1. Strangle your youth group. One sure, smooth way to “ deaden” youth interest is to choke off every desire teens may have to participate in the meetings. Do not allow your young people to plan or take part in any of the programs. Forget the rumor you’ve heard that today’s teens have talent, initiative, and brain power. Inform your group that you “ run the show” because you are the sponsor. Their job is to sit and listen. Teens who take part in programs keep their spiritual blood stream active. This keeps them alive and coming back. So, hold the tourniquet tight around the neck. If they beg for something to do— such as leading the singing reading the Scriptures, having an informal discussion— don’t dare let up. If you do, they may come back the next week—and that’s exactly what you do not want! Repress their desires to express themselves in their programs. Then it won’t be long before you may call the coroner. He will never suspect you had anything to do with the murder. 2. Starve them. If your teens insist on participating— if you can’t strangle them— then try starvation. Start a spiritual famine in your group. Give them no Bible-centered programs. Tell your group not to bother bringing their Bibles to the meeting. Omit Scripture reading. In your discussions refer to the writings of Aristotle or Toynbee, anything but the Bible. Forget about relating to their Christian-life problems. Do your best to undernourish your group by less-than- solid programs. Never get into subjects that teens are interested in, such as dating and marrriage. Avoid pro grams on how to improve daily devotions, and how to witness for Christ. Refrain from discussing how to choose a God-directed career or how to live with parents. Bypass topics on popularity, temptations, questionable practices. Skip these subjects, and your teens .w ill skip your programs. By a well-planned schedule of malnutrition you can make your teen-agers’ blood anemic and paralyze their spiritual muscles. Your group will pine away, having no strength to make it out to the meetings. Your goal will be accomplished— the bloodless way. 3. Bury them alive. You are aware that a rut is a deadly thing—something like a grave with both ends dug out. So why not bury your group in a rut? This method is unconditionally guaranteed to be fatal. Here’s how to use this method in your church: Insist that every program begin with “ Tonight we’ll sing your favor ites.” Follow the not-so-lively song service with a few testimonies, work in a dozen choruses, pass the chorus book for the collection, have the same three kids as last week read some “parts.” . Follow this procedure faithfully for several weeks in a row. Never vary it. Do nothing different in any of the programs. If you follow these instructions, you will not even need to hire an undertaker. You will have buried your youth group alive! 4. Poison your group. Envenom your youth group with the poison of nondiluted entertainment. Because teen-agers Ienjoly zestful activities, make your youth pro grams something like a circus. Add the hip-hip-hooray of contests, quizzes, choruses, films. Seek to attract'kids to the meetings by outside speakers every week. Include magicians, ventriloquists; show movie cartoons; take up the offering in a.flower basket;—do anything to fill in the
time and entertain. This approach is like sugar-flavored poison. Your group will enjoy it to the hilt, but at the same time they will famish spiritually. Then you can arrange for the funeral. 5. Asphyxiate your teens. Suffocate your young people with more preaching—on top of the Sunday school class lecture and church sermon that morning. Preach to the young people in every meeting. Smother them with your lengthy homiletical exhortations. Don’t worry about giving the teens the impression that church is only a place where they “ get preached at” all the time. After all, this younger generation is going to the dogs, and you need to call them back to dedication every week. Firmly stand by your convictions that socials and recreation are beneath the work of the church during the week. Center your entire youth program around you, around your “ sermons.” Let the young people know that because you have the answers, you do the preaching. Never try anything creative such as a panel, debate, or buzz session. Any mortician will tell you that asphyxiation is a simple but lethal method. 6. Knife your youth. If none of the above methods work, you may need to be more sanguine. Encourage your young people to talk to you personally about their prob lems. Promise your teens that they can confide in you. Then tell one of the other young people about the wrong doings of the teen you counseled. Soon the news will get around that you betrayed his confidence. That young person will know that he cannot trust you. Soon he drop out of your group. Fail to keep your word with other young people; dangle their mistakes before other teens; and you will soon decimate your group. 7. Work them to death. If nothing else works, have your young people do everything for and in the meetings. Offer them no assistance. Tell them the programs are theirs; you are only the chaperone. Insist that the teens develop their programs entirely on their own. Have them select the program idea, pick out all the songs, do all the research in the library for the debate (or whatever method they will use), find out for themselves how to conduct a debate, think up their ideas for publicity, etc. The program may be a flop (because the teens got discouraged in the struggling process of preparing), but your philosophy is “ learn to swim by swimming.” A few teens may drown in the process, but you needn’t care. After all, you don’t have time to give swimming lessons! The teens that don’t drown will soon drop dead from exhaustion. Then all you will have to do is write the obituary notices. 8 . ' Commit suicide. Perhaps you feel that the above procedures are inhumane. If so, may I suggest one other for solving your problem approach: suicide. Whether you resign by bullet, gas, ok a window leap, please leave a note on the dresser.
Word it this way: “ No sacrifice is too great for today’s teens. But I simply wasn’t willing to make the sacrifice.” Dr. Zuck. a graduate of Biola, is an editor of Scripture Press. Wheaton. Illinois. how to effectively kill your youth group
MARCH, 1963
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