As January draws to a close I am getting ready to really start the year. This week sees both high school students returning to school AND university students moving on campus at ECU. This means that both my ‘hats’ will be in full force from this week.

Sync Youth
Next Sunday will be our Sync Youth Launch for 2011. As such this week will require me to do some work on vision casting and communicating how 2011 will look for the various families involved at Inglewood. I’ll be putting together a short video for next Sunday, outlining what is in store from a Youth’s perspective and also what Parents can expect, hopefully enabling me to work on getting both of these parties onside.

The Hub ECU
The Hub is the name of the Church plant that I am leading. One of the area’s at the university that we really want to be involved with is the local student village, which this year balloons from 100 ish to 500+ students on site and flash new digs! This week students start to move in so we plan on being on-site, mostly tomorrow, just to help out. We’ll help students move stuff, cook some food perhaps, generally be around to chat as they get used to new environments, which for some will also be a new country!

Other
I’ll also be working on some training material for the Youth Leader Apprentice students. This year we’ve invited our 16-17 year old youth to volunteer fortnightly as Youth Leader Apprentices. I aim to use this time to build into them, helping train them in leadership skills, but also to help them discover what it means to serve others and learn how to build into the lives of other people. This is part of our strategy to help transition them towards an adult faith and adult involvement in church. Will keep you updated.

Should be a good week!

David Fitch, a bi-vocational American Pastor was recently quoted in a book saying  “Youth Groups Destroy Children’s Lives.” This quote caused quite the outrage around the blogosphere. Many people agreed with the statement, many vehemently disagreed. Such was the commotion that Fitch felt it necessary to clear up this statement on his blog. Here is a quote from the article

Prototype youth groups are built on the worst of modernist assumptions concerning the way human beings develop as cultural beings. They play into the worse impulses of parents who don’t get what is happening right before their very eyes when their children start to take on the moral formation of the ubiquitous culture at large. (Parents want young hip experts to save their kids – UH THAT DON’T WORK!!). They think the answer is to somehow get their children to a place where the youth culture attracts them and somehow makes Christianity attractive to their age group. All these things, I argue, work against the child growing up into a vital and real relationship with the living God and what He has done in Christ for the world.

What do you think about this quote? Does it challenge you? Does it provoke you? Does it bring into question what you may believe about youth ministry? Is Youth Ministry Useless?

In recent years many people, pastors, youth leaders, ex-youth group members and the like have started coming out and attacking the culture of youth ministry. People have labeled it a failed experiment. They’ve said it is un-Godly and un-Biblical. They have called for the ‘good old days’ before youth ministry. And the main catch cry tends to be that all youth group does is create a culture that can’t possibly be replicated or continued once the teen becomes and adult. They suggest, by taking teenagers and running youth groups, we forever set these teenagers up for failure because adult church can’t possibly be what youth group is.

In many ways the stats seem to suggest there is something terribly wrong with the way we ‘graduate’ teenagers into adult church. A project in the US called the ‘College Transition Project’ has found, anecdotally, that as few as 25% of youth group attendees continue in the faith past high school. Other denominations around the world suggest 60-94% of their teenagers do not follow through with their faith from the teenage years into adulthood. Though these figures are all from America, my own anecdotal experience suggests Australian figures would be fairly similar.

So what has gone on over the past 15-20 years to get us to the point where so much of the effort of youth ministry seems to produce little lasting fruit? What is the answer to these problems? Should we just scrap youth ministry all together? Is Youth Ministry useless?

The answer to this question is pretty much my entire reasoning for endeavouring to write a book AND my reason for this blog being called ‘Y Ministry?’ So why ‘Y Ministry?’ Well, because I want this blog to be all about why I believe in Youth Ministry and why I am committed to working with youth and young adults, who are typically from Gen Y currently. Y’s everywhere! Far from being useless, if we in Youth Ministry can learn from our mistakes, which are so readily pointed out by the baying crowd, I believe we are uniquely positioned to influence and transform youth culture.Sure, this has been the catch cry from youth pastors for decades, ‘lets transform youth culture’ but there are 5 key area’s that I believe we in Christian youth ministry are uniquely positioned to transform youth culture.

1. The Role of Rites of Passage in a 21st Century World -  This is a hot topic these days. What has happened to all our old rites of passage? How can we help teenagers become adults before they turn 30 and realise they still live in their parents house, with little life prospects…and are ok with that?

2. Web Generation 2.0 – What do genuine relationships look like in a world of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media. The church is called to BE a community. So many people are crying out for more community. How can youth ministry learn from its mistakes of shallow friendships and instead offer deep, genuine relationships to hurting teenagers?

3. Building Bridges Between ‘Youth’ and ‘Adults’ – As the results above show, we haven’t been great at transition teenagers into adult church…but could this weakness become a strength? Perhaps we need to utilise more adult contacts, more adult mentors in our youth ministry and help teenagers re-learn that it is actually okay to have older adults in their lives. Perhaps this would also help us transition more youth into adult churches?

4. Channeling Passion for Good – Taking the enthusiasm and passion inherent in teenagerhood and pointing it in positive directions. Giving them a purpose, something to strive for, helping them to create a better world.

5. The Role of Parents in Youth Ministry and Teenage Discipleship and teenage life in general– Many suggest our parents have forgotten how to parent and our teenagers have forgotten how to respect their parents. Could youth ministries do more partnership discipleship with parents and less babysitter discipleship?

These are some of the key topics that I will be looking to delve into on this blog. They will not always look ‘polished’ or read like a book (though hopefully one day my book will!), but I hope you will help me by sharing your thoughts, pushing back when you disagree and helping me journey towards building better youth ministries!

Anyone who has been to my website recently may have discovered that the ‘comments’ section of my website was playing up. In fact it was playing up by NOT ALLOWING people to comment.

Thankfully this was actually quite easily fixed and should now be all up and running!

Sorry to anyone who tried to comment but was unable to.