I recently went on a school trip to the WW1 battlefields of Belgium and France. Over the 4 days, I saw roughly 15,000 graves and 150,000 names on walls – the names of those whose bodies were never found or could not be identified. It was a truly harrowing sight, especially at Tyne Cot, where there are 12,000 graves and 35,000 names on the walls. And yet, seeing all this death and suffering wasn’t the most shocking thing on the trip, for me at least. For me, the most shocking thing was that, confronted with all this sacrifice, all this history, that people on the trip, young people of the same age as me, could turn round and say they were bored.
At first I was apoplectic. How could they possibly be bored? How, when faced with a field full of 12,000 graves, when walking through a carefully preserved trench, when surrounded by a wonderfully curated museum, could they possibly be bored? But then I stopped myself and thought about why I was so interested. As far as I know, I don’t have any relatives that lost their lives in WW1. I’ve always been fascinated with history, partly because both my parents are. So, I thought about it as we took the 8 hour journey home. Once I’d got past the reaction of wanting to lamp those who said they were bored, I realised that we could draw some interesting parallels between that trip and what is happening with young people in churches of all denominations.
For many young people, their only experiences of church, if they don’t come from a faith background, will be school assemblies at Easter, Harvest and Christmas where usually the whole school will troop into the local church – usually a CofE church, take from that what you will. They are made to sing a couple of hymns, get Bible-bashed with a sermon they don’t understand, much less care about and then troop back up to school, usually in the rain/wind/snow. And I know all this because I did the same thing for 7 years when I was at primary school. However, once they leave primary school, secondary and beyond is decidedly agnostic. Aside from RE lessons, religion is rarely brought up and for many children it simply slips off their radar. Once they get to being adults, those dreary services from their childhood may be the thing that prevents them crossing the threshold of the church and rediscovering God in their lives.
So, what can we, as churches, do? Well, if you are a church that hosts schools for their annual events, try and tailor your delivery style. Remember, these are not hardened theologians, these are young children who need a simpler, easily applicable message to take away. Make your churches more inviting. Services do not have to be completely silent affairs; in fact we are told in Psalms 98:4 to ‘Make a joyful noise to the Lord’ and in this children are the best.
Surely, if we, as Christians, believe that God’s word is for anyone who can hear it, it is up to us to step outside our comfort zones, outside what we have been doing previously, in order to engage the generations to come. We need to ask how we can share God’s word with people of all ages, in an engaging way that dispels those previous ideas of boredom and irrelevance. We need to challenge the status quo and remember in the words of one of my favourite Bible verses – 1 Timothy 4:12:
‘Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.’
Harry Booton
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