One conversation I had many times this past weekend was about how to “rethink” the way we do youth ministry. While many people have been rethinking youth ministry for awhile, it’s still a pretty hot topic among some of my recent seminary graduate friends.
This is something I struggle with a lot - my desire to really rethink youth ministry and what it could look like. There is part of me that feels the weight and burden of having two Princeton Seminary degrees, one being in Youth Ministry; I feel that with all my training and education, I should be doing some really creative new form of youth ministry. Right now, I feel like I’m just doing youth ministry as it’s always been done and as I’ve always led it. Yet, whenever I sit down to think about how to put together a new type of youth ministry - a youth ministry ‘out-of-the-box’ - I end up just thinking about programs. “What new program can I start up?” or “What new type of program can I add to our youth ministry…what would be cool?”
My real desire is not to create additional programs for the youth of our church, but that’s where I typically start when I try to think about how to re-do things in our youth ministry program. I’m not interested in creating a youth ministry that is so full of activities and cool things to do that youth just have “one more thing” to try and schedule into their already crazy lives.
So, I’m trying to think “outside-the-box.” I was talking to some friends this weekend about this, and I started to wonder, “What would a program-less youth ministry look like?” I don’t want a youth ministry that is focused on programs - so what would it look like for a youth ministry to be program-less? Is it possible? What would it look like?
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
lots of thoughts on this man.
1. I love the heart of this.
2. I’m guessing you know more about this than I do.
3. I might ask the question a bit differently. The way the question is inherently retributive in nature, it’s the like the kid who is growing up asking who will I become, as long as it’s not like dad. The question contains barriers the possibilities are you hoping for. The goal isn’t program-less ym so much as it is, what are the possiblities for great ministry to/with/for/from youth and their families. Or perhaps better than that is a series of questions for each community to answer like:
What might community look like in our context?
What is the role of a pastor in a community?
What is the role of a community member, and how well am I (as a member) contributing to youth and children?
How important are youth to me as a community member and what kind of commitment am I willing to make to kids here?
What rhythms and activities in my life (as a community member) encourage and interfere with our hopes for community and spiritual formation for youth?
Are youth important to us as a community, and in what way have we lived this out?
It seems to me that how a church answers these questions will lead them to answer yours. To declare youth ministry be program-less is actually another subtly colonial leadership style to impose on people in a church. The vision of program-less youth ministry then becomes one more way in which a leader declares what they think is best and attempts to align people with their program. buy in or ownership in this circumstance will likely not happen on a meaningful scale, because it is essential the same thing as program driven youth ministry, just a different means. A leader trying to leverage influence to minister to youth.
the question then is, instead of how do I as a leader, or resident expert try to create a program-less youth ministry that I believe in, it becomes, what environment do I need to create to enable the congregation to care for youth in a way that is meaningful, healthy, and faithful to them.
Just a thought or two.
that is the question. to make a program less programmatic means you need time and a network of relationships. it is my belief that more natural youth group feels, the less programmatic youth group becomes. does the youth group seem artificial? are there many elements in the program? are kids generally gelling with other kids? do many of your youth ministry programs happen in out of the church? i read pete ward: liquid church and he really inspired me to think how youth group can be a connected group outside of the youth ministry program??
is there a fix? no. it is all about time, relationships, observation and assessment, and facilitating environments where kids can connect (and sometime that means spending time outside of the church).
i would argue that during your 1st year @ your church, still keep to the program schedule. program schedules are great for the kids because of the structure and expectancy. focus on building relationships, assess where the kids are at and assess how you can create community in your youth ministry, and start to think how you can naturally have a youth meeting outside of the church walls.
I have a similar struggle, as there is an entrepreneur side of me that wants something more than doing the same kind of youth group I’ve seen done in nearly every church I’ve been in.
I remember taking a class in college on curriculum and program development, and the prof asked about our initial reaction to “programs.” There were answers like “factory-like,” “formulaic,” and “stifling.” Then he redefined curriculum and programs as being intentional and giving structure to ministry. A ministry where having good programs is the end goal isn’t anything new. What about a ministry centered around being intentional about students’ spiritual growth, where programs are a means to an end instead of the end itself, where structure springs from real needs of the community instead of structure defining the community? Programs aren’t necessarily bad; they just can’t be viewed as the final end of ministry.
A program-less ministry would eventually have to create structure. I can’t imagine a healthy youth ministry with zero structure, direction, or intentionality. That doesn’t mean it has to be the typical Wednesday-night-games-and-worship or small-groups-with-adult-leader structure that make up the majority of youth ministries; but there needs to be some structure to help maintain the vision for the ministry.
I’m afraid I’m commenting mostly to get the feed of comments. I’m one of the middle-aged (that is, younger) elders in a small, small, struggling PC(USA) congregation founded in 1960. Yeah. We’re in transition now, following the departure of our pastor of 23 years, who had borne criticism from within and without for his liberalism, universalism, inclusiveness, passion for justice, and most recently, attempt to foster a truly multicultural (including multiCULTi) community. We have a few faithful families with youth and even fewer with younger children, and we clearly understand that they are where we must build or perish. Maybe it’s just the end of our life cycle, but for myself, and the way this community gave my 2 sons (now 30 and 27) a faith they can rely on, even if it’s hard to find a place to practice it, I can’t give up without a very hard fight. I want ideas.
bks
bro. definitely one of the main questions in youth ministry. has always been my primary struggle in youth min. i always seem to come back to the comparison with adult ministry - adult ministry isn’t this separate, confined, programmed-culture within a church, so why does youth ministry need to be executed that way? i remember tony jones talking a while back about the shift he made at his old church in MN - “euthanizing” the separate, exclusive, youth ‘program’, and and making his goal to integrate students into the larger workings of the church and the ministry areas of the church. this is a larger hope and goal of mine, because it solves one of the biggest problems in youth ministry: the problem of sphere of influence.
to adequately mentor and disciple all the youth in a given church, that church needs ALL the adults behind it. so i don’t think destroying the program model is necessarily the right step, but certainly breaking down the youth-min-as-exclusive-and-separate needs to happen, and the larger church body needs to be integrated into ministry with young people (and vice versa). then, more and deeper mentorship and discipleship can happen, rather than the youth becoming little youth-director disciples.
this is not an easy task, as most youth directors (and even youth pastors) are not necessarily very respected members of staff, and thus do not get much backing from the larger church body. this is what i experienced at my most recent church. i was expected to make youth ministry happen. and i think that is wrong. i think the entire church is responsible for making youth ministry happen, and the youth director/pastor is responsible for facilitating it.
I agree with what Petros is saying. I think the first step in breaking down the old model of program-based (and isolated!) youth ministry is to make youth ministry a part of the whole of the church’s ministry.
What would it look like if you showed up at all of your church’s committee meetings to help them find ways of including youth in the ministry of the church - advocating for them as regular leaders in worship (readers, ushers, whatever), working toward joint youth/adult Christian education efforts, seeing if you could have the confirmation class sit in on new member classes, make sure youth are invited to be a part of social ministries…
And yes, a huge part of this also involves the parents. In my experience, the churches whose youth and youth ministry are best integrated into the whole of the life of the church are the churches whose parents have taken an active role not only in the explicit youth ministries of the church, but also the parents who have been active in making sure their own children - their whole families - are part of the ministry of the church.
As far as other program-less program ideas go…
I also agree with the idea that programs have to be a means to an end, not an end in themselves, at least not completely. It’s great fun to have game nights or photo scavenger hunts or to go bowling, and I think that those things need to happen with some sort of regularity, simply for fun and fellowship. But perhaps the foundation of the ministry needs to be creatively making space for youth to explore spirituality and discipleship in a way that they are both learning some fundamentals about faith, the Bible, etc. and also are free to explore it. I think you have a dual job - to encourage the basics and to encourage self-reflection about those basics. Maybe it means that your “programs” consist of exposing them to faith practices - prayer, service, reading the Word, etc. And then, maybe it means you have afternoon “office hours” at Starbucks or wherever, for youth to drop in as the wish to chat with you. I’m also a fan of home visits/school visits - meeting up with the youth on their turf under their terms. So much of youth faith development happens through the mentor relationship.
Ok. I could probably go on forever. Anyway, hope this helps!
I do realize one thing I can contribute from my little church’s experience (though a few consider this sad experience): We are blessed with a sanctuary with great acoustics and no pews. For this reason, a few years ago one child of our church asked to have a battle of the the JrHigh bands there. We supplied chaperones, mostly to have a visible presence from the congregation. And indeed we got a number of kids asking “This is a church?” but also “This is my kind of church!” It led to a multiband benefit concert for a girl dying of CF and needing a heart+2lungs transplant (she didn’t get it in time) and another benefit concert organized and played by another child of our church. For these occasions and the sake of our carpet, we have to restrict food to other rooms, and of course we have to keep a presence going outside too. But briefly, and maybe even better if we’d had a going youth program for them to hook into, we had quite a rep in quite a wide area of suburban NJ for welcoming and supporting youth in the ways THEY are called to minister.
bks
This could be totally unhelpful - but for my mind you’ve got to start by stepping back and asking “what kind of youth person do we want to create?” “Who do we want these kids to become?” Once you know what the goal is, and keep that as central to what you do, whether it’s program or not, you have got the direction for re-working your youth stuff.
But that’s easy to say cos I just stopped being (directly) involved in youth about 4 months ago
I wonder if a lot of the probs with out of the box thinking is a cultural one. Here in the UK, were church is declining so fast that we are in headless chicken mode, we have really had to rethink youth ministry cus there are no youth in the churches. In other words we have HAD to do mission out of the box, because there is no box. YPs just dont have a church/Christian story and so we are starting from point 0.
I am working with a project that is seeking to start missional (that word again) church with YP, by starting expressions of church with non-churches YP enabling them to form the church so it is truly missional to their culture. This means that we are not trying to get them to come to us, we go to them and stay.
BTW you may find http://www.sundaypapers.org.uk/ interesting, look at stuff on ‘flow’ I think this is really rethinking youth ministry!
tough but necessary questions.
i assume you have seen Rob Bell’s section on youth groups in
his new book:
http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2008/10/to-begin-with-church-has-youth-group.html
You pose a relevant question and I think it is true not just for youth ministry but for the church as a whole. holy heteroclite, I just finished Bell’s book and that passage about youth ministry really hit me hard. While I am not a paid staff, I am a long time volunteer and I can feel that something is not right and no amount of silly games and skits can fix it. I feel that kids hunger for God even when they don’t know what they are hungering for and I see adults mostly want nothing to do with them. How do we change this culture and get kids connects to God and part of the body of Christ rather than just the youth group?
The problem is that the moment you ask “What will this look like?” you start to create structure in your head or on paper about it. Doing that “feels” like a program, but it isn’t… but because it feels that way we run away from locking it down.
Our church is trying such a thing right now - it’s relational on purpose, and when we do an event it’s to further the relationships. Even as ideal as that sounds, there is a rub - you don’t have the attractive program to get new families excited to send their kids to or something teen-ish street kids can just walk into.
That’s the rub - the rub is that there will always be a rub.
Truth be told, Youth Ministry IS a program, is it not? So, if you wanted to make it program-less, you would get rid off meeting separate from everyone else. Instead, you would try to incorporate all other factions of the church into your get-togethers. You could do this on the sly- because obviously, if you just up and disbanded the youth group, no one would go for that, and you’d be out a job (and we know that’s what ministry is all about, right? Guys like us having jobs). So you could just figure out a way to trick all different groups and ages and segments and so forth to start coming, as if those other groups are just coming to help out or something, but really what will end up happening is older groups will end up getting ministered to by the young ones and you, and vice versa! Maybe you could all work on something together like spiritual disciplines or social justice issues (you know, actually being “the church.”). I haven’t actually read all of these other comments, so someone might have already presented these ideas- but this is what was running through my mind as I read your post.
Grace and peace
Cody,
You may find it of interest but in the UK the Youth Service (government youth work) have 4 core values that define what youth work is;
- Equality of Opportunity
- Voluntary Participation
- Empowerment
- Informal Education
So do these have to be programmes to be youth work? Informal Education is the interesting one to explore in regards to formal programming.
This 4 values have come to be core to my youth ministry and I think one can see this values reflected the in ministry of Jesus.
Read more here http://www.paultilley.net/what-is-youth-workministry
Adam,
I think the most important aspect of moving away from a “programs” approach to youth ministry (which I’ve been attempting for almost five years) is that youth ministers have got to learn to stay put for some time before abandoning ship and searching for greener pastures. Radical discipleship and intentional community naturally develop if youth ministers are adamant about sticking with a church beyond the “honeymoon” period of the first couple of years.
In the same way that Benedictine monks are committed to a threefold way of living that involves stability, conversion of life, and obedience, youth ministers who aspire to truly be a part of God’s cooperative work in the lives of young people have got to be willing to sacrifice personal plans and agendas for the sake of being a stable presence in the lives of the young people they work with. We’ve got to experience a “conversion” in our thinking about our plans for our lives and make more realistic assessments of the demands of the life of a youth minister and then weigh whether or not we’re willing to make a long-term commitment (and I mean a commitment of more than five years, for example) to a church and a youth ministry. And we’ve got to be willing to work within the framework of ministry that a given community has developed. And, if that framework appears to be ineffective, we’ve got to be willing to be obedient to God’s spirit in addressing these concerns in such a way that shows that we want to serve the whole church rather than the needs of the youth ministry alone. This, of course, will mean a move toward whole church ministry that includes youth as a vital part (something Tony Jones has talked about and to which others have alluded in these comments). And, obviously, such a rethinking of youth ministry will require that we hunker down for the long haul and work with God to formulate practices and patterns of live that engender life-giving faith for the whole community, not just for the youth.
That’s my two-cents, for what it’s worth.
Peace, A.T.
Oh, and by the way, I’ve been enjoying your blog for a long time but I’m just now adding you to my blogroll…sorry bout that!
Adam,
Great question and insights already provided so I don’t have much to add to these conversation.
I would simply say to simplify.
Don’t add many programs and work to eliminate some of what you are currently doing, if is is really not aligning with your vision.
Work within the programs to bring change and transformation.
Sunday school, retreats, trips, and youth group nights can still work (and might have to always work if you at serving at a local church)
So rather then getting rid of them for something new and trendy, rethink what you do and why and transition the programs to best serve the needs and your vision.
I have a few ideas that I am myself trying to institute in my journey.
Would love to talk further.
Cody has a great point. More people should consider his position. To put it simply, “youth ministry” is not biblical and neither are any of the programs. Statements like these are just hard to swallow at first, but eventually it goes down.