I shared a few thoughts at diocesan convention this year… (audio)
I would like to share briefly with you on the progress we have seen over the past ten years in youth ministry in this diocese. By progress I am not going into details like the 700+ students we are reaching through our events, the fact that we have in recent years trained the majority of our new youth ministers through our apprenticeship program, or talk about our exciting new partnership with the Diocese of Kilmore, Elphin, and Ardagh in Ireland. All of these are exciting subjects, but I want to let you see where this idea of making biblical Anglicans is leading us. This progress has taken us deeper and now we are seeking to make it wider. So, first up is deep and that will be followed by wide.
Imagine your youth minister proposed a program for teenagers at your church with the following requirements: attendance 5 days a week for two hours after school, plus four hours on Saturday mornings and explained to you that this was an important investment into the life of your teen, missing any of the sessions would hinder their participation and may get them kicked out of the program. In most churches, parents would rebel and may possibly even seek to get this outrageous youth minister fired. Yet, my sons currently participate in a program not in the church with those very expectations. It is a sports team at school and not a single parent complains about the time that is invested in an activity that, while wonderful in so many respects, lacks eternal benefits.
For years I found myself advising and encouraging youth ministers who were facing parents demanding fun activities and little actual spiritual content. These were youth ministers with strong convictions that a youth group, while being fun or enjoyable, should first and foremost seek to convey the gospel, teach scripture, engage students in prayer and worship, and learn to live as members of the body of Christ. Over the course of time, fewer of our youth ministers face resistance to leading bible studies and less pressure to provide a fun and games entertainment driven youth group. We have moved youth ministry into the realm of taking seriously the call of Christ to follow him. This is progress in going deeper.
C.S. Lewis once said… “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
Across the street from my house each morning, from 6am to 7am there is a group of Mormon teens meeting at my neighbors house for what they call “Seminary”. This is a class they participate in throughout their high school years getting up extra early every morning to learn Mormon doctrine. One thing I know about the Mormons is that they very successfully pass their faith from one generation to the next. Mormon teens are not only meeting daily for Seminary, they have youth group meetings and activities, Sunday school classes, and they attend worship with their families each week. Mormon families take time on a regular basis to read their scriptures together and have family devotions. The sense of family among Mormons is not limited to mom, dad, and siblings, but extends to the church family. The kids growing up across the street are connected relationally to every generation in their church. They seem to understand generational discipleship better than most Christians I know.
In going deeper, we have been pursuing youth ministry in the framework of biblical faithfulness. We have taught youth ministers and leaders here and beyond that biblically faithful youth ministry is centered on two ideas. Content & context. The content is the gospel as found in scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. In other words, we place a major emphasis on teaching the Bible and doing that well. Context is about building a sense of community amongst students, teaching them to be the church, do what Christians are meant to do (pray, worship, study scripture, and care for one another) and generally experience being part of the body of Christ. This simple model of content and context has reshaped youth ministry programs across the diocese, not to mention our summer camp sessions as well. The idea of shaping ministry around context and content is not limited to youth ministry though. It is a good way of thinking about how we make Biblical Anglicans in our churches.
However, Peter Rothermel threw us a curve when he introduced so many of us to the idea of multigenerational faithfulness. God has convicted many of us that what the church has been doing in youth ministry for many decades is largely the work that parents ought to be doing. If we empower parents to disciple their kids, it means youth ministers can build on that and help teens to reach out to others in a missional way. However, in many of our congregations, parents do not feel equipped and are overwhelmed by the thought of nurturing faith in their teens. Unlike the Mormons, we have not been very good at generational discipleship. Put your finger on that thought, because we will come back to it in a minute.
Now we want to go wider. In our diocese, we have youth ministry actively taking place in roughly half our churches. It is typically the larger churches where we see youth groups meeting and teens involved in the church. We know from church growth statistics that those searching for a church tend to be families with children or youth and they are looking for a congregation with active ministries to youth and children. This is perhaps one reason why larger churches tend to grow more rapidly. So, the issue of going wider is how do we get youth ministry started in more churches? We know from experience that funding and hiring a youth minister is not the answer unless a congregation has the right sort of mindset to capitalize on that… and honestly, many do not. We know that trying to plant typical larger church youth ministry models in smaller contexts is extremely difficult. So we have gone back to the question of how do we pursue generational discipleship? What can we learn from the Mormons so that the faith is passed from generation to generation regardless of the church size? The answer I believe comes from boiling discipleship down to its’ most basic elements. A few years ago I had a conversation with Rico Tice, the evangelist on staff at All Soul’s Church in London, the church famous for having been led by John Stott many years ago. In fact, it was Stott who hired Rico to come on staff and head up evangelism. Rico said two things that stuck with me. One was how he defines evangelism as simply teaching the bible to non-believers. Rico’s conviction is that we share the gospel by opening up scripture and examining it with another person. Similarly, when I asked him about the vision of All Soul’s church, he said it simply was to teach the Bible – one on one, in small groups, and in large groups (including worship services). If we look at discipleship as simply the process of opening scripture with another person and figuring out how we apply that to life, we have a viable way of pursuing youth ministry in smaller congregations. This is not dependent on programs nor is it resource intensive, it simply is making Biblical Anglicans in a way that only requires time and people. When we put this in the context of older generations engaging the Bible with younger generations, we are doing generational discipleship. When young people grow up with this paradigm of discipleship, they instinctively know how to disciple their own children when they reach that stage of life. To engage people in opening their bibles with others, we simply need to train them in how to understand the scriptures and give them a clear understanding of the gospel. The rest takes care of itself.
As we have pursued the vision of Making Biblical Anglicans, we have moved youth ministry deeper by centering ministries around content and context. In moving wider, we are seeking to engage people in a model of generational discipleship that will reach children, teens, adults, and families. This will impact generations to come!
On behalf of all who do youth ministry in our diocese, I want to thank you for your ongoing support! There is not another diocese in the country where youth ministry is so strong.
Dave Wright
2/19/2011
Leave a Reply