Third, we lost sight of the Great Commission, deciding instead to make converts of many and disciples of few. We concluded that strong biblical teaching and helping students embrace a robust theology was boring (or only relevant to the exceptionally keen) and proverbially shot ourselves in the foot.
The great commission (Matthew 28:19-20) is our mandate when it comes to any ministry. No one in youth ministry will argue otherwise. Yet I used to have breakfast with an older gentleman who would say to me “you need to have a lot of milk to get cream on the top”. He was suggesting that we must have lots of students involved in our youth group to get a good core of disciples.
One of the trends I have seen in youth ministry (broadly speaking) amongst both church and parachurch ministries is the tendency to seek a large group to share the gospel with and then be content with a small percentage of them becoming disciples. Books, training events, and conversations with other youth pastors all revealed the same thing. We do youth groups with as many as possible and then go deeper with a smaller group. Models have taught this via a diagram – such as Duffy Robbins’ funnel or Doug Fields’ baseball diamond. This is presented as not only a reality but instructs us to program for it. Obviously in relational ministry we have contact with more students than our youth groups actually see. There is a difference though between contact and youth group regulars. Does it make sense that we would disciple a portion of our group and think that we are planting seeds with the rest? Jesus did not call us to plant seeds. He commanded us to make disciples and teach them. If our ministry really consists of the core, are we just entertaining the rest?
An inoculation is a very low dose of a disease which is injected into the body so that we can build immunity to the disease. Now, think about the youth group that is loaded with silly fun and a tiny little talk about how cool Jesus is. Does that not run the risk of inoculating kids against the gospel? Have you ever met the kid who does not go to church (though his/her parents are active) on the basis that they go to a parachurch ministry? The only faith input they are getting is a tiny morsel of truth packaged in a cute little story. How would we expect them to conclude anything other than Jesus is irrelevant or trivial?
In today’s complex world, the carefree years of adolescence seen some decades ago have been replaced by the stressed out years of transition that seem to never end. If we are not digging into scripture with students are we not doing them a disservice? Are we really loving students if we are not willing to give them a theology that will hold up in the years to come? I have met far too many adults who think teens don’t want deep bible teaching and if we attempted such it would bore them. Well, the same can be said for teaching adults. It’s been my experience that youth pastors can be amazing Bible teachers because if we master the skill of speaking to teens, we can captivate just about any audience. We also underestimate the ability of students to engage with, grasp, and apply the scriptures to their lives. Same goes for theology.
So, how do we think differently about youth ministry then? The primary issue here is that we need to think of those we are discipling as our youth groups not the core of our groups. If in our youth groups we are unapologetically opening scripture and proclaiming the gospel in deep and meaningful ways, expecting the spirit to work and lives to be redeemed, we are on track. The “traditional” youth group (I’d use air quotes here if I could) of soft peddling the gospel and making things as insanely fun as possible might very well be contributing to moralistic therapeutic deism. We need to keep in mind that the only numbers that count are how many students are following Jesus for the long haul. So, I concluded that we don’t need a lot of milk to get the cream to the top, we just have to shake things up.
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