Working for a local YFC centre meant a wide variety of opportunities including detached street work, assemblies, RE lessons and lunchtime CUs in secondary schools, plus preaching and youth work training in local churches. I also started to subscribe to Youthworker Journal, a US-based publication edited by the late, great Mike Yaconelli. But good as it was, it was aimed at a very different cultural and church scene. I wanted the UK to have its own UK-relevant resource.
In the 1980s the number of salaried youth workers employed by churches was in the low hundreds, however there was a growing realisation that the numbers of children and young people dropping out of church attendance was climbing. ‘Something has to be done to turn the decline around,’ was the phrase on many lips.
After six fulfilling years with Youth for Christ I changed career path by becoming a journalist at Elm House, the Christian magazine house that published a range of monthly titles including 21st Century Christian (formerly Buzz) and had recently, with British Youth for Christ, launched Spring Harvest, which was becoming an influential and popular annual Easter event.
At the interview, I told my new boss that if I was hired my main motivation would be to lobby for the launch of a new magazine just for Christian youth workers. I argued that a single-page monthly column in 21st Century Christian magazine wasn’t enough. Churches were pushing more money and resources into youth ministry, including salaries, but I strongly believed that the army of over 100,000 youth work volunteers and the small but growing posse of salaried youth workers needed a magazine to highlight and promote good practice, to encourage creativity and to publish adaptable resources.
I was hired but while working on 21st Century Christian magazine it took me two years to learn enough about publishing, lobby my colleagues and, with the input of others, write a business plan that made the risk of launching a title for youth workers seem worthwhile. After three pilot issues in 1991, Youthwork was launched in full in 1992 as a black and white, bi-monthly magazine. Within 18 months it recruited 2,500 subscribers and started turning a small profit. In 1996 it became a monthly title.
The guts of the content haven’t changed hugely over its lifetime: the ready-to-adapt meeting guides were a unique selling feature in the 90s, which spawned the publication of several youth work books and other curriculum.
Most readers were volunteers fitting youth work into their spare time. Typically in their 20s and 30s, they normally gave five hours or more every week to youth ministry. One of the biggest issues the fledgling magazine struggled with, and which remains an issue to this day, is making Christians involved in youth work aware of the magazine’s existence before they drop out of youth ministry. Many volunteers, recruited to take on youth work roles by grateful ministers, burnt out within three years, frustrated by the challenges, not least the misunderstanding and sometimes opposition from church leaders who seemed only interested in bums on pews on a Sunday service and objected to noisy teenagers and the increasing the wear and tear on church halls. Youthwork sought to be a mouthpiece and sounding board for youth workers who often felt caught in a hard place between the adult church congregations on the one hand and the young people (both churched and unchurched) on the other.
One response was to invite church leaders to join with youth workers at Brainstormers, an annual youth ministry training event which the magazine organised: a good idea, but it failed to attract ministers. It was hugely popular with youth workers, especially the growing numbers of salaried staff who brought their volunteer teams along with them to enjoy the dubious pleasures of a November weekend at a Pontins holiday camp in Somerset.
The title benefitted financially from the growing numbers of job adverts for salaried positions in local churches. Peter Brierley’s church surveys in the 1990s highlighted the growing trend for children to bail out of Sunday School even before they graduated to the youth group. This research was influential, even if the findings were disputed by denominational leaders keen to airbrush the damaging figures.
In a consumerist society with an increasingly mobile job market, many churches realised that unless they had a thriving children’s and youth ministry they stood little chance of attracting the families who were moving into their town to join them. They also risked losing existing families to the church down the road where children and youth were well catered for. Meanwhile colleges and universities increased the number of degree-level youth work qualifications in response to the growing demand for trained youth workers.
But I always pitied the first salaried youth worker employed by any local church, where typically the quality of their management by the minister or trustees was woefully inadequate. Some ministers were envious and threatened by the charisma of the youth worker. Tensions were also enflamed if the salaried youth worker spent more time working with unchurched youth, than those teenagers of the people in the church who were paying the youth worker’s salary!
One of the biggest changes in youth ministry over the past quarter century is the dearth of 20-somethings in the typical UK church. This age group has typically been the most involved in youth ministry. But with the few 20-somethings who do regularly attend church all tending to attend the same one or maybe two churches in a city, it leaves a massive gap in the majority of churches. The lack of positive male and female 20-something role models and leaders is a huge and growing headache.
While continuing to be a volunteer youth worker at my local church, I’m delighted that in 2016 under Jamie’s excellent stewardship the magazine has made it to 25 years. But I am under no illusions about what a challenging time it is right now, both in youth ministry and in publishing.
There are many more salaried church-based youth workers than 25 years ago, although the numbers have declined since the high-water mark of 2001, but the numbers of churches with no thriving youth ministry are growing and the challenge to recruit and train volunteers is harder than ever. Meanwhile the lack of effective data about youth ministry – the biggest denomination in England cannot say how many youth workers it employs – is holding back effective and coordinated youth ministry strategies.
Many youth workers are looking for alternatives to a programme-based diary of activities. However the relational model most churches have adopted relies on volunteers sacrificially giving their time and most churches are struggling to recruit and retain these priceless resources. Some things don’t change.
John Buckeridge is Premier’s deputy CEO.
