A YMX member is writing an article about "Issues facing Youth Ministry today" And asked for my thoughts. I don’t know if he’ll use any of my thoughts, but here are some of the things that came off the top of my head. I’m no expert on youth ministry and the thing has gotten so big that I think it’s almost impossible to really say "these are the issues" without some serious study… but these are just things I have observed.
What do you see as some of the
main issues youth ministry is struggling with today?o Youth Ministry still
struggles to identify universally what it’s primary mission is… discipleship,
evangelism, or something else.o A lack of standardized
requirements to be labeled a “youth worker” (Such as, training or education or
certification)o Within the local church
there are still people who see YM as babysitting.o A general
uncomfortability with the role as “indoctrinator” by youth workers in the local
church.o A straying away from
teaching the Bible into a pure social/entertainment thing.o A lack of understanding
of youth culture and no desire to learn it.o Absolutely no ability
to connect adolescents to the body after they graduate.
What do you see as some of
the main issues youth ministry is responding to effectively?+ Serving
their communities.+ Getting
kids excited about being in the church+ Allowing
students to develop leadership skills+ Being an
entry point to kids of all backgrounds to the church+ A swing
towards small groups ministry+ Most youth
workers are very authentic to their kids+ A desire
to do ministry outside of the church and where kids areIn what ways does
youth ministry need to change?+ I think as
a profession we need to develop some standard goals. Why do we do youth
ministry? How does one get the label as a professional youth worker? What are
the standard things ALL youth ministries should be doing? Stuff like
that.+ Youth
workers need to care less about attracting kids and care more about fitting
their youth ministry into their church model and visa versa.+ Youth
workers need to get serious about training their adult
volunteers.+ We need to
get past games & music and into something deeper. In the 1980’s Dan Spader,
president of Sonlife, said “It’s a sin to bore a kid with the gospel.” I want to
revise that to say, “It’s a sin to never teach a kid the gospel.” I can’t tell
you how many times I’ve heard a kid from other youth groups who visited our YM
say that they have never heard the bible taught to them. When ministries begin
teaching solely topically, they are truly missing out on something big.
We’ll see what happens with the article. I hope he gets a lot of different perspectives on his question.
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