Where have all the students gone?

We’re living in a culture clash.

On one side of the clash is the lack of energy, drive and purpose in our NextGen students,  brought about by society. It’s mostly dominated, however, by the Internet & technology: insidious and powerful, it continues to take away the passions and desires of our students as they give into a constant craving for more and more and more likes and views and connections to their social group, gaming system or AI world.

Insidious, because what it is stealing from them is not just time or simply brain cells, but the capacity to create for themselves, to develop and express their own abilities and be available with energy and life for others around.  And many of their mentors have given up: they have forfeited the capacity of their parents’ generation to believe in them, to pour into them; to invest in them. Here is an interesting study to ponder:

Although Internet addiction has not been formally recognized as a behavioral disorder; there is evidence from the field of mental health suggesting that internet addiction may manifest symptoms similar to substance abuse and pathological gambling are primarily affected by IA compared to other age groups. This is due to their developing brains’ sensitivity to signals of excitement thereby making it difficult for them to control their Internet use. Studies on adolescence’ IA found different personal, family, and environmental factors associated with adolescent internet addiction including gender, parent’s IA, parenting styles, family dynamics, school performance and parents’ and peers’ influence. A cross-sectional survey found that IA mediated the relationship between social anxiety and poor psychosocial wellbeing in adolescents. This signifies that while Internet use may be seen as a relief and escape from the outside world, engaging in it excessively may be a contributing source towards psychological health conditions in adolescents.

Read more in this article on the influence of internet on teenagers

On the other side is the church.  The American/Western church is mostly in decline (with spurts of energy in church plants and “new thing” movements). In the midst of this decline, church leaders continue to struggle to identify volunteers to accomplish all the tasks necessary to be a successful, fulfilling destination. The church should be a safe haven for people who have been lied to by a materialistic narcissistic society who has minimized God and spirituality, disregarded truth and created our current.

Three in 10 U.S. adults attend religious services regularly, led by Mormons at 67%

Read the rest of this article

In summary, the church is under-resourced and our students are underestimated. 

How do we bridge the gap between the two? Here are three practical things we seek to do in our BuildingYourBand worship camps:

1. Give them a gift that lasts a lifetime.  What gift can you give a student that will last a lifetime? Most gifts they get last maybe two hours or until the next warranty is expired and the “better one” comes along.  What sort of gift?  the gift of music. Music needs to return to the place it belongs, which is on the lips and in the heart of every believer in every church.  While many of our students love to listen to music, and may have been forced to take lessons or participate in a school band, they see the capacity to play music for God as distant because we have made it too hard and  inaccessible.  The rockstar quality demanded by worship stages today has removed music from the reach and accessibility of many students. Time to give that back to them.
2. Introduce them to somebody who loves them more than anyone ever has. Ever. Period.  Knowing someone loves you and believes in you and will invest in you is one of the greatest and strongest motivators in life. What if that someone is the God of the ages in the person of Jesus Christ? What if worship returns to the passionate loving embrace of students today: in real time? Students need an opportunity to see genuine worship modeled by adults and other students who genuinely “love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength” and express it through their lives, their lips and their love songs to God.
3. Help them find their place at the table. If a student recaptures the joy of music, and falls deeply in love with Jesus in both personal and corporate worship habits, the last piece of the puzzle is belonging.  We were created in community. The intention of God‘s relationship with us has always been that we dwell in community. It should be the purpose of the church: assemblies of God‘s people who love each other so much that their worship, fellowship, care for one another and  generous sacrifice impacts a watching world who is living out quite the opposite.  The difficulty is for students finding their place.  “Where do I fit? What can I offer?  Why would anybody want me on their team?”

These core issues are the values infused into students as a part of BuildingYourBand worship band camps.  Tapping into a student’s love for music, infusing in them a love for Jesus and helping them find their place in the church are values that both groups so desperately need. After leading over a decade of camps with hundreds of students, we have created a week where we foster an  intentional love and devotion to Christ, plugged students into the conversation of music and then put them in bands; where they participate in creating love songs for God becomes bigger than many things in their lives.  

Watch Canaan’s Ride as he shares BYB Camp influence on him

This also ends up meeting a critical need within the church: if fostered properly, students go on to form their own bands that continue in student ministry groups, and develop on adult stages.  Mind you, they don’t sound like rock stars on day one: but when did “performance-to-tour” quality become the goal of our worship stages? What have we sacrificed on the altar of quality by setting such high standards for our musical singers and players that no one can really attain them but the professional, hired hands?  In reality, parents in today’s church are hungry for their students to be involved; to love anything godly. Most leaders are shocked at the cheering, the joy, the relief and the tears that pour out of parents who watch a child who hasn’t cared about much of anything playing an instrument or the singing a song for God in the closing worship concert of our camps.

Bridging cultural gaps can be hard.  With the values instilled and the love poured out through proven method of training and development, BuildingYourBand gives you the tools to build a bridge into student hearts that will give them a love of a lifetime, a place at the table and a connection to the body.  

Wanna play?