Photo by ekai via Flickr (Creative Commons)

About 10 months ago a group of people sat on Chris’ back porch talking about starting a youth ministry for our church, Harbor Mid-City. As we chatted, dreamt, and prayed about this ministry one of the things that came out was… “We want it to be a safe place for students to explore a relationship with Jesus.”

That phrase stuck. It actually became a part of our ministry description which we recite during every meeting. “IOB is a safe place for students to explore a relationship with Jesus.”

That phrase got tested a bit last night.

Stephen, our teaching/senior pastor, came to youth group last night to teach on and invite students to participate in baptism. His teaching was pretty simple… this is what baptism is, this is what it symbolizes, this is who should get baptized, this is how our church does it, we’d love it if you would consider getting baptized. He did a great job.

I could tell during his teaching time that some students were uneasy about this whole thing. They didn’t feel safe. It wasn’t that Stephen was teaching anything bad or that they were intimidated in any way or even that he was manipulating them to make a decision they didn’t want to make– there was just something about the truths of Scripture that Stephen was saying that gave the room a funny, rare vibe.

You could see it in their posture. You could see it in the way they looked at him. You could see it in the way they listened to his talk.

To follow-up, we broke up into small groups and the leaders were asked to dig a little deeper with the students and ask if any of them would like to be baptized.

Three responses from my circle that tested me in my response.

• Is there any way I can get unbaptized? My parents baptized me as a baby and I don’t want to follow God.
• I’m not ready to get baptized. I understand the Gospel and I get what Stephen was talking about, but I’m just not ready to put my faith in Jesus yet.
• Why did my parents baptize me? If they made a covenant to God than they didn’t live up to it at all.

Mince no words. These were questions that pushed me back to that discussion 10 months before. Was IOB really a safe place to explore Jesus? If so, how I responded either validated that statement or invalidated it.

Open questions for readers:

What would be answers to these responses which would communicate that IOB isn’t a safe place?

What would be some “this is a safe place” answers to these questions?

Youth group meets every Wednesday evening at 7:00 PM. And every Wednesday night at 7:00 PM a cast of characters arrives on scene. Each character is three-dimensional. And each character is coming to youth group for their own reasons.

Every Wednesday there is a plot and a series of sub-plots. And it looks something like this.

Style: Drama

The plot: Youth group has an agenda. The youth leader picks a topic for the night and has themed everything around it. In tonight’s play, we’re talking about worship. Everything that we’ll do is targeted at the agenda. What is worship? How can I worship? Why should I worship? Let’s worship together. Worship-themed games. And a wall where we’ll write our own definition of worship.

This is the plot the youth worker, Adam, needs for the night to feel like a success. This agenda must win over everything. Why? The youth worker is in charge, duh.

The main characters: Here’s a list of fictional characters for youth group, along with what their plot is on Wednesday.

Ted: Ted was in the parking lot when the youth leader arrived. He’s thrilled it’s Wednesday night because the last thing he wants to do is be home. Ted’s sister is two years older and teases him constantly. That may not be a big deal, but Ted is sick of being teased. He comes to youth group because its a safe place for him to hang out. He’s got a couple of friends who come, too.

Ted’s sub-plot for Wednesday night is that he needs to feel loved somewhere. He doesn’t get that at home. And he’s not sure if the church can make him feel loved… but his new girlfriend sure is making him feel loved. So if he’s not feeling it this Wednesday, he probably won’t come next week.

Linda: She just wants to make it in the room. She’s been crying off and on all day. Not like in a dramatic way… but in a “I need to go to the bathroom” kind of way. Linda doesn’t know what to do because she is about 5 days late and might be pregnant. She doesn’t want to tell Mario because she knows he’ll freak. Her eyes are sore from crying and she’s completely on edge. She told Jill, Mary, and Christy what was up because they go to youth group with her and love her.

Linda’s sub-plot is she’s freaked out because she isn’t sure if she’s pregnant or not. And she doesn’t even want to think about what would happen if she really is. That’d cause drama in every corner of her life. Youth group, school, and especially home. Yikes, her mom doesn’t even know she’s having sex. And the youth leader, Adam, that dude doesn’t have a clue. And she might just slap Margaret. That kid is so happy and she had the nerve to ask her on Facebook why she’s been a bitch all day. That kid doesn’t have a clue.

Margaret: She’s everybody’s best friend. At least she thinks she is. She calls everyone each Wednesday after school to make sure they come to youth group. She helps lead worship, she helps Adam plan youth group activities, and when she isn’t getting straight As at school she is doing pretty good on the soccer team. Her home life is meh, but it doesn’t seem to faze her. Sure, her parents are getting a divorce, but God is in control, right? Plus, Adam and the other youth group leaders come to her soccer games– they are the only family she needs.

Margaret’s sub-plot is tat she wants the night to be awesome. Youth group has made a big difference in her life, she knows she is loved and safe, and she feels like if people will just give it their all, they will all love Wednesday nights and the youth group will really start to grow.

Mario: Mario loves coming to youth group. It’s silly, it’s fun, he learns a lot. He likes learning about God. For the first time in his life he feels like the stuff about God is making sense. He hasn’t told Adam yet, but at the retreat he prayed the prayer and has been reading his Bible every day. Speaking of the retreat, for the last 2-3 months since the retreat… he’s been giving Linda a ride home from church. It’s kind of funny because everybody knows they are going out but no one really suspects anything.

Mario’s sub-plot is that he looks forward to youth group on Wednesday night so he can see his friends, learn about Jesus, and give Linda a ride home. He knows it’s crazy… but they’ve had sex on the way home every Wednesday for like 9 weeks. There’s no way he’d miss a Wednesday night. No not ever.

Carrie: Carrie is really quiet on Wednesday nights. She comes a few minutes late, brings her Bible, and just kind of goes through the motions. She comes to everything, loves Adam’s teaching, and just likes youth group because its a distraction from her home life.

Carrie’s sub-plot is that she comes on Wednesday night to get away from a verbally abusive home. Nothing she does is good enough for her parents. She feels unloved and youth group is the only place she feels safe. But no one at youth group would know that because she’s terrified to tell the truth about her dad, the pastor.

Jill, Mary, and Christy: They’ve spent the whole day praying Linda isn’t pregnant. Well, they were praying when they weren’t asking their friends if they should tell a teacher or Adam. So now they feel a little guilty that about 200 people at school know Linda might be pregnant but that doesn’t really matter because if she is… everyone needs to know anyway, right? And if she isn’t pregnant than those 200 people will know that prayer works.

Their agenda is that all they can think about is their friend Linda and her uterus. They are just going to play along tonight and not say anything. And then they are going to go home and Facebook chat about it some more.

Adam: Adam just wants Wednesday night to be over with. He’s super tired and had a bad day. Staff meeting went way late. He couldn’t find the ingredients for the game he wants to play. And he’s annoyed that the elders are thinking about cutting his budget to go to NYWC this Fall. Adam got rushed through preparation because he was dealing with a problem between a parent and a former student who is now in college… like all day Tuesday. Adam thinks his lesson plan is solid and that this is what God wants him to teach. But he’s really frustrated that the students just don’t seem as into it since the retreat.

Adam’s agenda is to be faithful to the plan. His gut is telling him there’s a lot going on with his students but the truth is, there’s a lot going on in his life, too. So Adam just wants tonight to be over with so he can go home and watch some TV he’s DVRed and see his kids before they go to sleep. He’s really frustrated, too. Since the retreat there’s been a lot of apathy among the students. Which is weird, it seemed like everything at the retreat went so well?

What’s the point of the story: A lot of time in youth ministry we think that the plot of our lesson plan is the real story of our ministry. We go home feeling great if the lesson went well and kids seemed engaged in the plot. But when you look at all the sub-plots coming on Wednesday night– you see God is waiting for someone to intervene– and we go home frustrated because our gut tells us it could have gone better and we just don’t have a clue why. Sadly, we allow the plot to override what our students desperately need.

Students are bringing the mess of their lives to the church and asking, “Can God help me with ____?“ And we’re answering that question by distracting them with games, music, and a lesson that isn’t answering their biggest question.

Photo by Ben Lawson via Flickr (creative commons)

There is something so cheap about a program that graduates students.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t like to let go? Or maybe it’s just that I can’t reconcile the theological ramifications of shoving a copy of My Utmost for His Highest in a kids hands and saying, “Thanks for the memories. Have a nice life!”

In reality, I’ve not let go of them. I just can’t. It wouldn’t seem right. And I am pretty sure they don’t want to either. Why else would I be maintaining these relationships with them into adulthood? Why are we still sharing life?

The way my youth ministry career has gone, in many ways that relationship is just getting started when they walk across the stage to accept their high school diploma. It’s not over, we’re just changing gears!

And yet, the programmatic approach to youth ministry depends on me pushing kids through the system. Freshmen take steps 1-2, sophomores steps 3-4, juniors do step 5, seniors do step 6. We’re always working kids through a system. We say we love them… but that’s a short-term love that lasts as long as they are in high school. Sayonara, sucker! I’ve got a whole slew of incoming freshmen to look after!

The way I see it, that type of program is a cheap Wal*Mart edition of discipleship. Real discipleship is taxing. It’s tough. It’s costly. It’s complicated. It requires more commitment than getting assigned to 8 kids for a small group year or running a program at work.

When I think of the way Jesus discipled I think of a process that was open-ended. They ground it out over time. It wasn’t a wheel or bases that he ran those young men through. It was life shared. Three steps forward, two steps back. But together they got there.

From my own ministry experience, you just know when you have a few kids who get it and want to be discipled long-term. You don’t get assigned these kids. A pastor doesn’t have to bestow anything on you. It’s just natural, you pick it up, and you see where the relationship goes. You recognize it in them when they are 14 when they won’t leave your house because they just have to talk to you about something. You see it when they are 17 and they just drop by to watch a movie or something. You see it when they are 19 and they are just back for the weekend and want to grab a cup of coffee to catch up on life. You see it when they are 23 and you are chatting about life on Facebook.

Maybe I’m just an abnomaly but my ministry to those kids continues long after I hand them a book and a graduation card. To do anything less would seem cheap. Like I didn’t even mean it.

“Programs are short-term. Discipleship is long-term.”

Maybe instead of trying to force discipleship into a 4 or 6 year box we need to re-shape youth ministry so that it starts with kids who want to be discipled and it ends… like at a later date when its over? Why are we trying to redefine discipleship instead of trying to redefine youth ministry?

There’s always room for a couple newbies in my life. As we get rolling with this new youth ministry venture in San Diego I can see the cycle starting over again. I’m getting to know 14-15 year olds who are looking for someone to walk with for the long-haul. I’ve got room in my life because the reality is that the ones I’ve been mentoring/discipling for the last 5-6 years don’t need much attention. That’s exciting for me to see it starting all over again. I’m hard-wired for it. But that’s how you would hope the process works, right?

Am I alone in this? Should we start looking at youth ministry as a long-term investment instead of a program?

CC 2.0 jenni40947 via Flickr

I’m a golfer. I’ve played the game off and on most of my life. More importantly, I love being around golfers.

There is a joke among golfers that there are just three rules to a caddy’s job. “Just show up, keep up, and shut up.”

That’s really how I feel about our burgeoning youth ministry. I’m just trying to show up, keep up, and shut up.

Show up

Let’s be real. As a volunteer that is 85%. I want to get there on time, be ready to join in whatever needs to be done, and be present emotionally.

Keep up

I’m learning. Tonight I came home feeling good because I felt like I learned a bunch of the kids names. I feel like I have a ton more to learn so that I feel like I’m actually contributing. I’ve got to keep up.

Shut up

The kids in our ministry could care less what I do for a living, how long I’ve been in ministry, or anything else. I just need to shut up and be there for them.

Yesterday, I was riding my bike to the trolley when I spotted this beauty. While the saran wrapping of the cars is very well done, the TP job leaves a lot to be desired.

My first thought? Hey, I wonder what church this person works at?

Of all the church staff, the one thing that youth workers get right more often than anyone else… good  ministry happens in the home. I’d take that a step further to say, the best ministry happens in the home. It doesn’t have to be your house. But the best stuff typically happens in a house.

I’ve been wrestling with the concepts of Marko’s book, Youth Ministry 3.0 for a long time. Actually, before I worked a YS I had been going through a prolonged set of discussions at Romeo saying in a thousand different ways… What I’m doing isn’t working anymore.

The problem was simple. I was trained and experienced at how to do youth ministry a certain way. The entire ministry was built around a youth group night of games, worship, small groups, and a talk. I had seen it work and do incredible things! Even in Romeo we had seen this ministry model draw 40+ students to a church of 120. Lives were changed, kids were discipled, volunteers loved it, on and on. We ran that thing and worked that model like a well-oiled machine. I was well-versed in all the terminology of all the other well-oiled youth ministry systems and had written tons comparing and contrasting the strength of one model over the other. But in the last few years the model tanked. Kids stopped coming. The whole thing became kind of toxic. Instead of re-arranging their schedule to make in on Wednesday night all of a sudden kids were trying to find things to do on  Wednesday night so they could politely bow out. Frustration mounted and I kept saying, “What I’m doing isn’t working anymore.”

The crazy thing was my reaction to a YM 2.0 model. My response was always, even to the last day, “I know this works, something is just missing, that’s all.” I would tweak things here, re-emphasize this or that. It was never that the concept was broken. The problem was always either the kids not getting the vision of the model or my model not having the funding/support it needed to succeed. It never really dawned on me that my solution to fixing things was to kill the model and search for a better way to minister to students. My reaction was always to just work harder and to keep trying.

Pray more, blame the parents. Pray more, blame the money. Pray more, blame myself. Pray more, blame the kids busyness. In the end I was royally frustrated and a little angry at God that He had me in a place where I couldn’t fix things.

But as Marko’s book shows, there is a massive shift from what he calls “Youth Ministry 2.0″ built around programs and models, towards “Youth Ministry 3.0″ where the programmatic approach is, probably though not necessarily, foregone for a draw towards ministries built around affinity. (A super over-simplified analysis, right there!)

My wrestling point right now is pretty simple… how do I help ministries kill what has worked for a generation and open their eyes to a way to reach this generation. My experience in YM 2.0 environments is that they’d be happy running an un-attended YM 2.0 model if that means they don’t have to change things. Youth workers may not like the sacred cows of big church but they have certainly built some sacred cows themselves. (Remember the fury over my articles, “I Kissed Retreats Goodbye?“)

From a national perspective I’m seeing one trend that is scaring me and I don’t want it to be the solution: Killing youth ministry budgets, staffs, and programs. Please tell me that we’re not going to throw the baby out with the bath water? Simply because a model isn’t working doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t minister to adolescents!

What is a more productive outcome than that?

This brings back some memories. When we took students to Chicago for a mission trip with ICI, we had endless gym time to practice all sorts of trick shots. Something tells me this guy was unstoppable at horse.

Now I just need a video with extreme carpetball shots and we’d be all set.

Since we’re talking high school and we’re talking basketball. Check out these variations on basketball. I grew up playing most of these “in the slums of Granger, Indiana.” OK, it was the rich suburbs… but hyperbole is just too much fun.

Twenty-one: all vs all, first to 21 wins. (I could write a book on local variations of 21. The game is different all over the country!)
Make-it-take-it: team game, score a basket and your team keeps the rock.
King of the court: multi-team game, your team wins a game to 10 and you keep playing.
Knockout: all-vs.all, start at the free throw line and try to knock out the person in front of you.

Boys and girls in youth ministry we’ve got some problems. We in youth ministry, as a tribe, believe some lies about who we are, what we’re about, and how we should be reaching students. Let’s address these and move forward to fix them, OK?

#1 Your ministry is “successful” if you have 10% of Sunday morning attendance. My entire youth ministry career has been wrapped up in the local church so I can state this from experience. But let’s bear in mind historical perspective to understand this lie before we can look at a solution. The current version of Youth Ministry is really a reaction to the success of early parachurch ministries. Back in the late 1940s modern youth ministry was born when Youth for Christ hired Billy Graham to lead crusades to reach teenagers… and boy did that work! YFC’s crusades scratched a cultural itch since teens had been left out of the local church with the emergence of adolescence. (Adolescence is only about 120 years old!) As a strong middle class was born out of post-WWII days adolescent teen culture blossomed and the church was seen as irrelevant to teens. Gradually, in the early 1960s the American church responded in a big way to numerical victories of parachurch ministries. Churches were tired of seeing all of the students go to YoungLife and Youth for Christ… so they started hiring those organization’s staff to run programs in local churches.

It was a great concept, but from the very beginning youth ministry was seen by church leadership as a way to hold onto church kids and maybe, just maybe, reach new families. This fixed a problem parachurches had without truly addressing the church issue that created the parachurch need in the first place… no place for non-believers to be ministered to.

The truth is that local churches royally ruined what the parachurches were doing. To even call what most churches do “youth ministry” is demeaning to its evangelistic heritage. Instead of youth pastors being hired to reach a high school they were hired to grow/maintain a local church. (In fact, I’ve talked to countless youth pastors who were fired for trying to reach lost students!) The lie is that a good youth ministry is about growing a church. In most cases, a youth pastor’s job is so limited and focused on the church that it’s really not about reaching lost kids at all. (Appropriate lip service is always about evangelism!) I’ve actually sat in youth ministry networks and listened to youth pastors sound satisfied that they are reaching 50-60 students with their ministry. The target isn’t a percentage of butts in seats on Sunday morning! Reaching 50 students while 1950 have never heard the gospel is a gross failure.

True success comes when you reach and disciple brand new people for Jesus Christ! The first lie points to the fact that church-based youth ministry largely lies to itself and calls itself a success when it reaches less than 1% of students in a community. Is it the individual youth pastor’s fault? Absolutely not. It’s a design flaw worth addressing. The truly successful youth ministries in this country focus on the lost in their schools and could care less what percentage of saved church kids come to their programs.

Questions for youth workers: Do you agree with my use of the term “lie?” If so, what are some ideas for fixing this in your context? If you don’t agree, I still love you. But I’d like to hear your push back.

Lie #2 It’s about discipleship

Lie #3 You have to have a youth pastor

I’ve been thinking about successful youth groups vs. unsuccessful youth groups. And truth be told the exact same thought holds true for churches.

• Successful youth groups takes measured, bold risks.
• Unsuccessful youth groups take few risks.
• Successful youth groups generate excitement both internally and externally.
• Unsuccessful youth groups are boring.
• Successful youth groups have a two-fold reaching/teaching mode.
• Unsuccessful youth groups have a one-fold teaching model.
• Successful youth groups have the support of the church leadership.
• Unsuccessful youth groups aren’t sure they have the support of church leadership.
• Successful youth groups have intentional event planning.
• Unsuccessful youth groups have events that are based on what kids want.

Of course, all of this comes down to “How do you measure success in youth ministry?” How do you answer that question?

I mentioned this project earlier today, here is the video. I think it turned out pretty funny. What do you think?