Teenagers' Faith in God

My parish - St. Joseph's Cathedral in Dunedin, New Zealand

My daughter has just participated in her first full Easter celebrations by altar serving in the Wednesday's Chrism mass, the Good Friday's mass and Easter Sunday today.  She is always eager to serve as I think it is a novelty for the children her age.  These days the altar servers are between 10 and 13 years old as the teenagers probably see it as not cool to be an altar server once they get older.  Also, the number of teenagers going to church with their parents has dwindled through the years.

This is one of the laments of the church and almost every religious education teacher you talk to.  A lot of teenagers would rebel and frankly tell their teachers how they hated their RE classes and as they grow older they always try all sorts of ways to escape these classes including truancy!  The church is very aware how they loose a lot of teenagers as they struggle with all the problems of growing up into adults.  Then when they start to have families, some will come back to the church if they want their children to grow up having God and embracing God in their lives.  

Here in New Zealand, all Catholic schools and also Christian schools are all integrated in that the school buildings belong to the church but the teachers' salaries are paid by the government.  Because of these reasons, only 5% of the students can be other than preferred students in that one parent or even grandparent in some cases is Catholic.  International students are not in the head count as they pay full fees and thus no connection with the ministry of education.

No one seems to know the solution to get teenagers to be interested in their faith and I guess it is always easy to blame God when things are against you and then drift away as they cannot reason as 'where is God when bad things happen to them!'

I know all I can do is pray for my students in that they will accept God and have faith in Him!