1. Professional doesn’t necessarily mean professional

Professional usually means a trained and experienced person who operates in an employed, full-time position, in order to pursue and develop a set standards and values. It usually comes with expectations, goals, resources, and an accountability structure.

There are very few, broadly agreed upon, standards and values for Christian youth work other than: ‘the youth worker needs to do something with the young people.’ Expectations are usually low, goals poorly or abstractly defined, very little resourcing, and a complete lack of consistent or objective accountability.

2. There aren’t actually that many professional youth workers

Most youth ministry in the UK is delivered by volunteers. In fact, I’d estimate that 70% of all Christian youth work in the UK exclusively depends on volunteers to run. By ‘exclusively’ I mean that this huge proportion of Christian youth ministry is also overseen by volunteers.

I’d then estimate that about 20% of Christian youth ministry in the UK is overseen by half-time, part-time, or job-share youth workers. I’m including curates, associate pastors, assistant ministers, and other staff members to whom youth ministry is not their first calling.

For the last 10%, from available research I’d estimate that there are less than a thousand full time Christian youth workers in the UK, and probably just under one-hundred in credited training centres at this moment in time.

3. There is very little career development for professional youth work

We have all heard the famous statistic that the average youth worker spends only 18-months as a youth worker before moving on to other employment. However, in years of looking, I’ve not been able to track down exactly where that statistic comes from. I’d guess it’s a little better than this and, on the whole, youth workers last one contract, which is usually two to three years.

From talking to ex-Christian youth workers, one of the common reasons I hear for quitting is there was no plan for their development. Now, that might sound materialistic or overly ambitious, but there are clear growth pathways in other areas of full-time ministry that don’t exist in youth work. This leaves the youth worker wondering, cycle after cycle, where everything is heading. Not just with them personally, but with their young people.

Connected with this, I meet very few full-time employed youth workers who have training budgets, reading lists, mentors, personal targets, or even structured line management. If it doesn’t look like anyone in the church takes it seriously, why should the youth worker?

4. Professional youth workers take over

Youth workers always struggle with recruitment; we always need just a few more volunteers. And something I’ve seen time and time again when churches hire a youth worker is all their regular volunteers (who were running the youth work) quit, or step back.

This is a double-barrelled expectation problem: On one side, the church suddenly expects the youth worker to do all the youth work, so they’re not needed anymore; and on the other side, the youth worker believes it’s their job to do all the youth work, and that no one else could do it as well as them. Burnout, or worse, quickly follows.

Sometimes what comes with this is baggage-approches from the youth worker where the professional youth worker drags-and-drops project styles they’ve seen work elsewhere, rather than developing something specific to the needs of their new local area… steamrolling over all the people who have known the needs of that area for years!

5. Professional is a dirty, dirty word in youth ministry

There’s always a little gut-twisting feeling when someone talks about “professionalism in ministry.” And I get it! We don’t want to pretend that we’re a business offering a product or producing a consumerist brand for people to buy into. We’re not professionals, we’re family! I get all of that, however, this attitude has also led to a huge abuse of employed church workers.

Professionalism doesn’t need to mean secularism, consumerism, or materialism. But it should mean objectively high standards for duty of care and the delivery of ministry. It should mean helpful layers of accountability, structured line-management, and resources to grow as a person.

6. None of this is new information, so why can’t we fix it?

I’m probably preaching to the choir, and I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of this before at conferences, in books, or from the many stories of youth workers who have been through it have told.

Churches have suffered because the youth workers haven’t been up to task. Youth workers have suffered because churches haven’t known how to take care of them. Young people have suffered because both the church and the youth worker can’t figure all this out.

There needs to be more conversation, there needs to be better standards, and there needs to be more we can do.

So what?

Youth ministry is a dying profession. That’s a brutal thing to say, but it’s an honest look at the numbers. There are fewer youth workers employed now than at any other point since the 1990s. There are fewer people in youth ministry training, there’s fewer courses available, there’s fewer conferences, fewer books, and fewer resources. The average number of young people in a Christian youth group is 5-12, and they only exist in 25% of churches.

We will not fix the quantity of our youth ministers, or the quality of their training until we’re able to properly address the problems in both our attitudes and our approaches what youth ministry really is.

We need to do better.

Over the next few months, I’m going to be writing to a number of church leaders and those with network and denominational oversight to ask them for a conversation. I want to see what they are aware of, what could be done about it, and whether a joined-up conversation might be possible in the future. If you’re interested in hearing more about this, and would like to be involved, please let me know.

 

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash