Reforming Youth Ministry
A LifeWay study recorded that 70% of young adults stop attending church after graduating from high school [1]. Another study in TIME said that 61% of churched teenagers leave church to never return [2]. Whatever one’s theological leanings, these statistics are sobering for any Christian to hear. They beg the question, “Why the mass exodus from the Church?”
Books and speakers of decades past heralded entertainment-driven pragmatism as the key to student ministry [3]. Unfortunately, these models have run their course and have failed to produce the results they promised. It is time for youth ministry to claim the sufficiency of Christ’s words when He says, “I will build my Church” (emphasis mine). By God’s grace and His Word, we can begin the ad fontes reformation that many youth ministries need.
A Biblical Perspective of Youth Ministry
When developing a theology of any subject, our first aid is Scripture. Is it biblical to have a youth ministry in the local church in the first place? If so, where do we find it?
While there are no “youth ministry” imperatives, for or against, Scripture does nevertheless support youth-focused ministry. The two clearest proof texts are Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-26 [4]. The Deuteronomy passage (known as the Hebrew shema) reminds readers of the need to teach young people Scripture’s basic truths. In the Corinthian correspondence, Paul explains that people of all ages can be part of Christ’s body.
While proof texts are helpful, perhaps the best way to view youth ministry is as a gospel-driven ministry focused on students. In No Guts, No Glory, Alan Stewart states, “Our underlying assumption is that youth ministry is like any other gospel ministry—it is all about the proclamation and teaching of the gospel” [5]. Princeton Seminary professor Kenda Creasy Dean writes similarly: “What makes youth ministry distinctive is not its form, but its flock” [6].
Essentially, Dean argues that all ministry is biblical, and the only thing that makes youth ministry any different is its special focus to a specific age group. Dean continues, “[Y]outh ministry acts more like a microcosm of the church than as an arm of education” [7]. When we minister to youth, we are doing exactly that: fulfilling the biblical mandate to minister to all of God’s people [8].
What Is In Need of Reform?
There is a vast difference between what young people want and what young people need. That tension is often what lies at the heart of youth ministry [9]. Due to our consumer-driven culture, the desires of youth are often fed through entertainment. This isn’t a recent development—the blood has been in the water for some time.
During the 1940s, the Youth for Christ movement pioneered entertainment-driven youth ministry. They tried to Christianize the youth entertainment of their day with a set list of vaudeville-style gimmicks: a performing “gospel horse”, a faux Frank Sinatra, and a fun-focused message. Thomas Bergler states, “For the leaders of the Youth for Christ, Christianity was increasingly becoming a product to be sold to customers via entertaining promises of personal fulfillment—with an added benefit of saving the world” [10].
It’s easy for us to identify these approaches as “gimmicks”, being removed by several decades. However, hindsight is 20/20. It’s especially difficult to identify such forms as “gimmicky” when we’re immersed in them. And today, many youth ministries are immersed in an updated version of the same thing. The numbers show us that we’re in a crisis mode, both yesterday and today. It is clear that the silver bullet of youth ministry is not found in these past approaches.
To fast-forward to today, many are lamenting the state of an entertainment-driven youth ministry. Any minister trying to chase a higher shock-factor will quickly come to the realization that the law of diminished returns applies to youth ministry [11]. Entertainment-driven models attract by promising short-term, numeric results, while claiming to “reach kids for Christ.” However, these same ministries often vacate the second half of the Great Commission: “teaching them all the things [Christ] has commanded [us].” How do we know we are reaching students if we are unable to see them mature in Christ?
An even more serious implication of this pragmatic model is the impact that youth ministry has on the Church as a whole. “What has become clear,” a 1994 report to the Lilly Endowment stated, “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” [12]. A host of today’s “alternative” church movements admit that their intentional refashioning of worship styles and church polity is strongly rooted in youth ministry. All too often, adults are looking for churches today that remind them of their youth group 20-30 years ago [13]. If the direction of youth ministry today will affect the church’s theology and practice in coming decades, youth ministry has never been more important. After all, youth ministry is no longer just about youth.
God’s Means-of-Grace
To that end, we must ask, “How can we reform youth ministry?” To steal a phrase from Brian H. Cosby, we can begin reform by “giving up the gimmicks.” Founder of Young Life Jim Rayburn infamously wrote, “It’s a sin to bore a kid” [14]. While Rayburn was most likely advocating for entertainment, Cosby notes, “[Youth] are bored because they are living from one pleasure high to the next. They’re not encouraged to live out, for example, the content and method of ministry service.” He continues, “America’s youth not only need a ministry that seeks to communicate God’s grace through the teaching of the Word, administration of the [ordinances], a life of prayer, gospel-motivated ministry, and grace-centered community—they actually want such a ministry” [15].
The opposite of giving students what they want is giving them what they need—and a holistic means-of-grace ministry does exactly that. These means-of-grace include the Word, ordinances, prayer, service (ministry), and discipleship in the church [16]. These are the very means by which God reveals His steadfast, committed love and grace to those who put their faith in Him. That is not to say that they work ex opera operato, or magically produce results [17]. Rather, God will work through these means, because He has ordained them for the building of the church. These are not common grace means, but special grace means—that is, grace made effectual in believers’ lives via God’s redemptive grace [18]. As we allow these means-of-grace to become our “strategy” for ministry, we begin to see their sufficiency.
Connecting Means and Methodology
One large question still remains: “How do these means-of-grace translate into methods?” The most pivotal tool is allowing these means to transform students into the image of Christ. God’s ordained means don’t need our help. Rather than allowing videos, games, or events to become the focal point of youth ministry, let’s let God’s means-of-grace shape our practices. This then makes the temporal elements of our ministry secondary. Biblical content and methods of ministry cannot be divorced [19].
If Scripture is made central, then preaching, teaching, and memorizing Scripture will become a priority. As we saturate our youth ministry in prayer (individual and corporate), a beautiful picture of our dialogue with God will be painted. As we observe biblical ordinances, we will note the beautiful symbolism of Christ’s servanthood, death, and resurrection. Our focus on service will cultivate cultural awareness and biblical application. And as we serve with our students, they will see our life lived out in light of the Gospel. While we follow the biblical models for discipleship, we will see the community of our youth group take biblical form, rather than that of pragmatism. These means-of-grace are extremely formative in the minds of young people.
Essentially, we must keep first things first. If we allow these elements to become our means, we will display the sufficiency of Christ amidst our ministry. If the maxim of “what you win them with is what you win them to” is true, then Christ must occupy the center of our ministry and methods.
Conclusion
Brian Cosby writes, “Substituting the gospel-focused ministry for an entertainment-driven attraction is neither safe nor right, and God has called us to so much more than that” [20]. Cosby is right. Entertainment culture in youth ministry will result in consequences that are neither safe nor right. We will end up building ministries of preference rather than transformational discipleship. Unknowingly, our ecclesiology will have a ripple effect that will affect the church in years to come.
Furthermore, God has called us to much more than entertainment. He has entrusted us with the message of reconciliation from our all-sufficient Savior. This is a magnificent honor and responsibility! As we turn back to historical, biblical models to grow youth in Christ, we will not only see students enjoy them, but we will also see them transformed.
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[1] Scott McConnell, “LifeWay Research Finds Reasons 18- to 22-Year-Olds Drop Out of Church,” Lifeway.com, Aug. 2007, http://www.lifeway.com/ArticleView?storeId=10054&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&article=LifeWay-Research-finds-reasons-18-to-22-year-olds-drop-out-of-church (accessed February 1, 2013).
[2] Sonja Steptoe, “How to Get Teens Excited About God”, Time Magazine, Nov. 2006, Nation Section, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1553366,00.html (accessed February 1, 2013).
[3] For example, consider Jim Rayburn, who said, “If you want anybody to show up, don’t have it on Sunday and don’t call it school,” and, “It’s a sin to bore a kid with the gospel.”
By 1947, Rev. G. Richard Kuch prophetically observed that virtually all youth organizations (both then and now) would follow in the steps of youth programs of the day, trying to create Christian versions of youth culture entertainment.
In 1950, even the Chicago Inter-Student Catholic Action progressively took on entertainment functions for their youth.
Thomas E. Bergler, The Juvenilization of American Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2012).
[4] Mike Kipp, “Is Youth Ministry in the Bible? Researching the Scripture Behind Youth and Family Ministry,” Fuller Youth Institute, http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/articles/is-youth-ministry-in-the-bible (accessed February 1, 2013).
[5] Alan Stewart (ed.), No Guts, No Glory: Building a Youth Ministry that Lasts (Kingsford: Matthias Media, 2000), 8.
[6] Andrew Root and Kenda Creasy Dean, The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2011), 20.
[7] Ibid., 40.
[8] It would be encouraged to view youth ministry as a subset of family ministry. To keep from “ghettoizing” the youth of the church, it would be greatly beneficial to allow the ministry of the youth to fall under the larger umbrella of ministering to families. This puts the central role of discipleship back in the hands of the parents, rather than that of the youth minister.
[9] Stewart, 17.
[10] Thomas E. Bergler, The Juvenilization of American Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2012), 35, 52.
[11] Brian H. Cosby, Giving Up Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry from an Entertainment Culture (Phillipsburg: P & R Publishing 2012), 63.
[12] 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.
[13] Root and Dean 31.
[14] Jim Rayburn quoted in Andrew Root and Kenda Creasy Dean, The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press 2011), 51.
[15] Cosby, 18.
[16] Cosby notes that the Word, ordinances (what he refers to as sacraments), and prayer are the historical means. This then is followed by ministry and discipleship, which have been incorporated in later. He makes this dichotomy due to the fact that the first three being mentioned in the Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 154. One should note that all 5 of these means-of-grace are biblically founded and were at work within the early Church. One of the clearest places that this is seen in Scripture is in Acts 2:42, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
[17] This is a term used in Roman Catholic theology referring to the supernatural work of the sacraments, regardless of the participant’s activity and/or disposition. Simply put, Roman Catholics believe that the sacraments, when they partake in them, confer special grace when performed with no condition on the participant.
[18] Cosby, 24.
[19] Ibid., 26.
[20] Ibid., 27.
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March 11, 2013
“If Scripture is made central, then preaching, teaching, and memorizing Scripture will become a priority. As we saturate our youth ministry in prayer (individual and corporate), a beautiful picture of our dialogue with God will be painted.” Love it! Excellent post, Chris!
March 12, 2013
Thank you for your kind words Zach! It is my prayer that we allow the means to guide our methods, so that, we can make more of Christ.
March 11, 2013
Nice work Chris. Reform not only in Youth Ministry, but also in the church as a whole, will take all of our best theological thinking, our unity, patience and prayer.
Thanks for the effort which went into this post.
March 12, 2013
Thank you, Bro. Barry! I couldn’t agree more.