I wasn't condescending, damn it. If I deign to condescend, trust me........you'll know it.
Youth groups are about association, pure and simple. Christian kids hanging with Christian kids. They aren't meant to replace Sunday services or parental teachings...merely to supplement them.
It has been said by people far wiser than you and me that who and what you'll be in ten years depends on two things: A) the books you read, and B) the people you associate with. My teen sons attend youth group (one is a bass player in their worship band) and they love it. They 'hang' with great kids and hear good words, too (youth pastor is a VERY mature late-20-something; the head pastor's son, and one terriic preacher in his own right).
Too many try to look at Christianity FAR too hard. There is nothing wrong with Christian kids associating with other Christian kids and hearing uplifting music and scriptural messages. As a dad of seven, I'm all too aware of the alternatives available to teens now days. No, I'll take an evangelical Youth Group that is well-run, well-structured, and well-led any day.
"I wasn't condescending, damn it. If I deign to condescend, trust me........you'll know it."
Well, if you weren't condescending, now you're menacing.
At any rate, accepting that youth groups are about association, then I would urge you to see what Scripture says about associating first and then seek a church which strives to follow that model. Cast aside your assumptions and go to the Bible first. What Scripture says about associating is profound, yet simple. And it doesn't list youth groups as one form of association that the church should promote. Rather it promotes inter-generational association and familiar association, under the authority of the elders in a local church. Nor does it list youth pastor as an office of the church. I'll keep waiting for a Scriptural reference on that.
Mainstream Christianity is losing teenagers. Check out this from Barna:
"the Barna statistics show that the percentage of teens who are evangelicals - i.e., those who are not only born again but also believe in the accuracy of the Bible, personal responsibility to evangelize, believe in salvation by grace alone, and possess orthodox biblical views on God, Jesus and Satan - have declined from 10% in 1995 to just 4% today. This demise is attributable to growing numbers of teenagers who accept moral relativism and pluralistic theology as their faith foundation."
Of course using that same criteria we are losing adults, also.
The point being, American Christianity needs to rethink itself. I would suggest going back to Biblical basics first. When we get those right, I would wager that things will start to look much better.
Finally, if you take a minute to check out the articles that I gave a link to, you can see much of this flushed out in greater detail and most importantly flushed out exegetically.