I’m writing this with some conflicting thoughts. It is a response to Dave Welch’s recent blog post and, in many ways, I agree with Dave. ‘Young People need Jesus, youth workers need Jesus. I need Jesus.’ Yes, and amen! But…
Reading the article, you could be forgiven for thinking that our youth work (Jesus-filled or otherwise) exists in a vacuum. The kind of vacuum where we hang out with young people as youth workers, “being Jesus” together and, as long as young people encounter Christ - not just our programmes - then lives will be transformed and off we go. Except we don’t.
Youth ministry doesn’t begin with 11-year-olds and it doesn’t end with a passing out parade as they head off to university or work. Our young people have been formed and shaped by all the stuff that has happened to them as children and are on their way to becoming adults as we work with them.
I know young people who have met Jesus, been set on fire and have sought to live their lives for him, only for them to not be in the Church today. In his article, Dave says:
‘We have been dressing up the crises in youth work and ministry as a crises of praxis. A crises of what we do. I don’t think it is that. We don’t need to change our praxis – if it was that simple someone would have done it and (being youth workers!) we would have found out what the secret was and copied it shamelessly, and we wouldn’t be here.’
In youth ministry, we have constantly changed our practice. Youth ministry looks very different to how it looked 30 years ago. (Is anyone still using ‘Lessons in Love’?)
We have amazing, innovative youth ministry projects which are engaging with the real world in which young people live and beginning to do exactly what Bishop Graham Cray encouraged the church to do well over a decade ago when he wrote:
‘Youth ministry involves entering young people’s world in order to plant the gospel and the Church there – it is not a bridging strategy but a genuine commitment to new forms of church. It is not a temporary way of holding them in church until they learn to worship properly like the rest of us.’
I would argue that the main reason why youth ministry is in crisis is not because of what we are doing, but because of what the church isn’t doing. The wider church, adult congregations, and many church leaders are still waiting for young people to ‘worship properly like the rest of us.’
The Church they are part of now, the Church we hope they will be part of in the future, the Church they will one day lead, is failing them. What is the point of radical, transformational, live for Jesus youth ministry if many of the churches where these kinds of youth programmes exist are on a different planet? We are still spending far too much of our time as those who minister to young people thinking about our ‘bridging strategy’.
Young people need Jesus (I need Jesus, we all need Jesus). We plant the gospel, it bears fruit - young people come alive! And then, they encounter the church. In 2002, David Coffee, at the time general secretary of the Baptist Union, called it the ‘double shock’ for young people coming to faith. First they encounter Jesus, (whoop!) then they encounter the Church (what?!).
While so much in youth ministry continues to innovate, adapt, engage and push the boundaries, much of the church stays as it ever was, simply hoping the young people when they become adults will just, you know, stay.
Jesus’ disciples loved a bit of hierarchy and positioning. Jesus basically modelled servant hood, while his followers elbowed each other for status. At one point, Jesus took a child and stood them in the midst of the disciples. He then says, ‘Truly, I tell you - unless you become like children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ What have the disciples just been arguing about? Status. What does a child have? No status.
We need a childlike church of adults that welcomes the challenge and the thrill of seeing children and young people shape it, not just shape their own programmes, but shape the whole thing, because they are part of it all.
We need to stop our bridge building that is about maintaining the status quo. We need to see adults in our church humbly transform worship, ministry ad service opportunities. Until this happens why would young adults stay? Why would they join? They may have been involved in some fantastic youth ministry, they may have led worship in their youth group, preached to their peers and led their mates to Jesus by the time they were 18. But now, well, now they are ‘adults’ they need to be married and in their 30s before they get to do anything beyond the youth group.
We have a church that continues to hemorrhage young people. We have recently had ‘symposiums’ about the missing 18-30s. Soon, it will be gatherings about the missing under 50s. The thing is, where youth ministry is most effective - it isn’t just great youth ministry, it’s great people ministry.
Why, when we know in youth ministry one of the most effective ways to teach is through discussion and interaction, questions and reflection and action together (not just for young people, but for people!), do so many of us put up with regular church services where we are just spoken at for 30 minutes? Then expect our young people to leave a vibrant, dynamic and engaged youth meeting and do the same.
I’m still longing for the whole church to be re-generated, re-formed by a generation of young people and young adults. We cannot keep promising the earth to the few young people we have left and then settling again in to a status quo pattern of ‘youth ministry over there’ and, when you can learn to worship properly like the rest of us, you can join in.
