For everyone who has a heavy-handed approach and attitude to kiruv – get off your pedestal and come down to earth with the rest of us. MOST OTD teens became that way ebcause of people who spoke to them as you suggest (too strongly, btw). Just as with a wounded animal, you need to speak gently, softly, and act slowly and sensitively, so too do you need to act with a yiddishe neshama that has been wounded. if you don’t GET that by now, you have no idea how to bring people closer to Hashem.
People who are ehrlcihe frum who work in kiruv day and night, have learned that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Stop preaching fire and brimstone, and start preaching acceptance. People don’t go OTD in one day, and they don’t come back in one day, either. If they are so disenchanted, they need to be able to see that the frum world CARES about them. That is not what I am hearing from some of the expressions being used by some individuals here. Others (like Aries), who are being argued with, have got it right, and I am certain they are doing a great job, and making a kiddush Hashem all the time.
BTW, as regards the concept of “thank-you” – it is VERY important for people to be makir tov to other people who have done even a small kindness for them (like opening the door for them). If one cannot be makir tov to a human being who does naarishkeiten tovos for us, as well as more substantial things, then how can one EVER know how to be makir tov to Hashem, whose chessed to us is daily and boundless? How many people really have the right kavanah when they said,”Modeh ani,” “Modim,” “V’anachnu korim,u’mishtachavim u’MODIM?”