When something is amiss in our youth ministries, we often blame non-Christian influences or cultural shifts. Rarely do we step back and assess our own ministry approaches, which may have worked in years past, but are no longer effective or relevant. In order to help us out of this ministry rut and experience ministry success, youth ministry veteran and professor David Olshine has put together the slim yet punchy Youth Ministry: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Get it Right detailing what is going wrong in youth ministry today and how we can fix it.
Drawing on his own personal experiences, the insights of ministry practitioners, and current literature on youth ministry, Olshine highlights many of the usual suspects that plague youth ministries across the country—lack of familial involvement, obsession with rock-star youth ministers, poor volunteer training, biblical illiteracy, and age segregation—and gives numerous solutions that will hopefully put your youth ministry on the right track. Specifically, Olshine’s work is aimed at making youth ministers engage in critically reflective thinking about youth ministry in their own context, as well as incorporating families into their youth ministries. Many of Olshine’s solutions derive from his vast experience in youth ministry, lending authenticity and authority to his work. Moreover, Olshine’s writing style is engaging, making the book informative and quick to read.
Olshine offers us little that is new in terms of critical observations about youth ministry or cutting-edge ministry models. However, his ability to synthesize the problems that plague traditional youth ministry models and suggest solutions will be helpful to youth ministers seeking to rejuvenate their ministries. This book will appeal especially to the busy youth minister who does not have time to read numerous books about revamping youth ministry practice. Informative, quick-to-read, engaging and highly practical, this title deserves a place on the shelf of every youth minister in the United States.
—Ben Espinoza, Covenant Church, Bowling Green, Ohio
It’s an admirable quality to be able to look at the shortcomings of your own profession with honesty, perceptiveness and sensitivity. David Olshine does this notably in Youth Ministry: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Get It Right. Olshine points to many of the well-known culprits of youth ministry ineffectiveness: the rock-star youth pastor mentality, obsessing about programs, ignoring parents and family systems, as well as a host of others. His format is practical and accessible. In each chapter he defines the problem and then proposes solutions.
There’s not really anything new or profound in Olshine’s diagnosis or suggestions. I might even say his discussions are unremarkable. The strength of this work is in bringing together in one place a quick presentation of all the major ills that continue to plague good youth ministry. A youth pastor looking to re-examine areas where they may have slipped into ineffective practices can do so quickly and easily with this work.
—Jeff Crosby, 20-year youth guy, Rochester, New York
In Youth Ministry: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Get it Right, David Olshine offers a very practical and accessible book for the busy youth worker. This brief review of youth ministry practices across the United States provides helpful critique and useful feedback. He opens his critique by exploring the need to follow God’s command that parents be the responsible caregivers in raising their children in all matters, including spiritual. This is a very important reminder for youth ministers and churches that tend to create youth ministries as tools for raising young people in the Christian faith. Youth ministries would be wise to develop programs that enable parents to raise their children in the faith and not clutter schedules so families have no time for personal interaction and growth in matters of faith.
Olshine concludes his critique of youth ministry by emphasizing the need for those who care for youth through youth ministries first to care for themselves. This is an important reminder for everyone in ministry. All ministers of the gospel need to be sure of and be aware of our relationship with God and with those God has blessed us within our families. Then we will be prepared for the other ministries to which God has called us.
In between these two topics, Olshine tackles many others, including the need for youth leaders and churches to let go of the Rock-Star mentality when approaching youth ministry. When we have a central person in ministry, this takes focus away from God and His Lordship in our lives. Olshine also discusses volunteers, what happens to students after high school, the need for cross-generational worship and ministry, and many other pertinent topics. Each topic discussed potentially opens the eyes of youth ministers so they truly might seek to impact youth with the mission and message of Jesus Christ.
All youth ministers, volunteers and church leaders would be wise to pick up this text and explore its wisdom. Youth workers will find myriad ways to apply this to their ministries and make some necessary changes.
—Joel Jackson
In Youth Ministry: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Get it Right, David Olshine has written a fantastic assessment of the state of modern youth ministry. Repeatedly he hits the nail on the head until it is driven all the way through the board. Beginning with the fact most youth programs today totally overlook the importance of a student’s parents in his or her life, Olshine offers diagnosis and solution for 12 of the most pernicious problems youth ministries face today. Each problem is laid out in a clear and compelling format that makes working through Olshine’s ideas easy. He offers a simple statement of each problem and solution before taking time to unpack these in great detail. This book should be considered a must for the bookshelf of any youth leader wanting to take student ministry to the next level! Youth volunteers, as well as concerned but uninvolved parents, also could make some good hay from Olshine’s ideas. Going one step further, with a bit of contextualizing, the problems Olshine identifies can be found at other levels of ministry, as well. As a senior pastor, I found several places where I was beginning to get uncomfortable as I sifted through issues that are pressing problems in my own ministry context. All-in-all, if you’ve ever found yourself wondering what’s wrong with your ministry when you’ve been spinning your wheels a while, or to avoid problems before they start, Olshine’s book is well worth your time.
—Jonathan Waits is a pastor who loves connecting dots between good theology and culture. He has the pleasure of serving a great church in southern Virginia and is a regular contributor to the Religious Herald.
In his book, David Olshine explores areas he believes are lacking or missing in youth ministries. He begins the book with the issue of youth ministers’ lack of outreach to the family by staying focused squarely on the youth. This topic is discussed widely among those who work with youth, and Olshine details this issue very well through his book. However, because this topic has such a broad focus, it gave this book almost a dime-a-dozen feel. As I continued reading, though, Olshine covers other areas of youth ministry that are legitimate issues that should be addressed, not only in the outreach to youth but the care of sponsors, properly sending high school graduates off and staying connected to them, and taking care of yourself, the youth worker. Again, these subjects have been covered in other books, but Olshine communicates as one who truly has been in the trenches. I enjoyed his authenticity of words of wisdom. (In his forward, Duffy Robbins says authenticity is one of Olshine’s personality traits.) I would recommend this book to any youth worker, but more specifically to those who may have started or finished a third year of youth ministry. I say third year because I contend that by this time, you have lived through the honeymoon phase, tried new things and have felt that prod that you need to re-evaluate some areas in your ministry and in your own growth in your relationship with Christ.
—Chris Ensley, youth pastor, Marion Christian Church, Marion, Kan.; adjunct professor, Tabor College, Christian Ministry Program; enjoys time with his wife, Jessica, and two daughters, Shaliah and Anani, and Crossfit, playing his guitar and being outside.
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