What Might Your Spiritual Life Look Like If You Stayed in Youth Group Forever?

Shallow Spirituality

What would your walk with God look like if you stayed in the youth group your whole life? I had the blessing of growing up in the church and truly loved our youth group. At First Baptist Spartanburg, the youth met in the basement of the church, in a room that we had decorated ourselves with fluorescent splatter paint and handprints on one of the walls. Sound like the nineties? You guessed it! It was the highlight of my week—seeing my Christian friends from other schools and buying a slice of pizza for only a buck!

But what might my spiritual life look like if I had stayed in the youth group? Or better yet, what might worship and spiritual formation look like if our churches never ventured past the content or approach we use with our teens? For this question, you don’t even need to use your imagination, because many churches were founded on this very principle. Around the same time I was experiencing youth group, there was a movement of church planters who were seeing the success of the musical styles and topical teaching that was happening in their youth groups, and they set out to create churches with a similar approach. In many ways, their venture was successful, and many unchurched people heard the gospel for the first time. But inevitably, what you win them with, you win them to. So, what have been the unintended consequences of this approach?

In his book, The Juvenilization of American Christianity, Thomas Bergler defines juvenilization as “the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become acceptable as appropriate for Christians of all ages.”¹

And why is this a problem? Let me suggest two reasons. First, the spiritual truths that sustain us as children will not be enough to sustain us as adults. Yes, the basics of the gospel will always be vital for our spiritual life, but our rudimentary understanding of the Bible will inevitably lead to rudimentary living. As a child, my deepest spiritual questions revolved around why Susie wasn’t asking me to her birthday party, and I was comforted by the truth that “Jesus loves me, this I know . . . .” As an adult who has walked through twenty years of brain injury with my husband, I still need the comfort of Jesus loves me, but my greater peace comes from understanding the doctrine of God’s sovereignty and how he often “permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves.”²

The second reason we must not stay in an infantile state of spirituality is that God designed us for growth! Consider the words of Psalm 1:1–4:

Blessed is the man
     who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
     nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
     and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree
     planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
     and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so,
     but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

If we were to read this passage backwards, we begin with two pictures: a tree and some chaff. The tree is planted by a stream, its leaf isn’t withering, and in all it does, it prospers. This tree is growing. It is lush, green, and healthy in appearance. And this tree is bearing fruit. Now consider the chaff. In the Bible, chaff is often referred to in contrast to wheat. Where wheat was valuable, chaff was not. It was separated from the wheat because it was worthless, and how they separated the two was by tossing them into the air. The wheat would come down, and the chaff would be blown away. I think I’ve made the point: We want to be like a flourishing tree, not lifeless chaff.

If the second two verses paint the picture of the two plants, the first two verses tell us how we might become the thriving tree. Our roots must grow deep. Rather than transient spirituality that listens to the voices of the world, we must intentionally plant ourselves where our roots can delve deeply into the soil of God’s Word. The wind of trials will come to both the tree and the chaff. Will my roots be anchored enough in truth to sustain me?

How might a Christ follower avoid shallow spirituality? It’s a lifelong process, but consider three starting points.

1. Pray prayers of our forefathers.

I would never suggest that an older prayer is better simply because it’s older, but oftentimes recorded prayers of the historic church give us greater insight into who God is, as well as unique perspective into prayer itself. There exists a trend in the modern church of equating spontaneity in prayer with authenticity. Yet in the Scriptures, even the prayers of Jesus can be traced to earlier prayers of Scripture, clearly not lacking in genuineness. Want a flourishing prayer life? Look to the prayers of missionaries and martyrs. You will find a depth of knowing God that will foster deeper intimacy and faith in your own prayers.

Our songs must proclaim who God is and what he has done.

2. Sing songs of substance.

When I am with worship leaders (which I often am in my role at our church), we commonly discuss song selection: What types of songs should our congregations be singing on a Sunday morning? I will usually introduce the idea of a continuum that I use. Imagine a line with these two words on either end: expression and formation. In all the churches I have visited over the years, I have experienced some worship services where the theology and language of the old hymns was so dense and archaic that their worship felt lifeless and quite impossible for a young or new believer to engage. Yet I have also visited churches that were so steeped in expression—every song boasting of “what I’m going to sing” and “how I’m going to praise”—that they never quite expound on why or who we praise. Our songs must proclaim who God is and what he has done. On Sunday morning, the sermon isn’t the point in the service where learning begins. And the music, I might add, isn’t filler for the latecomers to find a seat! Singing is formative. Not only do we learn of who God is, but we learn how to approach him in worship and prayer. What we sing matters, and our theology must become our doxology.

3. Choose to be a lifelong learner.

The late theologian J. I. Packer once said, “What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something that catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance, and in this the Christian has in a way that no other person has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?”

I began by asking the question, What would your life would look like if your knowledge of God remained shallow? But the greater question might be this: If we believe God to be more magnificent than we could ever comprehend, why would we ever cease to crave a deeper and fuller knowledge of him? If we believe that the truth of God sets us free, why would we not delve deeper into that truth in order to lives of greater freedom, more surrendered to his will? If we believe that God desires our worship to be both in spirit and truth, why would we not seek to sing the wondrous story of God in a fuller and more comprehensive way? And lastly, if we believe that God’s truth is the only thing that can make sense of the brokenness in which we live and our gaze is set on the hope that is to come, why would I not keep learning, keep exploring, and keep experiencing the height, length, and breadth of his love in Christ?

May your affections for God be rekindled as your mind is re-engaged, pondering the wonder and depth of who God is.

Laura Story is the author of Stand in Awe: How Reverence Transforms Our Worship and Our Lives.

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