my girlfriend; but a mate came to take me. I remember standing at the evening worship with my arms crossed; I didn’t want to be there. But one night, someone prophesied over me and spoke about my life. I remember thinking: ‘God really cares about me.’ I cried and cried; I spent the rest of the week crying. “I remember my girlfriend phoning up and asking if I wanted any drugs and I said, ‘No.’ That was the first thing that changed; then other things slowly changed, too. |
| “I’ve had times since when I’ve been really disillusioned with church. I found it hard when there haven’t been any strong male role-models. But then I read Acts, and thought about the amazing role-models there.
“I needed people — men — I could aspire to be like.”
Now 21, he works for XLP, a Christian charity that works in London schools and estates and runs youth groups in seven boroughs of the city.
“I’m desperate not to portray Christianity as some wishy-washy, Western, feminised faith. That’s not what young guys want at all.” His youth groups prove it: boys outnumber the girls at all of them. |
 Scripture Union boys-only holiday |
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