Should the youth pastor have a ‘pulpit’?
So I was checking out an American Facebook group the other day and came across a post discussing pulpits in youth rooms. There was a monstrous bar that one youth worker was using as a pulpit and was looking for advice and inspiration about what to replace it with. In the comments which followed was a huge list of ideas, photos and suggestions. It was like a Pinterest post for quirky millennial church furniture – but it wasn’t that which troubled me.
Should a youth worker have a pulpit at all?
Digging a little into the history of the pulpit, it comes from a Latin word that means ‘stage’ or to ‘raise up’. The concept behind it is the preached word was elevated above the congregation, putting the sermon front and centre. Well, kinda. That’s more of a super-polished readers-digest version with an overly romanticised ending. There’s actually a whole weird and freaky history of choirmasters, bishops, the Reformation, and non-conformists fighting about exactly what a pulpit is, where it should be, and who should be in it. You might be surprised as how much rage eight sheets of wood and a few stone steps can have.
A bit more practically speaking, pulpits preceded electric amplification. The wooden panelling around and above the pulpit, and the shapes within the churches they were placed in, served to make sure the preacher was not only seen but heard by all in attendance. It’s a little like putting your mobile phone in an open box – when it rings, it’s much louder! Acoustics eh!
So back to the question – should a youth worker have a pulpit?
Practically speaking – yes, a youth worker should be teaching from the Word of God, they should be seen and heard while teaching, and they really should need somewhere to stick their notes and Bible, a la iPad down. Sure. But a music stand and a good head mic would cover that. Do you specifically need a pulpit?
A pulpit comes with a range of assumptions, including a calling to a people, some level of authority over a congregation, and a gathered body of believers to be the shepherd of. A pulpit usually means a Pastor.
So, is a youth pastor a Pastor?
Now there’s the ten-thousand-dollar question!
At the primal pastoral level, a youth worker absolutely should be pastoring (small p). They should be teaching from the Bible, building discipleship-driven relationships, praying for a consistent group, and growing with them. They should be pastoring, but are they a Pastor (big P)?
Is the youth worker the de facto spiritual overseer of a group of young people?
I really don’t think so.
The pastoral responsibility over young people belongs to the whole congregation, it belongs to the parents, and it belongs to the lead Pastor of a church. The youth worker is a specialist – a well-honed tool and translator within that family to help young people connect with all that available love and support. The youth worker is a facilitator, not the lone-ranger.
I think one of the most significant issues we have to contend with in modern youth work is just how far we have separated youth work into its own particular ecclesiastical category. Back in the 90s, we were calling this model ‘the one-eared mickey mouse’* but even with all those warnings and theoretical fixes, I fear the model is still the subconscious way Western Christian youth work operates.
A youth club is not a church with its own pastor, it’s part of a wider church. A youth leader is not supposed to be the prime mover for theological care and pastoral nurture in a young person’s life. Their job, I believe biblically speaking, is to facilitate the whole church to raise those young people together.
If we took the role less seriously, I think we would take the work more seriously. If we made peace with not being big-p Pastors, then I think we would find a healthy groove to sit in where we could help young people thrive within a much larger and better equipped faith community.
Yea, that’ll take some work – and the change has to come in three directions – but I think if we give it ten years of solid attitude-change, sacrificial, loving graft, then the next generation of youth workers will have it down.
What do you think? Am I talking twaddle? Should youth workers be considered pastors in their own right – with their own specific congregations and cool looking pulpits? Let me know!
All the best.
*If you can find a copy, this was first posed by Stuart Cummings-Bond, printed in Youth Worker, 1989, p.76-78
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash