Editorial

Many of us who are passionate about youth ministry have become angry at the idea that our vocation, the thing that drives us, is some kind of stepping stone to ‘adult’ ministry, as if somehow working with young people isn’t enough on its own, but merely preparation for bigger, more important work to come.

We’ve all labelled those who have decided to leave the narrow path of youth ministry and hop onto the wide, easy, accepted path to ordination or church leadership as ‘sell-outs’. We’ve struck them off our Christmas lists and dug deeper into our ghettos. Good riddance to them…

Except, well, we know that isn’t the case, don’t we? As much as we like an us-against-the-world attitude, we know amazing youth workers who have moved on, either into leadership roles or other callings. (We also know that church leadership is, in reality, far from ‘the wide path’.)

So this month, we (dog) collared one of these sell-outs and got their side of the story. So in this issue, the future Rev. Alex Rayment explains how his passion and skills for youth ministry have only grown since beginning the journey to ordination. To those of us who have been guilty of being defensive over our roles in youth ministry, it’s a voice well worth listening to.

Elsewhere this month, I’m delighted to point you in the direction of Crystal Kirgiss’ stunning feature on adolescence. We’ve all heard the idea that adolescence and ‘young people’ is a century-old idea, but Crystal’s work shows that it’s been around for centuries. It’s an absolute riot of a read and a great challenge to a widely -held idea. On top of all this, we welcome back youth ministry legend Andy Hawthorne to the magazine. We gave Andy a blank slate and he came back to us with an article on… sin, and what a belter of a feature it is.

In all of these features lie a counter-narrative to something many of us have been guilty of believing: don’t become a vicar. Adolescence is a new idea. Don’t talk about sin. What are the other presupposed ideas we’ve fallen into? What are the youth work practices we’re a little too comfortable with? Honestly… I don’t know, but I know they’re out there. If we’re to serve the young people we’re passionate about with honesty and integrity, we need to hold on to our ideas and ways of doing things more lightly. We need to be open to new moves of the Spirit, new inspiration and fresh wisdom. We need to be open to those from areas that lie outside of our immediate circle. We need to seek out truth in areas we wouldn’t normally go. Our hope is that as a magazine we showcase voices from the whole spectrum of youth ministry. We want to talk about supporting transgender young people and we want to talk about sin. If you feel like the magazine is lacking something or only hearing contributions from a narrow band of voices, please get in touch. As the greatest philosopher of our time, Zac Efron, once sang, ‘We’re all in this together.