Adam McLane

Issues in Youth Ministry

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A few weeks back Tim Schmoyer asked me to give him my thoughts on Youth Ministry from a "big lens" perspective. He actually has a huge "What Needs to Change" series going on his blog… a fantastic idea and there are loads of good thoughts from a broad spectrum of youth ministry professionals, academics, practitioners, and thinkers. Read all of the authors comments.

Here’s an except of what I wrote:

In 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 and 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.

Kudos to Tim for pulling this together. And thanks for asking me to contribute.

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3 responses to “Issues in Youth Ministry”

  1. Jason Raitz Avatar
    Jason Raitz

    Great post. Really agree with 1 & 3. #2 I absolutely agree that we need to support our church’s model and vision, but I don’t know if attracting kids needs to suffer because of it. #4…I am for teaching the gospel and going deaper, but I really believe laughter (fun & games) can open up some great learning. Just my thoughts.

    Reply
  2. adam Avatar
    adam

    Jason, I didn’t exclude fun and age appropriateness. Yep, we need to reach people with what works for each age group. I hope I didn’t come across as being anti-fun!

    But I think the difference between running a youth “program” and running a youth “ministry” is the intentionality of the design in connecting the “programs kids” into a lifelong love affair with the local church.

    While there are NOTABLE successes in this, the vast majority of youth groups are so adolescently focused that they are doing a disservice by not connecting students to “big church.”

    At the same time, “big church” needs to acclimate itself to emerging leaders. It is entirely devastating to students that they are allowed to do so much in student leadership, even in college ministry, but that they are often times treated as ill-prepared, insignificant, and unimportant when they enter early adulthood. Hence, most churches (since they aren’t intentionally connecting) see a drop off of students in the 20-30 years. Heck, maybe that’s good for them somehow?

    I suppose I’m just saying that YG needs to be less about “just YG” and more about the whole church?

    Reply
  3. Jason Raitz Avatar
    Jason Raitz

    I hear you, and I couldn’t agree more. Great ideas and thoughts.

    Reply

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