A group of pastors and former youth ministry leaders suggest that today’s youth ministries should be disbanded, calling the common practice of separating congregations by age for worship and Bible study “unbiblical.”

The church leaders state their case in the documentary film, “Divided: Is Age-Segregated Ministry Multiplying or Dividing the Church?”

The film is produced by the National Center for Family Integrated Churches in association with LeClerc Brothers Motion Pictures. The producers released the documentary earlier this month online, and have made it available for free until Sept. 15.

“Divided” follows “edgy twenty-something” Christian filmmaker Philip LeClerc on a quest to find answers to why his generation is increasingly turning away from attending church. Recent surveys have shown that as many as 85 percent of young people will leave the church and many never return.

NCFIC Director Scott T. Brown told The Christian Post that today’s modern concept of youth ministry is a “50-year failed experiment.” Brown said that when he was a church leader in the ‘70s and ‘80s he could have been the “poster boy” for the youth ministry movement in California.

However, he said he now feels that dividing children from adults at church is an unbiblical concept borrowed from humanistic philosophies.

“The church has become divided generationally,” Brown said. “It’s not doing what Scripture prescribes and is actually doing something foreign to Scripture by dividing people by age or by life stage.”

“The whole point of ‘Divided’ is that God has spoken clearly about the discipleship of youth in the Bible,” he explained. “Scripture is sufficient. It’s time to get beyond the age of modern, systematic age-segregated youth ministry. We need to put it aside.”

Former youth pastor Boyd Dellinger, who is now the lead pastor of Heritage Bible Fellowship in Fayetteville, N.C., is one of several church leaders interviewed in the film. Dellinger said that by all of today’s standards he was once a successful youth pastor.

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