Youth ministry in the emerging church
By Mark Riddle |
| |
 (4)
|
|
| |
I recently read Ryan Bolger’s blog on which he wrote that “Youth Pastors need not Apply” for positions within the emerging church. As someone who spends a majority of their time each day helping churches ReImagine their ministry to youth, I thought I would offer a few thoughts regarding the role of youth ministry in the Emerging Church.
I work with churches and help them to be more healthy, especially in their youth ministry. I support the church leadership in their desire to minister to youth and families. I support current youth ministry staff, paid or non-paid, and I support "lay leadership" as well. However, my work is primarily about helping people understand their churches ethos and then coach them toward developing the ethos they actually want. Beyond that I work with systems and infrastructure.
There are those who say they have answers to questions most youth pastors over the age of 28 are asking about the future of youth ministry. If you don’t know the questions, then you are either a new youth pastor or you are not in full-time youth ministry. Suffice it to say, youth ministry has big issues and most folks find it’s not having the desired effect on our kids, within our churches or for our families.
So, out there are a lot of answers people are shouting from the rooftops, but before I state the loudest answer, let me be clear on a few things. There is not one way to do ministry. There is not one way to do youth ministry. Every model, or ministry has problems. The work of systems thinking is to begin to understand the ramifications of decisions we make, and to decide which of those problems we can live with. Most of the time, we make these decisions based on what we value and believe. We understand our values based on assumptions that we make about the world around us.
I don't think Emerging churches are not going to write off youth ministry. At least in the long run. They can't. Many who do initially, will return to some kind of focused youth ministry. Sure, many of these churches won't have weekly programs for their youth. Sure, many of them value all the people together. These are great changes, but cannot be pendulum swings, from what has been. When they return to youth ministry, it will look radically different.
Why must emerging churches have youth ministries?
1. The perceived gap between adults and teens is growing. With new people groups like "tweenagers" being formed by the American Marketing Machine, the gap will only be growing unless there is a intervention. Let me be clear. I don't think the gap is all that large. But the perception is huge. Teens feel abandoned by their parents. Teens feel used. Teens are ornamental in our society. Adults are scared of them. While individuating teens are more and more able to make decisions on their own, they are faced with more and more adult issues to deal with. All the while they know fewer and fewer adults personally. There is a need for someone to lead local churches (emerging or not) in their ministry to teens. In today's understanding of youth ministry, youth pastors often reinforce this gap.
By the way... Children’s ministry is next. Tweenagers (8-12 year olds) will be the next kids adults start to question their connection with.
2. Often adult solutions contribute to the divide. The soccer mom who doesn't want her teen to feel alone, isolated and abandoned, carpools more often, or volunteers at the PTA. However, the pace of their lives together and the busyness of their lives and activity actually contributes to the feeling of abandonment, by, among other things, depriving the family of time together. Again, this is an issue of systems. The cure is often worse than the disease. There need to be relational architects who focus on families and teens in our churches. There is no getting around it. It must be a big priority.
3. Changing the paradigms for ministry within the emerging church will actually contribute to a coming crisis. If you scratch below the surface of American teens you will find a deep well of issues that teens will want to deal with. Much like the house church of 40 people who try to support the others in the community who are in crisis, there will be times when those crises tip to becoming overwhelming to the local community.
What will likely be different?
1. Youth Staff will be pastors, not directors of programs. This will be born from the value that the God given ministry to adolescents belongs to the parents and the church at large. A mercenary youth pastor will actually lead a ministry to youth away from the values these churches have.
2. You will stop hearing youth pastors say, "I'm going to work myself out of a job." This attitude tends to limit the role of youth pastor to programs. Youth pastors will not be working themselves out of a job any time soon. So Please! Please! Please! stop saying this! Get an imagination for being a pastor, which is probably why you got into ministry in the first place.
3. Youth Staff will likely be hired from within the local congregation.
4. There will be fewer paid youth pastors in Emerging churches than in others because there will be fewer staff in emerging churches. While most churches in America hired a youth pastor as one of the first two or three positions, this will change. Emerging churches may not have any staff, and a youth staff person will be likely be lower on the list of priority.
Now to the biggest answer folks are giving.
Parents. Give the ministry back to the parents. “Parents are the problem.” “Parents depend on the youth pastor for the spiritual nurture of the kids.” "If churches would call parents on their responsibilities then there would be no need for a youth pastor.”
While I agree that the parental role in the spiritual nurture of adolescents has wained the past 100 years, I would suggest that there are other theological positions regarding who will be "held primarily responsible". Often this idea is a reaction to the breakdown of the nuclear family, which sets up the family as an idol. Our Focus on the Family has led us to believe that the nuclear family is to be worshipped. This position is a product of American Invidualism as much as taking the Shema seriously. So I'd say bravo on seeing this issue. Bravo for wanting to do more in supporting parents in their ongoing ministry to their teens. Most churches are not doing this, most youth pastors are not doing this.
But this solution will not fix the problem you are trying to repair. There is far more to it than that.
Theologically it's a fine line to walk to put even a majority of the solution exclusively upon the shoulders of parents. Would the world be a better place if parents didn't expect someone else to care for a significant portion of the spiritual nurture of their kids? Sure it would. But again, it doesn't solve the problem.
The church appears to have lost its understanding of community. The gospel exists within community, not simply the family. Ministry to teens has never simply been about two people (parents) in the lives of a child. It is far more than this. Churches who take parenting seriously but who do not take community seriously are only shoveling the hot coals of guilt upon the heads of parents and setting them up to fail. There is no healthy parenting outside of community.
We have good traditions within the mainline church and great intentions within our evangelical church, but our system and structure do not support what we are trying to accomplish. The United Methodist Church baptizes infants. At the baptism, the parents state they will raise the child in the way of God, then the congregation says they will support the parents and the child. But few do. 90% of infants baptized within the UMC aren’t going to church by the time they are seniors in high school. It’s a beautiful tradition with amazing intentions that exists within a broken system and structure that is yielding a deplorable result.
The Youth Ministry we live with now was the product of several good-intentioned solutions to growing problems. It was the church's response to orphans, who didn't have parents, and adolescents. Youth ministry stepped into the gap to fix these issues. But that solution has become the church's current problem and often enables parents in unintentional ways. The Parent solution is only a band-aid and will have unintended consequences as well.
Youth Ministry will have a place in the future of the emerging church. There is no getting around it. Youth ministry will be with us whether parents "take responsibility" for the teens or not. It’s just that youth ministry will look different. The perceived gap between adults and teens is too great. There will often need to be someone full time who bridges these gaps of perception.
The answer is not better parenting, the answer is a better church. That is why the emerging church will be a great place for ReImagined Youth Ministry to take place.
 Mark Riddle serves as the Lead Consultant for the Riddle Group, a youth ministry coaching firm. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma with his wife and three children. You can email Mark at mark[at]theriddlegroup.com. |
| |
|
(4)
|
|
I like a lot of what you've written. There's one question I have: Is "working yourself out of a job" a sign of programatic thinking or could it be that it is a sign of a leader who has truly empowered others? Should pastors actually work themselves out a job much more often? Granted on the other side of the argument is lacking consitency of leadership or the lacking of deep investment in people. But I'm just wondering... Thanks for a good article addressing some key issues in youth ministry.
Great article! Articulate and hits a lot of the points square on the head... Well done. Grace and Peace, -Jer
Mark, I enjoyed reading your article and agree that there are problems in Youth Ministry today. We took our Youth Group to Acquire the Fire a few months ago and it really sucked! Between all the commercials, the boring lecture style preaching, and the lack of focus on the experiential, our teens were more overwhelmed than helped. But I also want to mention a problem on the local level. I pastor a church of about 60 in a small Iowa town. When my wife and I came here there was no Youth Group. We built it up to about 25 to 30 on a good night, while taking care of the rest of the ministry in the church. Out of those teens not one of them has parents who attend our church. Those who are saying, "Parents need to take over the spiritual nurture of their teens" obviously still have the modernistic big-church mentality where they deal with just families in church. Will the Emergent church totally ignore those teens and kids whose parents won't go to church? Will the EC get so wrapped up in family community that we turn our backs on those who don't come pre-packaged for that type of environment? If the EC focuses so much on family that it ignores the differences between age groups and between the very people who make up society, then we are just revelling in our short-sightedness and our lack of wisdom.
Mark, this is a provocative, yet down to earth assessment of youth ministry. With "adolescence" now being extended to 29-31 year olds, do you think "youth" ministry will have to reckon with gaps up the age scale as it will with Tweenagers?
|
