Monthly youth leaders column

I was struck quite recently, as a very amateur military historian, by the death of the only two surviving ‘Tommies’ with eye-witness accounts of the 1914-18 war.

For as long as they both had strength, they loved to visit schools and talk to children about the things they had seen. One of them majored on the theme of peace and reconciliation and children were fascinated by his experiences and listened, perhaps because they spoke with eye-witness authority. Young people will listen to senior citizens — indeed, the Bible seems to tell us that this is the way faith is passed on from one generation to the next (Psalm 78.4). I am not basing a theology of youth work on two old soldiers, but I have begun to wonder about the way we select and train those who work with young people.

Gifted oldies

In most areas of ministry we look for two things — gifting and availability. If someone is good at leading groups we ask them to lead a home group. In our church we have some very good young home group leaders and we have some very good mature leaders and both sorts lead groups that span the full age range of the church. You will find some excellent children’s workers in their early 20s and I have seen excellent work done with children by those in their 70s. In schools, children are taught by those whose ages range from 22 to 65 and a good teacher is not judged by age, but rather by the interest they create in their material. If a person has the time to give to a work in the church and they are gifted, then we are delighted to see them fulfilled in their service and age is not the primary selection criteria.

Different criteria?

Not so with youth workers, which means we must be using different criteria to select them. We tend to think that people in their 20s and preferably single will make the best youth workers, although we do like to use some young marrieds. Now we must have those people around, but they are unlikely to be as spiritually mature as a 50-year-old (or older) who has many years of Christian living and ‘who can pass on the good deposit’ based on a life experience that spans many years. I wonder if we have said that the only way to relate to young people is ‘to be on their wavelength’, which we have wrongly interpreted as being as near to their age as we can get. I knew of one man (not me!!) who was greatly used as the wise man of a youth leadership team — he was a man nearing retirement. He was clearly gifted and available and many young people benefited from his GodÐgiven wisdom. He knew the Scriptures and that was the wisdom he shared.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for younger people to be recruited to youth ministry as volunteers. Young professionals are working harder and doing longer hours and find consistent commitment to a youth group more and more difficult. I believe we should be looking for younger leaders and train and develop their ministries. But, if the team only has relatively young leaders, where is the maturity to help the younger leaders grow and enable young people to see a model of mature and long-lasting discipleship? Our tendency has been to retire people from youth ministry too young — when they cease to be able play football with youthful energy or have stopped going to ‘gigs’. Could this be one of the reasons young people find integration into church life so difficult, as they never see most of the people who go to their church? They have been kept apart from the adults and the adults under 27 have never set foot in their group.

Let’s use them

So my plea is that we use the same criteria for youth ministers as we do for anyone else in the church’s ministry. If they are gifted and available, let’s use them for the glory of God and the growth in maturity of our young people.

Young people and senior citizens

Gifted oldies

Different criteria?

Let’s use them

Dave Fenton

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