Many “Christian” parents do very little to disciple their children in the faith. It is a tragedy. One group thinks that the church has done a disservice to parents by developing youth ministries. In their opinion, youth ministry (as well as any age-related ministry) allows parents to shirk their responsibility as the primary spiritual leader of their children. They have produced a video called Divided. While I found several problems with the movie, I’ll point out two:
1. It is clearly fake. It pretends that some kid is on a journey, when he clearly has already come to these conclusions from the teaching of his parents and pastor. No problem that he has come to these opinions, but he pretends like he is still truth-searching. I am guessing this will be revolting to most thinking individuals.
2. It does not portray youth ministry for what it really is. It makes it look like youth ministry is all about entertainment or trying to usurp parental roles.
Like most propaganda (and dare I say even conspiracy groups), it has a lot of truth in it, but throws in slight twists to bring the audience to conclusions which are illogical and unfounded.
80% of children/youth leave the church by the time they go to college. I’ve never been a fan of such a statistic. In fact, I want to see that percentage go to zero. But as bad as that number sounds, it may not be as “bad” as it appears on the surface. (Of course that number is bad, but let me explain.)
I think this number has always been the case. Even in Jesus’ ministry, the vast majority who followed Him did so for only a time. Regardless of our ministry techniques, I think we have to be aware that most simply won’t follow Jesus all the way. If you have a drastically different number for your church, I question if you are truly following Him or have watered it down.
It’s so easy to water down the Gospel. One way to water it down is to stop reaching the messy, hurting world out there–just take care of yourself and your family. Youth ministry says, “No, we will not isolate ourselves. We will reach every kid we can with the Gospel–even if 80% of them end up walking away.”
NCFIC thinks they have a better answer–get rid of youth ministry. (I was made aware of this group by a post from a youth ministry leader, Marko.) Now it is true that many of the issues they present are valid problems that many youth groups face: simply entertaining kids, trying to take the place of parents in discipling kids, etc. In fact, I’ve written about that. There is a strong movement within youth ministry to address these issues. That’s one thing I like about youth ministry, among many other reasons:
1. It is self-critiquing. Youth ministry is constantly changing, because we ourselves see our own faults. Nothing that was brought up in this video is news to youth workers. We are guilty as charged. But I love this about us: We readily admit our failure and seek to serve God more biblically and faithfully. Now a question to the NCFIC…could it be that there are just as troubling problems inherent to your philosophy of ministry?
2. My experience of good youth ministry is the closest thing I’ve experienced to New Testament church. Here are several ways my experience of youth ministry outshines your typical church:
a. It has been evangelistic. It does not cater to church people. Like Jesus, it is ok with upsetting the 99 to find the 1. I love how so many youth pastors get in trouble with “church folk” every time they accomplish something incredible for the kingdom of God. This latest video might even be another example of that.
b. It has been focused on discipleship. Most churches are unwilling to truly challenge their congregations. Their goal is merely to give a positive message that everyone will appreciate. My experience of youth ministry, on the other hand, is that youth pastors are doing everything they can to push kids to truly devote their lives over to God. They are not happy with simply numbers in a pew or dollars in a plate. In fact, it’s the only place in church I can think of where we don’t pass around a plate every week, thank God. The messages I’ve heard from youth pastors in youth ministry have always been convicting, challenging, and prophetic. Not your typical Sunday morning sermon.
c. Lay people do the work of ministry in youth ministries. There usually aren’t full-time “evangelism pastors” or “worship pastors” in youth ministry. We adults who serve in the youth ministry are truly ministry teams, and we’re usually not paid to do so. We don’t have fights over how the money is spent. Youth groups don’t split like churches do. As youth workers, we work. And we work together. And nothing, baby, can tear our teams apart!
d. Speaking of youth workers, I don’t know of any other group of people in the church who are more sacrificial with their time, money, and energy. I know I am biased here, but I would rather start a new church with the people in my previous churches who were youth workers than anyone else in those churches. 9 times out of 10, they are the most on-fire, passionate, God-seeking, God-honoring, Scripture-studying, prayer-focused, evangelistic, joyous, fun-loving, faithful, growing people in the church.
e. Youth ministries serve. We go out to our communities and we work hard. Try doing that with adults. They never have time with their busy schedules to put roofs on houses or share the Gospel to people in Mexico or rake the leaves of the widows in the church. But youth groups are doing it all the time. On top of this, many churches don’t provide much financial assistance to youth ministries–and youth usually aren’t old enough to have full-time jobs–so the youth also work very hard raising the money to go on such ministry trips.
f. Youth ministries are real. We don’t pretend like we’re ok. We regularly confess the problems in our home lives and inside our hearts. We don’t feel the need to be super-spiritual or happy all the time. Unlike Sunday mornings, where everyone is always smiling, shaking hands, and pretending like God is the most important thing in their lives.
g. Everyone shares. In most churches, the pastor preaches, and the rest of us listen. Not at youth group. We all ask questions, share what is going on in our lives, and laugh together. We’re often sitting in a circle on couches or on the floor, not in pews facing the choir. When we worship, we are less concerned with the quality of the music, and more concerned with baring our hearts before God.
Youth ministry made a big impact in my life. In short, I believe youth ministry is the best thing to happen to church in the past 100 years. I’m no longer a youth pastor. I’m now the “senior” pastor (although there is no one else on staff at our church, so that makes no sense). My goal is to turn this church into as much of a youth group as I can. In my opinion, youth ministry shows the church just exactly how far it is fallen and where to start in getting back on track. No, youth ministry isn’t perfect. It’s far from that. But it’s the one area of church ministry that should be encouraged and even modeled after–not vilified and removed.
In my opinion, rather than get rid of them, churches need to become more like their youth groups. Many churches already are. If anything, I say: Youth group all the more, baby!!!
10 responses to “In Defense of Youth Ministry”
“My goal is to turn this church into as much of a youth group as I can.”
That’s a great goal and I think you might be starting to succeed at it. The other day I was telling someone about the Highland Church and the way I described it was as a bit like going back in time to when I was in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in college, except we all have kids and “adult” burdens and responsibilities.
I am a firm believer that parents are the first and best teachers of their children but I’m realizing more and more this does not mean parents are the *only* teachers of their children. I grew a lot when I was involved in various youth ministries as a high school student and I sure hope and pray there are some great youth ministries around when my children hit that age. In fact, I hope there are great ministries for them even earlier. I will become very good friends with all the youth leaders who are influencing my kids 🙂
I can’t believe people are out there impuning youth ministry! Critiquing it is fine, but to want to throw it all away? Unbelievable!
Great post, Tim.
I like nearly all of your points. From a personal standpoint, I learn a lot better in environments like what you describe in 2f and 2g. I think it’s a mistake that church teaching is rarely interactive. Most people don’t retain what they learn in a lecture, so why structure a service that way?
One thing, while I don’t disagree with 2a when it is coupled with 2b, there is a danger in ignoring the Christian kids to focus solely on evangelism. Ministry is about helping people draw closer to God, both the reached and the unreached, and failing to offer Christian kids support at a crucial time in life can have significant consequences.
The point about parents expecting their church to provide spiritual learning… I’ve seen it, and it pretty much always fails. I don’t know what percentage of churched parents are like that, though. There’s a lot of responsibility in being a parent.
I think there are a couple of reasons why church teaching is rarely interactive:
1. We only have an hour on Sunday mornings, and in my experience, interactive/discussions take longer to go through, rather than one person stating “this is how it is.” I’m not saying that the lecture format is best, but if we could switch to more interactive forms, I think it would require being together for longer periods of time, and I don’t think most people would be happy with that.
2. People have preconceived notions of what church worship services should be like, and many people resist something that doesn’t look that way. For example, in one of our churches, I received some pretty strong resistance when we moved to that kind of format. People thought if there wasn’t “preaching,” we weren’t having church. It was seen as merely a discussion or another Bible study to attend. Some even threatened to quit attending the church if we didn’t have a “worship service.”
3. Many people who attend church don’t want to actively participate. It makes them feel uncomfortable. They much rather prefer a passive role. I think this is why many people attend large churches–so they are more anonymous. The times I ask people to participate in my message, I feel resistance from several people in the church. That’s ok–I think the pros outweigh the cons.
I’m not saying these are good reasons. As I stated in my post, I’m trying to make our church more like a youth group, and as you can see from Nanda’s reply, not everyone is resistant–and some are even excited!
I do think that these problems I’ve just mentioned in this comment are part of the reason why 80% of youth leave church–because in many churches a similar percentage of those who attend “big church” prefer the status quo rather than stepping out from their comfort zones and growing in their walk with God together in some material form. I think that kind of stuff happens more in youth groups, but until it happens in churches outside of youth group, many youth will continue to stop going to church when they graduate the group. (Although I’m not saying I think that’s the only–or even the main–reason why youth don’t come back. I’m sure the issue is more complex than that, and as I said in my post, I think a sizeable percentage of people will not stick with Jesus regardless of our methods.)
1. I hear you on the logistical stuff. For me, it’s a personal preference because I learn and retain more in an interactive format.
2. You certainly shouldn’t take active steps to drive people away. I agree.
3. There are a lot of different kinds of participation. I personally hate (with a passion) the fill-in-the-blank handouts, but there are a lot of people for whom that is a good tool to retain a message. You’re probably right that a large number of people don’t want to have to participate, and I don’t necessarily think anyone should be forced into it.
You have worked with youth, so you have a better perspective than I do as to why they leave. My impression has long been that they see the adults in the church practicing religion rather than living in a relationship with God, and so the whole thing seems fake and obligatory. I think this impression meshes well with your “status quo” perspective, though.
I do the fill-in-the-blank thing at our church. 🙂 I’m not sure it help with retention, but I think it helps keep some people awake. Others, it seems to not even help in that area, LOL.
That last thought of yours is what I was trying to articulate, but you said it better.
And I do think the largest component as to why youth leave the church has more to do with their parents’ (lack of) faith than anything else.
Here is a link that defines what recent studies determine is the faith of church-going teenagers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_therapeutic_deism
According to the study behind that by Kenda Creasy Dean, that “faith” is actually the faith adolescents see modeled by their parents, regardless of what their church teaches from the pulpits. The evidence is pretty overwhelming that the vast majority of teens learn this faith from their parents, and follow their parents’ example, even if they go to a “great” youth group. There are exceptions, however. God can work in spite of any family situation, obviously.
Love your thoughts on this…I understand where the idea of getting rid of YM comes from, because I’m really passionate about creating less separation between YM and the rest of the church, as well as calling on parents to do their job–discipling their children. But what about those adolescents who will never hear about Jesus from their parents? What about parents who come to church but are spiritually shallow?
BTW, I’ve heard many awesome things about Highland from my friends back in CO…so cool to hear what God is doing in Northern Colorado!
I, too, am passionate about bringing youth ministry and church more together and calling parents to disciple their children. Would love to hear what steps you’ve taken along these lines, if any. I’m sure it’s a slow process to move that direction.
Wow, you’re hearing things about us?? I didn’t realize we were so famous, lol. Do you have friends who attend here? I assure you, anything positive you hear is absolutely true, and the negative is just gossip. 🙂
If I were as humble as you, maybe God would use me, too!
Glory, Honolulu! Wooo–I wanna go there!