This is a followup guest entry to an article entitled Do You Believe Your Youth Group Will Stay In The Church? by my brother Nathan French.To get to know Nathan better check out his bio here or his Facebook page here. Nathan is our Youth Pastor at Apostolic Tabernacle and he is passionate about seeing AiMYouth live for God with abandon. Also, here’s a link to an article that I wrote a while back entitled 5 Key Subjects That We Must Address (If We Want To Retain Young Adults In Our Churches).

First of all, let me say that “backsliding” is a very real thing. It is impossible to “backslide” if you were never standing where God wanted you to stand in the first place. The youth of our generation have grown up in a different world then our elders grew up in. There are new temptations of convenience. The devil has cleverly placed temptations in front of our youth and made sin easily accessible for them. Violence, profanity, pornography….it’s all just a click away now. You haven’t given them computer access? Satan says, “No problem, their cell phones will do.” Satan has provided our students lots of help to lead them on the way to backsliding. As the Church, it is our responsibility to counteract these attempts of the enemy, and stand against the fiery darts of the wicked. I believe our young people can live for God in the last days! I also believe that they can resist the temptations of this world if the Church will be the lighthouse that they need it to be in order to see their way on an ocean of easily accessible sins.

The problem is not what’s coming from the world; our youth understand that the world is a dark place. What they cannot understand is how darkness gets into the Church. Backsliding begins in our youth groups when they see the darkness in the Church, because they no longer know where to draw the lines of right and wrong.  They begin to ask themselves questions like, “If darkness is in the Church, how are we any different than the world?” Please don’t misunderstand me; I don’t believe any of our churches want to see their kids backslide. Most often, we don’t even realize how we’re “helping” the process along. Here are seven ways church people might be obliviously “helping” youth backslide.

1. Talk bad about ministry. This is a great way to help your youth backslide. If you want to help them on the road to backsliding, keep on having those negative conversations at lunch on Sunday. “Why does Pastor always….?” Anyways, you get the point.

2. Never get involved. This is a great way to help your youth backslide. After all, you’re way too busy to help with the church right now. If we keep teaching our youth that God is the last priority, that will definitely help them make the decision to put God last in their life.

3. Never worship. Worship draws people closer to God, so if you want to help your youth group backslide… teach them how to not worship. Hosea 11: 7- And my people are bent to backsliding from me: though they called them to the most High, none at all would exalt him.

4. Constantly miss church. This is a great way to help your youth backslide. By simply not taking them to church, you have helped the devil immensely. The presence of God will begin to break strongholds in their life, so if you want to help them backslide, definitely do not take them to church three times a week. Psalm 122:1- I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.

5. Speak in anger and not love. Correcting your youth in anger rather than love is a great way to help them backslide. After all, God is love. If you don’t want God to be a big part of their life, don’t do anything in love.

6. Seclude yourself. Your youth group is a community of great friends that believe in the same thing. So, by secluding yourself and your family, you have already helped the devil. I mean, who wants to be around their friends of like faith anyways? Oh wait… your youth do!

7. Use God’s Name in vain. There is power in the name of Jesus. When you abuse it by using it as a joke, the devil is so happy. There is nothing more powerful than the name of Jesus. If you teach your young people that His Name is just a joke, you will definitely help them backslide. Act 4:12 – Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

We are THE CHURCH! Let’s be a light in a dark world and do whatever it takes to keep the darkness out of the Church.