Under my city ministries (I was twice in the same Church), our Youth went through four very different and very interesting phases. This post is about the third phase -- in which we had good young teens, and some very dedicated leaders. Looking back, though, I would estimate that more than half of those youth went seriously off the rails, and several died (I think of four in this moment, it is a sad loss). OBSERVATION: Paradoxically, the emphasis of our Youth leaders at the time was to teach the youth about the perils of life. They "drilled" them again and again, with explicit teaching. My analysis is this. Our leaders placed a heavy emphasis on morality, yet comparatively little emphasis on coming to know the Lord through personal surrender. The emphasis was on the horizontal rather than the vertical. But it is hard to say whether things could have turned out better. There are, too, some of those youth who are well placed in life today. I was in touch with three of them just this past week.
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