What's Next?

That's a great question. In honor of their fiftieth anniversary, Christianity Today is doing a series on what the next fifty years of ministry holds for the Church. One part of the series is focused on what is next in the area of youth ministry. They poll several major players in the field of youth ministry to get an idea of where things are at and where they need to go from here.

Those questioned include Mark Oestreicher, Chap Clark, Walt Mueller, Kenda Creasy Dean, Ron Luce, and others. That's a pretty impressive list. There are a lot of years of youth ministry and youth ministry training in that collective group. Not surprisingly the general consensus is that as we continue to do the same things in youth ministry that we've been doing for decades we are seeing it be less and less impacting in the long term. The chasm between being active in youth ministry and then being active in the church as adults is growing. Some snippets of the series are available online here. I just wanted to post a few select quotes because I believe their words give credence to fears that I've had related to youth ministry.

"[These] kids seem happy and willing to attend, and engaged in our ministries, but five years from now, when they're in college or post-college, they just really aren't connecting with real faith, let alone church."

"We have treated kids as a separate species, which has had the effect of marginalizing them in church life." The result is that older teens and young adults may have trouble feeling connected to the larger church.

Walt Mueller, president of the Pennsylvania-based Center for Parent-Youth Understanding, said evangelicalism's theology of conversion contributes to the problem. "What we judge as success is a high number of hands that go up when the invitation is issued, or a high number of feet that walk forward."

Like I said, pretty common thread running through those thoughts. We are creating a subculture within the Church. We are so marginalizing teenagers that when they get into their twenties the only way we can continue to get them active in church is just to create a new one that caters specifically to them.

I wonder if a major part of the problem is the "instant" culture we live in. As youth pastors and youth workers we measure our success in the here and now. If I have a growing group that's a success. If my kids are getting involved in mission and service related projects that's a success. If they are learning the Bible that's a success. The problem is that they're doing all these things isolated from the overall Body of the Church and they have absolutely no understanding of how they fit into that Body or how to engage it when left to themselves after high school. Because we see ourselves as successful in the short-term we don't see ourselves as a factor in causing the problem whenever these kids graduate. We just write it off as an increasingly irrelevant church, never realizing that our isolation mentality is leading to the problem.

And so what is our typical solution? It's starting a 20-something Saturday night service, meant to be hip and cool or a new seeker-sensitive mega-church popping up in our area. But those things doesn't solve the problem, they just put a Band-Aid on it. They re-affirm the isolation of groups and segments within the Church. Somehow we've got to re-invent things so that 65 year olds can be actively engaged in church with 25 year olds. We need to teach these groups how to relate to one another and learn from one another. We as youth workers need to come clean and admit that "success" must be measured in the long run and if our students aren't active in their churches and in their faith 5 and 10 years down the road then it doesn't matter how many great experiences they had as teenagers. Until we do that we will just continue to perpetuate the problem.

Honestly, the thought of this sort of change is terrifying to me. I have absolutely no clue how to see these things happen because all I've ever known is the failed system. In fact I know it so well that as someone who is no longer engaged in full-time vocational ministry I have the same problem of connecting and finding my place in the Body as other 20-somethings currently do. And as I wrestle through all of it right now my heart goes out to all the students that I've ministered to over the years because I know how inadequately I prepared them to be engaged in the Church as adults. And what's really sad is that I know how incredible those students are and were and how much the Church is missing because of their lack of involvement.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm just beating a dead horse and I wonder how long I should keep talking about this. I guess I talk about it because I'm tired of being a part of the problem and want desperately to be a part of the solution. I just wish I knew how to do that.