Youth ministry reaches a dead-end
The point of this blog is to define the Matrix for some of you involved in youth ministry in hopes that you'll go looking for a red pill. It is long b...
The point of this blog is to define the Matrix for some of you involved in youth ministry in hopes that you'll go looking for a red pill. It is long blog - more of an article really, but the usual short format was inadequate to address the issue of the church's broken model of discipling its youth. Nor is it all bad news - I share some ideas for change at the end.
After going on the World Race, Gary and Katherine Weston were determined to take Jesus' model of discipleship to the youth pastorate. A church in the Bay Area hired them and they went to work. But soon they faced situations that stretched the boundaries of their job description.
Katherine describes one in this blog: "Molly graduated from high school last June, and moved into our home immediately following our Guatemala mission trip in July (she was one of the participants). Molly and I meet regularly to read God's word and pray together, we're living shared life. 'Doing life together', as I've heard some say."
But things grew complicated in ministry and suddenly, early this year, they were asked to leave. Shortly thereafter they were church shopping and rethinking their lives. Sadly, variations on this scenario play out so frequently that we need to ask, "Are these incompetent people or is something broken with the system?"
Most youth ministers just want to disciple young people, but get caught up trying to satisfy too many constituencies and too many competing agendas. Along the way they learn that a youth minister's job is an impossible one. They're charged with running a program and keeping the tithe-payers happy. The jaded young people in their groups have a host of other options and show up with a bag full of mixed motives. Just keeping them busy is a full-time job.
And because they're hirelings who can be dismissed suddenly as were the Westons, they have to take care of business if they want to stick around.
The result: For every tenured youth pastor at a church with a stable, thriving youth program, there are five churches struggling to find their way in what the Who called "teenage wasteland."
Specifically, I see five reasons why it's broken:
1. Program vs. relationship tension. Youth ministers can't win. Most are wired and motivated to do relationship. Yet to satisfy their various constituencies, they have to spend a majority of their time feeding the beast that is their program. Many, having studied scripture, understand Jesus' model of discipling, but are handcuffed to a job description with a deep conflict of interest at its heart.
2. Many are too young. They're still in their twenties and haven't answered many of the basic questions that students are asking themselves. Yet they get thrown to the lions with little backup. For example, as covered in a previous blog, there are three fundamental questions that only fathers or father figures can answer. It's unfair to ask youth ministers to take responsibility that properly belongs to parents. They can be a friend and even a teacher, but few can be the father figure that students need.
3. Misplaced accountability. Parents, perhaps feeling ill-equipped to fulfill the job of discipling that God has given them, shovel pass the job onto someone who has signed a W-2 and can be dismissed on a whim.
4. Parental abdication. The very role of a youth minister enables parents in their dysfunction. Rather than being forced to see and wrestle with the bankruptcy of their own discipleship efforts, their responsibility gets lost in a broken system.
5. Stuck in the culture. Even the best-equipped youth ministers are stuck on a playing field tilted against them. American culture is a spiritual meat grinder set up to undermine a young person's spiritual foundation. It's cynical and media-driven and it creates an environment that is poisonous to the life of faith youth ministers are charged with creating. What's more, because of misplaced priorities, youth ministers have to fight for the time they need to detox the students in their charge.
If you've read this far, the good news is, there is hope. But if reality is broken, you have to embrace it if you are to affect change. Of course there are wonderful, encouraging exceptions to the bleak picture I've been painting. Some youth ministers, having themselves been discipled, are employed in churches run by boards and pastors who understand all these challenges and have the good sense to empower them. They work in communities composed of intact nuclear families where parents have not bought into the culture, who have prioritized discipleship above academics and sports.
If you're fortunate enough to be an exception to the rule, then you have a special responsibility to raise up the remnant who will show the next generation a better way.
The rest of you, whether parent, pastor, or pew-sitter, may have diagnosed many of these issues, but still be wondering what to do. When an entire system is broken, no one person can fix it. We all have a role to play.
Pastors: Need to take the long view and themselves get out from behind the safety of their pulpits long enough to disciple parents to not shirk their discipling responsibility. They need to commit to discipling and empowering youth ministers to get away from the program model and back to Jesus' model.
Parents: Need to repent of wrong priorities and blame-shifting and massively reorganize their lives to fulfill the mandate of "training up a child in the way he should go."
Pew-sitters: If you don't have children, you may feel like you've got no dog in the hunt, so to speak. But we all have to realize that the church is just one generation from going the way of the church in Europe. One reason revivals happen is because people heed 1 Chronicles 7:14 and recognize that they need to change, that if they don't change, their current lifestyle will lead them over a cliff.
Pastors who want to change need support. Parents need encouragement. Students need caring relationships. Jesus asked us to make disciples and the place to begin is with our young people.
Youth Minister Strategies
Muddle: You can muddle along. But when the system chews you up and spits you out, you can't complain, knowing that it was set up to do that.
Incrementalize: You can make changes at the margins. Specifically, spend more time with those who want to be discipled. Go on longer summer short term mission trips. Give your best leaders radicalizing experiences.
Opt-out: One youth minister had one of the top youth ministry jobs in the county. Head of youth ministry for LifeTV church in Oklahoma, he was burning out doing all the program stuff. So he quit a year ago and went to Mexico to serve as a missionary.
The point is, you don't have to be swept along by the cultural current. If you were called to disciple as Jesus did, determine to find a way to be true to that call. If the youth ministry model has reached a dead-end, then maybe it's time to look for alternatives.
