Monthly youth leaders column

Churches produce a lot of paper. Most churches you go into have mission statements, basis of faith documents and all sorts.

It’s often the process that led to the document that is more important than the document. If the mission statement is left in a rack in the hope that someone will pick it up it probably wasn’t worth the effort, but if it expresses the heartbeat of the group then it will constantly be used. So anything we produce for our youth group must be a living document.

Values have been described as filters that guide decisions and actions. Someone else called them ‘things we would die for’. They are the non-negotiables which shape all we do. They also guide us about which course of action we should take. Sometimes they can appear a little too vague but they should enable us to ask questions about what we are doing and whether we need to change direction. For example, ‘We regularly teach the Bible in an age related style’ is a value that opens up many issues. 1. Are we teaching the Bible or our own opinions? 2. Does our ministry happen every week — is it at the core of what we do? 3. Does our current practice speak into the lives of the young people? (It is possible to teach the Bible in a way that youngsters simply do not understand and blame them for being non-responsive.)

Values challenge us

So the value challenges what we are doing. A value like ‘we believe in a sovereign God’ is one you often hear stated, but what action results from it? One obvious outworking is how and when we pray. If we believe in the doctrine, we work at the practice. If God is sovereign (and he is), prayer is not an option, it is a consequence of that value. If we believe in Christ’s atoning death and resurrection, we have to be looking at evangelism. If Christ has done that (and he has), then it has to be told and we are ‘his ambassadors’. I have been criticised in the past for going on and on about evangelism in both church and youth group contexts. ‘God will bring in who he wants into our church, we don’t have to go and get them’ was once said to me. But our command from the risen Jesus is to make him known in a way that makes disciples (Matthew 28). And, if Jesus’s death and resurrection is a core value, it is not just a statement on a values document; it is the value that drives our evangelism — our heart for the lost.

Integrated church

If we believe that the church is Christ’s body and hope for the world, then we must re-double our efforts to see children and young people being fully integrated into the life and work of our adult church. They are not waiting in the wings — they are part of God’s community of faith and not a next-generation church.

Some of our values may be slightly less obvious. One I have picked up is that our youth group should be a safe place. It should be safe in three senses, all of which point us in the right direction. 1. Physically safe — this makes us look at the environment we work in. Is it safe or do we need to do some work on the building? Have we checked all our staff on the CRB register so that we know all of them are ‘safe to be with’? 2. Emotionally safe — are our team trained in how to listen to the problems our children come up with? Do our children feel safe to share their lives with us? 3. Spiritually safe — our group is a place where we can listen and question and know that we will be led biblically into ways of truth.

One way of checking that would be to gather your leaders, look at your group and analyse how safe your group is in those three ways.

So values are not dry statements. They are the things which matter to us and lead us to do youth ministry in a Bible-centred way.

Values...

Values challenge us

Integrated church

Dave Fenton

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