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Videos, Disco Balls, and Jesus: The 'American Idol' Approach to Youth Ministry

I was standing in the rear of our worship center on a Wednesday night as a pizza delivery guy walked in. One of the high school interns had ordered a pizza, and it showed up just as our weekly high school outreach meeting was beginning. Up on the stage were 5 dancing teenage guys having fun hopping around in hula skirts and Hawaiian outfits. An outer space background video was projected on a large screen behind the stage, and the band was playing rock songs, complete with a disco ball that flooded the room with sparkling lights.

Over 300 high schoolers were screaming out cheers and laughing and singing. I walked over to the pizza guy to see what he needed and he looked at me half amused, half bewildered and asked (I distinctly remember his words), "What the #*$%!@ is going on in here?" I was happy and proud as I explained that this was a church and these were teenagers having fun. I explained that this was all a set up to the Bible message we'd give later.

The Hype

The memories of that night remain vivid, because it was confirmation that we'd reached the goal for our high school ministry. I'd been taught by the popular mega-church youth pastors of the time how to use flashy videos, funny dramas, lights, and smoke machines to show the teenagers and the world that Christians can have fun. I was taught that we should entertain teens so they'll think church is fun—we'd never have to bore a teenager with the gospel.

We had a small group system and a typical Sunday worship meeting for youth, and God did use these times to touch kids' lives. I also know that many of them are still very serious about their walks with God, and several are in full-time vocational ministry. So I don't want to totally dismiss all we did as being a bad thing, but I can say that I went through major philosophical changes in how I view church-based entertainment and youth ministry overall.

The Switch

After years of focusing on using the hype, the videos, and the lights to introduce teens to Jesus, I began to feel rather uneasy. In fact, I began hearing from teenagers (especially those not from church backgrounds) that they weren't too impressed with our fancy videos and funny dramas anyway.

So, after much thought and conversation with other youth pastors, we did a 180-degree switch. We stripped our outreach meeting to a very raw, acoustic, candlelit, low-key approach and the strangest thing happened. Non-Christian teens were telling me they really liked this, because it was "spiritual." I wasn't focusing the bulk of time and energy on what funny story to use in the opening, or on what drama, video, and PowerPoint effects we should include. Instead, my questions were: How can we set an environment to corporately encounter God? How can we lift the name of Jesus all the higher? These were our stated goals before, of course; but, in reality, I was more consumed with making sure we got these entertaining elements of programming covered.

We saw non-Christian teens drawn to a non-entertainment-based, spiritual program. After we made the switch, the only complaints I heard were from some of the Christian teens who asked why we weren't making Wednesday nights fun anymore.

The Pendulum

For a while, I went a little overboard and felt we shouldn't use any technology or anything that felt like entertainment whatsoever. I took Romans 12:1-2 to an extreme. No electric instruments. No dramas. We ripped down that disco ball and put the smoke machine in the storage room.

Over time, I realized that my reaction wasn't in balance, so I started asking the bigger questions rather than focusing on the surface things we were doing. How did we end up in youth ministry focusing so much on entertainment? Why does youth ministry use such a heavy amount of flash and fun to communicate who Jesus is? Once you start down this road, what's interesting is realizing how much focus and attention you've paid to entertainment in your ministry.

Entertainment Everywhere

I started noticing the true focus of many of the youth conference seminars and books out there. They're all about how to use drama, how to use PowerPoint, how to use movie clips, and how to create videos for announcements. In photos of the large youth conventions, I saw flame-pods on the stages, huge video screens, and laser lights. Christian teens present were the targets of marketing campaigns for Christian pop music CDs complete with t-shirts and hats. Large national evangelistic events relied on bringing in big name Christian bands (which interestingly, since most non-Christians don't know who they are, attract primarily Christians). There were even WWF-looking guys breaking bricks on their heads so that teenagers will be entertained enough to hear about Jesus. Again, I know God has used this type of thing in the past, but I began having inner-brain freak-outs thinking about what I and many others have done in the name of Jesus.

Vintage Christianity

So we started the Graceland worship services at Santa Cruz Bible Church, where we tried to go back to a vintage faith approach to worship and outreach. As an experiment, we incorporated some ancient disciplines, and from the beginning, we were open about the spiritual reasons behind our outreach nights. Eventually we stopped outreach nights all together and simply had worship gatherings that both believers and non-believers could attend.

We still used video, but instead of hyped videos for entertainment, we used them to show ancient symbols, stained glass images, scriptural meditations, art, etc. We still used electric guitars and did some pop worship songs, but we also introduced extended low-key times of worship and silence into the mix. We even moved the band to the rear of the room to lead from behind so it wouldn't come across as performance or just another entertaining concert. We still used lots of humor (we didn't go to monastery-like meetings), but the focus and culture of our ministry was different. The response from both non-Christian and Christian teenagers and young adults to this non-entertainment form of gathering was incredible. Jesus didn't need fancy videos and a disco ball.

Deeper Questions

We didn't stop with just changing the larger meetings and the Sunday school. We focused on the other critical parts of youth ministry and had solid teaching in our Sunday morning youth gatherings. We paid a ton of attention to mentoring and relationships and an incarnational approach to discipling. I moved from just asking the typical categories of questions such as "When do we do evangelism?" and "When do we do discipleship?" to "How do we approach spiritual formation holistically?" and "What's the role of the church and families in the spiritual formation of teens?" We moved from thinking about how our youth ministry approaches what we do, to how the whole church approaches ministry.

If you're in youth ministry, you're influenced by the philosophy of the larger church. I recognized the entertainment focus wasn't only in youth ministry, but in the whole church. We graduated kids into the adult life of the church, and the entertainment followed them—just in different forms.

Adults have musicals and arena evangelistic events with big name speakers and "older" styles of bands for outreach. Adults come in and sit and listen to choir performances. Congregations require charismatic preachers who deliver humorous, carefully-formed sermons complete with 4-point outlines and helpful acronyms. No one would admit these things are purely entertainment, but, in many ways, our expectations have become similar to what we'd expect from an entertainment performance.

American Idol Ministry

By the time teenagers reach adulthood, have we taught them to view church like the panel of critics on "American Idol?" They sit back and watch and expect a level of performance. If it falls short, they critique. We get caught up in the bigger, better, more, cycle. In your youth group, if you think about it you may already have the nice Paula Abduls who tell you everything is great—and you have the Simons lashing out at you or complaining to their parents and then the parents become Simons.

A couple of years ago I was approached by an excited Mom in our church asking me if I'd seen the wonderful article in Newsweek that had "Jesus Rocks" on the cover. She was thrilled because it featured young people on the cover. As she expressed such joy, I inwardly cringed. I knew the article she was speaking about, and the article was called "Jesus Rocks" but the subtitle was "Christian entertainment makes a joyful noise." The whole article was about how much money Christians are spending on entertainment. The mother was pleased that we have concerts and events that her teenager can now go to and was happy to see it on the cover of Newsweek. But I sadly thought, "So, we finally made the cover of Newsweek, but it's all about the extent to which Christians are focused and spending money on personal entertainment."

The big question in all this is: Are disciples being made?

The Real Test

I don't know the answer. We live in an entertainment-saturated world. Today's American teens have had a steady diet of TV, Play Station, movies, and concerts. We need to change our underlying tendency to make sure kids are entertained by what we do. Not that we have to cut ski trips, fun videos, retreats, etc. But when a teen describes your ministry, what would she say? "They have a great band;" "They have cool videos;" "the speaker is really funny". Or would they report, "They really worship there and I felt God's presence;" "I can't believe how much they loved me there." Are they saying as they walk away from our meetings, "I enjoyed that" and "That was fun" or are they saying "I met with God today" and "I felt closer to Jesus today." We must teach and show students the Church's reason for being. The New Testament doesn't focus on the meeting or the methodology; instead, it shows the Church's character and love for God and others. The Church's pillars are their love, their faith, their dedication to Jesus, and their mission to make disciples. How much of our day-to-day conversations with our youth leaders and staff are about this?

Youth leaders must rethink ministry and what it means to be the Church. It isn't easy, but we can take steps, provide honest self-evaluation, and do some deep heart-searching about our focus in ministry. And we can teach and model to students what the Church should be.

I hope we get another cover of "Jesus Rocks," but with the subtitle: "Christian families are staying together," or "Christians' love for the poor is everywhere," or "Christians' love for their neighbors is changing the culture of America."

Dan Kimball is the author of The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations and is pastor of Vintage Faith Church, a soon to be launched sister-church of Santa Cruz Bible Church in Santa Cruz, Calif. Dan is on the board of emergentYS and is a contributing editor for Youthworker.