Here’s the thing. I’m a year into training for ordination and I have never felt more passionate about the youth work I am involved in. (A quick caveat: throughout this article I will be referring to ordination in the Church of England; however, I hope you find this useful whether you are in a free church setting or any other denomination as the call to wider-Church leadership is assumed or placed on you.)
I studied youth work and theology at CYM and even before I graduated people had begun to ask me when I was going to get ordained, as if youth work was me dating the Church but ordination was waiting for me at the end of the aisle. It took four years of fighting internally and arguing externally to create an almost bullet-proof theology around how I could do anything a vicar could do without the ordination or the systems the Church of England provided. Then, during a time of sung worship during a weekend away where I was the guest speaker, I felt God remind me of some amazing vicars who are also still very involved in youth work and almost audibly I heard the words, ‘If it’s good enough for them, why isn’t it good enough for you?’
Then it hit me. I had been so busy trying to quiet the voices of people around me that I hadn’t asked God what he thought about the idea! Here I was faced with a dilemma: carry on with my pride intact or ignore those promptings and potentially disobey God. Maybe this was not the most conventional start into ordained ministry, but I was convinced that while obeying the call others put on your life is easy enough, disobeying God is a much tougher thing to do.
So I embarked on the dreaded ‘ordination process’; a series of monthly conversations with someone appointed by the diocese to direct potential ‘ordinands’ in the right direction, culminating in a three-day Apprentice-style grilling from an ominous group of people, known only as ‘The Panel’. It was during this process that it started to get difficult. I was encouraged to read, pray and search myself on the intentions behind beginning this process. I was very honest and began with admitting that I was deeply uncomfortable with being in the process. It was only later that I discovered that John Chrysostom (thanks to Graham Tomlin’s – The widening circle) had written in AD 390: ‘There are many qualities… which a priest ought to have. And the first of these is that he must purify his soul entirely of ambition for the office.’ As I began to do that study and reflection, I felt God highlight some obvious hard truths.
Ordination is not an upward step
Ministry
By this point I had been doing youth work for eight years: four years in London and four in Cheltenham. I realised, however, that while I had been serving young people at the heart of that, the form in which I did it was in direct correlation to my own personal skills, passions and abilities. In London, all the projects I was involved in were around musical projects: recording spaces, open mic nights and music festivals. In Cheltenham it became more about sport, games and eating. All these things, while never bad, began with looking at what I was good at and enjoyed doing and then involving young people in those activities. I often reflected on the success of the youth work I did based around how much time I had spent with young people, how many young people enjoyed hanging out at our house, how many detached conversations I had had and how well I had done at recruitment. While these are not bad things either I realised that the ministry I was involved in revolved entirely around me.
The ‘process’ began to give me a wider view on ministry. Not just a ministry to a select group using a select skillset to underpin it, but the giving of your entire self for the service of others. Ministry became the attitude where, when needs present themselves, the response should be one of service and mobilising the Church as a body to serve, not only if the leader feels they have the skills or interests to fulfil them. In Being a priest today, Christopher Cocksworth (Bishop of Coventry) writes that servant leadership is the primary mode shown by Jesus, describing him as, ‘The homeless rabbi who redefined leadership in \terms of service, made the towel a symbol of authority and lived as the servant who gave his life for many.’
I have seen some amazing youth workers who start from this place; it just took me eight years to be convinced that this was the type of ministry I was called to.
Imagine what churches
could look like if an
increasing number put
young people at the centre
of their missional agendas
Culture
I have the wonderful privilege of co-leading the youth work at New Wine. We spend a week with young people, encouraging and equipping them with tools to take home to be active disciples in their church communities. We also get to work with youth workers on site, running seminars that may be helpful for the context they work in. Unfortunately, so often the buffer in applying these things is the church leadership: leaders who may feel unsure about this new wave of enthusiasm as the young people peel off the coach back from their summer camp; leaders who may be concerned by their youth workers’ new ideas because of the cost attached: both personal and financial. I firmly believe that not only is youth work an amazing training ground as you undertake a crash course in apologetics, ethics, mentoring and family crises; but if leaders use the youth ministry as the rudder that steers the ship, seeing what God is doing in the young people and involving the church in that story, not only will we see the generation gap decrease but also shared enthusiasm, energy and expectation for what God could do in the life of the church and the wider community.
This may sound very utopian; however, as youth workers realise that what they hold is special and the ministry they undertake is a serious gift that could impact the wider Church, they may see their vocation including serving the wider Church, enabling other members to do the fun, exciting, enigmatic life of youth work as they train, encourage and cheer on from the wings. It is never about us. Alan Scott, a church leader in Northern Ireland, said recently: ‘If you equip people for ministry, they will serve well in church. But if you awaken them to their authority, they will serve well as church.’
So much of my time has been to try and recruit people for a role or fill a space in the rota. This is not an approach that awakens people to their destiny: serving young people, which is an absolute privilege not to be taken lightly. One day I may be ordained as a vicar and I will have the opportunity to set the culture for a church. Imagine what churches could look like if an increasing number put young people at the centre of their missional agendas.
Broken vessel
The final thing I have to say about my own journey for reconciling the call to ordination is about brokenness. Many of us who became youth workers did so out of brokenness. Never have I met such an honest bunch than the youth work colleagues I have had the joy of working with both town-wide and nationally. We, as youth workers, are acutely aware of our own brokenness. We know the areas in our lives that need more of Jesus. We totally understand where we have fallen short of the glory of God and yet sometimes the easiest way of dealing with that is through working with people who struggle with the same issues: young people. Unfortunately, I, like many other youth workers, have seriously struggled in dealing with those issues personally. Sure, I was helping young people be released from unhelpful habits, self-doubt and a severe lack of personal worth, and yet time and time again I failed to address those issues in me. As I began to scratch the surface around these issues I began to see this not only in youth workers, but in church leaders and the rest of our congregations. The unique thing was that youth workers were the most honest and vulnerable about these shortcomings. Imagine a church that doesn’t pretend to have it altogether, a church that isn’t afraid of the paradoxes life throws at them, a church that isn’t defined by its success. Imagine instead a church as an outward expression of God’s grace, a people saying, ‘Yes we are hurting, but we know a God who is with us in the valley.’ Imagine a church that confronts the ‘grey areas’ as often as it does the themes of celebration worship and holiness. I firmly believe that the potential of the youth worker that feels called to be ordained is one that may rewrite the story of the local church and redefine what success is. Not only because we personally understand those shortcomings but also because we know what it is like to run a session where no one shows up, because we have been there when a crying teenager is telling us of their parents’ divorce, because we have run a shoestring budget and because we have dealt with the competing demands of church leaders, eldership, parents, school teachers and young people.
A caveat
To finish, the call to ordination is not an upward step. If anything, it is a downward one. It should always be from a place of service and a denial of self to serve others. It is not reserved for the elite. Young people in this nation are being served more than ever by the faithful volunteer who gives up a Wednesday afternoon to meet them for a coffee or the part-timer who has given up that well-paid job to run a youth club and a Bible study. They are the elite. I only write this as I wish to hopefully put to rest a misconception about youth workers who get ordained and ‘give up’ youth work. No matter what job youth workers end up in, we don’t stop hearing the cries of young people, nor do we stop dreaming of seeing the youth of our communities rise up to be all they were made to be.
For those of us that have felt that niggling feeling about wider-Church leadership but are worried all the above may come true, be encouraged. As a church leader in whatever denomination you are part of, you could steer a whole church and the leadership networks you would be part of, helping them to change their outlook on young people, the place of youth in the church’s missional strategy and see young and old serve together in this wonderfully strange thing we call church.
Alex Rayment is studying for ordination and works at St Paul’s Church, Cheltenham.
