Purpose of Youth Ministry

Firstly, this blog was written by request for the friend of a friend. I worked a little at a time on it over the past couple months, but I was very close to NOT finishing it as my friend Luke wrote something I felt was similar. But I had a few minutes in the early morning while I was at a conference and so here it is.

Youth ministry (as in ministry to teenagers) began in the 1960s. Para church groups actually made the original strides in youth ministry. The church had been doing Sunday School for some time and had become effective at reaching children with the Gospel. However, they were not able to keep the children after they had grown into teenagers. There were a lot of things vying for time and attention and the Church was not, by-and-large, keeping teenagers after they were out of Sunday School/Children’s ministry.

With that background said, I’m going to share a little bit now of what I view as NOT a good reason or primary purpose of youth ministry.

- a positive alternative for youth that offers a safe environment for kids and doesn’t have the negative effects that the world does.

We hear this so much. We want to offer a “fun” alternative to the world for youth. Many youth ministries can be seen doing this when it seems that all they offer is fun and there is no real Gospel teaching or discipleship. There’s a national Christian radios station with a broadcast tower in our area whose slogan is “Positive Alternative”. Even Christian music- while alternative may not be a bad thing, it should not be the main thing. Youth ministry should be more than just “an alternative”.

The purpose of youth programming in the church should be primarily this:

Providing a venue within the Church for evangelism to and intentional discipleship of teenagers and working toward their incorporation into the Church.

I like this working definition because it outlines a few key things. It provides that we are not just serving our own, but there needs to be a reaching out. Just as churches should grow through conversions, youth ministries want to see that positive growth. Reaching lost people with the gospel is important. Hand in hand with that, it also outlines that youth ministry should be used as a process to be discipling teenagers. It doesn’t take someone who’s cool or someone who knows it all- it just takes being real with them. As our primary focus should be the kingdom of God, however, and seeing as Jesus commanded his disciples to “make disciples of all nations”, it makes sense that discipleship should be a major concern. And as my Evangelism and Discipleship professor in college used to state, Evangelism and Discipleship are like “fruit and fiber”- why have one without the other?

Also we hear a lot of talk about how the youth are the church of tomorrow. But the truth is, just because they are young does not disqualify them from participation in the Church today. They are the Church of today AND tomorrow. The Church has not simply stayed the same for the past 1900 years and in the past 50-100 people have decided to change it. Christ’s body has been like the organism it is- shifting and changing since its inception. It does not mean that to shift the “look” of Church (without compromise of the message of Christ) is to betray our heritage.

Finally, I’d like to make the point that youth ministry, just as adult ministry, should rarely be about the “Get as many people as we can here and preach the evangelistic message to the so that hopefully a few will respond”. I do not mean anything against large evangelistic meetings, but to do so has met with such poor follow-up results. If we are about making disciples as much as we’re about simply evangelizing, then we MUST recognize the small value of getting someone to say a prayer at an event and then not ever think about that again. In youth ministry especially, teens want people to be real, and they themselves aren’t going to make a commitment lightly at an event if they don’t think they’ll do anything about it after the event.

There, I think I’ve hit my creative quota for the day. Does anyone who reads this have any other ideas? Or thoughts? Or, most especially, any dangers of youth ministry? I haven’t listed any of those- maybe I’ll blog those another time. But I welcome the thoughts for such a topic.