“WEB ONLY: Beyond Christian Education?—A Story Not Yet Told: Past, Present, and Future Youth Ministry in Black Churches”

By Dr. Donna L. Gilton

A. Why This Article
This article is unashamedly written from a specific black perspective. It is important that YouthWorker Journal continues to publish articles on urban ministry by people from a variety of backgrounds, in addition to Efrem Smith’s excellent column. Each group has its own issues, as well as contributions and all of these things should be presented to mainstream youth ministry audiences over time. If urban churches are going to be criticized, fairly or unfairly for not reaching urban youth, the full context of youth ministries in those churches should also be presented. In addition, churches that are truly multicultural, and not just integrated churches reflecting one dominant culture tend to be dynamic institutions that are combining traditions from two or more cultural streams. It is vital that YouthWorker Journal publishes articles reflecting the perspective of people from multicultural, and more specific ethnic churches, as well as white, mainstream churches. Since black church traditions are being questioned in YouthWorker Journal ¹, I do feel compelled to describe how and where traditional youth ministry in black churches has been successful. While it is no longer sufficient for all young people, it should not be abandoned, either. There are many ways that traditional ministry can be combined with newer and more relational approaches.

Black churches have initiated a wide variety of community-based youth ministries and activities for many years and most of these activities have been lead by lay volunteers. While more traditional than many of their white counterparts, they have made very important contributions and their story has never been fully told, either in mainstream Christian periodicals on youth ministry or in most seminaries. This article will describe how youth ministry has evolved in black churches and denominations with an emphasis on the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in the last few decades. It will also discuss the importance of existing initiatives and make proposals for much-needed changes in the near future.

B. AME Youth Ministry: From the ACE League to the YPD
Until the 1960s, most youth ministry in the AME Church consisted of Sunday School, junior organizations, special youth Sundays and programs, and especially the Allen Christian Endeavor (ACE) League, which is now the Allen Christian Fellowship. I can personally attest that this was a very active program until the end of the 1950s. The ACE League was under the jurisdiction of the Sunday School and often met Sunday afternoons and evenings, as families met for services or programs. Their literature was very similar to Sunday School literature, except that it was more applied.

During the 1960s, the ACE League became considerably less prominent at a time when the Young People’s and Children’s Division (YPD) of the Women’s Missionary Society was growing in importance. This represents a minor paradigm shift in AME youth ministry. Both organizations were started in the early twentieth century and both still exist. However, they are sponsored and maintained by different people and departments and have different points of emphasis. The Allen Christian Fellowship is managed by our Department of Christian Education and it is strongly influenced by clergy. It has always emphasized Christian behavior and fellowship. The YPD, on the other hand was originally intended to train future members of the Women’s Missionary Society (WMS). However, it has evolved to train both boys and girls for leadership, in general! It has always been sponsored and managed by the WMS and most adults involved in this ministry are lay WMS members.

The ACE League or Allen Christian Fellowship was originally founded on four principles – confession of Christ, service for Christ, fellowship in Christ, and loyalty to Christ’s church ². Their goals were to “promote intelligent and practical Christian living” among young people, “to train them in the proper methods of Christian work and helpfulness” both for the church and for the needy, and “to strengthen and purify the social life of young people” ³. The goals of the YPD are “to provide meaningful youth training in all areas of church life”, especially evangelism and Christian social relations, to “increase knowledge of AME Church history and the Scriptures” , and “to provide opportunities for leadership experience.” ⁴ Many of our current generation of ministers, church officials, and leaders had their initial training in the YPD.

In the past, the ACE League was especially known for sponsoring debates. This can be important training for several reasons. Debating teaches people how to think about and investigate all sides of an issue, how to reason, how to think on their feet, and how to be assertive. My father was exposed to debating in the ACE League in the late 1920s and early 1930s. By the late 1930s, he was traveling the world as a debater and Oxford University ranked him as the top debater from the U.S! Debating is a very traditional activity that can provide very useful training for urban youth. The YPD places less emphasis on debate, but still promotes discussion. During YPD meetings, young people and their adult supervisors consider not only the Bible, but church history, ethics, and a variety of other social issues, as well as their own ethnic and cultural heritage. For instance, I can remember being introduced to the world of deafness as a very young member of the YPD.

The YPD, in particular, excels at teaching young people to be both leaders and servants. Children and youth are taught about Robert’s Rules of Order and how to conduct themselves as officers and they are also expected to do forms of community outreach and Missionary work. This work can be as simple and low-key as reaching out to elders and sick-and shut-ins in the church or the community and as elaborate as participating in short-term missionary work in a YPDOTF (YPD on the Field) program, abroad. A child in one of my groups eagerly suggested a clothing drive for homeless people, and our group did just that!

While members in both organizations can come from any church, or none at all, YPD members have always been encouraged to bond specifically with the AME Church as a denomination. The YPD gives many excellent conferences for young people on the local, regional, and international levels. Young people are able to network with youth from other cities, states, parts of the country – and sometimes other countries. On the other hand, the ACE League tend to be more local – and ecumenical, with a lot of fellowshipping between local young people from different churches – and sometimes different religions. As a teenager in the YPD, I had adult supervisors who grew up in the ACE League and who brought that influence to our group. My youth group met and fellowshipped with white Methodist groups, as well as several Jewish groups. My youth group also had Catholic and Episcopalian members, as well as members from the AME Church.

The YPD is organized into four age groups – the Mother’s Sunbeams (age 2-6), the Allen Stars (age 7-12), the Young People’s Auxiliary (age 13-17), and the Young Adult Division (age 18-26). Most of the work of this organization has been with the Allen Stars and the Young People’s Auxiliary. Usually, if a YPD can attract members who are still in elementary school, by the time these members are teen-agers, they have a grounding in the Bible and they can run meetings, manage themselves (with some adult supervision), and plan and execute their own activities. This enables adult supervisors not to be the “sage on the stage” with all of the ideas, but the “guide on the side” who can support engaged and committed youth.

In some respects, the YPD can be compared to Scouting. Members wear forest green and white uniforms to special events and their activities include regular meetings and conferences, educational sessions and workshops at these events, occasional programs put on by the youth, outreach, fundraising – and some fun and recreation for the young people, including field trips.

The YPD has been very successful in reaching children and youth aged 7-17 who have always been in church (and who usually go to Sunday School, as well). They have been less successful at reaching people over the age of 18, and especially families that are unchurched. However, within these limits, this organization has done very well, being managed by lay volunteers on limited budgets.

Allen Christian Fellowship groups are rare, but they still exist in Florida, Ohio, and in other places. This program is poised for a revival. The AME Department of Christian Education is developing new curricula designed to take many contemporary developments affecting our young people into account. It is also developing and promoting online education, both for this program and in general ⁵.

C. Other Forms of Youth Ministry in Black Churches
In addition, the AME Church and many other predominantly black churches and denominations offer other activities that are also very important. Junior boards, including junior usher boards and junior and youth choirs offer practical “hands-on” training in practice, discipline, decorum, and maintaining organizations. This makes it easier for young people to later make the transition to similar adult organizations. Some of these groups also reach children and young people unreached by the Sunday School or many youth ministries, like the YPD. My godson is autistic. He has always attended Church School but junior choir was one of the best things ever to happen to him! There he discovered that he had a gift for music! He is now a teenager who sings in the youth choir.

Junior and youth choirs are culturally important in black churches, as well. Unlike some white evangelical churches that may be lead in worship by a few people in the front with guitars, most black churches have multiple choirs by age group and by musical preference. In this era of funding cuts for public school music education, the children’s and youth choir may be the only place where many of our young people get any music education, at all.

Occasional and even regular church services lead by youth – and by children can be very important, as well. These services, which are conducted for the whole church, as well as the Easter and Christmas programs encourages young people to participate in the full life of the church, introduces the entire church to new music and worship styles, such as gospel hip hop, step dancing, and liturgical dance, connects young people to their elders, and trains our youth in public speaking and in the leading of worship. It helps to bond young people to the rest of the church (and vice versa). People of all ages enjoy youth services because they are very lively, vibrant, and spirited!

In addition, black churches and denominations have historically done many activities that should be increased (and in some cases revived!) Since the mid-1800s, black churches and denominations have established, supported, and maintained networks of colleges and universities that still exist. Black churches established many of the first elementary and secondary schools for African Americans in the south after the Civil War. In spite of the existence of public schools, a similar network of elementary and secondary schools that are both Christian and culturally relevant is still sorely needed. However, in an age when larger and wealthier churches, like the Roman Catholic Church are decreasing the number of their schools because of financial constraints, this can be a major challenge.

Black churches also have a history of sponsoring tutoring programs after school, on weekends, and sometimes during the summer. This is a very important part of youth ministry! Each church should do what they can to make sure that none of their children are “left behind” as they go to school. In the past, some senior ministers would look at the report cards of all young people in their congregation to encourage both strong and weaker students. Some churches have sponsored college and career counseling programs and fairs and a few have computer labs that are available to their members and in some cases for the public. Many also host Head Start and day care programs.

Black churches have sponsored various “rite of passage” programs which end in initiation ceremonies. These activities are intended to prepare young people for adulthood and they range from the middle-class oriented Debutantes and Masters to more Africentric programs. More initiation programs that include the entire community are also essential.

Also any church-wide programs and activities that bring together young and old people and entire families are also important. Even the old custom of having teas is making a comeback, after almost dying out in the 1970s and 1980s. Teas offer informal training in civility and etiquette, give all people a chance to be graciously together, and they connect generations. Other events that do this are “Old Fashioned Days” or church homecomings, poetry and rap readings and slams, and coffee houses and talent shows, where people of all ages can perform. This is in addition to picnics, dinners, and other events for the whole church family.

D. Where We Can Go From Here

Working With What Already Exists
1. Be holistic. – There should be a variety of programming and initiatives. No one program or style of ministry can do everything for everybody. This way, the church can still reach different young people at different times and in different ways. All initiatives for young people should be viewed as a system.

2. Know when to play “taps”. – As long as programs and activities attract and help young people, they should continue. However, it is also important to know when and how to carefully prune or weed programs that are no longer relevant, useful, or helpful to our youth. Programs considered to be obsolete can really vary by time and locality. Most ministers and lay people want to maintain programs that were beneficial in their own development. However, the prudent weeding of programs and activities is essential.

3. Church school is foundational. – This organization is dedicated to one purpose – to promote the knowledge and use of the Bible, which is the foundation on which everything else stands, including having a personal relationship with God. This author would like to see more Christian churches in general develop a curriculum that takes secondary students and adults through the entire Bible in roughly a four-year period, followed by a service of graduation or recognition. This would probably entail slight extensions and revisions of traditional Church school curriculum. As Christians, we should at least be grounded in the Word.

4. Extend and supplement successful organizations. – Successful programs, such as the YPD should continue their activities. Some programs should be extended or revised. However, where this may not be possible, new supplementary programs and initiatives are necessary.

5. All good ministry is relational. – Adults should try their best to bond, guide, and care about all young people who they work with. Young people will not stay in groups where they cannot bond with other youth, at least one adult, or both! However, lay people also need to know when and how to get help or refer troubled people to professional sources, if necessary.

Time For a Paradigm Shift
It is time for a major paradigm shift in black churches when it comes to youth ministry. All of these traditional approaches are no longer enough for some children and teens, especially those who are severely troubled, and many young people from unchurched families! Life is considerably more complicated now than it used to be when most adults involved in youth ministry were young(er), themselves and youth ministry can no longer be done by lay people completely on their own who are learning on the job. Poverty and “worst case” situations are more dire than ever and black churches are bucking an entire society that is not only racist, but generally corrupt from top to bottom. There is a serious need for a more professional ministry that can incorporate both counseling to more troubled youth and their families and more training and support of lay people who work with our young. At this time, AME ministers who train as youth ministers are being assigned as senior pastors or assistant pastors, where they cannot always use their best talents. Recently, this author has found herself in agreement with Efrem Smith ⁶ about hiring youth ministers as paid consultants who can work with several churches in an area. Having a youth minister in each church at this time is not practical, when most of our senior pastors maintain secular careers as teachers, professors, college administrators, social workers, accountants, doctors, lawyers, etc. to make ends meet. However, having consultants who can work with lay volunteers at several churches may be a more practical approach. It is also important for many reasons for lay people to continue to be deeply involved in this work.

We also need to borrow some from the white mainstream. In the case of music, African Americans have borrowed hymns from white Christians since the camp meeting days of the early nineteenth century. We use and love the music of composers who speak to us, such as Isaac Watts or Bill and Gloria Gaither. In addition, we use more recent praise music from white, evangelical churches, as well as classical music and many traditional hymns. However, we also make ample use of our own rich body of spirituals, gospel music, hymns, anthems, and praise music. Expect similar developments when it comes to the future of black urban youth ministry!

However, we will only borrow what works for us. I have observed several weaknesses in mainstream youth ministry that I would not want to see repeated in my own church. Some are too faddish, and most may be unintentionally training young people not to be leaders or servants but only to be self-absorbed and self-satisfied consumers. Relational ministry must be combined with training young people to lead, serve, and to care about others. At its worst, mainstream youth ministry also can separate young people from the rest of the church so much that they are never really integrated with the rest of the congregation. Many young people in such situations leave as soon as they finish high school, in too many cases never to return. I observed too many of these trends in an integrated, but white-oriented church that I was active in for several years. This is why a combination of separate and integrated activities between age groups is so important. In addition, children’s ministry should be taken more seriously as a foundation for youth ministry! Any success of our YPD can be traced directly to this!

This is also a challenge for Christians from mainstream and predominantly white churches, parachurch organizations, seminaries, and media. Instead of ignoring us, viewing us as competition, or criticizing us among themselves, these Christians should be making more of an effort to communicate and to work with us! They have the financial and materials resources that we do not and we have the human and cultural resources that they sorely lack! It is time for everybody to talk!

Last, black churches have been accused of sticking too closely to a “Christian Education” model in doing their youth ministries ⁷ This author suspects that programs like the YPD and other traditional black activities may go beyond that. However, the AME Church defines Christian Education very broadly to include all educational activities and training for people of all ages which occur in the church. In addition to the Allen Christian Fellowship, our denominational Christian Education Department oversees Sunday schools, a Fellowship of Christian Educators, a young adult council, a Debutante-Master Commission, a Writer’s Guild, Boy and Girl Scouts, a denominational music committee that sponsors annual conferences for church musicians, as well as the Sons of Allen, a group of men in ministry. While Christian Education may be defined very broadly here, it is important to consider that whatever we do or do not do with young people and however we do it is education and training. This includes teaching young people how to be good disciples of Christ! We cannot get away from that. Everything that young people are exposed to, including general culture and media are educational tools that can be used intentionally or unintentionally for good or for bad. YouthWorker Journal acknowledges that by paying so much attention to culture and media in their journal. All of these things should be taken into account, as urban youth ministry is criticized.

There is another reason why predominantly black churches and other churches with many black members should not totally abandon religious education activities. There is a black intellectual tradition that goes back, largely to the black church and our youth are unaware of this. Too many of our young people see any intellectual activity as “a white thing”. To them, to be scholarly is to “act white”. Christian education activities can show this belief for the myth that it is. While all black religious bodies have intellectual foundations and traditions, black Methodist churches in particular have always stressed faith, piety, and activism, as well as the value of both education and the intellectual life. It is no accident that a very high proportion of African American intellectuals, artists, and activists like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Daniel Payne, Henry Ossawa Turner, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Virginia Hamilton, Daisy Bates, Rosa Parks, Alex Haley, and the Rev. Oliver Brown (of Brown vs. Board of Education) all come from black Methodist denominations!

Efrem Smith ^{8, 9} is calling for urban youth ministries that focus on teaching young people to relate directly and intimately to God. In the AME Church, the Allen Christian Fellowship has always focused on Christian behavior and fellowship and the YPD has always stressed leadership, outreach, and service to others. We need to be promoting all three of these approaches. If our young people do not have personal relationships with God, the rest of our work is for naught. However if they do and this is not reflected in their behavior and in their willingness to serve others, this is also for nothing. Our youth need it all – all of these points of emphasis, a combination of lay and professional staffing, and both age-specific and age-integrated activities. It is time for the entire church to reach all of our young people, nurture and love them, ground them in the Bible, make sure that they walk with God and that they have the secular education and counseling to enable them to make a living, and train them to lead and to serve.

References
1. Dorrell, Jimmy. “The Call to the City: Have We Lost Our Urban Youth?” YouthWorker Journal . V. 22 no. 3 Nov.-Dec., 2005
pp. 44-48.

2. Wright, Richard R. Centennial Encyclopedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church . Philadelphia: Book Concern of the AME Church, 1916 p. 289.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/wright/wright.html

3. Smith, Charles Spenser. A History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. V. II Philadelphia: Book Concern of the AME Church, 1922 p. 236.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/cssmith/smith.html#225 .

4. African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Women’s Missionary Society (WMS). Young People’s and Children’s Division (YPD).
Y.P.D. Handbook. P. 30

5. Telephone interview with Rev. Daryl B. Ingram, Secretary-Treasurer, Christian Education Department, AME Church – January 11, 2006.

6. Smith, Efrem. “Urban Youth Ministry as a Profession?” YouthWorker Journal. V. 21 no. 3 Jan.-Feb., 2005 pp. 18-20.

7. _____. “Old School and New School.” YouthWorker Journal.
V. 22 no. 4 Jan.-Feb. 2006 p. 18.

8. Ibid.

9. _____. “High-Risk Youth.” YouthWorker Journal. V. 22 no. 3
Nov.-Dec., 2005 p. 16.

Biographical Information
Donna L. Gilton has been an active lay volunteer in many aspects of traditional youth ministry and Christian Education. She has served as a Sunday School teacher, YPD supervisor, junior choir director, and tutor. She has organized church libraries and served on a board of Christian Education, as well as on a board for an alternative Christian school. She is currently Associate Professor of Library Science at the University of Rhode Island, and the church pianist at Mt. Zion AME Church in Newport, RI.