Don’t get me wrong, I love youth work. I am a passionate believer in youth work. It does some great things. It has the power to change young people and the church and the world. But I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ve been pulling our punches a bit with this blog series there’s a train of thought running through a few of the posts, but we haven’t got to the punchline yet! We began the series talking about needing a revolution (see Martin’s blog kicking off the series here) and I agree. We do. But we have said that before. Then Phoebe continued the argument talking about needing to look beyond the decline (see Phoebe’s blog here). Also true. These ideas are both very laudable. But I can’t shift the nagging feeling that we’ve been there before too. The history of youth work within the church is littered with examples of revolution and looking beyond the decline. Now more than ever people are calling for this. But I still think we are missing something.
Working harder, smarter or more imaginatively won’t fix this. Youth work is not a technology. This is not a technological problem. A revolution won’t fix this.
My thinking is illustrated very well by this great video from ‘Axis of Awesome’. If you listen to commercial radio you will know this already, but essentially all pop music is the same. The same four chords can be used to make virtually any song (if you don’t believe me watch the video. They do everything from Auld Lang Syne to U2). Just change the speed and the key, and away you go. I wonder if we have been using that approach in youth work almost since it began. The same four elements in everything. If it doesn’t work, change the order, spend longer on something or get better marketing material. (It doesn’t matter for this blog post, but those four elements, should you want to know are: Bible Study, social action, food and worship/prayer). Take those four elements and you will find virtually all our youth work fits in to this model. These things are all good – don’t get me wrong. I have seen lives changed for the better by it. They are a cornerstone of my work. Yet I am really struggling with them. They are all biblical. They are a youth worker’s trusted friends. But, at this moment, they are leaving me a little bit hollow. Like a fast food meal – full for a moment, but craving more within minutes.
So this leaves us with wondering where we are at the moment. We’ve (well I have!) been doing youth work, finding it doesn’t work, so changing things up and trying again. Doing more food, a different Bible Study course, more social action. This doesn’t work so we try doing better flyers or more Facebook interaction, and so it goes on. Going round in this cycle has led to a realisation that this doesn’t work so we then call for revolution. Except that leads to simply doing the cycle again, but maybe a bit faster or in a different order. So, in short here’s my problem:
Youth workers don’t need to innovate.
We don’t need a revolution.
We don’t need more youth workers.
We don’t need better resources.
We don’t need to try harder.
We don’t need more money.
We don’t need to blame anyone.
We don’t need bigger events.
We don’t need celebrity youth workers to save us.
We don’t need a plan.
We don’t need better coffee at our events.
We don’t need a strategy.
We don’t need growth.
We don’t need more volunteers (!).
We don’t need to look beyond the decline.
We don’t need town wide ecumenical youth events.
We don’t need to be afraid of the youth work down the road.
So what do we need? I can hear the screams of pain as you are all shouting at your computer – ‘What? Of course we need all these things. Or at least some of them. Or let me choose at least one of them…’ Here’s some truth that I need to hear, and maybe you do to. We’ve had all of these things. We’ve tried all these things. I’ve tried all these things, many times and in different ways. And yet, here we are still calling for a revolution. It’s not working (whatever ‘working’ means in this context. That’s a whole new blog!). 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.
It is not a crisis of praxis, but rather a crisis of theology.
It is not even really about what we believe – we don’t need to change our beliefs. It’s just that what we believe isn’t truly lived out in our lives. The theology we have shouldn’t be written on stone but on flesh. As a friend said to me today, theology isn’t theology until it is lived out. The theology should be the answer to the ‘why’ questions that we (and young people) ask. ‘Why am I here?’ or ‘Why do we do youth work?’ etc. A church leader said to me on the phone this week: ‘we need to sort out our youth work because if we don’t the church won’t have a future’. The lived theology is then: we do youth work to give this church a future. Poor theology (or vampire theology – the church lives on the blood of the young). That shouldn’t be why we do youth work.
Why do we do youth work? Because God does youth work.
But neither we as youth workers, nor young people, need youth work. It pains me to type that as paying my bills relies on youth work, but it is true. And we’re forgetting this.
Young people need Jesus, not youth work.
This is why we struggle and get frustrated – we have nothing to prove. Your group doesn’t need to be bigger than the one down the road. The question is ‘how many people come to your group?’ but rather ‘are you, yourself, moving closer to God each day?’ Our youth work is secondary. No revolution required. It has all been done (on the cross by Jesus), and is being done as we work our salvation out in fear and trembling. Not in your youth group, but in your heart. It never was about us and our group/church/cool resources or whatever. Young people need Jesus, not the church, not our group, and certainly not our cool, interactive, fully social-media integrated Bible study and social action programme we are running through lent. Just Jesus. Our work is simply to focus our group on Jesus. Of course it begins with us. Are we ourselves focussed on Jesus? Are we living the life ourselves? (that’s why devotionals like ‘Open Me’ are so crucial) If Christ is at work in us – as we show this to those around us, we invite people to join us in the dance of faith, that is life changing. We don’t need a youth work revolution. We need resurrection in each of us. My prayer is that this resurrection would begin in me anew today. Young people need Jesus. Youth workers need Jesus. I need Jesus.
David Welch is youth adviser for Guildford Diocese, and a volunteer youth leader.
