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Adrift at Sea

Let me say from the outset that youth workers are my heroes; they’re people who are willing to brave the adolescent world to bring hope, love, and Jesus to today’s youth. I applaud your enthusiasm, I admire your courage, and I thank God that you’re on the front lines. I am, however, dismayed as I reflect upon the state of youth ministry today.

It seems as if youth ministry, as a whole, is at sea, drifting further and further from today’s adolescents. I believe those of us involved in active youth ministry have, for the most part, stopped thinking theologically and Biblically, and so offer the Gospel to kids in less authentic ways.

Numbers
I believe that this shift in thinking is largely inspired by a church that sees success in numbers. Which one of you hasn’t had this experience? You return from a retreat in which God has worked in mighty ways. When you have the opportunity to share about this powerful experience, the first question asked is, "How many attended?" It seems we’re a church obsessed with numbers. I can tell you story after story of youth workers whose first months on the job are dominated by parents, youth committee members, and pastoral staff stressing over and over how they expect to see the numbers increase.

Have we reduced youth ministry to a competition in which the mark of a successful program is the number of bodies present? What about changed lives? What about students learning what it means to be a follower of Christ? Are we so easily pleased with mere attendance?

Copycats
I’m sad to say that we as leaders in youth ministry haven’t done much to help alleviate the situation. We’ve written popular books that usually promote a particular philosophy of youth ministry. We encourage youth workers to take this philosophy back to their ministry and parrot it. When I was pastoring at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, we had an event called TBC (Teen Breakfast Club). Hundreds of kids came out every Thursday morning. It was a powerful event in their lives. When news of this success spread, youth worker after youth worker came to visit us in order to try and duplicate what we were doing. Invariably, their efforts failed.

As leaders we have promoted this copycat mentality. What we offer most youth workers isn’t authentic, won’t change lives, and doesn’t come out of solid theological thinking. What can we say of a leadership whose best it can offer young ministers is "copy what we’ve done" and "if you aren’t making someone mad, you probably aren’t doing good youth ministry." We ought to be ashamed of the leadership we’re providing.

Context
To me what’s missing in most youth ministry is the ability of youth workers to think theologically and heed certain theological guidelines as they develop praxes of ministry that are relevant to their situations. The people who copied what we did at Fourth Presbyterian failed because that program was indigenous to our local situation. We’d assessed our needs and prayed for an event that would be effective in reaching our local kids. And its success wasn’t in the numbers; God changed many lives through this program. We wanted to be a part of what God was doing, so we looked around and tried to meet the needs we saw around us. To do anything less, such as adopting a "successful" philosophy without determining your particular needs, is to cheapen the Gospel.

Theology
So whatever we do must be indigenous to our situation and it must come out of the needs that exist there. Once we’ve begun to understand this, we can go to Scripture to discover the best way to reach kids with the Gospel. Our scriptural search must be informed by questions that are germane to our specific situation. When we’ve done this kind of theological work, we can begin to develop philosophies of ministry that’ll be effective and practical in dealing with young people.

Assimilation
The local church must be the context in which we do our ministry. If we have a solid theology, we see that it is not the goal of youth ministry to win kids to Christ and disciple them. When that’s the stated goal of our youth ministry, we become a church unto ourselves and we’re no longer part of the local fellowship. It’s the task of the church to win kids to Christ and nurture them, and youth ministry is a part of the church. Youth ministry cannot perform its functions as an independent organization.

Therefore, the goal of authentic youth ministry is to assimilate kids into the life of the church so they might become a part of a fellowship in which they live out their faith on a daily basis. This leads to intergenerational programming, involvement of the entire church staff, family-based youth ministry, and much more.

When we’re stuck in a copycat mentality and don’t focus on assimilation, we’re not bringing kids into a vital intergenerational fellowship. We’re making them trophies in our numbers game.

In order for us to think theologically, we have to be willing to make changes. Numbers can no longer be our criteria for success. Instead, the criteria must be faithfulness in seeking out the needs of our kids, determining what God’s doing and being a part of it, and creating new programs indigenous to our local situations.

We must be willing to take the more difficult road. This road leads to hard work but is necessary in order to develop praxes of ministry that are influenced by developmental, sociological, and cultural phenomenon, and informed by Scripture. It’ll mean a commitment to not simply copying the programs that are getting big numbers. It’ll take a generation of leaders willing to make changes in how we teach and mentor young youth workers. We have to be more concerned about them and their growth than promoting our own programs and selling our own books.

As I said, youth workers are my heroes, and I pray that we’ll have the courage to make the changes and do the hard work necessary in order to reach this generation of young people. My fear is that if we don’t, we may have great numbers and great programmatic success, but little else. Our task is daunting and I fear few will join us, but I’m more convinced than ever that this is the road to authentic youth ministry.

Charles N. Neder is the National Director of Youth Ministry for Presbyterians for Renewal. He's a 38-year veteran of youth ministry; and he has founded programs, such as Fun in the Son, The Great Escape, and Son Servants, that reach thousands of young people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.