What are we doing?
By Walt Mueller
Nothing in my youth ministry training or experience had prepared me for this tension-filled moment. In just a few minutes I was to stand and speak to a group of 200 high school students from a variety of churches who had gathered together for the weekend to learn about how their Christian faith should intersect with their everyday comings and goings. I had already addressed the topics of peer relationships and materialism earlier in the weekend. In a few moments, I would be giving the Saturday night sex talk.
Before I went to the microphone, the organizer’s plans called for a hand-selected, mature Christian student to speak first on the topic I had been asked to address. This time it was an attractive young high school sophomore who had been chosen by her youth pastor to motivate and encourage her peers by telling a personal story regarding what God had taught her about living out her faith through her sexuality.
As she walked to the mic, her youthful good looks caught the attention of the usually disinterested guys sitting near the back of the room who had shown up to ski and play football. They were all ears. “My youth pastor asked me to share with you what God has been teaching me about sex, the topic Walt’s been asked to speak on tonight,” she began. “Last year when I was a freshman in high school, I started going out with Seth. During our first few months together, we encountered a lot of sexual temptation. We knew God wanted us to remain pure so we did everything we could to avoid the temptation … until one night when things got a little crazy and we had sex. It was the first time for both of us and we felt incredibly guilty. For the next few weeks we asked for God’s forgiveness and spent time reading the Bible together to come to a better understanding of how God wants us to experience our sexuality. It became clear and obvious to us that God wants nothing more than for us to feel good and be happy. We realized that having sex made the two of us very happy. Since then, we’ve been having sex.”
My jaw dropped and sweat beads formed on my neck as the crowd erupted in vigorous affirmation and applause—especially the now-very-interested guys in the back of the room. The young speaker walked back to her seat. Before she got there, her youth pastor intercepted her and gave her an encouraging pat on the back while whispering what looked to me like “great job!” in her ear. By the way, I’m not making any of this up.
That was 15 years ago, but it shook me up so much that I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Over the course of that time I’ve watched loads of kids grow up to bear the fruit of ministry efforts and emphases that shaped their beliefs and resulting behaviors. No doubt, many grew up to pursue a path of loving God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, while loving their neighbors as themselves. But a growing number have left me scratching my head and grieving while looking at the youth ministry world of which I am a part, and wondering if maybe, just maybe, we’ve been doing something wrong, or at the very least, been engaging in imbalanced ministry.
It wasn’t until Christian Smith released the results of his ongoing research on the religious and spiritual lives of American teens in Soul Searching, that I was able to have my strong suspicions confirmed by the hard data and observations of a sociologist who was trying to get at the root of teenage spiritual culture. Smith tags this emerging new faith as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (God wants us to be good, happy and feel good. He’s there for us when we need his help. If we’re good, we’ll go to heaven), a framework that offers plenty of room for kids in our youth groups—along with a beautiful young girl and a guy named Seth—to reach and live by some frightening theological conclusions. Whether we like it or not, Smith’s put a name to the fruit of our efforts, and his upsetting label serves as a sad descriptor of the shape of far too much of the adult faith that we see in our North American churches today—a faith that’s been fostered and nurtured in youth ministries during years past.
As someone involved in this high, great and glorious calling known as youth ministry, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask myself, “What is it that I’ve done that’s contributed to this reality?” and “What should I be doing to guide kids to spiritual growth that leads to transformed hearts yielding the fruit of conformity to the way and will of Jesus Christ?”
Perhaps the place to start is with a look backward, a thought that came to me during one of my recent television remote “flip-fests” (they drive my wife nuts, by the way). I stumbled upon an episode of This Old House Classics where Bob Vila was touring a toilet factory. (I know, I’m not quite sure why I kept watching.) While standing at the end of a 400-foot-long kiln used to fire the toilets,
I don’t claim to have it all figured out. But from my vantage point as a youth ministry veteran and culture watcher, my look backward into the youth ministry “kiln” we’ve used over the years shows that there are some parts either missing or malfunctioning. While it’s not my intent to equate youth ministry to a machine, nor is it healthy to see kids as “products” who we must force through a “cookie-cutter” assembly line, it is helpful to examine the results of our ministry efforts in order to evaluate when and where to change course. As Francis Bacon has said, “Histories make men wise.” Histories can also make youth workers wise.
If we’re going to take kids deeper, from spiritual children to adults who embrace and live out Jesus’ message of the Kingdom, what should we do differently? Here are five suggestions (would it be wrong for me to call them imperatives?)—occasioned by both a look back at our youth ministry history and look at our current cultural soup—for equipping students to live their faith in God’s world now and in the future.
Tend to your own theological and spiritual vitality
In his book A Mind for God, James Emery White quotes Billy Graham as saying, “I’ve preached too much, and studied too little.” Sometimes we get locked into believing that youth ministry is only something we do, as if developing a set of skills and implementing them through the right programs and games is going to lead students to spiritual maturity. It doesn’t work that way. I believe we’d see a radical change in students if we viewed youth ministry more as who we are. In youth ministry we are not just called to be with students, but we are called to first be about a life-changing message and way of life that is the substance we pass on as we spend time with kids.
Pray for and pursue a passion and hunger for God that is fed by study, theological reflection and meditation on God’s Word. Adopt a dissatisfied posture that leads you to always say, “I haven’t arrived and I’ll never arrive because there’s always more to know.” Get beyond reading youth ministry texts and programming books. Develop a reading list that’s deep and wide in theology, missions theory, cultural critique, spiritual disciplines and biblical studies. While under our care, our students will go no deeper than we are ourselves.
Rethink your theology of conversion
We’ve reduced conversion to a numbers game where raised hands and walks forward are indicators of “decisions” for Christ. The evidence seems to point to the fact that many of these decisions may have been solely about raising a hand or walking forward—and nothing else. Perhaps we’re too focused on getting kids’ hands up that we don’t offer a way for the one who raised the hand to learn about the necessity and shape of the changed life that should begin the minute the hand goes down. Perhaps our theology of salvation has failed to include a place for what happens after. It’s time to understand and act on the fact that conversion is not just about belief, repentance, forgiveness and eternal life. Something else has to happen.
Salvation makes a person free from sin and a slave to righteousness. Our kids must understand that they are re-birthed people living every second of new life on this earth under the reign of the King who has made them His own by calling them into His Kingdom. As David Wells has said, “there is no conversion without an ensuing life of discipleship that involves growth in moral maturity, a deepening faith and loving service.” Maybe it’s time for us to ask them to raise their hands or come forward if they’re willing to spend nine to 12 months with us looking at what it means to live in God’s Kingdom.
Cultivate the life of the mind
In today’s culture, kids are being pounded with more information than any prior generation. This rapid-fire barrage comes from every direction. As new media outlets are created and developed, it’s only going to get more fast and furious. Take television for example. When I was growing up we had one television set that picked up 8 channels, four of which (UHF) went haywire whenever an airplane flew over the house, and one of which seemed to us kids to be an absolute waste of time (PBS). Today’s average household has four televisions and each one receives an average of 100 stations.
Whether they know it or not—and they usually don’t know it—our students are sorting and processing this flood of information that speaks to them on every conceivable issue and matter of life. It shapes their beliefs and behaviors. Shouldn’t we be training them to move from a posture of mindless consumption to a posture of mindful critique? Spiritual formation includes discipleship of the mind. For too long we’ve taught kids what to think. Our culture requires us to teach them how to think. A great place to start is with an intentional effort to incorporate skills and practice for evaluating media (music, TV, film, advertising) from a distinctively Christian perspective.
Focus on the integration of faith into all of life
I’ve often heard Christians respond to accusations of hypocrisy from the watching world with an admission that “yes,” we are all hypocrites. In fact, “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” Okay, I can agree with that. But all too often it’s a copout. There’s a lot more truth in the accusations than we’re willing to see, admit or believe.
The world is right in their assessment of who we are. Our faith is marked by a huge and growing gap between stated belief and lived behavior. We have separated our lives into neat little compartments that are kept far enough apart that they never overlap or collide. We live divided lives where our faith fails to intersect with our vocation, academics, relationships, sexuality, play, dating, etc. This dis-integrated faith is not only anti-biblical, but it’s killing us and our presence in God’s world.
As human beings we are integrated wholes where every area of our lives is a place God has claimed as “mine!” We must not only be teaching this truth to our kids, but walking through life with them showing them how to integrate their faith into every nook and cranny of life. Make a list of everything the kids you know do and are. Now ask yourself: Have I told and shown them how God’s Kingdom is to infect and rule that area of their life?
Fight materialism and injustice
When you read the Gospels it becomes abundantly clear that Jesus spoke more about the dangers of money and wealth, than he did about Heaven and Hell combined. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that those things don’t apply to us or our kids, since, after all, we have very little compared to guys like Bill Gates and Donald Trump. But did you know that in the global order of things, everyone of us and everyone of our kids sits somewhere in the top two to five percent of the richest people in the world? Perhaps that’s why materialism is the great unrecognized, ignored and unaddressed sin of the American church. Isn’t it ironic that when you visit other Christians globally, those who have the least amount of stuff are the richest and most secure spiritually?
We must challenge materialism and promote economic and racial justice if we want our kids to become mature citizens of God’s Kingdom. Here’s a practical suggestion that might sound harsh: stop taking expensive ski trips (as an example) with your youth group. These are the very things that foster lofty expectations, materialism and a sense of entitlement. Instead, focus your efforts on missions and service.
In recent years my look backward has extended beyond my own years in youth ministry, to those who have followed and served Christ in times past, both ancient and not-so-ancient. I’ve learned a lot from how they lived, how they prayed and what they wrote. One of those groups I’ve found to be rich and personally challenging is the Puritans—a group I’m guessing we don’t talk about too much in youth ministry! I recently ran across a Puritan prayer prayed at the start of the day and read these words: “As I cross the threshold of this day I commit myself, soul, body, affairs, friends, to thy care; Watch over, keep, direct, sanctify, bless me. Incline my heart to thy ways; mould me wholly into the image of Jesus … If my life should end today, let this be my best day.” If that’s what we’re praying/doing in youth ministry, then, with God’s help, the kids will turn out alright.
In his best-selling book Season of Life, Jeffrey Marx follows a season of high school football at
I wonder, are we thinking that way about how we do youth ministry?
Portions of this article are reprinted with permission from the May/June issue of YouthWorker Journal (youthworker.com).
For more information on resources to help you understand today’s rapidly changing youth culture, contact the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding.
©2007, The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding