Staff training discusses root causes for exodus of youths from churches and explores solutions

["Taiwan Church News" <enews@pctpress.org>]

3117 Edition

November 21-27, 2011

Church Ministry News

Staff training discusses root causes for exodus of youths from churches  and 
explores solutions

Reported by Chen Yi-hsuan

Written by Lydia Ma

In face of the mass exodus of youths from churches, Nanmen Presbyterian Church 
in Tainan recently began hosting a seminar series entitled “Being there for 
youths during struggling times.” The seminars will be held every Sunday 
afternoon and anyone interested in youth ministries is welcome to attend. The 
first seminar was held on November 20, 2011.

These seminars typically begin a time of Bible study followed by a book study 
of Les Parrott’s “Helping Your Struggling Adolescent.” Discussions that follow 
from this study are open and free, with emphasis on listening to others and 
fellowshipping with others.

The coordinator for this seminar is Nanmen Church’s intern seminarian, Wu 
Ming-han, who is currently a student of Tainan Theological College and 
Seminary. After getting to know Nanment church, Wu noticed that many of its 
youths no longer show up after graduating from high school. Upon further 
investigation, he discovered that some youths had gone to other churches while 
others were no longer Christians. At the crux of the problem was that Nanmen 
Church wasn’t equipped to minister to senior high school and college age youths.

With this seminar series, he hopes that it will attract young adults and church 
leaders to read Parrott’s book and engage in heartfelt and free discussions. 
His seminars usually begin with reading a passage from the Bible where 
participants are invited to share their views on what they think the passage 
means. Following this segment, Wu begins to tell a story related to psychology 
and participants are invited to take turns to invent their version of how the 
story progresses next and ends.

Wu said that as soon as people begin to share their thoughts and understanding 
of an issue, they are simultaneously prompted to examine why they think of 
certain things in certain ways. Similarly, those who are listening are also 
enlightened by different perspectives they’d never thought about before.

Wu conceded that it’s impossible to avoid disagreements and conflicts in 
church, but he underscored that communication and listening to one another was 
vital. He hoped that this seminar would help people become better at speaking 
out and listening.

********************

Taiwan Church News is published weekly in Taiwan's local languages. 

You may translate and re-use our articles online only if you acknowledge the 
source as "Taiwan Church News" and list the names of the reporter and writer. 
Contact us before reprinting any of our articles for print publications. 

Direct comments and questions about this article to: enews@pctpress.org

Visit our website for more news at: http://enews.pctpress.org/ (English) or 
http://www.tcnn.org (Chinese) 

********************