I’d like to first qualify everything I’m going to say by saying this: God’s purposes prevail and he can and will use whatever means he deems necessary to fulfill his plans.  I acknowledge up front that there are those who have been involved in youth ministry that have benefited or even been strengthened in their faith.  I also acknowledge that people have come to know the Lord through their involvement in youth ministry.

The reason our family is opting out of youth ministry/children’s Sunday school is because we believe it is our responsibility to disciple our children in the Lord, train them in wisdom, worship with them, create strong family bonds, and encourage the joy in spending time with different age groups (as opposed to  age-segregated groups that you find in youth ministry).

On my dad’s side of the family, I’m the oldest of 15 cousins. There were too many of us to fit around one table at my family gatherings, so my grandparents came up with a clever solution: two tables. The first table was the adult table.

The second table? You guessed it. It was the kid table.

The contrast between the two tables was stark.

The Commission on Children at Risk, a panel of 33 leading children's doctors, neuroscientists, research scholars and youth service professionals, drew upon a large body of recent research showing that children are biologically primed ("hardwired") for enduring connections to others and for moral and spiritual meaning. In this report the authors introduced a new public policy and social science term--authoritative communities--to describe the ten essential traits across social institutions that produce better outcomes for children.  Of those defined authoritative communities, families are first.  The second recognized authoritative communities are spiritual communities.  Yes, our church families.  (Learn more about this report at http://www.americanvalues.org/html/hardwired.html )