TGC #1

I confessed that my circumstances as a rookie youth minister led me to fall into several traps that have been common amongst youth pastors for decades.  Having been hired by a mega church as a rookie straight out of college, I was way over my head.  Given that no young guy wants to fail in his first job out of college, I knew I had to get to the surface and learn to swim. I read every book on youth ministry I could get my hands on and attended every seminar that came through the Chicago suburbs.  I needed both the theory and the practical how to.  No one had prepared me to lead a youth group but God had called me into this position against all odds.  What YS and Group and various others were teaching were viewed as the effective youth ministry models at the time.  I have since come to view them as somewhat faulty.  My basis for that view is merely the stats on the so called failure of youth ministry.  Those stats from Christian Smith, Gallup, and LifeWay on the lack of substance of faith among american teens as well as the drop out of kids after high school is sufficient evidence even for the most skeptical among us.  The models of the 80’s and 90’s were not producing the fruit we wanted to see.  Four traps are worth noting here as ones I and many others fell into.

Relevance – In my twenties, youth culture was my culture.  I did not stop listening to the latest music or keeping up with the trends in movies, TV, and other media.  I read magazines that were dictating the youth culture to keep fresh.  I bought clothes based in part on what was trending (within reason) and knew the slang that all the teens used.  Relevance was important to me because I thought old people were out of touch and could not relate to teens.  Over time though I discovered otherwise.  A guy not all that far from retirement took me out to lunch quarterly to check in on me and sort of mentor me.  He headed up Youth For Christ’s Juvenile Justice Ministry.  Specifically, he worked with gang members in inner city Chicago.  Gordy, as he was called, was as irrelevant looking as one could be and yet every week he was sharing the gospel with hardened street thugs and leading them to Christ.  Gordy took me into the city once to show me around and to the county jail to see his ministry.  It blew away my notion of relevance.  He understood the culture he was reaching but he did not reflect that culture. What really mattered was loving people and telling them about Jesus. A few years later a successful business man whose kids were all grown up volunteered with my youth group.  Most Tuesdays he came straight from work in his suit and did not have a chance to change clothes.  I thought the group would struggle to relate to an overdressed guy who was older than their parents.  Was I ever wrong!  As they got to know him, the guys flocked to him every week to hang out.  He loved teens and was young at heart.  So, over time I stopped worrying about being relevant.  I still listen to the latest music but I am not buying into skinny jeans. The point being that we need to understand the culture that we are ministering to but we don’t need to be part of it.

Pragmatism – The golden rule I discovered amongst those training people in youth ministry is that what works should not be questioned.  It seems biblical enough that if something bears fruit it must be healthy right?  Some support pragmatism based on Jesus’ teachings about bearing fruit.  The trouble is that we too often measured the wrong fruit. Instead of looking for transformed lives, we counted attendance. The most common model taught in those days were explained with a funnel or concentric circles.  The idea was to reach crowds in order to disciple a core. Anyone who questioned that model was simply told not to worry about it, just do it because it works.  So as a twenty something youth pastor needing to make things happen in order to keep my job, I did what worked. in the back of my mind though was always the question of whether there was another way.

Attractionalism – Yes, I know this is not actually a word.  I think you get the idea behind it though.  I was encouraged to do whatever it took to draw a crowd so that I could share the gospel and hope to disciple some.  My job security rested on producing numbers.  So, we created the most attractive youth group that we could.  For many in those days that meant outrageous fun and hilarity all centered around the youth pastor.  Not being a center of attention guy, I looked to use the talents of students to create the most awesome youth group meetings. We also were blessed with a huge budget, so we began hosting concerts several times a year that drew large crowds of high school students. As long as I could brag in staff meeting once a month about some large numbered event, I had job security. What I found though that was more attractive than anything I could create was genuine community. The fellowship aspect of Acts 2 was compelling to me and we looked to reproduce that in our youth group.  In time we found that our group was attractive but not for the show we put on but for the relationships that existed within. 

Segregation – I inherited a segregated situation in my first church.  The pattern since early in the life of this particular congregation was that parents dropped off their kids for sunday school while adults went to worship. This only enhanced my belief that I had an ability to relate to kids that parents did not.  It never dawned on me that the strained relationship between parent and teen was a result of the fall and not God’s ultimate intention. I was the youth guy and our ministry would disciple teens. We did little with the rest of the congregation.  I did not realize what a huge loss this was until my second position when i saw the value of intergenerational relationships in the church.