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On a recent bright and muggy Sunday at Park Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis, 12 teenage worshippers climbed the staircase bridging the old and new.
The old sanctuary consists of ornate woodwork and flowing banners adorning the altar, which holds a foot-high golden cross. The teens approached the more modern “Youth Center,” a room filled with plush, multi-colored couches surrounding a giant television set with a pool and Foosball table. A youth minister greeted them with hugs and handshakes as they walked through the doors.
They could be doing anything else on a Sunday morning, but they made a choice to attend.
In a world where school, parents and the media compete for a teenager’s attention, Twin Cities churches continue to seek new and inventive ways to lure young people.
As they talk about their faith, one sentiment is clear: they feel passionate about attending church.
“It doesn’t feel like my mom forces me because I force my mom to go,” said Levi Caffes, an eighth grader. “She’s the one who brought me to Christ and if she starts not going, then I’ll stop going.”
Other students share Caffes’ devotion to his faith. They keep busy throughout the year with lock-ins at the church, camping trips and the Iron Man and Woman bike trips, a highly anticipated week of bike riding and camping.
At Temple Israel, also in Minneapolis, there is a different approach toward reaching youth. In preparation for Confirmation, a Reform Judaism ceremony similar to the bar and bat mitzvah, the temple took its students to Washington, D.C. They met 250 other Jewish teens.
In Washington, the teenage students did something unorthodox for the nation’s capital: instead of separating church and state, they integrated the two subjects to learn what it means to be Jewish American. This integration gave them a unique opportunity, where they not only learned the responsibility of being an adult from a religious viewpoint, but also what it’s like to be an adult in their country. The teens then were taken around the city where, for four days, they learned about what Rabbi Michael Namath, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, calls “the connection between Judaism and social justice.”
Namath hoped that by the end of the four-day experience, all 250 teens, including those from Minneapolis, “understand the Jewish mandate to be a part of social and political change.”
Like Temple Israel, Grace Fellowship, a Baptist church in Brooklyn Park, is marrying another taboo: religion and public schools.
Champlin Park High School contacted Grace Fellowship about forming a program called “Something Else,” said Dave Mergens, the Baptist church’s youth pastor.
Grace Fellowship receives help from Champlin Women of Today to bus students between the high school and church twice a week. The program allows students to hang out in a structured environment where they can also study the Bible, Mergen said.
The school and church relationship is unusual, Mergen said.
“Any time I tell other youth pastors about it their jaw drops,” Mergen said.
These churches have figured out ways to attract young people to their services and help them understand what their churches preach, religious leaders said.
For Mari Fitch, a 10th-grader who attends Park Avenue Methodist, church should be an integral part of every teenager’s life.
“Living in a secular society, it really is important, at least for me to know about all my options, so I can make decisions in my life,” Fitch said.
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