Lead or Leave

I don't mean this post's title as an ultimatum. Far from prescriptive, I'd like to consider for a few lines here that it might in fact be descriptive. Maybe it's the answer to the perennial question of why young people largely don't remain in the church even if they start out there. Could it be that "Lead or Leave" is the instinct that many young people feel, and those that don't (ie, the natural followers) are just following the leaders who leave because leading isn't an option offered by most churches?

It seems that we're most likely to follow our peers first before we'll go out on a limb with people that are of a significantly different demographic than us. And those that are the natural leaders, then, have the greatest influence over those in their own demographic. So here's this great synergistic ecosystem of thoughts, actions and influences flowing between leaders and followers in every generation. But the church almost completely lacks the mechanism to matriculate that generation into the mainstream flow of church activities because once they outgrow the "youth ministries" box, they are not allowed to take the helm at the next logical echelon, that of adult ministry.

Sure, we'll let a few through. Those that are willing to march to the beat of our drum. But those that are doing their own drumming and the peers that are marching with them, are for all intents and purposes shown the back door because we don't give them control of the front door. And they very effectively march onward and outward but not with our blessing and not with our vision.