All of the “counselors” were stationed along the bleachers, and each kid that came forward was to speak to a counselor. I had been trained by a very wise man in how to "lead someone to Christ". He always taught us to never lead the conversation, but instead allow the inquirer to do most of the talking. He also taught us not to use simple yes or no questions (especially if the answer is an obvious yes or no). As the first student approached me, I gently said, “why have you gone forward tonight”? My first response was an honest “Because my friend went forward”. So I spoke for awhile with the student, realizing that he had no idea what the gospel is, or what it meant to "be saved". I was very careful not to assure him that he “just got saved”. After ending the discussion with the first student I moved to the next student. (There were more students who “got saved” than we had prepared for, so we had many kids “waiting to get saved”). As he came, I again asked, “why have you come”? His response was something to the effect of, “I thought everything was really cool, and I liked the speaker”. When we began discussing salvation, and why he had come he said he had already gotten saved at another event. But when I asked him very basic questions about salvation he was totally clueless. By this time, most all of the students had been through “counseling” and our bus was warming up. I learned later, that 13 of our kids had gotten saved (13 out of the 46 that we took). You would think that with 13 souls “saved” that I would be excited, but I had a sneaking suspicion of what had happened.
Shortly after the event I talked with some of the students that had "made decisions" one on one, and asked them questions pertaining to salvation. Just basic things, about Jesus dying for their sins, what that meant, why the needed it, etc. Basic things. No questions about transubstantiation. I did not ask if they knew what anthropomorphism means, merely basic things pertaining to the Christian faith. Nothing even too deeply doctrinal, just basic Scripture. These youth were clueless as to what it meant to be saved, and what they were even being saved from, or who they were being saved to. Yet I looked at the paper the counselor had filled out and it was marked as clear as day, “salvation”. How had this happened? How is it that these people had gotten these kids to pray a prayer, then one week later nothing had changed in their life, they did not even know the most basic truths of coming to Christ?
As I began asking myself, "Why exactly where these youth told they had "accepted Christ" at this event then one week later they knew nothing of salvation"? Perhaps we were not prepared for the event and we had to settel for "bad counselors". In that I would agree that we need better training in teaching people how to lead someone to Christ, this I discovered was not the problem. In fact I have discovered this phenomenon at most every big event we attend (which I have started to avoid). We see this same thing every year at church camp. In fact it is not just a youth ministry thing. It is happening to adults all across not only the United States but all around the globe. Millions of people are getting “saved”, but then we see no fruit whatsoever.
Whenever I first arrived at the church we are currently at we had numerous kids who had gotten “saved” at least on three occasions. I even hear this in testimonies of many adults. They get “saved” at one point, got baptized, walked away, came back, got “saved” again, walked away, got “saved” again, and then finally this time it seems to have stuck.
This problem is even well documented within the Southern Baptist Convention. I consider it a serious problem that the SBC claims 16 million members but only 5 million even attend church. Of that 5 million who attend only 3.2 attend some sort of further Bible Study like Sunday School. This was from a 1997 study, I would almost venture to say those statistics are keeping at about the same percentage, and I am going to make a prediction that unless God sovereignly changes the structure and underlying philosophies and theology of the SBC that percentage of difference between members and church attendance will continue to expand. (And I believe this might happen due to the recent push to get 1,000,000 souls saved in 2006). Perhaps you come from a different denomination, yet I would not consider yourself immune to this. Studies have shown that this percentage is about the same across the board.
There must be a change in the way that we do ministry. I have recently sensed God doing a mighty work in the way that adults are ministered to, yet I have yet to see this type of movement in the way we minister to youth.
Work in Progress...to be continued
