When I posted the link to Greg Stier’s review of the film “Divided” my motivation was the characterization of Jesus as a youth minister. His basis? Evidence in scripture that most of the disciples were under 20 years old. For 25 years (the ones I have been in full time youth ministry) I have been hearing people characterize the disciples as teens thereby making Jesus the first youth pastor. Nice sentiment and I wish it were true because it gives so much cred to the profession. However, it’s just a bad read of scripture. Hold that thought.
Recently at the D6 conference, Peter arranged a lunch with Voddie Baucham for all of us South Carolina folks. It was a great chance to visit with Voddie and talk a bit. Thanks to Peter, I did get in a rather interesting conversation with him. I was attempting to describe what God has been doing in our youth ministries in the sense of putting scripture in it’s rightful place in our ministries. So, I opened my mouth and said that we were seeking to do Youth Ministry from a Biblical perspective. As fast as the words left my mouth, I knew I was in trouble. I did not get the whole sentence out before I realized it would sound incredibly stupid to Dr Baucham. Here is the guy who argues that youth ministry is not biblical. He is a voice in the “Divided” film and advocates for what I would describe as a radically integrated church – meaning lacking any age segregation at all. While I admire the position, I have mixed thoughts about it primarily because we are in a church culture that has long segregated the ages and we have youth ministry expectations that are deep seated and need to be considered. If one were planting a church, I might suggest considering the Family Driven Faith approach that Voddie advocates. However, ours is a different setting and Voddie understands that.
So, what did I know that made me regret my statement about doing Biblical youth ministry? Simply that we don’t actually find youth ministry in the bible. Voddie was gracious and pointed out that the task we find in the bible is multigenerational discipleship. Despite what so many have told me over the years, comparing Jesus to a youth pastor is a bad read of scripture. The reality is that the disciples as teenagers were not adolescents. They were adults. Until about a hundred years ago, the life transition that took place was directly from childhood to adulthood. There were no “teen years”, no teen spirit, no tweeners, or anything like what we see today. For Jesus to call some “teens” away from home to go follow him was not anything like what we do in youth ministry. Yet that is exactly what Stier’s suggests makes Jesus our model for youth ministry. He simply argues that the disciples were under 20 years old which makes them teens and Jesus called them away from their families to follow him and be his disciples.
So if we want to talk about youth ministry from a biblical standpoint, we are really talking about discipleship. If your brain suddenly reacts like “wait… what about evangelism?” then I would suggest we look at the great commission and realize that we are called the proclaim the gospel in order to make disciples. Then we are to send out those disciples to proclaim the gospel and make disciples. Evangelism is not a separate task. Now, looking at youth ministry as merely disciple making, we are free to figure out how the Bible tells us that is done and apply what we learn to our ministries.
Leave a Reply