Is preaching the most effective method to teach teenagers?

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Most of what I remember of my youth pastor from being a teenager his him giving talks. He and his small team would take it in turns to deliver the message each Sunday night. Some of these we would look forward to more than others because they would be funny or moving or poignant. Others, however, would just be boring or self-serving – thirty minutes to just get through before music and games.

The concept, however, was clear: teaching and authority is delivered from the front of the room.

Today I’m in a similar position. I deliver talks to my young people. I also give assemblies in schools, and a lot of my projects have that upfront teaching aspect to them. I have however, dialled back on upfront speaking as my main teaching style, and I’ve embraced more conversation, mentoring, group discussion, active service, briefing and briefing, Q&A, and try-and-see methods.

I’m going to briefly discuss some of the reasons I have come to that decision.

The de facto approach

I recently read a poll on a youth ministry Facebook page comparing the most effective methods of teaching teenagers. Of the 100+ full-time youth pastors that responded, well over half said that up front preaching is still the most effective method of teaching young people today. I was pretty surprised.

In the comments I suggested that the reason we think it is the most effective is that it tends to be the teaching method that we’re best at delivering, and the one we have the most experience with. We might be, therefore, measuring it’s effectiveness by how good we are at it, rather than how much our young people retain and apply.

Like me, many youth pastors grew up watching their own youth pastors preach and speak from the front. They possibly even graduated into volunteer youth ministry by doing some talks. At Bible College they started to learn how to public speak better, and they began finding their favourite YouTube preachers. Upfront speaking is what we know.

This de facto approach is highly practical, in that we don’t have to respond to the unknown and the spontaneous. It’s constructive, in that we can plan it meticulously and feed it into the context of teaching throughout a term. It’s safe, in that it is tidy and keeps surprises to a minimum. It’s also ego-stroking, in that it gives us the opportunity to make teenagers like us.

Does it work?

This might be the $1 million question. We can probably all think back to talks that had a big impact on our Christian walks. We can remember talks when great swaths of young people stood up to follow Jesus at the end. This might be why talks are still the main – if not the only – teaching method used at youth events and conferences.

But here’s another question: How many talks can you actually remember?

By remember I mean can you piece together the main point of a talk with all the moving parts it took to get there? Can you remember the three points and the applications? Can you remember the unpacked exegesis and the contexts they sat in? How many talks can you remember like that from probably the hundreds, if not thousands, that you have heard? What’s your retention and application percentage? Does that ratio feel like good stewardship?

If you’re a note taker then retention and application might be easier, or – if like me – you tend to plagarise other speakers anecdotes, then you might remember more – but even then some work has to be done in other teaching/learning styles before you get there.

American educational theorist, Edgar Dale, famously published what’s called the Cone of Learning, where he placed retention percentages alongside different learning methods.

Dale said, for instance, that the best way to learn something is actually to teach it to others, and if we can’t do that then we should emphasise discussion and practice over simply reading and listening. What was most shocking, however, was he said that the ‘lecture style’ or upfront speaking was by far the least effective method of teaching. He said humans tend to only retain 5% of a talk 24 hours later.

Dale’s ideas are certainly not watertight, and educational theory has come a long way since. But even if it’s just half true, we need to consider how effective our upfront speaking-heavy teaching methods truly are.

Is it biblical?

Now this is interesting because at first glance public speaking seems to be the main teaching method in the Bible. However, a deeper examination will reveal that this is just not correct.

The Patriarchs, Judges and Kings sometimes spoke to large groups, but more often we see them speaking to individuals or other leaders. Prophets spoke to crowds sometimes, but more often spoke to rulers, councils or individuals. There are other times when Kings and Prophets spoke to the whole nation of Israel, however, this tended to be to lead them in worship or prayer rather than teaching.

Some version of upfront speaking happened in smaller circumstances, like the head of a household telling an ancient story to his family, but that happened over a worship feast that they all joined in as part of the ritual.

In the New Testament Jesus is frequently mis-described as a crowd teacher and preacher. But this is actually a very rare occurrence. He does speak in the synagogues, but when He does this from the front it is almost exclusively limited to the reading of the Torah (with a cheeky sentence of personal commentary thrown in), and when in the outer courts, He tends to be answering questions and discussing with small groups of people in turn (like most Rabbis would).

Even classics like the Sermon on the Mount, or the Sermon on a Plain were focused times of teaching the disciples with a crowd ‘listening in’ rather than taught directly. In fact, almost all of Jesus’ recorded teaching happens in small groups and with individuals. The biblical Jesus is just not a crowd teacher or public speaker.

The book of Acts is probably the most interesting because proclamation was almost exclusively reserved for groups of unbelievers, whereas teaching through conversation and discussion were most commonly practiced with groups of already confessing believers. This is clearer in the Greek, but still we do this backwards don’t we?

Proclamation and preaching are certainly biblical practices, but they are by no means the exclusive, de facto, most effective, or even most usual method of teaching employed throughout the Scriptures. Upfront speaking was mostly reserved for the pubic reading of scripture or the corporate leading of worship.

Preaching as we know it today is largely a remnant of Christendom, rescued somewhat by the Reformation, helped along by the Edwardian era, but stunted by the Victorian Church, and then intellectualised by the Enlightenment. We need to look deeper and further to teach better.

So what else is there?

Allowing the Bible to speak with room for the Holy Spirit to interpret and apply should be the most important aspect of our teaching. The Bible historically been a conversant book, one read in community not just alone in isolation.

I favour facilitated Bible discussion, where a leader knows the passage well and has maturity to teach, but the content is discussed and then applied by the wider group. Truth is facilitated, and the discovery of the ‘true path’ is led by figures with the experience of mountain guides. They don’t do the hiking for them!

Having an experienced, mature, and trained pastor figure in the room safeguards against discussions dissolving into relativistic chaos, and they draws threads together helpfully without superimposing an unnecessary or tightly constricting agenda upon God’s Word in the gathering. This also keeps teacher-accountability on the table with the Bible.

This approach also opens up the importance of student participation in teaching, of mentoring, actual practice, abstract thinking, conversation, Q&A, try-and-see, briefing and debriefing, and open-ended discussion.

Proclamation is great! Public speaking is one of the key parts of my vocation and one of the things I’m best at. This does not mean, however, that it is the only, or even the best way that God can use me, or that speaking is the most effective way of teaching the people that God has put under my care.

We need to widen the net, broaden our skills, and embrace a bigger field of teaching methods, and we can do this without losing our biblical compass. The plans, character, heart, and purposes of God in our communities is big enough to warrant stepping out of our teaching-style comfort zones. Let’s get on it!

 

Photo by Nycholas Benaia on Unsplash

A reader’s digest history of youth ministry

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For the history-nuts among us, I thought I would put out a readers-digest of the history of modern youth ministry. This includes a few significant social-historical events that have genuinely influenced the direction and shape of Western Youth Ministry that we see today.

Have fun!

18th-19th Century

Age-specific ministry began during The Industrial Revolution when children worked six-day weeks instead of receiving formal education. In response Robert Raikes developed Sunday School, an age-segregated environment that taught religion and literacy. Sunday Schools replaced the larger ‘children’s church’ meetings that existed, streaming them into smaller age groups.

When state-mandated midweek education took over teaching in the 1870s, Sunday Schools became purely Bible focused.

Following this, The Society of Christian Endeavour (SCE) was founded as a participative, relationship-oriented gathering to help older children transition into church. SCE meetings tended to be large, sometimes multi-denominational, mid-day gathering of young people into their twenties with Bible study around a meal. It grew quickly and was well integrated into the life of the church.

Pre WW2

The SCE movement grew until the 1940s when it was overshadowed by parachurch organisations. This was the beginning of the end of the SCE meetings.

During this time, psychologists had just presented the ground-breaking concept of Adolescence (G. Stanley Hall, 1941), which became more potent in the zeitgeist as drafted young people left home to fight in wars.

By the close of World War II, increasing secularisation was drawing adolescents away from the church, resulting in the need for a more dramatic and intentional missional response to young people.

1940s – 1970s

Denominationally-specific youth fellowships tried to do this with mixed success. It was the parachurch groups Youth for Christ (YFC) and Young Life (YL) that took centre stage. By this point the SCE movement had been totally replaced and had all but disappeared from churches.

YFC led contextually accessible rallies for thousands of young people. YL, however, focused on individual relationship-building. They emphasised ‘winning the right to be heard’, by which they meant ‘gain[ing] the friendship and respect of students before expecting them to listen to the claims of Christ’ (Mark Senter, When God Shows Up, 2010, p.220). This was the first instance of incarnational youth ministry. It was in the 1950s that YL first used that term.

Going back to the 1910 Edinburgh World Mission’s Conference, two Missiologists referenced something called the missio Dei as part of the Church’s mission. Missio Dei, or ‘the mission of God’, reconfigured mission from being church-based (they come to us) to being culture-based (we go to them). This use of missio Dei came to prominence in the 1960s and both YFC and YL grew up saturated in its convictions.

By this part of the 20th Century, the Salvation Army began using choruses on the streets in evangelism, which soon developed into songs in their own right. By the 1950s, these choruses abounded. This – mixed with a sudden evangelical mission to young people in Britain and the Jesus Movement’s desire to embrace the music of culture in America – created entirely new forms of Christian music. This music fashioned an early bridge between the Charismatic renewal of the 70s and the Restoration movement of the 80s, culminating in the ground-breaking and ecumenical hymnbook, Songs of Fellowship. Off the back of this came the rise of Christian bands and alternative youth sub-culture. D.C. Talk were perhaps the most prolific of this kind in America.

1980s

Youth ministry in the following decades developed depersonalised programming in tension with personal relationship-building. Often these represented different strategies and clashed when they came together.

By the late 80s, John Wimber’s visits to St. Andrew’s Chorley Wood gave rise to New Wine and Soul Survivor alongside the already popular Spring Harvest. These festivals gathered a broad range of traditions together and united them through music. They showed that music was a relevant factor in unifying diverse Christian groups, and that it was essential in engaging specifically with the culture of young people.

These large events across Britain (Spring Harvest, New Wine, Soul Survivor) echoed the contextual attraction of early YFC rallies. The ‘worship leader’ became the hero of youth ministry and mission culture, and especially in the UK was supported by popular bands such as Delirious and The World Wide Message Tribe.

In the 80s and 90s, the techniques of these organisations were emulated in some wealthy churches, which then eventually trickled down to the rest of us, creating the modern church-based ‘youth pastor’. These youth pastors developed much of the standard project templates that we use today.

In 1988, Resolution 43 from the Lambeth Conference called ‘the closing years of this millennium a “Decade of Evangelism” with a renewed and united emphasis on making Christ known to the people of his world’.

1990s

by the early 90s contextual church planting, rather than youth-driven initiatives had become the accepted approach to local mission. Building on Resolution 43, the report Breaking New Ground established church planting strategies to ‘underchurched’ areas (1994:9) to ‘attract those who do not normally attend worship’ (35). It was the first widely reported Anglican document that grappled ‘positively’ with how postmodernity might affect how we ‘do church’.

During this time ‘Missional Church’ entered vocabulary, and George Lings began to document examples of contextualised, missional church planting in the Church of England to inspire others in Encounters on the Edge (1999-present). This all sowed early seeds for Fresh Expressions.

In the mid 1990’s with contextualized, relational mission now firmly in the church zeitgeist, there was a resurgence of detached relational work. In America this was driven by the work of Andy Borgman, and in the UK, it was Pete Ward. This represented the ‘second wave’ of incarnational youth ministry with a greater focus on culture.

In the late 90s, early proponents of intergenerational ministry began to publish as an alternative to the two most popular models of the time; incarnational and funnel youth ministry. They (perhaps unknowingly) were recreating some form of the SCE movement. This was a direct response to what they saw as an increasing segregation between ‘church’ and ‘youth’.

2000s

Fresh Expressions – most notably Messy Church, and Café Church – began to gain traction across a few mainstream denominations. A decade after Breaking New Ground came the 2004 Mission-shaped Church [MSC] report. Where Breaking New Ground saw church planting and early forms of fresh expressions as ‘supplements’ to Anglican life which sustained the parish system (Bayes, 2006:10), MSC saw them as entities effectively separate to the governing life of the parish (2004:xi, 12). This — along with supporting Bishops Mission Orders (2007; updated 2008, 2012) — gave Fresh Expressions recognition as authorised ‘expressions’ of the Anglican Church and therefore the ability to define liturgy, leadership, and practices outside the usual confines of Anglican Law.

From MSC came the officially branded Fresh Expressions movement. This was an ecumenical approach to British mission that included six major denominations and three well-known charities as partners. This was the far reaching and widely embraced result of a five-decade paradigm shift. Youth Ministry – as we know it today – largely grew up in this context. It became to be seen by many circles as an informal and broad form of Fresh Expression. This is important considering its projects had pioneered many of the practices largely adopted by the wider spectrum of Fresh Expressions.

Moving our focus back to America, in the 2000s new thinkers revisited incarnational youth ministry with some fresh ideas, most notably Andrew Root and Kendra Creasy-Dean. This was the third wave of incarnational youth ministry. The missional perspective of the church as a whole, however, started to shift its focus to ‘the missing generation’ of 20s and 30s. This was arguably the generation failed by the last decades of youth ministry. Because of this, these key incarnational authors started to branch out, and – especially in the case of Root – began writing to the wider church, rather than simply youth workers.

The popularity of the festivals of the 90s continued into the 2000s and became increasingly blended with an aim to reach young people while engaging with youth culture more specifically. This development was been influenced by modern recording-house based project churches such as Hillsong, Bethel and Jesus Culture.

The Emerging Church Movement of the late 90s and early 2000s took brief centre stage and saw the church as a poor representation of what it was supposed to be. They said it had, as a result, produced shallow or false Christians. Figures like Rob Bell had a strong influence on youth workers – thus youth ministries – across America and the UK.

The last decade

Youth ministry back in America still enjoyed a vibrant training and resourcing market, however in the UK, the number of youth ministers lasting beyond one contract dropped dramatically, and many churches stopped raising money for it. Conferences came and went, and the church started to look with renewed vigor at new missional ideas such as pioneering ministry theory and Fresh Expressions (which in this decade developed partnerships among almost all major denominations in the UK).

There are fewer youth ministers in the UK and fewer people in youth ministry training in the UK than there was ten years ago; however, it must be noted that there were many more ten years ago than there were twenty years ago. We haven’t seen an exponential drop, but rather a spike alongside the missional renewal of the 90s.

There are still great charities and groups offering quality resourcing (Like Youth for Christ, Youthscape, Urban Saints etc.), but the local church youth pastor – upon the models of the last few decades – is certainly struggling.

The future?

Youth Ministry today is a very different beast to it was in the mid 90s, which in turn was different to the 60s-80s, which was also different to the pre-1940s, and different again from the industrial revolution. All these, however, have played an important part in the almost-Frankenstein’s monster of youth ministry approaches we have in the UK today. It is a rich historic tapestry indeed!

Change certainly needs to happen. Youth Ministry needs sounder theological foundations, a clearer relationship with church, a realistic approach to mission, a bold stance both within and outside culture, and a much more solid united identity. It’s still very tribal, a little bit ritualistic, very segregated from the wider body, and (at least in my opinion) is in many cases as deep as a teaspoon.

I’m encouraged, however, to know that as a movement, Youth Ministry is still very young, so there is still lots of clarity to be had, and growth to happen. We are infants, but growth comes with growing, not just groaning.

We don’t have things like the Reformation to look back on as a melting pot for healthy practices to emerge and be challenged by. We don’t have hundreds of years of trial and error to perfect the ultimate ‘lock in.’ We don’t have ancient ecclesiastical giants to look up to as archetypal youth pastors (with perhaps the exception of Mike Yaconelli!). We’re still babies.

Although ministry among young people was happening in some form before the 1940s it was largely part of a broader whole; over-specialisation and the unhelpful compartmentalism we experience today are largely traits of the 20th Century. We may need to go back a little to go forward a lot.

If we want youth ministry to thrive, and for there to be serious competition in the positions we create, then the whole church collective needs to work together towards biblically solid foundations for its future. We need to pull together, not keep looking for tribalized wedge-issues to separate us. There is nothing less than the glory of God and the salvation of young people on the line. Let’s do this together!

I imagine in the years to come that youth ministry will be largely supported by ‘tent-making’ jobs, and (I hope) will learn towards a facilitation model where the worker’s main responsibility will be the enabling of the wider church to do mission and ministry among young people. The future will tell!

Photo by João Silas on Unsplash

What makes a rubbish youth group work?

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I sometimes wonder about our standards for what constitutes ‘good’ youth groups.

If young people are as varied as humanity itself (which they are), and leader’s love for them can express itself in many different ways (which it can) – then who are we to decide if its quality youth work? If the result of that formula looks poor to us, we should look a level or two deeper before casting judgement.

I get to visit lots of different youth clubs as part of my job – and one of the things I’m supposed to do is say what’s not working and how to fix it. A few years ago I visited a ‘rubbish’ youth club.

It met in the evening – too late to be ‘after school’ and too early to be an evening out. It was right around dinner time, so thee kids were missing food and missing family time.

The meeting – which was a completely random mix of young children and teenagers – gathered round a few nasty looking go-pack tables, with over-diluted orange squash, and dry cookies that had been stored in cling-film.

There were no games, and a completely incomprehensible craft. The materials they used were both too young for most of the group, and too old to have been considered relevant; the weirdest bit though – was the youth leader.

She was about 85 years old, wearing every manor of doily, and smelling faintly like a mix of old spice and fish. She sat a the end of the table and ruled the room like a quietly spoken drill master. I sat in the corner making a long mental list of everything wrong with the group.

At the end of the night, this leader broke the news to the young people that because of her diminishing health she would have to step down. I was totally unprepared for the response.

Tears. Everywhere. From the youngest children to the hardened 16 year old boys. There were quiet sobs, many hugs, and a real brokenness in the group. She then proceeded to talk to every single person around the table one by one to tell them what she loved about them, and what her favourite memory was of each of them.

She had remembered everything! And – as was clear from her examples – she had spent decades opening up her whole life to young people. She had taught many of them to bake; she was a math tutor to several more; she had provided a home for some who had lost parents, or had run away. She had also been there for many of them, literally, since they were born.

I had never seen anything like it!

They were committed to coming to this terrible youth group, because she had committed to loving them.

I had never seen love like that.

These were healthy, holistic, cared for, supported, nurtured, discipled young people – in the worst looking youth club you’ve ever seen.

Let’s get our youth clubs right, of course! Let’s be clear, fun, relevant, engaging, and accessible. But – so much more than that – let’s love.

If we get nothing else right – let’s get this right. Let’s love these young people. It’s that which holds everything together, it’s that that makes the pieces work, and it’s that which changes the young people’s lives.

What actually makes us relevant?

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Relevancy is a word we throw around, and rightly so! It’s essential, as effective youth workers, to be relevant to young people. What we mean by this, however, dramatically varies depending on who you talk to.

Immersion – Being Just Like Them

For some, being relevant means being just like them. So the youth worker will immerse themselves in the TV shows, the music, the books, the clothes, the slang, the hangout slots, and all the latest crazes of youth culture.

A problem with this, of course, is there’s no such thing as generic youth culture. Young people are people and as people they are a varied mix of genres, personalities, and subcultures. It’s more likely that the immersive youth worker is just getting clued up on one type of youth culture; which will inevitably make them outsiders or even hostile to others. This form of relevancy makes you inevitably irrelevant to many others.

Another problem is the rapid pace of products and entertainment aimed at young people. A friend of mine who is a youth worker in China recently told me that they were among the very first to be hit by the ‘fidget spinner’ craze. This lasted a few short weeks before the schools cracked down and they were no longer cool, yet all the youth work resources were still writing about them. Youth culture immersion gives your relevancy a self life.

The biggest problem with this, of course, is the creepy factor. It’s fine to like a few things aimed at younger ages (I adore The Minions and Lego!), but immersing yourself in that world as if you were still a 14 year old girl, when you’re actually a 36 year old man is actually a bit weird. The novelty will quickly turn to distrust, and it probably should.

Is there another way?

There are supracultral truths about the state of humanity in general, and young people in particular that are always true.

Human beings are

  • Made in God’s image
  • Damaged by the fall
  • In need of a saviour
  • Longing to give and receive love
  • Built for relationship
  • Want opportunities to change the world
  • Need to be heard and understood
  • Fighting with identify and character
  • Have an eternal destiny
  • Are afraid of lots of stuff

The list goes on. What else can you add to it?

Being relevant starts with treating young people like people, not as some social experiment that you can tune into if you read the right books and watch the right youtube channels. Although it is a great idea to know what’s happening in their world and be able to point back to it ‘relevantly’ in your conversations and teaching, that will only go so deep or last so long. There are other ways to be relevant and lasting.

  • Active listeners are relevant
  • Honest and transparent storytellers are relevant
  • Humble people are relevant
  • Compassionate and interested adults are relevant
  • People who create situations for voices to be heard are relevant
  • Those who ask good questions, yet don’t have all the answers are relevant
  • Those who talk clearly from the Bible are relevant (after all, it was written to every generation)
  • Those who constantly mention Jesus; his life, death, and resurrection are relevant

So lets know whats going on in ‘youth culture(s)’ for sure – but even more than that, let’s actually try and be genuinely relevant to young people as people.

Why Fivefold Ministry matters to youth ministry – by Jonny Price

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‘Fivefold Ministry’  is a concept that can be found in Ephesians 4:11. In it Paul outlines five roles Jesus has given the Body of Christ to help it to mature, these are:

  • Apostles – Pioneers of new work
  • Evangelists – Fresh communicators of the gospel
  • Prophets – Those who speak out about spirituality and the realities of life
  • Pastors – Nurturers, carers and protectors of the people
  • Teachers – Communicators of the wisdom of God

Each of these roles are responsible for a different aspect of the growth of the Body of Christ. Often this idea is applied to leadership of our Churches, but rarely are those same principles carried across to our youth ministry. I believe that they should be, and that if they are, they can have a great impact upon our work.

Here are four important lessons for youth workers to take from the ‘Fivefold Ministry’ concept.

  1. It reminds us that not all youth ministry is evangelism.

Often, the stereotypical youth worker’s gifts are primarily the same as an evangelist, with a lesser emphasis on the pastor role. There is nothing wrong with this, as long as the ministry these youth workers build is not based solely on their gifts alone.

A youth ministry based on evangelism may be great for reaching out, but how do we then build up the faith of the young people we work with beyond their initial commitment to Jesus? A youth ministry based on teaching may be great for developing faith, and teaching the Bible, but how do we then make sure that our young people are being taken care of?

If we build a team of people with a variety of gifts, then our ministries will be able to evangelise, develop faith, care for young people, and equip them to do likewise all at the same time.

  1. It helps stop our ministries becoming stagnant.

If we have a team of people who all have the same gifts, play the same role, or place their emphasis and passions in the same place, then it won’t be long until that ministry becomes stagnant, relative and misweighted.

If, however, we have a balanced team made up of different roles and gifts, then there will be a constant, healthy tension between the different emphases of the ministry. This means that the team will always be pushing towards new ideas, exploring blind spots, and growing deeper in what they are doing.

  1. It opens the door to new types of youth worker

If we build our teams of people who think and act the same as us, then how are we showing the diversity of the Body of Christ? We risk inadvertently closing the ministry door to people who don’t act the same way as us, or who see things a bit differently.

If we are able to show the diversity inherent in Fivefold Ministry, then we will demonstrate a far more holistic ministry to our young people, and allow them to step into it themselves.

  1. It allows our young people to take ownership.

One of the common misunderstandings about Fivefold Ministry is that it only applies to leaders. If instead we approach it as being applicable to the whole Body of Christ, then we will allow our young people to take ownership of our ministry too, and of their own faith development. We will start talking about faith more, inviting our young people to be a part of it. As a result, this will help them to see how they can live out different aspects of faith, because they will see these different aspects in us.

This is exciting! Imagine a youth ministry where you don’t need to meet up with young people week in and week out to see how they are doing because you know that through the relationships they have with each other, they are being taken care of. Or imagine that you know that the teaching you give at youth group is less essential because they are teaching each other from the Bible.

Brining it all together

Yes, the Fivefold Ministry comes with problems, like all good and new concepts do. Working with people who have different visions of ministry to us causes conflict and strain. But with proper communication, even the conflict can be an amazing tool for development.

Let’s diversify our leaders and volunteers, so that they represent the diversity of the Body of Christ, and so through that diversity, our young people can experience and know more of the love of God, and the plan that He has for their lives. Surely this is the point of everything we do.

A Cantankerous Old Man’s Guide To Youth Work

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When I was 15 one of my best friends was a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, called Cliff.

Being paralysed from the waist down after a bad car accident, Cliff hadn’t left his flat in 10 years. He was old, he was moody, he was racist, he smoked like a chimney (not just tobacco!), he swore like a sailor and drunk like a very thirsty fish.

Why on earth was this cantankerous old man one of my best friends? 2 reasons:

  1. He just liked having me around!

Cliff took a genuine interest in the things I cared about. He would just sit and listen to me talk about guitars and computer games. He even bought me a large power kite one day after hearing me rave about them. He didn’t try to be like me, or pretend to be ‘one of the guys,’ he just genuinely cared about me and really did like spending time with me.

When I had major surgery, he got Iceland Home Delivery to send six large crates of junk food to my hospital bed (which fed all three Children’s wards in Blackpool Victoria Hospital). When I turned 16, he paid a taxi driver to bring a magnum bottle of champagne to my front door. What a freaking legend!

  1. He gave me responsibility.

Cliff allowed me to rebuild his computers, cook him meals and do his shopping. I would tidy his house, sort his mail and charge the batteries in his wheelchair. I never had any doubt that I was valuable to him.

By the end of his life Social Services would no longer work with him. He would rage and throw things at them. I had the keys to his flat, became his next of kin and his sole carer. When Cliff died I organised his funeral – at 17. His estranged family didn’t come.

Short Safeguarding Note: For those of you with Spidey senses tingling (rightly so), my parents kept up a relationship with Cliff themselves and kept a closer eye than I was aware of.

 

Cliff’s Guide to Youth Work

In terms of healthy boundaries, this might not be the ideal job description for a youth worker. It does however, give us two very clear principles for youth work:

  1. Show young people that you genuinely value your time with them.

Don’t fake it, don’t milk it and don’t try to be one of them. Just like them, and like hanging out with them. Show them extravagant acts of love. Don’t know how – here’s 55 ideas!

  1. Give them clear genuine responsibility.

Young people don’t want to be consumers, they are wired for producing. Simple entertainment-driven youth work is now going to way of the dodo – and good riddance to bad sugar-fueld nonsense!

Get them to run things, to work on things, to lead things, to learn things, to research things, to design their own programs, to tell you what they want to learn about and to help teach each other. Let them know that they’re valuable because they are valuable, not because they boost your youth group numbers.

Let’s learn from Cliff and take the words value, extravagance and genuineness to their youth work ideals.

Thank you Cliff.

Compassion Ministry, The Future of Christian Youth Work

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Christian Youth Work is still in essence, a new principle for Churches. Unlike other areas of pastoral Church work, it hasn’t accumulated centuries of wisdom to stand upon. This is probably why it only takes a few years to be considered a ‘veteran youth leader’.

At it’s most basic level, working with young adults and children with specific needs is as old as the world itself. However, embracing youth work as project ministry with clearly defined parameters, staff, budgets and gift sets outside the immediate purview of Church elders and parents is certainly still in infancy.

As with anything in sapling stages, we must be continually open to various ideas to make sure we’re not growing against a wonky stake. A forced change in shape at this stage will simply mean deformity later.

Christian Youth Work in the west has cycled around clubs, events, mentoring, short term mission projects and in more mature ministries youth leadership. Generally we transition through incarnational youth work, into funnel models of youth work aiming at two ends of a spectrum: the large crowd event and the small discipleship group. Usually we stick a middle ground youth club in to create the funnel link (and many of us don’t go further than this). If we are developing both ends of this spectrum with reasonable consistency and are keeping a mid-layer youth group solvent then we give ourselves a hearty pat on the back and start training others to do the same.

“Compassion ministries are driven by the conviction that Jesus meets needs, heals hurts and brings the kingdom to earth – not just to church.”

Developing Unease
This has led to increasing unease in the Youth Ministry world. With further distance between the polarising worlds of church and culture, and a mighty drop off of young people church attendance we are starting to find holes in these classical methods.

For instance we keep meeting young people who really need something different and something more substantial than what these well managed systems can produce – and even more frightening we keep not meeting young people in general because they have no connection point within the models we manage.

This has led many over the last few years to wisely abandon classical youthwork in pursuit of specific mission focused projects working with marginalised young people, young people in poverty, young people from other faiths and young people with various behavioural and social difficulties.

“The future of Youth Ministry is, I believe in these compassion ministries.”

This is a colossal step in the right direction! These are compassion ministries – ministries driven by the conviction that Jesus meets needs, heals hurts and brings the kingdom to earth (not just to church).

Compassion Ministry
The future of Youth Ministry is, I believe in these compassion ministries. I want to challenge all of us to step out in faith and think about the following list, and I’d like to urge Bible Colleges and training centres to teach these things at the highest possible level:

– Support groups for those will mental health issues

– Mentoring, Counseling and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

– Art and creative therapy

– Stress and anger Management

– Conflict resolution and mediation

– Social Enterprises to get young people vocationally trained for work

– Social Enterprises to teach young people fundamentals of emerging adult life (hygiene, social interactions, literacy etc.)

– Integration and support for those with learning and social difficulties

– Social work projects for whole families

– Parenting and ‘big brother / big sister’ training

– Local social action groups

– Trusts and funds to support those 13-18% of families that are living in genuine poverty

Compassion Ministries meet genuine needs, make authentic connections and drive holistic community. They are the modern equivalent (along with others) of ‘having everything in common’ that the church in the book of Acts teaches to us.

If I could take 5 years out to ‘retrain’ as a youth worker I would study law, cbt, and conflict resolution. I would get accredited as a counsellor and mediator and would start setting up social support groups in every school and hospital I could find.

The First Steps
I have some amazing leaders who naturally get this.

One of my leaders is passionate about mental health resources for young people. I’m convinced she will do enormous things in this direction and she is starting by simply chatting, asking questions and studying what is currently missing in her local context.

Another of my leaders works as a teaching assistant in a local school for young people with various learning and social difficulties. Every morning he packs cereal bars in his bag and gives them to young people who haven’t had any breakfast.

This is the future of youth work. This is how we must move forward. Small acts of compassion aimed at meeting genuine needs in young people. Any youth work strategy that does not include these things in the next few years will be as irrelevant as the dinosaurs.

Youthwork in Wales… some thoughts

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Youthwork in Wales. After just 3 and a half years working in Wales I’m anything but an expert! I am, however, a learner, and I’ve put together these quick thoughts as a result of my own growing observation and conversations in the Welsh-ministry world. I would of course heartily welcome any feedback from experienced Welsh pastors and youth workers in order to grow and adapt these thoughts. I am holding them loosely and (I hope) with an open hand.

Most of my experience is in North Wales… creeping into Mid Wales, with very little in South Wales (other than some epic holidays and knowing some amazing people). So I guess I’m mostly talking about the North here.

I’m an Englishman living in Wales. My ancestry is Welsh, I became a Christian in the town which I now work, and I am in love with the culture here and never felt more at home. I am, however, definitely English (watching the World Cup proved that!) – so do take my observations lightly.

 

Big, Whopping Preliminary Thought:

– Wales really is a whole other country! Let’s treat it that way. I have another post on this topic here.

 

What We Have

– Wales is beautiful! I have a friend who has been working in Wales for a long time who once said ‘when God made the Earth He started with Wales.’ I think my friend was right! Wales is gorgeous, rich, and diverse – and perfect geographically for outdoor pursuits! There is lots available (mountaineering, canoeing, climbing, surfing) within easy driving reach of each other and easy reach of town bases. This is one of the key reasons that Welsh Youth Camps are so successful.

– Legacy. There is a proud and broad Church and missionary history in Wales. There are many countries (such as India and South Korea) that still view Wales as their spiritual home. Don’t forget the epic Welsh revival(s) just over a century ago, and the founding of charities like Scripture Union and The International Beach Mission. This gives people huge pride in – and openness to – ministry, particularly with a view to mission.

– Unity. Another friend I’ve made here settled in Wales after working for years globally with people like Billy Graham. He told me just last week that he hasn’t seen such an unprecedented level of churches and charities working together anywhere else in the entire world… Go Wales! There are disagreements and factions of course, but when it comes to mission there is a huge willingness to pool resources and march forward. I spoke at a camp last week that had people involved from Young Life, Urban Saints, and YFC which was attended by a huge range of denominations. There was no ‘look at us’ and a whole load of ‘look at JESUS!’

– Multicultural… but not like what you’re thinking. Wales’s as a culture is split several ways, but what you really notice is the incredible Celtic heritage bleeding through the older Welsh communities, particularly from the West Coast. This heritage is spiritually aware, open and ready to hear about the mysteries of God in a unique way. The Welsh language is also incredibly rich, broad and adds a whole host of considerations for ministry.

– Community driven. Much of North Wales still feels like a village community. This bleeds through into Church and School culture and makes community projects and particularly events that cross the age spectrum work really well.

– Love of creative arts. Wales has an ancient history with art and creativity, and this forms many of the foundation blocks of its culture. Art galleries, poetry, folk music, architecture, sculpture and theater are mainstays of just about every Welsh settlement – and should be taken seriously for Welsh ministry.

– The highest poverty in the UK. Almost a quarter, 23% against England’s 22% and Scotland’s 18%. When you consider population sizes that’s huge!About 700,000 people in Wales living under the breadline. Further, the cuts have damaged the Welsh working poor more than the rest of the UK. By 2015-16 tax payers in Wales will be paying £900 million a year for benefit reforms.

– Highest Child Poverty in the UK. About 15% live in what’s described as severe poverty in Wales. Read more about poverty in Wales here and here.

 

What We Don’t Have

– Clinical resources and support groups. There are, for instance, no clearly advertised self harm support networks across the whole of North Wales. Waiting lists for NHS counsellors are huge, and there are few local competitive free-lancers. There are a lot of emotional needs that go unaddressed in North Wales because of the lack of support.

*edit (2015) – Mind, the Mental Health Charity, are pushing hard to make inroads to remedy some of the above.

– Up-to-date First Language Welsh Resources. There are groups like SU who are working hard to remedy this, but much of the Welsh resources for young people are old! Google Translate and Babblefish simply do not work for Welsh! There is a huge need for properly translated modern songs, Bibles and youth resources. This is a need, but an incredibly niche huge market, so good luck trying to convince the publishers!

– Crowds. For some perspective, North Wales has the same population as Sheffield. I once tried to run a crowd event just for Christian young people in a North Wales town where I had only 20 or so show up. This was really disappointing until I realised that those 20 constituted about 80% of the Christian youth in that town! If you want to run crowd events across a larger area though, you are plagued by geography. We need something other than standard crowd events to build wider community here.

– Large school districts. The largest areas of North Wales only have a couple of Schools serving them, and in some cases these school populations have been coached in from miles away. Cross-school based projects are going to struggle, as is any group or project that depends on multiple feeder schools.

– Cities. OK so we’ve got a couple… 6 of them. In the North we’ve got two: Bangor (population 17,575) and St. Asaph (population 3,491). Both of them are 20 minutes away from my base in Llandudno (population 20,710 – almost bigger than both cities put together.) Considering that there are 51 cities in England (average size about 200,000), it should become instantly clear that this is a totally different world! City ministry models in England are not going to help us much here.

– Motorways. So this sounds like a small thing, but in order to get from North Wales to South Wales the quickest, easiest way is to leave the country, travel down the M6 then come back in… Yeah. The lack of mobility infrastructure (& the fact that mid Wales is incredibly sparsely populated) really makes Wales two countries.

 

What We Don’t Need

English City Driven Youth Strategies. Even in the few years I’ve been here I’ve seen several English City youth workers come to the area, try to start a big event only to see it pop and fizzle. Then they move away. I’ve come from 7 years working in London and I’m still saying it! We don’t have feeder schools, we don’t have several key massive youth groups, we don’t have mainstay youth projects and we don’t have the resources available to English cities. We also have a very different geographical town structure than City clusters. Please think contextually. Think about Wales.

Events, projects and physical resources that are crowd-drawing, resource-draining, and lacking follow-up that are created without a proper understanding of the context are not going to make disciples here. They’ll only make even more church debt! It’s just bad stewardship.

 

What We Really DO Need

Methods and praxis for developing mission strategy in schools and a mechanism for rolling that out more widely.

More resources in terms of cash and people to invest incarnationally and intentionally in the area – particularly in para-church projects.

Welsh speakers working alongside veteran youth workers to come up with innovative, fresh and culturally relevant youth work resources and Bible translations.

Churches, cities and towns to pray for us intentionally as a country.

Churches and charities to step up with their resources and take risks by setting up counselling and support networks for emotional and mental health.

To maximize the use of our pre-existing, well established camps and to work them into our church youth strategies.

To keep working in partnership and unity with various other groups and to pool our resources – it’s about the name of Jesus after all!

Do We Really NEED Another Youth Event?

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Do we really need another youth event?

I know they’re fun (if you’re an extrovert) and they’re cool (if you’re a faux-hipster) and an ego-bump (if you’re a youthworker) and they look like you’re doing something (if you’re a trustee) – but do we really need another one?

A big flash-bang-wallop youth crowd event is something like a rite of passage for a youth worker: ‘you just haven’t made it until you’ve done one!’ You haven’t properly broken in your adrenaline-soaked, caffeine-fueled, slightly-demented Youthworker brain until you scored over 100 on the attendee register.

It also needs to be big – with big names and big people and big broken guitar strings and big florescent jackets and big lanyards… oooo the lanyards. It needs to have an explosive name, like … explode! Or a cool revitalising, flavored water sounding name like … revitalise (spare no creative expense here).

 A big flash-bang-wallop youth crowd event is something like a rite of passage for a youth worker

How Long Can We Keep It Up?

After the dying glow sticks are cleaned away and all the lollypops have been swapped for fake email addresses; after you’ve had the requisite three weeks to sleep it off – and the requisite shouting match with your treasurer about your doctored event-expenses; after the event is done and dusted – what do you do then?

How many of those young people do you ever see again? How many ‘seeds’ were really planted? How long can you keep competing with the ‘youthphoria’ nights that the local nightclub keeps running? How long can you keep telling people, we really need this event! How long can you keep telling yourself that this is what successful Youth Ministry looks like?

Smelling The Rat

I was brought up in event-driven youthwork culture. My youth group was a youth church with full-on band, lights and comfy chairs. We regularly ran big nights with famous Christian bands and speakers. We got shed loads of young people there and had a whole bunch of leaders too. I eventually became a leader in this setup, carried on the tradition and furthered it by working with events across London. But somewhere the novelty wore off, and the young people started to smell the cheep, imitation rat.

How long can you keep telling yourself that this is what successful Youth Ministry looks like?

My Beefs With Crowd Events

Don’t get me wrong – youth events can do things that other programs can’t… with some thought. There is a place for them… sometimes. Some kind of crowd interaction is needed in a successful, healthy youth ministry… somehow, somewhere.

My big beefs though, are these:

  1. They are often flat-packed, copies of something else with no evidence of any thought put into the local context at all.
  2. They drain things: people, money, resources, time, effort, program shapes. You need to have a Godly approach to stewardship but crowd events tend to throw this out of the window.
  3. They only cater to part of the young people population and psyche – often the popular-hungry extrovert. Whereas the solitude-seeking introvert is hiding in a corner wanting the floor to swallow them up.
  4. They often don’t fit into a broader youth work strategy of followup and discipleship.
  5. They often steal from from other groups without thought for their own programs or relationships.
  6. They tend to present a dishonest view of the Gospel though the sugar-vibe. That’s lots of crazy, hyped up experiences that model ‘look, this is what Christianity really looks like’. Reality check: it doesn’t
  7. They thrive off crowd-driven mentality, but they seek individualistic responses. Want to guess which overrules the other?
  8. They can encourage passive ‘entertain me’ young people, rather than productive, participatory, experience seeking young people.
  9. They often compete/dilute with secular consumerist culture which simply does it better.
  10. They mostly simply don’t work. On their own, with no thought to context or strategy they fumble, burn out and die – taking people with them.

 

So Is There No Place For Them?

Of course there is. My problem with events is that most that I’ve seen advertised to my young people, and most that I’ve worked with are cookie cutter and haven’t come out of seeking to fill a real intentional need.

“The gathering of worshipers is an amazing missional tool – when done right.”

Crowd events can be amazing when they create safe space to develop family, mimic the celebration of heaven and seek to give secular culture a run for its money. The gathering of worshipers is an amazing missional tool – when done right.

 

So How Do We Do Events Right?

Start by asking the big questions:

  1. Do we really need this right now? // Is this where we are in our Youth Ministry Journey?
  2. Do we have a core group of developed relationships with young people to build out from? // Are our current young people going to grow though this in fellowship, worship, prayer, mission and discipleship?
  3. Has God given us the resources needed to create this properly? // What other opportunities are we inadvertently closing the door on?
  4. For what purpose do we want to run this // What need is it fulfilling?
  5. Have we talked to local pastors and youth workers about potential harmony with their programs? // Is this crowd event genuinely serving the unity of those who are working with members of that crowd?
  6. What else could we do creatively with the resources that we have? // Are their other, creative options that better fit the people and context that we haven’t considered?
  7. How do we intend on doing followup? // And who are we doing that with (see 5.)?
  8. Do young people here really care who these ‘Christian big names’ are? // What else could we spend the money on?
  9. Are we trying to represent who we are? // Are we trying to use this as an opportunity to repackage/reinvent who we are?
  10. Are there already things in the area that we can partner with? // What about other things that will be sucked dry if we don’t partner with them?
  11. How will the Gospel be presented and how will other elements help or hinder this? // Whoops – did we think about presenting the Gospel clearly?

 

There’s obviously a bunch of other bits n’ pieces to throw in, but I felt a wee bit ranty – so this is all you get! Enjoy 😉

‘What Soul Survivor Got Wrong’… a missed opportunity

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(First written in 2012, edited 2014

(more recent post: ‘The Christology of Soul Survivor)

Last year at Soul Survivor a very young (like 15 yo) member of the prayer or ‘enabling’ team kept showing up whenever anyone in my group was being prayed for and he had a couple of bad habits. First, he pushed! He would stand in front of the person he was praying for and give them a little nudge in the chest or just apply continuous pressure until they went down. As soon as they hit the deck he moved on to ‘get’ somebody else.

The other thing he did – which I found even more annoying – is he’d tell you that you were praying wrong. So he would physically move your hand to ‘more powerful praying positions.’ I was praying for one of my young people one evening and he came, moved my hand from the young person’s shoulder to their chest, but assured me that ‘everything else you’re doing is great!’ I wanted to ask whether or not the Holy Spirit has a better line of fire now my hand was out of the way?

I thought the enabling team was there to make sure groups we’re looking after each other and blessing what God was doing – not interrupting experienced group leaders to choreograph hand positions and push people over who looked a wee bit wobbly?

Why The Crit?… Hater!

I don’t want to come off as overly critical (too late right?). Soul Survivor is great! It has an amazing legacy and done some incredible ministry. I’ve been taking youth groups for years and we always get a lot out of it. We meet God there and are blessed by powerful, Spirit-led ministry. I respect the people running it and it forms an effective part of my annual youth work discipleship and mission strategy. But there is stuff that Soul Survivor has done (and does do) that has caused issues for young people that I’ve worked with over the years.

Soul Survivor wields an enormous amount of influence in the youth work world and has developed a large proportion of youth leaders in my generation. Big influence means big responsibility, and even though I know they get lots of unhelpful criticism – they need to set the example for how to properly evaluate themselves in humility and be clear about their mistakes, as well as their many successes.

The Opportunity Andy Was Given

I was thrilled therefore when in 2011, Andy Croft was given a huge opportunity to talk at the Youth Work Summit on ‘What Soul Survivor got Wrong.’ This was an opportunity to cut through all the crazy criticism they get and say, ‘here’s how we see it and how we’re trying to grow as a movement and serve your youth groups better – we know we haven’t always gotten it right and we’re aware of specific areas to develop and here’s how we’ve been doing it.’

Unfortunately, this is not the talk Andy gave. The ten minute message took on a tone that straddled the lines between subversively defensive and so broad that you couldn’t really blame them for anything. I’ve got mounds of respect for Crofty, but this really was a missed opportunity to set an example of how to engage critique well. The only real conclusion I was able to draw was that Soul Survivor does not effectively evaluate its ministry, doesn’t have a language developed to talk about its issues in public, and is not aware of specific areas that they need to grow in.

What Andy said

Andy talked about the initial phone call where he was given this opportunity, which he seemed a bit upset by. He moved on to say he realized the importance of evaluating ministry and so would give it a shot.

1. Evaluate ministries against their aims

He explained that ministries should be evaluated against what they are trying to achieve – which is right as long as that the aims are specific enough to be valuable. The aim Andy gave for Soul Survivor was “to reach young people and to equip them to live the whole of their lives for Jesus.”

This is a good aim – but is practically the same broad aim of every other youth ministry in the Christian world. How can we effectively evaluate against that? I guess we can in a very broad way, but such as a single aim, it’s very difficult to come up with specifics.

A better way of saying it might be “to reach young people and to equip them to live the whole of their lives for Jesus – by developing an event that works alongside churches to provide a worship and teaching experience that motivates, inspires, encourages direction change and sets trends for Christian youth culture.” That would have been more of a  benchmark to measure.

As it is, using such a broad aim means we have no effective tool to measure Soul Survivor’s success, or of course its issues.

2. What we can’t do

Andy continued by saying there are lots of things that Soul Survivor cannot do and shouldn’t be held responsible for. Again he’s right! Understanding the resource scope of what you’re doing is simply a smart thing to do!

He said that ‘As an event, we cannot do discipleship or effective followup.’ And fair enough – that’s true too. But if a key, pivotal part of Soul Survivor’s aim is to ‘equip young people to live their whole lives for Jesus’, isn’t that the heartbeat of discipleship? If we measure Soul Survivor against it’s given aim, then is it perhaps missing out something significant here?

More importantly though, Andy just took Soul Survivor off the hook. With a hugely broad aim, a tip of the hat to ‘well we can’t do everything’ and no specifics of what they can and should do we’re left with nothing but straw men and meanies like me saying ‘hang on a minute?!?’

3. No history to measure by

Andy said that as Soul Survivor is only ’19 years young’ it’s harder to evaluate how successful it’s been. Under that logic though the vast majority of the UK’s youth ministry to can’t be clearly evaluated or held to account either. Nor can – as my wife pointed out – most of our marriages.

Because of Soul Survivor operating over the last two decades, Andy says that the group to look at are the 20s and 30s of today’s church and culture. Andy makes some insightful and important observations here: 20s and 30s are missing from our churches and sexual ethics in that age group is confused at best.

Because of these two points Andy says Soul Survivor could have done better; particularly showing more clearly the cost of following Jesus and teaching better about relationships. And good on him – yes Soul Survivor can take a measure of responsibility here and should work on those two areas. However, so can just about everything else in society – and again, are these not primarily discipleship areas?

These are not Soul Survivor specific points. All of us – education, church, politics, the leadership of previous generations – have had a hand to play in today’s 20s and 30s culture. Even though I share Andy’s passion to teach the cost of following Jesus and be clear on sexual ethics – if that’s the only thing Soul Survivor takes away from two decades of youth event ministry we’re going to be found seriously wanting.

So what did Soul Survivor get wrong?

This is harsh, but it’s hard to take away anything of significance, or at least specificity, from what Andy shared. Andy ended with a short ‘what we’ve got right’ section. If I’m honest, it sounded like practiced criticism-rebuffing rather than effective evaluation or humble honesty.

I’ve not yet read or heard anything from Soul Survivor that demonstrates a language for evaluation and improvement. It must be there because Soul Survivor has developed and has got better every year. From this message four years ago though, however, it looks like Soul Survivor still thinks of itself as the underdog trying to get a seat at the big boys table.

What we need from you Soul Survivor

Soul Survivor please, you need to set the example and lead the way. Help us on the ground know that even you get it wrong and show us how to effectively evaluate, own up to, and change our own shortcomings. We need you to set the example!

Where do I think Soul Survivor may have got it wrong

I think Soul Survivor has got some specifics to answer for. I’m sure they have answers to some of these, different opinions on others, and have better insight for some I’ve missed.

– It’s part in the increased commercialization of Christian media
– The consumerist approach to the events that only nominally (or awkwardly) create space for genuine community participation
– The events effectively replace many youth groups short term mission trips that always used to be the first weeks of summer
– Copycat events all over the UK trying to replicate the Soul Survivor feeling, splitting churches and keeping young people in youth groups rather than growing into full Church life – not to mention draining resources and people
– Assuming everyone wants to be the happy, sweaty extrovert for the week
– Not always explaining the Gospel before asking people to respond to it by becoming a Christian
– Creating a generation (my generation) of youth leaders who think the Soul Survivor formula is the way to run week-in-week-out youth work
– An odd approach to the distinct parts of lament and joy
– An energy sapping approach to spirituality that doesn’t take physical health seriously enough in emotional encounters
– Although getting better, a poor respect historically for Bible Teaching
– Inspiring people to be on stage rather than on the front lines (made better with Soul Action’s work)
– Perhaps not properly training or supervising their enabling team.

I want to end by saying I have masses of respect for Soul Survivor – but I want them to lead too. They are not a reactionary group any more – they are mainstream and need to be taking their place as servant-hearted, wise and humble leaders in the UK Youth Ministry scene.