Sharon Galgay Ketcham - Reciprocal Church: Becoming a Community Where Faith Flourishes Beyond High School

I am thirteen and sitting in a church parking lot with my mom. My heels dig in as do hers. I am kid number three, so Mom is pretty adept at knowing when to push and when to release control. So when she pushes hard, I know my resistance is futile. My family is in the middle of a tumultuous time following our move from Texas to Germany. My brother starts a new school as a senior in high school, my sister remains in college in Texas, my dad faces tremendous responsibility in his new position, and my mom gets up every day to help each of us gain our footing. We must adapt to a new culture, a new language, new road signs, and new friends. Needless to say, the challenges my family face are taking a toll. And me? I have a freshly molded piece of plastic strapped around my body that I get to wear 24/7 to prevent my scoliosis from progressing. This final blow crushes what remains of my childhood confidence.

We are sitting in front of this church because my mom is forcing me to go inside and join a youth choir. She knows what I need before I know what questions to ask. And she is right. I encounter Jesus with this community and confirm the faith my parents taught me.

My faith experience sets the stage for a lifelong conviction: God gifts and empowers young people to renew the church. After graduating from college with a ministry degree, I spend a decade serving in the local church until I come to the end of what I know. Certainly, I can attest to Gods transforming movement in the lives of young people during these years, but something is not quite right. I see the early signs long before news headlines sound the alarm that rising generations are leaving the church in unprecedented numbers. Amid what many would call a successful youth ministry, faith roots do not appear deep enough. How then could it be true that God wants young people to renew the church?

These experiences inaugurate my search for an answer to the reality that continues to unfold before us. The following pages capture years of researching, listening, experimenting, and clarifying. One thing is abundantly clear. My earlier vision of God using young people to renew the church took an unexpected turn. I envisioned young people as the heroes of this story whose passion would break in and spur us, the church, toward renewal. I did not anticipate that young people would be lead characters in a dramatic tragedy. Losing young people from our churches is what is finally capturing our attention.

The following pages will cast a vision for your community to become a reciprocal church and act as a catalyst for conversations and decisions in your churches and ministries. For each chapter, you will find a set of questions to assist you and leaders in your churches or ministries as you reflect on your particular circumstances. Part one of the book casts a theological vision for the reciprocal church, and part two defines values and practices inherent to becoming a community where faith might flourish. In , I pose three answers to a pressing theological question: how have we understood the relationship between young people and the church? We will explore how young people might end up believing this relationship is superfluous, the ways churches often treat the relationship as supportive, and why this relationship is actually vital.

I did not anticipate that young people would be lead characters in a dramatic tragedy. Losing young people from our churches is what is finally capturing our attention.

The work of theology often involves examining our present conceptions of the Christian faith and evaluating whether these remain faithful to the biblical witness and our historic creeds and confessions. By retrieving lost understanding or revising past conceptions, we do this work to express the faith in ways that make sense to us today and speak authentically to both the past and our present experiences. When you turn to ).