[rueful]

For everyone on this board who went through a Youth group and is still committed to Christianity and the values they learned (or at least hopefully learned in Youth Group), Im sure alot of us know others from our same youth groups who heard the same lessons and now have given up on church.

So in an effort to learn or just understand more, what made you stick with it as opposed to those others, if you have any idea.

Im not sure if that made sense, so ill give an example. I dated a girl on my youth groups leadership team, we went through the same youth group for three years, same leadership team, learning all the same values hearing all the same discussions and lessons, yet im still practicing those values and she is not. The biggest thing that sticks out to me is that my parents practiced those values at home and hers did not, but does anyone else have similar situations with different ideas of what happened?

[NG33]

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I can tell you what happened at my youth group. It really all boiled down to following the lifestyle the Bible set out or doing your own thing. The majority of the time when people left my youth group it was due to them not liking to have to "follow all the rules". They saw God as the ultimate authority figure, and they felt that if they did what they wanted then they'd show God they were in control of their lives. Now there are usually more things to it, but this is what I've gotten from old friends who left the church.

[BJWilliams]

Really for me it was not only the youth group but also a very strong foundation built at home...I didnt become a Christian until I got to college but I had a very strong Christian foundation with my parents but they also didnt try to drill everything in my head and not allow me to make mistakes and learn consequences on my own.