Five-Dollar Couches and the Church’s Future
What is the one staple that you can find in virtually every youth group across America? You’re right: the (overly) pre-owned couch. Whether you’re in Idaho or Illinois, California, or Connecticut, it would seem that the perennial signature of any well-christened youth room is an old couch.
One can only imagine the stories behind the acquisition of these couches. For some, the youth minister bought a couch from the local thrift sore, due to his low budget (another perennial feature). Others were procured from a caring church member, looking to “bless” the youth ministry with a piece of furniture.
Many of us have a picture of our beloved youth group couch etched into our minds. Those who were diligent to be early to youth group found their favored spot (not to be confused with James 2:1-3) on the couch. Others would come in later, only to squeeze themselves between friends, obviously surpassing the max occupancy for the couch. The couches were always well worn, with holes everywhere and soda stains galore. They weren’t particularly comfy, but they stood for something more: community.
We knew that we were part of something bigger than ourselves when we entered the youth room and took our spot on that dirty, old couch. We were with people who cared for and loved us—and that makes our memories of that dreary, timeworn couch all the more fond.
You may be asking yourself, why are we discussing couches? It’s because there is a deep formative aspect of youth ministry that endures throughout our entire lives. What we did, saw, and experienced in our foundational years in church has shaped us in profound ways. Furthermore, what we do in youth ministry isn’t just formative for just us, but reaches the entire church. In this article, we’ll explore the impact that popular youth ministry has had on our understanding of contemporary ecclesiology.
Youth Ministry Yesterday, “Big” Church Today
Often we hear dialogue about what Stuart Bond, in an 1989 YouthWorker Journal called the “One-Eared Mickey Mouse”. Bond stated that we have ostracized youth to a type of ghetto in the church, separating them from the life of the church as a whole. However, even despite this article’s partially true claims, youth ministry has still had a profound impact on the church’s development.
I want to propose a thesis for us to explore: what was done in youth ministry a decade or two ago is now normative for the church as a whole. Likewise, what is being done in youth ministry today will be normative for the church in decades to come.
As Thomas Bergler points out, “In subsequent decades [after the 1960s], seeker-service pioneers like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren would use the same [youth ministry] techniques to attract Baby Boomer adults to church.”[1] He continues, “The white evangelical churches that are growing the fastest in America are the ones that look the most like the successful youth ministries of the 1950s and 1960s.”[2]
While this may sound outlandish at first, this thesis has rung true time and time again. Andrew Root and Kenda Creasy Dean describe this in their book, The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry:
Many visible leaders of today’s “alternative” congregations—church movements where pastors intentionally refashion styles of worship, patterns of polity and forms of nurture to attract Baby Boomers and/or their progeny—admit strong roots in youth ministry. A quick scan through their proliferating publications show that, by and large, these leaders simply adapted the visions, methods and rhetoric of youth ministry to address the adults these youth inevitably became.[3]
As mentioned before, this is probably most explicitly seen in the ministry of Bill Hybels. While pioneering a successful youth ministry called Son City at South Park Church in Park Ridge, IL, the church’s leadership asked Hybels to replicate the same ministry—only for adults.[4] In other places, research shows that youth programs from years before are now shaping the way in which we worship together corporately. As a generation has transitioned from one ministry of the church to another, the ministry model has often transitioned with them. Leaders are unashamed to admit that their “tools of the trade” were often learned in youth ministry.
It is clear—in some ways, this is not a negative influence. The practice has brought numerical growth to many who have embraced it. However, what concerns me is not so much the evangelistic emphasis (something I think youth ministry has always gotten right), but the other consequences that this paradigm shift has induced. As Bergler, in his new book From Here to Maturity notes, “This dynamic of juvenilization leaped out at me when I realized there was nothing happening in the seeker-friendly ministry of Williow Creek Community Church in the 1990s that had not already been done in the Youth for Christ rallies in the 1950s.”[5] Before moving the entire congregation to the youth room then, let’s take a step back and survey the far reach of this movement.
Redrawing the Ecclesial Map
What causes me some trepidation is the impact that youth ministry has had and will have on practical ecclesiology. My concern is that the tributary of youth ministry is having a far greater impact on the great river of the church than we initially suspected. What we intentionally, and maybe more often unintentionally implement and practice within student ministry, is formulating our thoughts on what the church should do and be in the future. If our ministry practices are inherently bent toward juvenilization, so will our impact on the church.
Kenda Creasy Dean, professor of youth, church, and culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, recorded that a 1994 report to the Lilly Endowment stated, “What has become clear . . . is that youth ministry is ultimately about something much more than youth ministry. . . . These [Christian youth] movements are redrawing the ecclesial map of the United States.”[6] This is an astounding observation. We are not only borrowing from youth ministry for church today, but youth ministry is changing the way in we think about the church from here forward. Youth ministry has a deep influence, and we need to take notice.
As one author wrote, “In every corner of the globe, youth ministry acts as the church’s ‘research and development’ department.”[7] This really gets at the root of the issue. Youth ministry has functioned for a long time as the “test site” for practical ecclesiology. In other words, if we want to see how something might fair in the church, it’s quite plausible that it will be tried in a youth ministry first. For example, think of the musical styling popular among teens twenty years ago. During those years many would not dare test the waters of the adult congregation with this style; however, churches now use this same form of music during corporate worship.
There are intrinsic problems with this progression, most notably the lack of concern for developing maturity. It may say more about our spiritual health than the method’s efficiency if we can use the same church strategies on adults that we’ve used on teenagers. Furthermore, we fail to establish our ecclesiology in a historic-biblical foundation, but rather in the amorphous, contested phenomenon we call youth culture.[8] Thus, if pastors are borrowing from youth ministry today, and will inevitably derive some elements from youth ministry in the future, what needs to be done?
So What Do We Do?
Seeing the progression and impact of current trends, we must agree that “youth ministry is no longer about youth.”[9] We must teach both our youth ministers and our pastors about the growing relationship we have discovered here. In the same way that our dilemma has present-future implications, we must exhort leaders to apply wisdom in both of these areas.
Today, pastors must continue to seek biblical wisdom when discerning how to reform church practices. Instead of simply keeping the same practices the past generation used in teen ministry, pastors emphasize the practices which cultivate spiritual maturity. Rather than asking what has brought this generation in before, we should ask how we can continue to bring them closer to Christ. We should let the commands of Scripture dictate our ministries rather than what a particular age group perceives as trendy or attractive.
Likewise, youth pastors should be constantly aware of the power they hold. The practices they cultivate and promote will not only form students spiritually now, but will leave a legacy for years to come. Youth pastors, knowing what they are doing in their ministry now may affect the entire church for years to come, carry a heavy responsibility. It is all the more reason for youth pastors to build upon scriptural means-of-grace.
Some aspects of youth ministry will come and go. Nevertheless, there are elements and practices that we learned in our youth that formed us in deep ways. Our zeal for mission, concern for the oppressed, and love for our Christian brothers and sisters can often be traced to behaviors we learned in youth group. Let’s not underestimate the power of Scripture and the means-of-grace in the life of youth.
I don’t think the ancient, grimy couch is going to make its way into the sanctuary of the church anytime soon. However, I do pray that the things that couch represented last for years to come.
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[1] Thomas Bergler, The Juvenilization of American Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 205.
[2] Bergler, 208.
[3] Root & Dean, 31.
[4] Melanie Ross, “The Search for a Grown-up Youth Culture” Yale University: Reflections, 2014, http://reflections.yale.edu/article/seeking-light-new-generation/search-grown-youth-culture (accessed March 21, 2015).
[5] Thomas Bergler, From Here to Maturity: Overcoming the Juvenilization of American Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 2.
[6] Ronald White, “History of Youth Ministry Project” (unpublished midproject report submitted to the Lilly Endowment, Indianapolis, Ind., August 20, 1994), 7; cited in Andrew Root and Kenda Creasy Dean, The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press 2011), 29.
[7] Root & Dean, 16-17.
[8] In a way, adolescence, specifically in church, has become a moving target. Some argue that post-industrial revolution, adolescence has been extended too far (see Critique of Modern Youth Ministry) whereas others have argued that youth are forced to grow up too soon (see Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture) This makes adolescence an extremely hard “target” to hit, and in many ways has led to the rise of age-specific pastoring.
[9] Root & Dean, 31.
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