Youth Groups and Student Ministry: A Perspective from the Other Side

This post is really long. However, for a variety of reasons I've been thinking about a topic that hasn't been on my radar in a while... student ministries, and their place in the church. For the record, I don't like any ministries that break the church up into categories. So, my bias against isolating teenagers from their families several times a week... well, my bias is there. Be warned. That being said, I've been deeply involved in student ministry: as a student, as a college intern, camp counselor, disciplenow leader... and now I spend a lot of time with urban homeless youth... the hypothetical youth group scenarios I discuss in this EPIC blog post pertain to the middle class, Bible belt, rural/suburban youth groups with which I've spent the most time... anyway, sorry about the length. Good luck...

Substance and Depth: Issues of the Heart... Issues of Appeal
There is huge pressure on students ministries to bring in the numbers. This raises the question: what attracts teens? Entertainment does. This is a fact. Maybe you will have a select few who want "serious" Bible studies and such, but if you cater to their tastes (which tend to involve serious discuessions, long, slow "worship" songs, low lighting and general solemnity) then your numbers will plummet. I've seen this happen. So, youth ministers are faced with awful dilemmas: keep the maximum number of kids in a church setting and hope for a general good outcome, or spend your time pouring into the smaller group who say they want more depth... This is the conversation I found myself having both as a student in a youth group, and later as an employee for a church student ministry. I think the dilemma is wrong.

Go Ahead and Play

First, and for the record, it is fine to have fun with your peers. All of you very devout highschoolers out there, hear this: you are free and alive and not nearly as sophisticated as you think. I wish I had stopped to consider that my "serious" faith was actually arrogance leading to divisiveness. Leadership: let the play become the assumed part of the evening, and the substance become what takes up your preparation. I now know the games aren't wastes of time, but they were disproportionately attended to.

Substance

Most student ministries are about appearances. The goal is a mass of kids in one place at one time, behaving well. We constantly try to change behavior in the church, without addressing the fact that our students need a change in desires. For example: I can't convince a teenage girl that abstinence is a good behavior without her desiring a biblical marriage. She won't have any desire for a biblical marriage until she realizes it is God's picture of the gospel... a little portrait to see everywhere in every corner of society... that portrait isn't precious until Christ has saved her from utter peril and wrath. Every behavior that we try and convince students to emulate or forego is directly linked to a desire that needs to be made new.

Or, we confront a desire and just feed it's twisted side. If students want praise, even in the church we tell them they are misunderstood, beautiful no matter what, significant and important, special and talented... they already hear all this all day everyday at school, on t.v., on facebook, on blogs :). If they really believed it, teenagers wouldn't be so darn moody. What they need to hear is that their only significance is in being built in the image of a divine creator (and there is no end to that significance.) They have done nothing but spoil and destroy and misuse that image since they were born... they already have a haunting suspicion something is wrong (thus the moods,) but in the church, we have this weird way of just joining the chorus of those trying to tell them not to be so upset, they're really not so bad. We probably ought to tell them that, yes, most of what they fixate on is stupid. Most of what goes on in highschool is worthless. They really are as messed up as everybody else. Then, we need tell them the glorious, absurd and shocking nature of the hope.

Does this make sense? What I am saying is: the goal of most student ministry teaching that I see is "act this way" and "feel this way"... the real teaching should be a thousand different ways to see and say the gospel. It is everything and everywhere, and the only hope of any kind. Until you have it, you might have a very clean outside of the cup... but it will just be a bunch of students having fun, and some students feeling pious and underappreciated. Both groups could still be very well behaved. Both groups could be going to hell. (What's scarier for many church parents: if the gospel really gets ahold of our teens, they will actually want to bring the bad kids around.)

Depth and Breadth

I'm fine with everyone having fun together. We're really alive, for crying outloud! Enjoy it! Also, I don't think youth groups should be solely responsible for the discipleship of their students. I'll come back to this.

The teaching of student ministries don't devote a lot of time to addressing the ideas that barrage students. Philosophy, arts, ethics, economics... they don't come up much. That takes a lot of energy and study... and kids will tell you they think it's boring. Parents will tell you their kids don't understand things that are so difficult. I don't blame the kids. They've been fed an idea that entertainment consumption is all they are made for. However, I don't understand the parents. I don't know why they complain about rigorous thought being needed for studies within the church. What, exactly, do they think their kids are up against? Ideas have consequences. The ideas that permeate our education system... where to even start. They are out to destroy. Maybe your child will make it through highschool with "faith" reasonably intact. Maybe they live in the Bible belt, and most people seem Christianish anyway. However, if you, as a parent, are relying on the youth group to equip them with a deep faith... they won't make it through Philosophy 100 at the local community college. (This doesn't diverge from my earlier point that it needs to be the gospel and only the gospel that forms the substance... the gospel is the only answer for any and every issue of life and society.)

If there is any place where there should be intensive study, it is in issues of faith and God. If parents aren't up for that, they shouldn't stomp their feet when their child isn't allowed to pray in class... or when they become an agnostic shortly after leaving home... or if faith simply doesn't come up in conversation once they're adults... an entire battle of ideas and ridicule and culture went on, and the parents partook of and excused a lack of effort. Most likely, their child's heart was gone long before their behavior followed suit.

The Goods...

Do you want to know how God graciously brought me through college, travels, and more and more college? It had little to do with what I learned in youth group. It had everything to do with frequent and long conversations with my parents... who would hear what ideas, and dilemmas confronted me, and then point me towards some book, thinker, artist, theologian, doctrine which had confronted this before. I had parents who were equipped and intentional and constant. And, they prayed for me. There is no end to my thankfulness for my parents.

If You're Still Reading This...

You, as a parent, can't save your kid. But, the biblical responsibility is so, so clear... and youthgroups never come up in the New Testament. I maintain that discipleship and growth and changes in desire and knowledge of the gospel... has to be modeled and emulated and treasured at home. And you have to pray for your kids.

I don't want to be a youth group basher... well, ok, I do... but I think they have a time and a place. I'm still close friends with several people from student ministry days. They are wonderful, godly people, and I so value their continued presence in my life. Teenagers do need close friends who are Christians, and facilitating such time is important. But youthgroups shouldn't replace what parents are meant for... and when they do teach, it should be the gospel (and the message of depravity which that entails.)

Really, what I really, really pray for is parents who take their child's faith seriously and view it as a responsibility worth time and effort... and I'm so thankful to have a living example.