What are the key issues and trends for youth workers in church settings? To find out we asked:
Scott Stevens, Director of Student Ministries LifeWay Christian Resources. A publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, Lifeway was founded in the late 1800s. Lifeway provides resources to approximately 5,600 full-time youth ministers in 45,000-plus churches.
Dave Curtiss, USA/Canada Coordinator for the Church of the Nazarene Youth ministries. Founded in 1912, Nazarene Youth Ministries serves 900 full-time youth pastors, more than 7,500 volunteer youth workers and more than 170,000 young people.
Marti Berger, Director of Christian Formation for the Evangelical Covenant Church, which serves more than 25,000 junior and senior high students.
Steve Puils, Director of Outreach Ministries for the Assemblies of God. Founded in 1914, the Assembly has more than 3,000 full-time youth workers and 6,000 volunteers serving 370,000 youth.
Here’s what our four experts told us.
YouthWorker Journal: What do you see as the key opportunities and challenges for youth ministry today?
Marti Berger: One of the key opportunities we have right now is capitalizing on where students are on the whole issue of justice ministry and humanitarian concerns. They really want to impact their world and live a life of significance. They are looking to the schools, and often to the church, for some of those ways of finding answers. They are seeing that our world is not functioning in the way they would hope it would function, and because of that, I see youth not being discouraged but rather encouraged about how they can make a difference.
Dave Curtiss: The deconstruction of the family and society is an enormous challenge, [as are] the increasing sophistication of teenagers in the area of media and music, and the devolution of religious views. This last one especially means that there are more opportunities to share you viewpoint than ever before. For instance, if people are seeking and searching Buddhism, Hinduism or Islam, that probably means they are also searching Christianity.
Students also are rejecting the monochromatic look of many churches. In other words, all white people go to this church or all black people go to that church, all Asian people go this church and Hispanic are at that one. They desire a more broad ethnic connection.
Scott Stevens: It continues to be a struggle for churches to involve students into the full life of the church. You have kids who have pretty extensive responsibilities with things they do at school, whether it is teams, clubs or other leadership things they do. Then when it gets to the church, it’s kind of like, “You’re really not quite ready to do something significant here.” So we keep all the youth of the church locked up in the teen room or down in the basement.”
Steve Puils: I’m going to wrap that question up into one concept—that of making disciples. Too many times we are judged by success. We are judged by how many people sit in the seats when we do a youth service, a Bible study or a small group. Instead we should be judged by how many disciples we made, how many people are still in the kingdom five or 10 years from now. The pressure to have numbers shifts us into that mode, when really that’s not a good barometer; that is not the ultimate mission of what Jesus sent us to do. It was to make disciples!
We’ve fallen into the trap that technology is going to win them over. If we can have a cooler light show or this video or that concept, then we feel like we’re smarter than Jesus or the early church was. Ultimately we’ve got to come back to the Word and to prayer. How do we instill in students the biblical concepts of spending time with God, talking to Him and spending time in the Word?
YWJ: What are the unique gifts your denomination or organization brings to the table to address these opportunities and challenges?
Stevens: We have developed a strategy that focuses on helping students develop spiritually. We call it the Know-Own-Known strategy for spiritual development. It is based on
Berger: The Covenant was founded on the principle that we can do more together than we can apart. Throughout our history we have also had a strong missions emphasis. That has always been a high value for the church. We have across the years sent missionaries “out.” But that was a generational thing. Students today don’t want to send someone else, they want to go.
We also have a three year (tri-annual) event called CHIC (Covenant High in Christ.) where we gather high school students together. This last year our project focused on things we could do for Africa. The students were able to raise enough money that we could start a school, get school supplies, and provide a teacher for three years. We built a medical facility complete with a doctor and nursing staff.
Puils: We were founded as a cooperative fellowship where you could decide whether you wanted to be a part or not. This cooperative fellowship was why we came together as a movement. So one of the things we bring is networking. We believe it is critical that we network with everyone. Any church, any denomination, any Bible-believing group of people—we what to work with them.
Curtiss: I think our denomination has a unique ability to connect because of our heart for social justice and our strong emphasis on multi-cultural and multi-ethnic ministry.
Here’s one way that plays out: last summer at Nazarene Youth Conference (our quadrennial gathering of youth from the Church of the Nazarene). We had over 10,000 students at the event and we deployed every learning style and every ethnic touchstone to reach every segment of the culture and our students responded to that. So when we gave them opportunity for ministry, our “Feeding of the 5,000” where we planned on collecting and sorting enough food to feed 5,000 people it actually turned into the feeding of the 10,000.
YWJ: What do you want to achieve in 2008, and what are some of the specific programs or initiatives you are initiating to achieve your goals?
Puils: We have to get back to our foundation. We want to finish this year and see that we’ve got students into God’s Word and talking to God, basically prayer, the word and spiritual disciplines. If we end this year with students developing that then this will be a successful year.
Curtiss: We are creating some experimental experiential events called FUEL, that will be held next summer through the United States and Canada. These are three-day discipleship events that focus on holiness. Halfway through these events we will actually be turning the event over to the students. We’re turning them loose with video cameras and other recording devices and with dance, art and drama they will be able to express themselves and they will be able integrate these things back into what we are doing on Friday night and Saturday morning.
Berger: Specifically we are piloting a new justice ministry at our North Pacific Conference called Feet to Faith. We are bringing students together for five days. Each day we take a different topic, like homelessness. We will not simply be talking about it but students will have a homeless experience. We are not trying to direct them as to what to do, but rather putting it out there so they have to wrestle with it.
Stevens: A big part of our work is getting the word out about our spiritual development strategy. We are releasing this fall a new Sunday school curriculum that is call Known. But if you aren’t using our stuff, we sure want to encourage you to focus on the spiritual development of students instead of all the stuff that we normally do.
For youth ministers that have been in this for a while they can almost close their eyes and plan a year of youth ministry. But we want people who have been in it a while as well as those just staring out to say, “What are we hoping to accomplish through our ministry?” And to focus on that rather than just doing what we have always done.
YWJ: Do you have any other insights about youth ministry in the 21st century? What are you seeing?
Stevens: We have realized lately that spiritual development is a life-span thing. So we have begun partnering with the other folks around here. The Children’s team as well as the Young Adult team and us have begun to look at spiritual development as an issue that spans all of life.
Curtiss: What I’m seeing is a deep dissatisfaction of youth pastors with the church and their desire for kingdom orientation rather than denominational orientation. And I think that is true with kids as well. This is tough for me to say, because I work for a denomination, but as far as students are concerned, they care that the poor are reached, cared for and loved. They care about kingdom issues. But, denominational loyalty for them is pretty much is out the door.
Puils: A lot has been made in the last several years about relationships. Ministry has always equaled relationships, whether through small groups or just hanging out. But the end product of relationships has to be making disciples. I’d love to see every student have an adult coach. We’d like to see adult followers of Christ passing on this faith to the next generation.
Berger: We are wrestling with the whole issue of young adult ministry. We have been attempting to find ways to engage our young adults with the justice issue.
We have a model we call “2MJ squared” (2MJ2). We put these young adults in a “live in” community, like you see on those reality shows on TV. We wanted to give them a chance to not just talk about racial reconciliation but also to live it. They might serve all day in a soup kitchen or go to a homeless shelter. Then later ask, why did we do this, what did we learn as well as how can we take what we’ve learned in college and reflect the kingdom of God better.
