Evangelicals Now
<< May 2009 >>

Monthly youth leaders column

Is it time?

Youth ministry has undergone radical change over recent years.

In the early post-war years it was almost exclusively run by well meaning volunteers who faithfully did their work week by week — the concept of a full-time youth minister was virtually unknown.

I first met a part-time one in the 70s. What became apparent in the 80s was that young people were leaving the church in droves — most of us doing youth ministry at that time could see there was a problem, but when Peter Brierley published his research (Reaching and Keeping Teenagers) the figures confirmed what most of us knew.

Response to losing youngsters

The response to the problem was largely two-fold. Various para-church organisations created events, which were geared to youth, in the hope that these would lure young people back into the Christian fold. It is not for me to judge the effectiveness of these initiatives except to say that much of the presentation style used in these could not be replicated at church level and could have increased the alienation felt by many young people. I was (and still am) involved with Keswick Youth Ministries and, although I know the event was a blessing to many young people, we often heard sad stories of the experience of young people in their local church settings.

Full-time

The other response was the creation of full-time youth ministers. Because of their superior resources, these were confined to larger churches and were either seen as people who were to teach and pastor the existing group or be seen as evangelists who would reverse the trend and fill the church with young people again. Because there was no real structure, these people came from a wide variety of backgrounds. They were often appointed from within churches and sometimes left established careers to serve in the church. There is now a steady stream of people coming off training courses from a variety of churchmanship but not enough to meet the demand.

But there is another group of people who have considerable experience in youth ministry who have become both competent and experienced and who are considering the next step in their service.

Some see adult leadership in the church as their way forward, but, if that becomes the only way forward, then we will lose a whole group of excellent youth ministers. Sometimes (not al-ways) these will be people with families to support and some are seeking ways forward which will develop their gifts.

Time to rethink?

Is it time for us to review how experienced youth ministers are integrated into the life of the church. For clergy there is a recognised way forward from curate / assistant minister through to church leadership, but this is by no means clear for those working in youth ministry. I hope we will never reduce any kind of church ministry to a career structure, but I believe there is a need to review the progress of youth ministry in our churches. How should those experienced workers be developed in their ministry?

We run quite a bit of basic training for those new to youth ministry, but there is little which will stretch experienced workers both theologically and in their methodology. Do such people need to seriously consider sabbatical leave to both recharge and deepen their understanding? Perhaps some of our church leaders need to re-assess how their youth ministers are best used in the leadership of their churches?

Dave Fenton