Camping, Youth Ministry – Time to Panic?

The following is Part II of an article series on with camp meetings, Chautauqua, Methodist camping, and the poor. Part I asserted that a big part of Methodism’s success in America was the result of camp meetings (with reference to John Wesley’s decision to “be more vile” and preach in the outdoors and on the streets), its ability to reach the poor, the transition to church camping, and relationship to Pentecostalism. It also spoke of what might be called the liberal and cultural sophistication pushback against this thrust as exemplified by the Chautauqua movement.

United Methodism faces a crisis. This despite glowing reports from the recent General Conference that reference a sense of unity and predict a bright future at the decisions to be open and affirming. There have also been claims that the younger generation has been turned off to the church because of its alleged rigidity and intolerance around persons who identify as gay, lesbian or transgender. Now, however, there will supposedly be swelling interest in the United Methodist Church among youth and young adults.

Time for a reality check: the UMC is losing its youth. I have observed this firsthand simply by noting that I see very few youth in UM services I attend. Others, including the director of camping ministries in our conference, confirm these suspicions. Indeed, the situation is probably worse than I imagined.

My years in active ministry have been devoted to camping and youth (along with other things). I attended camp as a youth myself. When I became a pastor I attended our conference Senior High Institute every year for over 40 years. I was a Junior High camp director for 14 years and the conference coordinator for youth ministry for another eight years. My North Indiana Methodist Conference, one of five conferences (three Methodist and two Evangelical United Brethren) that now make up the Indiana UM Conference, would, when I began my ministry, regularly enroll 3,000 Senior High youth and 1,800 Junior High youth each summer.

In later years, I would set a local church goal each year of 30 Senior High youth at our conference Institute program. We lived together in a cottage for the week and grew in Christ. This would launch our youth program for the year. We recorded numbers of youth that entered full-time Chistian work.

Contrast that with what is happening today. This past summer—after the disaffiliation of a number of our UM churches–our conference (remember—it is five times larger than my original North Indiana Conference) recorded a grand total of 1,547 campers of which more than half were in elementary camps. Our camp facilities were used but much of their use was in the rental to megachurches or other denominations who needed camp facilities. And yet, and this is borne out by conversations with persons from other conferences, our Indiana conference is still considered as having one of the best programs in the connection.

This carries over into local youth groups and district and conference youth ministries. I served as a sub-district youth coordinator, then a district youth coordinator, and after that the conference youth coordinator. I remember sub-district youth rallies of 200 youth and conference rallies of 500 persons. We did Bible quizzes and talent nights and concerts. Then, in the late 1960s, we were told our youth programs were “mickey mouse.” “Youth” wanted to be involved in social issues and justice issues and be treated like adults. Major “youth” demonstrations (the demonstrators were mostly college age) at the 1968 and 1970 General Conferences led to major philosophical and theological changes in youth ministry on the national level.

In order to be inclusive, we began operating on a quota system. A new youth organization was made official, the National Youth Ministry Organization (NYMO). In 1974 I attended a meeting of conference youth coordinators in Nashville and received  a disturbing report. Between 1968 and 1974 the number of senior high curriculum materials sold quarterly decreased from 1,200,000 to 400,000. In 1967 the number of youth staff under the Methodist Board of Education totaled 13. By 1974 that had been reduced to one part-time person. In 1967 there were 52 full-time conference directors. Youth ministry in the denomination was in free fall. In 1980 NYMO was replaced.

While this was taking place, evangelical youth ministries were flourishing, or, at least, remained strong. The Jesus People movement, the charismatic movement and independent ministries such as Campus Crusade and Youth for Christ were spreading. This was at the college level as well as the High School level. In 1955 I attended the Intervarsity Urbana Missionary Conference in Urbana, Illinois. The attendance was 5,000, and I remember the excitement that so many people registered. Within 20 years the conference was registering 17,000 for the every-three-year event.

It needs to be pointed out that the decline was greater, at least in mainline denominations, than just youth ministry. In the 1950s more than half of all Americans belonged to one of the seven mainline Protestant denominations. By 2023 less than ten percent did. For United Methodists, while the membership of the global church in 2020 has actually increased from 11 million in 1968 (the time of the Methodist-EUB merger) to nearly 12 million, the American UM membership has halved, from nearly 11 million to 5.5 million. The growth had taken place in Africa and in other areas outside the U.S.

Of course, there are still many other reasons why youth ministry is in decline. With the gradual decline of cultural support for church activities, schools and sports more and more have scheduled Sunday activities in direct competition with church attendance and activities.

The decline of the stable Christian family has also affected youth Christian involvement. United Methodists once emphasized the importance of the Christian home. This emphasis has been compromised with the rise of feminism and increasing acceptance of gay and lesbian influence. It has not helped that the new Social Principles statement omits references to father and mother and husband and wife and redefines “family.”

But a number of observers have also commented on the negative influence of smartphones and social media. In March, National Review carried an article, “Smartphones Are Damaging Our Kids,” with the subhead “Parents need government to help protect children from social-media tyranny.” American teens and young adults spent about an hour a day socializing in person in 2012, but that figure has halved to 30 minutes by 2022. Half of U.S teens were significantly sleep-deprived in 2022, up from a third in 2012. More than twice as many American teens suffered from major depression in 2022 than did in 2011. Emergency-room admissions of self-harm, a behavior linked to depression, doubled among teen-age girls in the U.S. between 2010 and 2021. Suicide rates among American children and teens have doubled during that same time-period. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared that adolescent mental health is the “crisis of our time.”

For these and other reasons the number of youth strongly committed to Christian faith is on the decline, and especially so in United Methodism and in other mainline denominations. Whether this is so in areas in the non-Western world remains to be seen.

Another reference to camping: I remember when Ken Enright, a Methodist missionary to Congo, was a missionary-in-residence at our Senior High Institute camp in North Indiana in 1964. His experience was so exhilarating that he said he was going to build and establish a similar camp in Congo. He did: it grew and flourished. Sixty years later, the “camp” has expanded and evolved and has repurposed itself several times. When civil war in Congo made it difficult to sustain the camp, a major portion of the operation moved to Zambia (though there is still a camp in Congo) where it is now the Kafakumba Training Center. It has expanded to include schools, a hospital, a retreat center for families and (basically) a training school for pastors. It also has launched a number of agricultural projects including bananas, fish, pigs, goats and honey, that enable local farmers to be self-sustaining. I am privileged to be part of the Kafakumba Training School Endowment Committee, a board composed almost entirely of laity, both United Methodist and Global Methodist, committed to endowing the school with a goal of $2 million.

Outdoor camping also played a major role in what is—or at least once was—racial and economic diversity in Methodist membership. Though African-Americans have been in North America since 1619, they comprised an insignificant amount of church attendance, membership, and Christian growth until after the Revolutionary War when American revivalism, especially through camp meetings, attracted groups of African-Americans.

Camp meetings were greatly influenced by African-Americans, not only in the music, but also in customs such as the ring dance and ideas such as the immediate experience of the Holy Spirit. By 1830, 30 percent of Methodist Episcopal membership was African-American, slave and free. At the time of the Civil War, seven of every 10 blacks who were slaves and who professed Christian faith were Methodist.

Despite emphasis today on inclusion and open hands, open doors and open hearts, the percentage of African-Americans in United Methodism is less than 5 percent, a far cry from the 30 percent of the mid-19^th century. The decrease of the percentage of blacks in United Methodism is connected with the diminished emphasis on camp meetings as well as the reaction against revivalism and the doctrine of Holiness and anything associated with emotionalism.

So, some questions for United Methodist leaders, or, for that matter, for all of our UM family.

Is there an acknowledgement on the part of church leaders that the United Methodist Church in the U.S. is losing its youth? Whether the answer is yes or no, where in the church is effective youth evangelism taking place? Where are the places where youth ministry is thriving? Where does the responsibility lie in these areas? Are there plans in the making to deal with this serious problem?