How do I get high schoolers interested in coming to a teen-oriented Church service?

Question

I am a junior in high school and I am involved in an organization called Life Teen. Life Teen does Catholic Masses with music and sermons that are oriented toward teens and high school kids. We're trying to get more people involved, but we think a lot of people probably consider it "uncool". Answerers don't have to be Catholic; answers just have to be serious!

In response to Nea

We don't want to force religion on anyone. We merely want to get people open to being involved with religion interested in coming.

In response to disturbed001500

To focus a sermon on teens, a priest takes the lesson of the passage (which is the same no matter what) and relates it to circumstances more likely to occur in a teenager's life. For example, "You shall not kill." Hopefully there aren't a bunch of teens out there killing people, but one can relate it to how teens could kill others' spirits...you know, making fun of people, putting them down? That may sound lame, but I don't write the sermons. They're much better than that.

Answer 1

Food Music Fun

Answer 2

When I was with Youth For Christ a billion years ago, I joined because we were singing songs and playing guitars and talking about things that bothered us in today's world and discussing how the Bible and our Faith addressed those issues. The two leaders were very enthusiastic and charismatic and energetic. They knew their letters from Paul which can cover so many modern topics.
You need to make it fun, contemporary, musical and you need to tell them you will have answers for them and be good enough as a Bible Scholar to deliver on that. All the books from Paul are full of passages that are applicable to daily life. Also encourage them to have their own Bible and to highlight in it if they want to or need to - it makes it more personal. We all were decorating the covers back then, too. That will shock some people, but if you want to bring the Bible into a teen's life, you need to make it more interesting and much, much more personal.
You should practice by thinking about what the Bible says about a lot of the questions in Friends and Family and Singles & Dating and how to make the answer less judgemental sounding - because that is a lot of what they will ask about. If you cannot help with those answers, don't bother trying to organize something for teens.

Answer 3

Offer them money. Come on, put out your banners for it, but allow them to decide if they want to be brainwashed by your cult or not. How is it that you can focus a sermon from the Bible on teens? Does that mean you pick and choose what you think teens want to hear and ignore the rest? Kind of sounds like that to me. Why not teach the whole Bible front to back and see how many times you can pick out that the Bible contradicts itself or is impossible. Teach them about God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah for the sins happening there, but at the same time God ignoring the incest of Lot and his daughters, and the hypocrisy that God displays time and time again.

EDIT: Kind of sounds like the sermons are being customized towards the crowd and not all the messages of your religion are being given out. Why is that? Does that not scare you that a religion would adapt itself for different groups to solicit them? Is it a business or a religion?

Answer 4

I think that this is going to be hard, because at present it is uncool to believe in anything. Perhaps you should ask them what it would take to get them to go? Maybe you should hand our flyers, and maybe take everyone out to eat after wards, like a nice place, not burger king. Perhaps you should get a couple of the popluar kids to get invovled and encourge people. But maybe your church should let every one know , and mean it, that they can wear what they want, every one can come no matter what they believe, and they can ask any questions they want, even if it is something that may make you cringe. I think people stay away from churchs because who wants to go and have to worry they will not fit in because they believe different, or they have to wear the right cloths or they will not be welcomed.

Answer 5

I live in a college town so there are many young people and many high schools. Our Church do Praise and Worship to the new Christian Songs, we clap our hands and sing Praises unto the Lord. We bring in Christians Bands and I love it as well.

It is sincere and The Holy Spirit is always present. Therefore, many young people have given their hearts to God and attendances is awesome.

Answer 6

Even if they aren't interested and you know they won't want to go to a church, just say, "Hey we have this really cool thing goin on, you wanna come?" if they ask what it is, ha it's okay to lie about it, (it works) if you say like its a party or something. 'cause my pastor tried it on this one bully in his school when he was in high school and he told him it was a party and then when they got there he was really mad, but he ended up getting saved! Is that not cool? Good luck, I hope you guys can get some people to go!

~Meg

Answer 7

im baptist and we have a successful after school program. kids come after school for free tutoring and home work, we offer a whole line of nintendo xbox internet pool snacks the video games get them in and we have an hour of silent time in which we do biblical prayers and lesson and they come back in droves weve grown from about 10 to 50 kids.....we even offer after school pick up

Answer 8

Do like Campus Crusade does.

Hang signs everywhere promising free food. Once you've got your marks in the building, lock them in and preach away.

Afterwards, hand them each a snack sized bag of Doritos.

Remember, it's ok to lie for Jesus.

Answer 9

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Answer 10

Well, just don't TRY to be "cool." If you have stuff like, "Yo homies! Come check it out and hang with J-Crizzle once a week!" then people will feel patronized.