Tonight I have the fun opportunity to talk to a group of interns from our churches New Heights Project.

Basically, we hire high school students from our community to a month-long leadership development internship in which they go through a couple weeks of preparation and a couple weeks of doing children’s outreach. It’s a bit funky, which is what I like about it, but one aspect I love is that we don’t just hire students from our youth group. Ultimately, the group is made up of both Christian and non-Christian students alike who spend weeks learning and telling other kids about the Gospel. And in the process we hope that they have ample opportunity to explore a relationship with Jesus and perhaps trust Christ with their lives.

Yes, we really do have students who don’t even profess Christ asking other people to profess Christ! Hey, if God can talk through a donkey… [See Hyde's Dedication and Leadership for more on this principle.]

At any rate, here’s the notes for my talk. Feel free to use this as a jumping off point on your own talk from Matthew 16. (Um, please let me know if you plan on publishing these somehow. Didn’t think I needed to say that… but then I find my words in weird places!)

If you don’t know me in person, this is kind of a home base talk for me. It communicates a lot of my story and my vision for what God is calling each of us to do.

Jesus Calls the Ordinary to Do the Extraordinary (276)

I have the coolest job in youth ministry. I get to do what I love, connecting with youth workers around the world and I get paid for it!

At the core of it this video demonstrates the 2 things I love most about working at YS.

1. Tic lays out the heart of why we do the National Youth Workers Convention. This is really the heart of YS. We do all of this to minister to youth workers… that’s why it is worth it to us.
2. I get to work with amazing people. Setting aside the amazing people I get to connect with outside of YS as part of my job, I have gotten to work day-by-day with some amazing heroes of youth ministry. These folks continue to be a daily inspiration to me.

When we were shooting this video (ht to Ian) I just kept thinking about those two things.

Dang, I am fortunate.

And dang, I want to be a part of carrying on this legacy.

I’m always at odds with this reality:

If Jesus offers good news, what is it about how we do youth ministry that is only attractive to 1% – 2% of the high school students on our campus?

That always lead same  to a place where I say, “I don’t think we’re doing this right just yet.”

• Good news spreads like wild fire.
• Good news is unstoppable.
• Good news releases energy.
• Good news releases joy.
• Good news is contagious.

In 1994, as a high school senior our basketball won the Indiana state basketball championship. If you’ve seen the movie Hoosiers than you get a glimpse of how important this is to the state of Indiana. It’s a really big deal. Not only do the finals fill the RCA Dome, the same building which hosts the NCAA Final Four, it is a much bigger tournament as every high school in the state got a chance to enter the tournament. So as the final seconds ticked off the clock in overtime and our team was up 93-88… the student body of Clay High School collectively lost it. We poured onto the court. We screamed and danced. And then when we got kicked off of the court we ran around the inside of the stadium screaming, chanting, bouncing, skipping, and dancing! And then we got kicked out of the RCA Dome and we literally just ran through the streets of downtown Indianapolis screaming, chanting, bouncing, skipping, dancing, and stopping traffic to tell them, “We won!”

That was good news worth celebrating. It unleashed unstoppable joy. It was universal on our campus. It was even universal in our city as everyone felt good about this good news!

If youth ministry were good news to the high school students on our campus.. you’d see this same unstoppable release of joy. It’d be nearly universal. Even those who didn’t embrace it would be excited it. Good news is worth celebrating, dancing, and running through the streets for.

I know it. You know it. 1% – 2% of people running through the halls… that’s just creepy!

The only question is, are we will to think and dream of ways to be good news to our campus so they might desire to hear Good News?

Photo by bipolarbear via Flickr (creative commons)

A few years ago I was talking to a senior pastor about youth ministry. In a moment of honesty he said something like this.

“I don’t get it. Tell me why you want to work with high school students your whole life. You’re qualified to be a senior pastor. You have all the qualities people look for in a senior pastor. And your teaching style moves high school students to a type of faith that most churches would love. Plus, you could be the boss and you’d make a lot more money. What don’t I see?”

The truth was that it took me by surprise because I’d never been asked that question. I’ve only been asked it’s annoying cousin, “When are you going to be a “real” pastor?”

Here’s a summary of what I told him:

• I love the process. In the 5-6 years that you have a student in your ministry you see them go from squirrelly middle schooler to mostly grown up.
• I love that adolescents are moldable. The reason you can teach them radical truths and they will respond is pretty amazing. You just don’t see many adults looking for truth to move them.
• I love the fun factor. When was the last time you’ve preached to adults and illustrated something by covering a kid in shaving cream or dunking for oreos in chocolate syrup. Like never. There’s a middle schooler in me that is highly amused by this kinesthetic goofy learning stuff. Adults just don’t go for it.
• I love that it doesn’t end unless you want it to. Seriously, this is a beautiful time of year. I love the longitudinal factor of youth ministry. And I love the fact that you can chose to continue investing in some students while having a perfectly good excuse to move them out of your life. You can’t do that as a senior pastor, can you?

How would you have answered this question?

I’m spending the next week on the road for work, capturing stories from youth workers in their context.

Here’s Ryan’s story.

I first heard about Ryan’s story last year. We met for lunch and than later at NYWC. I love that his story is just like real life, full of ups and downs. Full of moments of questioning and assurances.

His story is pretty much the way God rolls. When I spent time with Ryan and Ashley last week I couldn’t help but think… “God has them right where He needs them.”

In God’s wisdom, He likes it when his people are completely dependent on Him.

Recently we took a survey of Youth Specialties customers. The results of one particular question completely shocked me. Here it is:

When I was looking through the initial survey results I turned around to Tic, and said… “Wanna know why so many youth groups are struggling to keep students for the long haul? There’s the problem, right there.”

Of our sample of 600 youth leaders 76.8% of them teach mostly topically?

The words of Paul echoed in my head:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17

But apparently many youth workers don’t believe this is true. They believe that topics are more important than Scripture!

Let’s review:

• All topics are not God-breathed.
• All topics aren’t useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.
• All topics are not equipping the man of God for every good work.

But God’s word is!

Look at it another way– Most youth workers are getting in the way of this.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 2 Timothy 3:14-15

Don’t even give me the parent comeback. “It’s a parents role to teach their kid the Scriptures.” That’s a joke. Youth workers aren’t paid to babysit, are they? Certainly, parents have a role in teaching their children. But, as a person called and equipped to teach and reach middle and high schoolers doesn’t teach the Bible– what kind of example is  that?

Don’t give me the “all the kids in my youth group know the Bible” comeback either. If all you are reaching are kids who were born and raised in the church than you’ve lost sight of what youth ministry is all about in the first place! I would argue that if you aren’t reaching teenagers for Christ than you aren’t likely doing discipleship while going anyway.

Here’s what I am saying.

• Get back to your first love.
• Teaching the Bible is more useful than teaching purely topically.
• Teaching the Bible is taking students to the primary source.
• Teaching the Bible is equipping your students for every good work.
• Teaching the Bible is long-sighted and strategic.
• Teaching the Bible is teaching a man to fish instead of giving a man a fish.
• Get back to your first love.
• If you want to change a persons’ life, you need to get them in God’s word.

Today I had the chance to talk to youth workers in East County about all sorts of internet and technology stuff. Here are some highlights of that discussion.

• It’s important to identify WHY you are a part of social media. Youth workers must get past the passive-praxis response of just doing it because it feels like we should and all the cool kids are doing it. Please pause and reflect on the theology behind what you are doing. I’ve got an article in the Winter 2010 issue of The Journal of Student Ministries which talks more about this.
• Teens are multi-tasking everything. They watch TV while texting and having a friend over– and both are listening to music on their iPods. This results in some funky relationships where people are “together” physically but don’t talk to one another. Though they might text each other about the movie they are watching. If you need to see this phenomenon go do some observation at Target. You will see teen girls shopping together while talking via text to other people. True confession: I’m guilty of this one, big time!
• Text messaging is king in youth ministry. You text a student, you know you are getting to them. Do more of that! go unlimited, baby! Engage them where they are with how they are willing to engage you.
• Don’t forget to go to stuff like games. Technology makes some things easier, but you physically showing up in their life is still a big deal.
• The new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation on media consumption by teens is mandatory reading for youth workers everywhere. Here’s the link. Don’t come to conclusions, read articles, or do anything else about the topic until you digest this new study.
• Parent issues with technology are a big deal in some circles. But it seems like there is less of a battle with Facebook compared to Myspace.
• Fewer ministry dollars and time are being spent on building a web presence as we all just cave in and do stuff on Facebook. I think this is a good thing.
• Tools like Hootsuite and CoTweet are perfect for busy youth workers. Sit down once a week and schedule Facebook profile messages and tweets.
• Presence is becoming a major issue. Kids don’t even know how to just sit and have a conversation anymore. Of course, this starts with adults. I’d suggest everyone reads Flickering Pixels by Shane Hipps. I love how he approaches the topic.
• IRL is back. All of this technology is leaving kids hungry for real life experiences. Events, retreats, concerts… experience are all hot this year. It might not be in traditional ways, but real life stuff is becoming cool again.

One trend that I meant to talk about but ran out of time with is this: I’m seeing fewer and fewer teens reach out to become content creators. It’s not just that I am around shy kids, it really is that there are fewer teens out there who are contributing substantive thoughts/comments. Attention spans are about that of a flea right now. Which is why sites like Fail Blog, FML, and TFLN are so popular among teens. (Those links are not safe for work) Look at the comment sections of these sites. Nothing of substance whatsoever. There must be $1 billion in text messages sent in 2010 containing either “lol” or “k.”

A few weeks ago Sara and Tim got married. They have a pretty cool story, I hope I don’t get in too much trouble for sharing the little snippets that I know.

I met Sara last October in Pittsburgh for the National Youth Workers Convention. I was walking around looking for people to interview for the ghetto fabulous podcast recap and found Sara in the hallway and she agreed to let me ask her a few questions. (She also knew Patti, maybe through YMX, I’m not sure on that part of the story!) Later in the weekend she and I bumped into one another again in the store and chatted some more. We connected, it was cool, and now she is a contributor on the YS blog.

I remember cracking up with her because she told me that before the convention the little old ladies of the church had invited her to come over and they all prayed for her… that she would meet a husband at the conference. Being from a smallish town in Upstate New York it really wasn’t an unreasonable prayer request. There probably aren’t a ton of eligible bachelors there who’d love a life of ministry to teenagers. She thought it was funny that the ladies of the church were so concerned about her dating life. I mean, it is really funny!

Lo and behold, the old ladies of the church got their prayer answered! Sara met Tim (a youth worker from the Albany area) at convention. They hit it off… obviously. And I have no idea the whirlwind romance that happened between then and November 14th… but they got married!

Now we know that NYWC isn’t just a place to get encouraged, trained, resourced… and has been well-documented… make babies [for married couples.] Apparently, NYWC is a great place to meet a spouse, too!

We tried really hard to get them to convention in Atlanta so we could bring them up on stage, embarrass them lovingly, and turn their faces all shades of red. As it turned out, NYWC was a great place to meet and all… but not such a great place for a honeymoon.

Over the past several days I’ve started to put words to what I’ve been observing: The tribe of youth ministry is anxious.

2009 has been a ridiculously hard year. Last October when Tony Campolo spoke in Sacramento he said something like… “Church, as we know it today, will collapse with the economy. And we will shake ourselves off and ask, ‘what do we do now?”

Prophetic words.

A year later we have to step back and acknowledge that in many ways Tony was right.

• A down economy has forced tens of thousands of churches to re-evaluate how they spend money. Not a bad thing, but has caused stress at all levels of church staffing.
• A shifting culture, and the owning of the reality that traditional youth ministry programs are fading in their effectiveness… more stress for youth workers.
• Time to think, causes that stress to bubble to the surface.
• The length of time things have been stressful (for some, 2-3 years now) causes this stress to manifest itself.

And the manifestation of what we are all feeling is this anxious elephant in the room at the National Youth Workers Convention. It’s the tears shed as we go to worship. It’s the hunger in conversation. It’s the sleep in the hallways. It’s the lack of eye contact. It’s the nervous laughter.

We are an anxious tribe. We fidget. We wring our hands. We bang our heads against the wall. We wonder what to do with ourselves. We wonder what the future of youth ministry is. We hypothesize. We position ourselves. We take our stress out on others. We blame ourselves. We blame our leaders. We blame our calling. We blame God.

For me… recognizing this tribal anxiety and the disorder that goes with it is 90% of the battle. All of those symptoms in our tribe, I don’t know what to do with them. But anxiety, I know what to do with that.

After 18 months of working at Youth Specialties and interacting with youth workers around the United States (and everywhere else) it’s finally sunken in: There are two different things called “youth ministry” with a major gap in the middle.

Professional vocational youth ministry: When I talk about youth ministry this is often my default. These are youth ministries and youth ministry leaders who have formal education, continued training, experience, and live their whole lives thinking about youth ministry. When you talk to them about youth ministry they think of models, books, authors, speakers, ministry ideas, successful programs, historical viewpoints, on and on.

This youth ministry is pretty sophisticated. Like any profession people fall into schools of thought. They have models for doing youth ministry. They have personally written and can defend philosophies of youth ministry. They run programs which implement their well thought out and defended philosophy of ministry. They train volunteers to be proteges for their school of thought. They have opinions about whether a certain models is getting stronger or dying.

For the 20% or so of youth workers in America in this category those nuances matter to them. They are on the leading edge of thinking about Youth Ministry 3.0.

My Church Youth Ministry: They just want to know how to minister to the kids in their church. When they e-mail me or call our customer service line they don’t want to talk philosophy or are even aware that there are different ways of doing youth ministry. They are calling because they have 15 seventh graders in their Sunday School class and they need a curriculum that will work for them. When you ask them about what they are trying to do with the group… you’ll hear the dead air or the exhale and then they’ll say, “We’re Methodist, what works for Methodists seventh graders?”

They don’t know or care about philosophies of ministry. They don’t know or care about ministry models. They haven’t heard of Saddleback or Willow Creek. They go to First United Methodist Church of Middletown– that’s it. They may know that some churches have full-time youth workers but they don’t really care. They have a full-time job outside the church. They have a kid in high school. And the pastor thought they were pretty loving towards teens and asked them to minister to their kids friends. They give of themselves to invest in the kids in their church and that’s amazingly awesome.

For the 80% or so of youth workers in America who fit this category, youth ministry is pretty matter-of-fact. There are kids who show up on Sunday morning or Wednesday night and they do what they can to minister to them.

Minding the gap: There are not big steps in between the two groups of youth workers. It’s a gap with a chasm, not a ladder to the next or even a bridge.

It is literally two different things we call youth ministry in America. They all care about the kids in their church. One group is purely interested in the kids in their church. While the other also cares a lot about the greater profession of youth ministry.