Maddie knows it’s not about the numbers. Recently her team vicar said just as much.
‘We don’t want you to feel the pressure.’
Yep, that sentence came out of his mouth verbatim. Only, she can’t help notice the profound disconnect between the well-meaning intention of those words and the reality of the church culture. Most churches track two pieces of information: Numerical attendance and financial giving. Move aside spiritual maturity – you are far too nebulous and we can’t pin you down in an annual report to the members – it takes two to tango, and this dance is the real bottom line.
Being involved in a successful church plant, Maddie does feel the pressure and joins in the dance, spinning figures in a positive light, stepping on egg shells in meetings and crashing when she gets back to her flat after another performance.
For Maddie, like many others, the central task before her is seeing those young people she has in front of her mature in faith and into the responsibilities of adulthood. She would happily sacrifice a gymnasium full of young people who happily straddle church and world with a mediocre faith (American research labels it Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, British work calls it the Happy Midi Narrative), for a living room alive with the grounded faith of a handful. I’m with Maddie in her desire for ripening fruit of the Galatians 6 variety.
The obvious motivation for putting a strong focus on growing fruit and investing in small numbers is the superficiality that surrounds attractional “come to us” ministries. It plays to our cultural obsession with the individual, where we fear becoming just a number in someone else’s game. Youth ministry is rebounding from a relationship with programs in the 80s and 90s and falling for the time-heavy incarnational approach declaring that you can’t disciple en bloc.
The problem with a rebound relationship is that you hate the former and accept the new love in your life, blinded to any of their character issues, rejecting out of hand even your best friend’s warning.
Let me be that guy.
Deeper, unconscious motivations in ministry
I wonder if one reason for rejecting the numbers game is that we haven’t been that successful with it and hide our disappointment through a passive aggression. When only a handful of young people turn up, we make an excuse: it’s about quality not quantity.
Tango comes in loads of flavours – but they are all fruit
Maybe you’ve never noticed, but there’s no cola/chocolate/cream-soda/irn-bru Tango. It’s all about the fruit. And just like the dance of the same name, when we talk about fruit in youth ministry, we are talking about two aspects inextricably bound to one another. They are fastened at the hip: you cannot have one without the other.
The first is what we have already explored. It’s fruit that endures. Have you ever considered that expression? Seriously – the only fruit that really endures is the freeze-dried variety that once was the exclusive cuisine of space explorers and those planning on surviving the apocalypse. That’s what makes the idea so appealing. Fruit that does not go off, but continues to ripen and grow. A Dahl-ian vision of discipleship. Simply peachy.
But we cannot start with the second half of this saying of Christ. In His final message to the disciples, Jesus tells them, “I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last” (John 15:16).
The second aspect is that God has called us to bear fruit which is the produce of mission. ‘In short, new converts’ (Pillar NT Commentary). One thing I have always loved about Soul Survivor is the commitment to give an invitation for young people to know Jesus. It shouldn’t be coercive and it’s not their job to ensure the fruit lasts (that belongs to the local church), but numbers do matter.
Succeeding at the dance off
I was listening to a seminar at a large youth work conference on the topic of discipleship. From the floor, I told the story of how my leadership team had worked out the amount of meaningful time spent per young person involved in our groups and programs, given the number of leaders we had. We had concluded that on average we spent five minutes of quality time per young person. I asked them for advice.
‘Look to make the most of those five minutes.’
Wow. I was stunned into silence. Yep, let’s make a difference by maximising on the five minutes out of a theoretical 10,080 in any given week. That’s less time than the majority of us spend brushing our teeth.
There’s a tension between numerical fruit and ripening fruit, and the only biblical solution is to pay attention to both. Matt Summerfield of UrbanSaints is one of many trying to find this balance with Live Life 1-2-3. It’s essentially geometric progression based on 2 Timothy 2:2. Geo-what? Basically, infinite growth. It’s the “make disciples of all nations”, (numerical fruit) teaching them (ripening fruit) of the Great Commission.
The passage speaks of four generations: Me, you, reliable people and others. Paul is not simply thinking about the young people in front of him – he’s thinking three generations forward! On reflection, I think there are three challenges that, when fulfilled, will answer the tension of bearing fruit:
Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest (Matt 9:38 ESV)
While I don’t find the language of the ESV useful in youth ministry, it captures the need to pray with passion to God to raise up new workers, and thus increase the capacity of our ministries. I don’t want warm-bodies involved in youth ministry with me.
Become more strategic in how you structure your ministry
Duffy Robbin’s Funnel revolutionised my ministry approach (I thought I had come up with it, although mine was concentric circles! Doh), as it helped me conceptualise different levels of ministry and how detached work and church based can be friends, not enemies.
Think creatively about generating opportunities to spend more time with the young people
168 hours. They are going to sleep and school for most of that, so build ministries that a) involve themselves in school, b) target afterschools, sports leagues, and micro-business, and c) offer residential components and over-nighters! With one lad I became his Duke of Edinburgh instructor for the guitar so that I could continue working with him outside of the conventional structures.
“Faith is difficult. Discipleship requires a huge investment of time. And most of us don’t have the time. Or we choose not to take the time. Or our current models of ministry don’t allow us the time.”
Mike Yaconelli, Getting Fired for the Glory of God.
Andy du Feu is director of youth and community work at Moorlands.
