Youth Groups as Church or Social Gathering?

All over it's seen in society that their is devoted religious followers. As discussed in Chapter 19 of Sociology "Religion" a statement from Emile Durkheim claims that church can contribute to the operation of society through "social cohesion" which is uniting people with similar interests of symbolism, values and norms. It seems in recent years of the church that they are developing new ways to interest teens in being active members of a religious organization.  "Youth Groups" is an interesting concept that rather than gathering the church as a whole, younger people are individualized out to share similar ideas and issues that can be used as collective efforts to look towards their faith as an answer to anything.

Although, youth groups are being seen by some church organizations as more of a "hangout" than a gathering for religious purposes. When I was in high school I was invited by a good friend of mine who began going to a youth group in a town over and wanted me to come. I ended up going to the group for almost six weeks and found that more was emphasized on activities to do and free food to appease the younger crowd of people in the church. I ended up going to the congregation on Sundays only about four times and discovered that there was a completely different approach than those on youth groups. It was almost an eye opening experience seeing that the youth group was almost used as a draw in for the younger crowd to go to Sunday service, but there was no true positive effect seen since only myself and five others out of the thirty plus people in the youth group actually went to Sunday service.

This observation almost goes along with the idea of structural functional theory for religion in society which makes the claim that it unites people and controlling behavior. This does so by the idea that I was first drawn in by someone who I was united with in an attempt for him to unite me with others who had the christian values and ideals he did. Next thing I knew after attending the service I began to be questioned about the music I listened to and the fact I enjoyed "inappropriate" movies. I realized that this group was trying to control my behavior to match their ideals and values. Though I didn't continue going to the church, I did realize that maybe these social groups put on by the church were an idea to try to draw in a crowd by appeased to what the youth of today perceives as "cool" or "hip." The rise of christian rap and hard rock also almost goes along with this idea of "going with the flow" to put in a sense subliminal messaging to get people to buy into the christian ideas and values. There is nothing wrong with the values christians today are trying to teach youth how to get spiritual fulfillment in life. It seems at times though that there are desperate attempts to conform target audiences such as teenagers to buy into these values.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-08-11-teenchurch10_ST_N.htm
http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2010-02/youth-ministry-killing-church