A youth ministry revolution? Sounds fun, I want to join in. However, let’s be a little careful about the kind of revolution we have… Sometimes I think the temptation is to go for bigger, better, MORE lights, BIGGER platforms, BRAND NEW formulas, EVEN MORE PERSUASIVE AND CHARMING speakers (with that cheeky hint of je ne sais quois)… when probably my inclination would be to strip it all down a little. Whilst I’m so grateful for the legacy of youth ministry that’s gone before, I think we need to think really seriously about what we’ve created and, rather than rebuilding a shinier youth ministry tower, let’s have a deep, contemplative, sage-like ponder over what we’ve already got and rethink what we do with it. We'll ask the God who made life from dust for creativity and hope as we stare down our dry bones.
For me, the headline for youth ministry’s headline in the UK is all about Church. My worry, or concern, is that we’re not engaging the Church and young people well together. Conversely, I have strong conviction that there is more hope for young people in the Church than we are currently offering them, and more hope for the Church in young people than we are currently taking note of.
There is more hope for young people in the Church than we are currently offering them, and more hope for the Church in young people than we are currently taking note of
My encounter with the church as a young person was that of extreme welcome, inclusion and love. This experience was a tangible invitation on behalf of a God that was wholly relevant to the complexity of all challenges and heartaches, potential and passion, that I experienced within adolescence. Through community, God revealed him and herself again and again in the many faces that embodied time, interest, care, fun, safety and belonging. It was literally life changing as here I found a place that I could flourish in ways I had not yet discovered I could. In my church community I came alive, found a voice, loved others with meaning and purpose, and began to live out the Christian story way before I could articulate this deeply meaningful process theologically.
For me, then, church was doing what it was meant to do. In all honesty church hasn’t always been a safe inclusive place of flourishing for me, but I’m so glad for this foundational first taste of how important collective faith is. In my ministry it’s been with joy that I’ve witnessed the Church adopting young people and investing in their flourishing, and at times with sadness as I’ve seen young people excluded, rejected or become disillusioned through their experience of Church. Of course, like all relationships, our relationship with the Church is complex and mixed because we are complex and mixed people, but I believe that the Church has an especially significant role in the mission of God to draw us into wholeness through the work of her/his people. Through church, we offer out hope, wholeness, and ultimately salvation* in our humanity, and aren’t there enough societal clues to suggest that there are young people who could do with some of that?
Simultaneously, we seem to have a church with an ironically adolescent-esque identity crisis on our hands. As we set sail out of the safe harbour of Christendom, modernity and being sure of what we believe in a four-step explanation of nought to heaven/sinner to winner in four easy symbols**, and head out through the murky waters of gay marriage, lady leaders, and ‘how far is too far?’ we don’t quite know where we’re headed, and it’s a little intimidating. Of course there’s probably hope at the end of this journey***, but we’re becoming something we haven’t been before and have all kinds of strange and confusing feelings about it.
If only we could find people who expertise in the area of feeling uncomfortable in their own skin, don’t know how to manage a body of changing sizes and proportions, and completely understand feeling both fully alive and fully doomed at the same time…
HOLD. THE. PHONE. Young people *might just be* the group who could offer us some consultation. Plus they know how the internet works. I mean how it really works. The modern day prophets we’ve overseen. The problem is that we’ve got so good at honing a practice where we pass on what we want them to learn from us, that I think we can’t understand that it’s not how we're passing it on to them that we’re doing wrong, but that we’ve forgotten that we’re a partnership of learning and developing together. In fact, we’ve so focused on the idea of young people becoming adult Christians that the adult Christians might have forgotten how to learn and transition.
Thus we have models of youth work which are trying to recreate an outdated model of Church to be more effective, when actually we need to re-ask the question of what the Church means to young people and what young people mean to the Church. This is a really scary thing to do when our Church and youth ministries feel fragile, but with a re-imagining of all young people could be to and in the Kingdom of God we might uncover all kinds of dormant mysteries in resurrection, grace, purpose, and mission of this partnership.
And can I emphasise while I’m here on this platform, I especially don’t just mean the exceptional ones with good public speaking skills, Grade four in at least two instruments and a clear plan on how they’re going to become good citizens. Not that these young people aren’t great, but I have a suspicion that for the Church to fully engage with and realise the potential of young people we need to cringe, be made to feel awkward, be frustrated by prejudice, negotiate outrageous passion and compassion between spells of COMPLETE AND UTTER apathy, as well as recognising the inevitable end of the world and doom of all mankind on a daily basis.
So where do my ideas leave the role of youth workers? In all honesty I think it’s to do ourselves out of a job****. To facilitate partnership between Church and young people in pioneering and awkwardly ‘trial and error’ ways where the young people help the Church get real***** with the culture we find ourselves in, in the actual humanity we find ourselves in, and as the Church encounters young people in all their un-censored-ness, join us in the job of trying to extend God invitations to them which are meaningful, relevant and completely full of love. I think this means advocating for young people's participation and for their needs at every level of Church involvement, in faith that it will be good for the Church and young people despite how uncomfortable it'll make everyone. It also means hosting spaces for young people to share community with the Church and pointedly trying to bring all together. Putting youth ministry back into the heart of churches, and unveiling the joy and pain of this to the adult community as you encourage them to meet Jesus in their relationships with young people.
And, gladly, Jesus is with us. He didn't need a stable situation, with a cupboard full of ready-made resources and a slick AV system. In fact he destabilised those with their religious systems sorted out and pristine. Let's follow the leader who started his Church with that motley crew of young people who had a lot to learn.
*In all its forms… but that’s another discussion!
**That can be worn on a hoody or convincingly doodled on available napkins in coffee shop corner tables, for example.
***Just ask Rob Bell.
****Whilst still somehow maintaining a culture that will pay us to do so.
*****I’m sorry I used this phrase everyone. I guess I'm still a little old school at heart.