I previously wrote an article discussing my trust issues with letting other adults teach and lead. I’ve had some good follow-up conversations from it and wanted to put the second part in play, as well. I’m really working through the idea of a ministry to students, which is what we’ve been doing, as opposed to a ministry of students, in which we just dabble. There is a ton of ongoing discussion in youth ministry about student-lead ministry. I’m really wrestling with what exactly that looks like in our context.

I hear these stories from speakers and authors about how the kids in their groups are organizing global events and saving the world, all without adult help. I also heard one recent speaker make the comment that if there is an adult in the youth meeting, he/she had better not speak at all, or else the students are expected to kick them out of the meeting. OK, this speaker was clearly way overstating the case and going to an extreme to shock/impress the audience. It did very little for me. That simply isn’t a biblical approach if we take that literally, which I know the speaker didn’t do.

But what does it look like to train students to do ministry? Some of the proponents of this idea discuss making sure everyone on stage at youth group is a student, right down to always having students teach. That might be it, but I think that’s incomplete. We often discuss how youth ministry is supposed to exist outside the walls of the church, but then consider extreme discipleship-making with students letting them plan/run the youth group program at church. Could it be more?

Our churches need to push toward a model where church literally happens more outside the building than in it. I don’t necessarily mean moving our worship services to a park for a week (although that often can be a tool to make everyone reconsider what church is). I mean changing our philosophy toward ministry, who does it and where it happens. We need to move toward designing ministries that thrive outside our safe walls.  Our personal ministry goal is to move incrementally within the next five years to where 75 percent of our ministry happens outside the church building. We aren’t reducing what we do now; we are strategically implementing methods that don’t exist right now to do ministry out there.  Before you ask for the PDFs, I don’t know what that’s going to look like in its entirety; it’s a five-year plan, in which each year we push out a little farther.

This is where my questioning a ministry to students vs. one of students comes into play. I can try to go out and make new student ministries in our community, and I will; but I never will hit our goal of 75 percent outside while keeping all we currently do going in a healthy manner, as well. I could task other adult with the responsibilities, but they will struggle, too.

However, what if I give this goal to our students? What if they go and create in their world? What if we meet with them, train them, encourage them, pray with them and follow them as they lead out of the church? What impact on our groups, churches, communities might that approach have during the next half decade? What will they learn about being disciples? What might they internalize about what the word church means?  Yeah, it could get potent really fast.

This is where we are headed. I don’t know what it will look like or what it will become, but that’s OK. I don’t have to know now (and I am a major control freak about knowing what to expect). Jesus knows, and He will tell the students as they need to know. It will be fun.

I’d love to hear your successes, failures and thoughts about all of this. Thanks for thinking it through with me.