Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Oct/85

Contributor - Murray Moerman

Title - Youth Ministry Part 2

Topic - Focusing on Church Growth

Fourthly, rely deeply on members of your youth group to interpret youth culture for you. Young culture changes monthly. if you've been out of it for eighteen months, you're out of it. Last year's bag of tricks won't do the job at this year's outreach ministry.

Probe deeply and continually among the members of your youth group who are most involved in the youth culture. Ask them to tell you what music is in, which issues are hot, what behaviours are valued, and to evaluate your games, activities, studies and program. They know what relates and what doesn't. Ask them to commit themselves to helping make you the best possible youth leader. They know what it takes. Trust them. Develop an inner core of young people who will be honest with you and be prepared to accept their criticism. Don't take that criticism personally but as an invaluable means of coming to know youth culture, understanding their language, problems, perspective, and view of life.

Give their culture room. You don't have to meet in your church building. If ,you want to reach young people recognize their values. Listen to their music, watch their rock videos and movies, walk around the school campuses if you can, read books and attend seminars on youth ministry. Youth ministry is not a random stab in the dark. It is a disciplined, focused commitment.

Love your kids. Don't be offended by their music, their moods, their irresponsibility, their changeability, their preoccupation with intestinal gas or with the fad that will inevitably follow it. Study youth culture through the eyes of the young.

A fifth aspect of your philosophy of youth ministry should include the leadership team. The day of the single youth leader or solitary couple is, I hope, over. Include on your leadership team at least two couples and two of your most responsible young people.

The reasons for a team are many. The variety of gifts represented will enable a variety of ministries to be effected well: one person will be a good speaker/ discussion facilitator, another will be creative and spontaneous enabling participation in a variety of games or activities suitable to the age group, another may have musical gifts and can take responsibility for group singing, another may have a counsellor's heart and win the confidence of the young people you least expect. It is essential to have two young people on your leadership team to continue to interpret youth culture and call the team back to relating to the real issues and felt needs of the current youth culture.

A variety of ages on the leadership team are important. Many churches assume that only college students can relate to young people. That isn't so. Studies have shown that the age group most trusted by young people when personal counsel is required is the age group of 30 - 50. Try to have at least one couple in that age group. Youth leaders are often surrogate parents.

The leadership team should be committed to meeting monthly. Good youth meetings don't just happen, they require detailed planning. Advance planning enables the highlights of each prepared meeting and/or activity to be publicized in your church newsletter, and for the delegation of responsibility to be made clear (ie. who will prepare refreshments, games, teaching, phone group members to invite them to the meeting, provide transportation as necessary, etc.).

Youth team members should also, if possible, meet with one student per week on an informal one-to-one basis after school, on the weekend or whenever convenient. Each young person requires personalized pastoral care just as does each adult. Those who respond best to this . one-to-one "after school for a Coke" pastoral care may be invited to the "discipling" meeting and trained to take responsibility for the pastoral care of ot@er more "fringe" kids. Youth ministry must maintain a relational priority.

There is much more of course to be said about youth ministry and these two columns have not said it all or best. I suggest you read Larry Richard's Youth Ministry (Zondervan) and contact Youth Specialities, 861 Sixth Avenue, San Diego, CA 92101, for a list of resources.

Much of the church growth literature passes over youth ministry yet some of the most significant potential for the growth of God's Kingdom lies precisely at that point. Most major mission movements of the past have drawn the majority of their spiritual energy and personnel from the youth culture of their day. Most of Jesus' disciples were probably only in their teens and twenties when Jesus called them. During the "Jesus Movement" among the young in the 1960's adult oriented churches turned aside young converts in a "no shirt, no shoes, no service" mentality. We need to take youth ministry more seriously than that. The future of the Kingdom lies in the hands of the young. Let us pay the price to prepare them to make their contribution now.

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