How large is the average UK Christian youth group?

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Now that is the question isn’t is! How big is the average youth group? I don’t mean how many young people are there averaged out across the number of churches which exist in the UK – as most churches don’t have any youth provision. The question is, of the Church-based youth groups that exist, what is their average size?

There is very little actual research into this, and what there is seems questionable. Let’s start with one such piece of research from a reputable source.

Kageler’s Study

A few days ago, I was put onto a cross-cultural comparative study of youth work by Len Kageler[1] who found that the average youth group size in the UK in 2006 was between 50-180 young people.

Shocked? I was too. Even generously speaking – and including children – this would make the average Christian youth group bigger than the average church. Let’s spend a little time with this figure and see how likely it is.

Kageler’s methodology sampled youth workers who are part of the International Association of the Study of Youth Ministry (IASYM)[2]. This is a group that I’m a part of and it represents those in youth work who are actively involved in academic research. This means Kageler didn’t sample ‘typical’ youth workers, most of whom in the UK have no formal training whatsoever. This also excludes the majority of youth work in the UK that is run by volunteers.

Using surveymonkey he received 303 responses from across 24 countries. We don’t know how many responses came from each country, but taking the average, this would mean he received 10-15 responses from each country. This is clearly far too small a sample, and it looks to me like he happened upon some larger youth groups.

The issue with 50-180, of course, would mean that the ‘average’ youth group is larger than the ‘average’ church. To get to that figure we’d have to assume that either 1. Most Christian youth work happens outside the sphere of churches, or 2. Christian youth work is limited to just 10% (or less) of churches.

Exploring a better model

In 2018, the Church of England reported that the usual Sunday attendance was 703,000[3] people. Across roughly 16,043 churches and cathedrals, this makes the average attendance 44 people per church. Of this, 13% were children under the age of 16, or about 7 per church. As only 25% of these Churches have any youth provision, this would mean that the likely average across those 25% of churches is 22 young people. So, 25% have 22 young people under the age of 16, and 75% don’t have any at all.

Assuming that this is too stark, and that there would be some bleed through of Church of England churches with no youth provision but who still some young people attending – the average ‘youth group’ size in these churches would be around 18 young people, aged 0 – 16. Of course, this still means most churches don’t have any young people at all.

There is also a significant drop off of young people between the ages of 11-14. Only about 26% of those young people aged 0 – 16 noted above would be older than 11. This would make the average youth group in the Church of England would be about 5 young people. Perhaps 5 – 10 allowing for 17 and 18 year olds that aren’t part of these figures.

The Church of England make up nearly a third of all church attendance, but using similar available figures for Baptist, URC, Catholic, Pentecostal, Orthodox, independent, and ‘other’ churches, we should be able to put together a reasonable figure.

It’s hard to find data, but we can add to this that the Christian Youth Work Consortium in 2016[4] found 7192 13-19 year olds in the Methodist church were attending on a Sunday morning, but 67,000 attending weekly activities. This (according to Piggot, 2017)[5] would be across 4512 Methodist churches. Likely (using similar data to the Church of England), this means those young people will be spread out among fewer churches, making this about 10-40 young people involved in regulated weekly activities – however only 10% of this would be on a Sunday.

Limitations of this model

Some of this data goes back as far as 2005[6], but mostly church attendance trends downwardly. The Church of England, for instance, had an average attendance of 54 in 2005, but 44 in 2018. So, any figure we come up with is likely to be generous.

Much (but not all) of the data is also only pertinent to England, and misses Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Also, this data doesn’t look at all at parachurch groups like Youth for Christ, YoungLife, YWAM, Scripture Union, or Urban Saints. It also doesn’t make a clear distinction as to what constitutes a ‘youth group.’ It’s likely that much of the figure from the Methodist churches above includes larger one-off events or schools work. For that reason we should err on the cautious side.

It’s also worth noting that we stream young people into age categories. So often youth ministries have separate 11-13s and a 14-18s groups. In these common cases, a youth group may actually be two groups. This also doesn’t account for funnel models of larger youth groups where there can be as many as seven different groups/projects based on group aims or maturities.

Finally, some churches have larger average sizes but make up a much smaller proportion of church attendance across the UK. So Pentecostal churches, for instance, have an average attendance size of 129, but only make up 9% of Christian worshippers across the UK.

With all those provisions, let’s try to estimate an average.

So, what’s the answer?

With this in mind, we are able to come up with a broad, but I think likely figure.

I believe that the average youth group size across the UK is between 5 and 20 young people aged 11-18. These groups are mostly limited to 25% of the church.

Splitting up the age categories, the average is probably 5 – 12 young people per youth group.

 

** Additional note suggested after publication:

For an excellent study on the impact of vocational youth, children’s and families workers has on youth group attendance in the Church of England, see:

Francis, L. J., Howell, D., Hill, P. & McKenna U. (2019) ‘Assessing the Impact of a Paid Children, Youth, or Family Worker on Anglican Congregations’ in England, Journal of Research on Christian Education, 28:1, 43-50, DOI: 10.1080/10656219.2019.1593267

They found that the average youth/children’s group in the Church of England contained 0 – 10 young people, but saw an increase of around 7 when a vocational worker was added; making it 0 – 17 young people aged 0-18. This would be consistent with my findings above.

 

Notes:

[1] Kageler, L. (2010) ‘A cross national analysis of church based youth ministries’, The Journal of Youth Ministry, 8(2), pp. 49–68

[2] https://iasym.net

[3] Church of England (2018) Statistics for Mission. (Research and Statistics, Church House, London), available at: https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-10/2018StatisticsForMission_0.pdf

[4] Christian Youth Work Consortium (2016) Report of the consultation: Christian youth work and ministry across the UK, available at: https://www.cte.org.uk/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=182924

[5] Piggot, A (2017), Statistics for Mission, available at: https://www.methodist.org.uk/downloads/conf-2017-42-Statistics-for-Mission.pdf

[6] Evangelical Alliance (2005) English Church Census 2005. Available at: https://www.eauk.org/church/research-and-statistics/english-church-census.cfm

 

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

Should we hold youth meetings in church buildings?

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Historic church buildings are an important British heritage, and a legacy of the established church of Christendom. But are they the best place for a youth event?

When Millennials were the young people of the day, the answer would almost certainly have been no. The arguably masculine authoritarian architecture mixed with the over-spilling soreness of growing up with GenX and Baby Boomer parents who were made to go to church by their parents have been a dead turnoff for many. This is largely why the youth events of the 90s we’re moved to school halls and community centres, and why many Millennial church plants have gone to pubs and houses.

But we don’t work with Millennials, do we?

Are GenZ as freaked out by our ancient church buildings as we were growing up? Or are church buildings just another detached source of intrigue in the same way a Mosque or a Temple would be? Are they, as Mark Griffiths might say, ‘three generations removed’ from the bitterness of the anti-church generations? Are we at risk of reading our own prejudices into the cultural whims of today’s teenagers? Are there perhaps benefits to running youth events in church buildings now?

As with all things culture and history – it’s probably not that simple! Let’s start with some important background.

History, Wealth and Power

Throughout Christendom historically, the Church has asserted itself on the landscape by imposing centralised places of worship. Back in the 4th Century, Roman Emperor Constantine not only enabled Christians to worship publicly, but also gave them resources to do so. He returned property that was previous confiscated by Emperor Diocletian, granted tax exemptions, and built basilicas throughout the empire – often financed by pillaging pagan temples. This planted seeds that largely continued throughout Europe until now.

In Britain today, the established Church of England is still one of the wealthiest landholders with a £2 billion property portfolio and 100,000 acres of land across England and Wales. This makes up a significant portion of their £6.7 billion in declared assets. Their investments have returned almost 20% and are up from £4.3 billion in the last ten years. The Church also enjoy generous tax benefits on these holdings. Early Christendom advocated the Jewish practice of giving alms for the remission of sins which ensured a continual flow of wealth to the church that continues in some form today. ‘Even the most humble members of the Christian community were involved in this perpetual mobilisation of wealth.’ (Brown, 2013, The rise of Western Christendom: triumph and diversity, A.D. 200-1000 p.69).

The cultural conception that “church just wants our money” comes from a quantitive reality; one that is arguably an easier position to argue than “churches serve the poor,” however true it might be. Throughout the Middle Ages there was a stark contrast between the wealth within and the poverty outside imperialistic church buildings. The steps of Cathedrals today, especially in larger European cities, are still peppered with the poor and homeless.

In 2015, Housing Justice lobbied the Church of England to sell its underused properties to respond to the housing crisis, issuing a report stating, ‘The Church cannot speak out on this or any other issue without putting its own house in order.’

Church = The Building

‘Church’ has become synonymous with buildings rather than the gathered body of believers. There is an implicit idea that to meet with God means you must go to an established church in a recognisable building, and to be a Christian is to simply be a regular church attender in said building. In 2015, however, the Church of England reported 1926 closed and repurposed buildings, making the God who resides inside seem irrelevant, inanimate and diminishing.

Even when at the height of relevancy, the aesthetically beautiful and imposingly grand structures only speak, at best, to part of God’s character, or allowed for limited expressions of worship or activities. Ever tried to move some pews for a game of dodgeball?

Church buildings themselves can serve as a monument to an apparently dying religion. They are often crumbling structures which are locked for all but an hour a week surrounded by smaller memorials to the deceased. Inside, older British churches have uncomfortable, formal and awkward interiors that do not exist in any other public building save perhaps a courtroom, theatre, or overcrowded classroom – each designed to give credence to just one voice at a time.

Problems increase when examining the symbols used throughout the buildings, much of which is in memory of someone other than Jesus, including the often-imposing wall of military paraphernalia. The cross is sometimes absent, replaced with coded Christograms such as IHS or XP. The absence of the cross uncovers darker problems, as for some cultures and students of history it represents conquest, not loving self-sacrifice.

Church buildings and symbolism create a plethora of problems for the relationship between church and society today. They can misrepresent Gospel values, exhibit irrelevancy, disable participation, and are sometimes seen as a testimony to mistreatment and imperialistic exclusivism. Although newer church buildings are less of an issue than the many older listed buildings, they are still often built with the same values, and may therefore still trigger the same responses in society.

Do young people care about any of that?

Well, frankly, some will and some wont. However, even if they don’t explicitly care about it, this reality still exists in the zeitgeist that they are growing up in.

That said, it’s not the whole picture.

Institutionalised church has also been an immense source for good in the Western world, and many excellent community-driven churches today still meet in exactly these buildings. A sense of wonder, mystery and the right kind of holy reverence can be modelled by them artistically, helping us with some forms of our worship. As in all things of course, the heart will bleed through the stones, and a genuinely loving church will look loving, even dressed in its granddad’s old suit.

With all that background in mind, here’s a few thoughts on church buildings, venues, and young people:

Authentic people create quality spaces

Young people are attracted to authenticity and genuineness, no matter what it’s dressed in. In the same way that young people respond better to a good listener than they do to someone who has binged the same boxsets, young people will go to events that strike a chord with their values.

Under the traditional attractional models of youth ministry, the venue itself needs to have either an inherent coolness or be an inherent blank canvass. So, cinemas became great youth ministry event venues, and coffeeshops became fabulous regular project spaces.

If young people today can feel the genuineness of the people running it and can find empathy with those people, then they’ll probably rock up anywhere accessible that we hold an event.

Physical spaces are approaches though digital corridors

Much of GenZ’s community building is now done completely separately to actual physical spaces. Relational capital is largely built online through social media spaces. If you can develop a healthy online presence that reaches into the worlds and circles that young people move in, then they are more likely to sound out the venues you use that flow from that.

There’s something in exclusivity here too. If you found a real space through personal online invitation, there’s a feeling of personal importance and specialness that comes with it.

Ancient spaces are expected for mysterious philosophy

The Christian faith is no longer a societal ‘given’ when we’re talking about British religion. It’s not the only classically religious worldview on offer, and possibly not even the most obvious. The little that our young people know about the Christian faith does come with a few interesting expectations.

One of the only things that most young people know about Christianity is that it’s old; so they are expecting something deep, rich, and ancient. With that comes intrigue and interest. And because we’re not trying as hard as we would have been with Millennials to distance ourselves from ‘traditional’ Christian stereotypes, trying to avoid an ‘old’ expectation is not as high a priority as it used to be.

So why not use it? Young people are often looking for a refuge from the fast-paced, modern, inauthentic consumeristic world they live in. We can provide that through relevant authentic ancient spaces that demonstrate a steady depth to the God we worship.

So, are church buildings always a no no? Food for thought, eh?

 

Photo by Karl Fredrickson on Unsplash

Bringing the Bible to Life for Young People – by Tim Adams

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This week, Communications Manager for British Youth for Christ, Tim Adams, tells us about their incredible new resource, ‘The Good News Bible: The Youth Edition’, that was created in partnership with the Bible Society.

At Youth for Christ, we passionately believe that the Bible is foundational to seeing young people’s lives transformed by Jesus. Gen Z is undoubtedly the most biblically illiterate generation in history, so new interactive ways are needed for them to engage with its central truths.

This is why we’ve produced a youth edition of the Good News Bible, in partnership with our friends at the Bible Society. We’re blown away at the response so far, including winning the Christian Resources Together 2019 ‘Bible of the Year’ award!

Good News Bible, The Youth Edition is jam-packed with creative, interactive sections on key subjects, including (among other things) relationships, mental health and exams. It also has over 400 individual interactions throughout. As well as being the incredible Word of God, every other page gives a creative way to best unpack it. This could be a paragraph to colour in, a link to a YouTube video, or a challenge to help young people learn more about what they are reading. [Check out a sample here.]

This award-winning new edition connects directly to our young people’s world. It brings the Bible to life because it allows them to engage (or re-engage) with it in exciting, fresh, creative, thought-provoking, active and visual ways.

Youth for Christ Church Resources Director, Dan Lodge, speaks of his excitement at the recognition the Bible has received. He says, “It adds to the stories we’ve heard of young people coming to know Jesus and falling in love with God’s Word through it.” What’s more, it’s already been translated into other languages so that young people across the globe can engage with it.

Our hope is that this edition will enable a whole generation of young people to connect with the Bible. The results could be phenomenal!

Do you know a young person who struggles to connect with the Bible? Someone who could engage with an interactive edition of God’s Word? Why not buy them a copy or pick up your own Good News Bible, The Youth Edition here.

Tim Adams is the Communications Manager at British Youth for Christ. He is a writer and nerd, whose interests include evangelism, apologetics and biblical theology.

Teenagers and Bereavement: Helping young people process loss

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The reality

Child Bereavement UK report that 70% of schools have a bereaved pupil on their role at any one time, 92% of all young people will experience a significant bereavement before they’re 16, and a parent of a dependent young person dies every 22 minutes.

This is not something that ‘might’ come up at our youth projects. It will come up. Are we ready for it when it does?

When it gets real

After being in youth ministry for just a couple of years, I remember getting a phone call at 6am from a local school in London to explain that a very popular sixteen-year-old boy had tragically lost his life in the night. He had been out with some friends, came home late, and – complicated by an undiagnosed heart problem – choked on vomit in his sleep. I was asked to attend a memorial assembly that very morning, then asked if I would stay behind afterwards to ‘counsel’ some of his friends.

I got up, donned my suit, and headed through the morning London traffic with no idea what to expect. The assembly was heart-breaking. Two thousand students, many openly weeping, a confused and unsure shell of a head teacher trying desperately to find words of comfort, and the boy’s parents, fresh from the hospital on the front row in each other’s arms. It got very real very fast.

You first bucko

When young people are hurting in our youth group, or – tragically – when one of our young people passes away, we get hurt. We too are bereaved. We too are going to feel it and need to work through stages of grief and come to terms with loss. We will feel it too.

Counsellors and missionaries have professional ‘debriefing’ sessions, where they can methodically move burdens away from themselves. After counselling, the counsellor themselves will share the stories from therapy sessions with their supervisor to relieve the weight.

We too need to make sure we are not isolated. Pastors, line-managers, mentors, and friends need to be in place to help us process hurt too. If we don’t do this, we won’t be much help to the young people themselves.

What does loss feel like to a young person?

This is really tricky because every young person is very different. Consider that a 2-5 year old might struggle more with the abstract idea of permeance or finality of death; a 5-8 year old might start processing that permeance, potentially leading to separation anxiety; a 8-12 year old may begin to grapple with their own mortality and fears linked to what if it happens to them; whereas an adolescent is more likely to ask abstract questions (futility of life, etc.), in relationships to their own experiences. Death is a huge abstract concept to process and different ages and people are going to be working through different things – and this is before the personal side of losing someone they love.

For many young people we work with, death might be a completely alien concept – so even those on the outsides of the ‘blast zone’ of personal loss might still be feeling some form of grief quite strongly.

Young people are reported to feel all kinds of emotions including numbness, sadness, fear, tiredness, anxiety, calmness, worry, weirdness, guilt, injustice, confusion and even peace. It’s important for us to remind them that they’re not broken or weird if they are feeling something other than ‘sad’.

With that in mind, young people experience loss and grief much like the rest of us, the difference however, is a developing young person is missing the context of greater life experience in order to frame those emotions.

Our job then is not to manage or steer emotions, but to provide a healthy structure so they can experience them freely and healthily in a safe and secure way.

Does it ‘get better’

This depends on a lot of things – especially closeness to the person lost, however, as a general rule of thumb, loss doesn’t just ‘go away’ but we do ‘get better’ to some degree. Reality changes, and with proper help we are able to move through and beyond, rather than just move on.

It’s interesting how many people start to feel guilty when the hurt changes shape or diminishes somewhat. It’s important for us to encourage them that it’s not disrespectful, dishonourable, or forgetting – it’s just growth and that’s healthy.

A lost person will always be part of our lives, and their absence will always feel ‘wrong’, however that feeling of loss and wrongness does move from the constant central focus so we are able to live on healthily.

Some practical thoughts

What NOT to say to a bereaved young person

Hopefully these are obvious, but let’s say them anyway:

He’s gone to a better place… (it might be true, but the question it raises is ‘so why is that place not here with me!?!’)

Everything happens for a reason… (what could possibly be the reason for…?!)

Time heals all wounds… (Actually no it doesn’t. Healing requires time, but that’s totally different)

Try not to cry… (Why the heck not? It’s an entirely sensible, apt, and healthy thing to do!)

Be strong… (So it’s weak to grieve now is it?)

Let me tell you a story about my loss… (How about you just acknowledge my hurt for a while?!)

A few more things to avoid

Focusing on yourself rather than them

Denying the seriousness of the event

Devaluating their feelings

Telling them not to think or talk about it

Making assumptions or oversimplifications

Over-reacting (from your own anxiety or fear)

Withdrawing

A few things you SHOULD say

I’m sorry for your loss

I love you

I don’t have the right words, but know that I care

I don’t know how you feel, but I’m available to help

How can I support you?

My favourite memory of your loved one it…

Saying nothing

Many people have reported that the most helpful thing during their time of loss and grief was just a present friend. Someone who just came to be with them, hung out with them, or just sat with them in silence.

The power of presence when it comes with warmth and compassion is both palatable and powerful. Don’t underestimate the power of just being with someone who is hurting.

Grief is exhausting!

It really is! Your mind, heart and body all dial up to 11 and work hard to process this new reality. Off the back of that, patterns and habits start to fall away.

With this in mind we should gently encourage young people to keep eating, drinking, sleeping, socialising (somewhat), and exercising. Even just going for ten-minute walks is important.

Going back to school

It’s important to go back to school sooner rather than later, but it does need to be managed carefully. We can work with the family to help a bereaved young person manage their return well though. This might included:

Half days

No exams / homework

Permission slips to step out of lessons for a break

Who tells the students?

What about the funeral?

It’s important to give young people the choice about whether or not they want to go. Trying to keep them from it because it might be too painful could cause resentment later but forcing them to go might mean confronting things that they didn’t feel ready for.

This choice should be made off the back of clear information. Explain exactly, bluntly, and clearly what is going to happen and why. Encourage questions without pushing and ask them if there is any way they would like to add to the service. This could be reading a prayer, laying some flowers, or picking a song.

If the loss affects you too then you should also make the choice for yourself whether to go, however It might be appropriate for you to ask the family what their expectations for you are. When I have been, I have sat at the back, payed my respects, then let people come to me if they want to, rather than swooping in as the superstar youth pastor.

In the youth club

Prepare the groundwork beforehand by talking about death in teaching topics, creating an open community, and encouraging conversation and questions.

Don’t’ taboo tradition to the point where you downplay any kind of ritual. Ritual can be immensely helpful to help young people grieve and find some sense of closure.

I once went to the school to help during the death of a pupil. I, and a couple of local counsellors and pastors, went to a temporary classroom to be available to chat. The students were also told that it was ok to write some messages or stories on the walls inside if that would help them.

Over the next couple of hours, we saw hundreds of students come through that building, almost all of whom left a message. By the afternoon every piece of wall, inside and outside, the carpet, the tables, the chairs, and the ceiling were covered (and I mean covered) by writing:

There were funny stories of times when friends had gone out and done stupid things together.

There were shared dreams and aspirations of what they wanted to be when they grew up.

There were heart-wrenching, deepest apologies – the guilt of which you cannot imagine.

Myself and the other counsellors walked around like lost sheep. We tried, very carefully, to talk to some of the young people; but that’s really not what they wanted. I shared a hug with a young lad I knew from my youth club at the time, tears lining his face. I had no idea what to say and no idea what to do.

You learn about these times in college and through books, but nothing prepared me for it. I remember tangibly thinking, God please help me take my youth ministry more seriously.

Of course, this is not youth work going wrong, this is youth work working! This is youth ministry at its most pertinent. The creativity of the school gave the young people an uncommonly valuable way of moving thorough their pain as a community. It was amazing. I was there, at best, to facilitate the safety of the activities and the tone of the room. God was obviously, however, in their midst.

This is the power of ritual. Light a candle, create a memorial book – do something tangible.

Resources

I want to plug a friend’s workbook. It’s a practical booklet that you can work through one-to-one with bereaved young people. Grab a copy here.

There are phonelines like Cruise Bereavement, Childline, and Samaritans; and websites like Hope Again, Winston’s Wish, RD4U and Youth Access. These are all helpful. However, I strongly encourage you to familiarise yourself with local groups and networks.

Finally, don’t forget the GP, who can often connect a hurting young person up with groups and therapy that we just don’t have access to.

Finally finally, pray. God is the one who understand bereavement in a way we never could, and he comes with hope and love the likes of which we could never show. Leave it with Him!

 

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

A ‘Facilitated Model’ of Youth Ministry

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Over the last couple of years, I have dialled up my public opposition to the model of youth ministry known as ‘incarnational.’ I certainly don’t regret this as it’s a largely unchallenged idea in the youth ministry world that has a shaky foundation at best, and real negative consequences for our work. This idea has been a given, and it needs another side in the conversation.

I’m aware, however, that some people really just mean relational, or contextual youth ministry when they say ‘incarnational’, and I’m mostly fine with that. Not everyone has read the books that push it, and many have only heard bits of the idea through conferences and training days that use the name. I also guess that some more experienced proponents of the model have matured the idea into healthier and safer practices. Although if the ‘updated’ incarnational model as presented by Dr. Root is anything to go by, I’m not too sure that’s true.

I get that incarnational ministry sounds right but having a theological sounding name doesn’t necessarily make something theologically sound. Although I too believe in ‘doing ministry like Jesus did it’, I’m not really sure Jesus did do it like incarnational theory sometimes suggests, and – if I’m really honest – I’d rather build a model that reaches for all of the Bible, not just bits of it.

If you’ve not read my longer posts outlining the issues, I think the concept of incarnational youth ministry misuses the Bible, hijacks a well-established and important theology diluting it in the process, and encourages exceptionally unhealthy practices. Bottom line: I’m tired of meeting people who ‘used to be a youth worker’ but burned out after trying to live the way incarnational theory suggests. An ‘always on’ youth worker, after all is a ‘sometimes off husband’, and an ‘always available’ youth worker, is a ‘less available mum’.

You get it, I’m not a fan. It’s gotten to the point, however, where it would be very easy for me to be known more for what I’m against rather than what I’m for, which would be rubbish, and if you know me personally, I hope you’d agree that that would be out of character!

In some sense, I haven’t wanted to suggest an ‘alternative’ model for youth ministry, rather I’ve tried to harmonise what I feel are the better parts of the more popular models of youth ministry (namely the funnel, hub, intergenerational, and indeed incarnational).

My instinct was that if we instead started with the Bible itself, rather than our praxis, then we would end up with an amalgam of the better parts of each popular model and shake off some of their more questionable features. We would then have some form of ‘alloy’ youth ministry, one that blended the helpful and disregarded the dodgy. This was one of the central features of my book, Rebooted.

Of course, what I have unwittingly done is in fact suggested a different model in a roundabout way, rather than just a youth min alloy like I hoped. So rather than beating any more around the bush, I thought I would spell out the basics here, and even give it a name.

Facilitated Youth Ministry

I know this isn’t a particularly sexy sounding phrase. I played with mediated youth ministry, but that’s only part of the story, and I thought about enabling youth ministry, but that’s weird for other (I hope) obvious reasons.

Facilitated youth ministry, or if I may be so bold, the facilitation model, is driven by the central premise that a youth worker’s primary function is to facilitate ministry for young people rather than simply deliver it. The youth worker’s role is to facilitate the movement of truth, compassion, discipleship, worship, and mission between young people, the church, and the broader community. The youth worker is the junction box not the electricity.

This requires skills like mediation, management, direction, discernment and oversight at least as much as the ability to communicate with teenagers. A facilitator needs a keener awareness of boarder theology and a passion for more than just young people. The need to be church builders, not rebels.

Facilitated youth ministry begins with the idea that young people were not segregated in the Bible. The youth group didn’t cross the Jordan separately, the youth group wasn’t exiled in their own camp, and the youth group wasn’t taken out of temple services to play Mafia. Young people are no less a part the church as anybody else.

There are times and spaces in the Bible way young people are separate, but even then there is always significant overlap with the whole people of God, and this relationship is always facilitated by a handful of parents and elders. There’s our facilitating youth worker!

The responsibilities given to the church, also directly apply to young people. If we wait until they ‘grow up’ before we introduce them to what God asks of them, it is more likely they’ll just grow out of it. Young people are looking for mission and adventure, after all. Why not give it to them?

Before we go further, it needs to be said that the ultimate responsibility over young people is not the youth worker, but the church pastor. That’s what the Bible teaches. This means Bible Colleges need to broaden their curriculums, pastors need to learn some new skills (and maybe new attitudes), and youth workers need to team up more closely.

With that in mind, I’m going to try and give a few pillars to this model here but will write more broadly on it as time goes on.

Facilitating discipleship

In this model, the youth worker seeks to create relationships between young people and many Christians. Through some form of mentoring, small groups, service, and participation, the young people are looked after by a variety of older Christians throughout different areas of their lives. This should be the biggest part of a church-based youth worker’s timetable.

One young person could go sailing with a married couple, get help with homework by an old Maths teacher, serve on the worship team under a spiritually aware a music director, learn to cook with a homegroup, read the Bible in MacDonald’s and with a student, and still not go near a youth group. This isn’t to say youth groups aren’t important, but they are no longer the nucleus of discipleship or spiritual growth. Although our models might leave room for this, a facilitator makes it their primary role.

If a youth worker spent more time finding and facilitating these relationships – knowing and training people, making introductions, periodically checking in – then each young person would have much broader and deeper experience of spirituality, without becoming overly dependent on one person or group.

Not only is this healthier for both the young person and the youth worker, it will subtly train the church to be much more accessible to young people. It’s also more clearly what we see in the Bible.

Facilitating community

There is significant difference between a classical youth club and genuine youth community. A club is entertainment-driven; it’s about providing the young person with an experience that they can consume. As a result, clubs exhaust leaders, strain resources, and create an ‘us-and-them’ culture. Sessions are spent enforcing rules and energetically managing people’s moods. This is why clubs are incredibly homogenous, and only tend to attract one type of young person.

A community on the other hand, is much more interested in integration and mutual service. In a healthy community, relationships police each other, everyone is involved in providing aspects of what happens, it overflows the bounds of the meeting spaces, is less likely to form cliques, and is spontaneous enough to adapt to the real needs of the people within. Clubs are attractive because of the system; communities are attractive because of the people.

A youth work facilitator knows how to integrate young people together – to help them like each other, not just like the leaders. Their time isn’t spent on making a club that attracts the biggest number of young people, but instead creating a safe space where young people integrate healthfully. This also works for a wider age bracket, and is more inclusive of different types of person.

A huge part of this is adjusting our youth work philosophy to help the young people to take responsibility over their own culture. The facilitator helps them develop an environment where each person is cared for by the environment itself. This involves peer mediation, more open communication, and asking individuals specifically to look after people who struggle, including those with additional needs.

Games, teaching methods, seating layouts – everything – needs to be adjusted to help grow a community, not a club. This takes very careful steering and organic growing, not top down leading. It’s facilitated not dictated.

Facilitating truth

As youth workers we have a habit of teaching our favourite bits over and over again. This isn’t helped by the last thirty years of youth work resources basically orbiting the same questions and Bible stories. We are told in the Bible, however, to teach the whole council God, and we know that every piece of God’s truth is truth for everyone.

Facilitating truth is looking far and wide in the Bible and creating teaching plans and methods that help a young person grow from birth and into adulthood. Ideally, each young person should know broadly about the character of God, the nature of the Gospel, and the responsibilities of a Christian.

Most of our resources and curriculums, however, don’t last more than three months, and don’t sequentially go deeper in maturity. The maturity level stays the same with a new topic until the circle begins again. It’s a stair-master, not a ladder.

A term that I would like to see us use more, therefore, is growth pathway.

A growth pathway is a likely track a young person might take on their spiritual journey and what they will learn in that time. A pathway for a young person who starts coming to a group at age 14, for instance, will be different to a young person who has been bought up in a church. When a young person ‘graduates’ youth projects, they should be transitioning into the next stage which, if you’ve been facilitating discipleship (above), should be quite smooth.

This means working closely with children’s workers and parents, but also student workers and senior pastors. You should roughly know what to expect when your youth group gains a young person from Children’s ministry, and who you’re passing on too. This takes the sudden jumps out of the equation, and means you lose less young people in the process.

Facilitated youth workers are able to recognise potential growth pathways and how to connect each young person individually into the life of the church. This form of ministry is far more adaptive and specific – and as a result, far more relational and compassionate. This means you don’t have to move at the pace of lowest common denominator but can help different young people thrive within their own growth pathway. This all comes back to facilitating discipleship.

Facilitating mission

We heard it said that the best person to reach a young person is another young person and there’s a lot of truth in that, however we will insist on doing it for them! The great commission says go make disciples of all nations, however, I think we subversively send the message that this only applies after you turn 18 and the youth group will no longer do it for you.

The question here is how do we facilitate evangelism among the young people themselves? What is it they really need? Is it better training, more engaging clubs, funnier talks? It genuinely could be any of these things, but I’m suspicious that it goes a lot deeper than this.

All mission is driven by the same relationship with Jesus. When we’re excited by Jesus, we tell people about Jesus, just like when I am excited by the pizza served at my local kabab shop, I tell everyone I meet that it’s better than Dominos.

Facilitating missions starts by helping young people develop deeper maturing relationships with Jesus and as a result take greater responsibility for the great commission in their own lives. This isn’t guilting young people into ‘saving their mates’. It is, however, helping them see the great commission as something that applies specifically to them and asking them how we can help them to fulfil it.

It’s calling them to an adventure and a mission that’s real, not just cool sounding.

Facilitating worship

Worship in Israel was an all age affair. Whereas teaching largely happened in specific groups, worship was practised as a whole body. All age for us usually means a children’s service with a little bit for everyone and hardly anything for anyone.

When we ask young people to participate in worship, that should mean more than just giving them a token thing to do. For young people to truly participate in worship we have to give actual responsibility within worship.

The youth work facilitator’s role here is to help young people integrate into all the worshipping activities of the local church. This means helping them enter into the groups and teams in the same way that an adult might. A facilitator supports them and knows how to help other people support them to, without actively having to lead them in those spaces themselves. This involves safeguarding and accountability, but it comes back to facilitating integrated ministry.

When young people participate as an integrated member of the whole community of faith rather than a token, ‘aw isn’t that nice’ occasional addition, then the whole church start to develop a genuine pattern of authentic all age worship. Worship will reflect the needs and desires of those leading the worship, the more diverse that group is, then the broader the needs that are met.

Facilitating resources

This should be a smaller point, but it’s worth adding. We should always step out in faith, but that doesn’t mean over-reach and burn through our resources. The job of a youth work facilitator is to carefully steward the resources available across the whole church. This could actually be a lot more than is usually available, because we would not just be recruiting cool-sounding people for a club!

Not every specific church can tick every potential ministry box, which is why the Church (big c) is supposed to work together as one body. Rather than trying to do everything, find one or two things to do and do them really well.

For someone wanting to have a crack at facilitated youth ministry, I’d suggest dropping your gathering-styled projects to one a week – look for a way to cultivate a healthy community in that space, and then start plugging your young people one by one into the wider church. Start to train mentors and prepare the other ministry teams (even if that’s just ol’ Olive the organist) to accept young people. Go with young people into new spaces and start to wean them off you and carefully into new relationships. Perhaps most importantly, however, start talking regularly with your pastor about all of this – if you can’t get them on board, then it’s just not going to work.

A model of facilitation

A youth work facilitator’s job is to facilitate the movement of truth, compassion, discipleship, worship, and mission between young people, the church, and the broader community. This has do be done in close relationship to the pastor (after all they are ultimately responsible, not you).

A facilitator is a conduit that helps young people grow deeper with God, deeper in themselves, and deeper within the church community. A facilitator helps a young person grow individualised roots that will last, and that are not dependent on ‘youth friendly’ stuff, or a single individual.

A facilitator will need to be integral to the life of the church, actively involved within its ministries, and have a real passion to see the whole body grow not just the young people. They will need to be specialists in youth culture for sure, so they can help the whole church understand young people better, but primarily their time should be spent in facilitating healthy church-wide ways to integrate young people into the whole community of faith.

In the Bible youth-specific ministry is the responsibility of the whole church, carefully facilitated by a few people. Driving at this today means youth workers need to know how to utilise the whole church to reshape itself and help everybody grow together.

So, is this a new model of youth ministry? Or is this just a very different model of church? You decide. Thanks for reading this far!

 

Photo by Elaine Casap on Unsplash

Discussing Incarnational Youthwork – the reader’s digest version

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Back in June I wrote a 5-part series on Incarnational Youth Work. This was, in itself, a reader’s digest version of a forthcoming journal that’s being published later in the year by Brill.

It strikes me, however, that 6926 words over five posts still wasn’t that digestible or ‘blog friendly.’ So here is a reader’s digest version of that reader’s digest version!

As with any reader’s digest, please don’t take this as the final word. It’s a summary with less nuance; it’s a formula without showing the working; it’s fast food, not Michelin stars! If you want a bit more meat, check out the originals, and if you want a lot more meat then grab the Journal, and if you want my alternative, then buy my book! (Cheeky plug? Yup.)

What is Incarnational Youthwork?

The definition of incarnational youth ministry begins with the idea that we’re doing mission and ministry as Jesus did mission and ministry (W. Black, An Introduction to Youth Ministry, 1991:209).

The thought behind this is as God became human and immersed himself into a specific culture so the worker must immerse themselves – both contextually and relationally – in order to bring the gospel to young people in their own cultures today.

They must become something other than what they are to become like those they minister to. They must be ‘incarnate’ and become just like them. Young Life in the 1940s called this ‘earning the right to be heard’. In Jim Burn’s own words, ‘as the ministry of Jesus was incarnate in the Gospels, so our life must be incarnate in youth ministry’ (in Josh McDowell’s youth ministry handbook: making the connection, 2000:35).

Sometimes, when youth workers say they’re doing ‘incarnational’ youth ministry they are actually just doing relational ministry (focused on individuals), or contextualised ministry (focused on cultural context), or a mixture of both. The two main moving parts of Incarnational ministry are contextualisation and relationship building – but it technically goes much further.

The Semantic Problem

The Incarnation itself means something very specific. It has lots of moving parts, but incarnational ministry only focuses on one part: Revelation. God came into our culture to reveal himself to us so we can build relationship with Him, therefore go and do likewise.

I don’t want to downplay the importance of revelation, but it is far from the whole. With only a small part of the Incarnation at play, can we really say that we are being incarnational?

The Incarnation has been reduced to revelation that we can copy, rather than the one time, unique, and saving action of God that we worship. When meanings change this much semantics become very important. We don’t talk about Trinitarian or Atoning or Salvific youth ministry – why then would we let the Incarnation be fair game? Words and meanings are important! A tyre, after all, is not a car, an arm is not a body, and Posh is not The Spice Girls.

Reading the Incarnation through the tinted and very specific lens of incarnational theory has resulted in a generation of youth leaders who can’t articulate the main moving parts of the Incarnation itself.

When using any foundational doctrine as a basis for our work, we should always ask whether we are confusing or diminishing the doctrine. Incarnational theory uses one very small part, morphs it into a thing that we primarily do, rather than God, and then completely bypasses the other aspects of the doctrine.

My big problem here is that if we read more youth work books than theology books (or dare I say the Bible) we end up thinking of the Incarnation through the lens of incarnational theory and thus diluting who Jesus is and what He did. It’s no less than messing with the meaning of Jesus.

The Biblical Problem

Throughout the youth ministry books that teach the incarnational model, three Bible passages are used almost exclusively: Jn. 1; Phil. 2; and 1 Cor. 9. These are all used sparingly and, honestly, in some cases just very poorly.

There are many key Incarnation Bible verses that incarnational youth ministry theorists don’t use at all. Sorry about list, but Ex. 25:8; Is. 7:14; Mic. 5:2; Mal. 3:1-5; Matt. 1:18-23; 3:17; 17:5; Mk. 1:24; 10:17-18; Jn. 5:18; 6:29; Col. 1:15-20; Heb. 1:1-14; 20:28; Rev. 19:11-13 are all very important.

I don’t expect youth work books to use all relevant passages, but I think the selective way they have picked their verses is a little telling. It’s almost like they had a point ready to go, and then looked for verses that fit their point. This is the wrong way around.

Jn. 1:14

Almost every Incarnational writer uses The Message version of verse 14, which says Jesus ‘moved into the neighbourhood’. I’m a fan of the Message but this is misleading. At best, it is a partial interpretation of the whole.

It should be very difficult to come away from Jn. 1 without a clear sense of the uniqueness of Jesus as both eternal and creator. Incarnational youth ministry writings unfortunately pass over both of these aspects in their rush to make it about what we should do instead.

Making what Jesus does in Jn. 1 primarily about what we should do today is a little bit weird. We do feature in Jn. 1, but as His creation (v.2), needing His light (vv.4, 9), and made to be His children through faith (vv.11-13). Jesus is our way of knowing God (vv.1, 7, 14, 18) and our place in this story is to believe in God by accepting Jesus.

Phil 2:5-11

This teaches that Jesus, as divine, was born to die. It draws a straight line from the complete uniqueness of Jesus to the atonement won by His death. It is about ultimate humility that shows Jesus’ headship over all creation.

Incarnational youth ministry writers, however, don’t spend time on the salvation aspects of this passage, which is a significant oversight considering it’s the central part of the it. Instead it’s used as a blueprint for our own humility and work today.

1 Cor. 9:19-22

Incarnational writers often add a ‘likewise clause’ to the verse. ‘Our goal is to become all things to all adolescents so that we might reach them.’ (Gerali in Starting right: thinking theologically about youth ministry, 2001:286).

In the next chapter, however, Paul unpacks what this looks like, and it is largely about being full of grace and patience and communicating clearly. It is not about indiscriminately immersing ourselves into a culture or becoming just like a teenager to reach teenagers.

This could even be dangerous. What would we do if we needed to sin, or flaunt safeguarding to enter into a particular culture? At another level it’s just creepy – teenagers aren’t looking for adults who dress like kids and can quote box sets, they’re looking for authenticity.

The Theological Problem

The Incarnation has always been understood by theologians to be a one-time action of God. It has six essential moving parts:

Pre-existence – Jesus is God. He existed in eternity, in the Trinity before he was ‘enfleshed’ in Jesus. He ‘was’ before he was Jesus.

Hypostatic union – Jesus was both divine and human – at the very same time. He was both fully. Two complete, distinct persons, fully united as one.

Humility – Jesus, the pre-existent God, humbled himself to both human reality and ultimately death. It’s not just about eventual depth, but initial height.

Atonement – Jesus came to save us, and He needed to be both human and God for this to work. As human, Jesus was the required sacrifice for sin (2 Cor. 5:21). He was a human solution to a human problem. As God, Jesus was able to become both perfect sacrificial lamb (Lev. 16) and High Priest (Heb. 4:14-18). This made His sacrifice eternal! ‘For Athanasius… Jesus’ atoning death was the central purpose of the incarnation; the immortal Son of God needed to become man to die’ (Athanasius, 318, 1993:35, cf.:26; also check out Steve Jeffery, Ovey and Sach in Pierced for our Transgressions, 2007:172).

Eschatology – The Incarnation makes Jesus the undisputed King of the world. He is the new head of humanity being the first born of the new creation. Where Adam got it wrong, Jesus got it right (Rom. 5).

Revelation – The communication of God to His creation, first as the ultimate human to humanity, and secondarily as a 1st Century Aramaic-Jew living in that particular culture.

Incarnational youth ministry misses five out of six aspects of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and seriously dilutes the sixth. That’s like 85% of the doctrine!

The Incarnation is primarily a unique work of God. It is not one that we are actually directly instructed to imitate because realistically to do so would be idolatry. We can work with it and even learn from it, but we can’t dress up in it like a onesie or a superhero costume.

The Practical Problem

Incarnational youth ministry has an inherent mugginess of boundaries that creates a lot of potentially unsafe situations.

Unchecked openness

This model encourages an open door / phones always on policy. Forgetting for a second that we’re neither God nor parents, what is the realistic risk-reward of making ourselves potential targets of dependency while burning out in the process?

This is exactly the kind of openness that is cautioned against by person-centred therapists, precisely because of the boundaries it rejects and dependency it creates. Modern counsellors are trained to look for these signs, so they won’t be this unaccountably open. We might in fact be surprised that a lot of what is specifically suggested by incarnational youth ministry is flatly rejected in modern counselling theory.

Burnout

Renfro in Perspectives on family ministry says the reason youth workers burnout is ‘because our ministry models are fundamentally flawed’ (2009:10). Todd Billings draws a straight line between poor incarnational theology and practical complications. He says,

Yet because they take the Incarnation as their “model” of ministry, these evangelicals often assume that they—rather than the Holy Spirit—make Christ present in the world… “you and I may be the only Jesus that others will ever meet” …The burden of incarnation—and revelation—is on the shoulders of the individuals. Such a theology often leads to burnout (2012:60).

Dr. Andrew Root says we are to us to indwell or inhabit the pain of another so completely that it becomes our own (Revisiting relational youth ministry, 2007:129-130). This is a recipe for burnout for sure, but also quite close to a textbook definition of abuse: When two unequal parties share their own respective weights of experience and pain and needs, what will happen to the ‘weaker’ party?

Blurred lines between work and home

An ‘always on’ youth worker is a ‘sometimes off’ husband, or a ‘partially available mum’, or ‘too busy doing ministry’ dad. We really need another way.

You don’t want to argue with a family member at two in the morning, because you’ll both say things you don’t mean. Always being on is something parents do for a set number of years and they make a lot of mistakes, as we all know.

That close family relationship, all-warts exposed, cannot extend to twenty-some young people twenty-four hours a day. It’s a recipe for the happening of terrible things — and it also sets a precedent for those young people. We might be inadvertently teaching them to fall into unsafe behaviours and practices with other people in their lives who perhaps they shouldn’t trust.

Safeguarding

Being alone on the phone to a young person at all hours, having them come into the house alone, regularly meeting in quiet spaces, and prolonged private conversations can create unhealthy levels of dependency and exclusivity. Things are easily misconstrued in concealed spaces, especially with hurting and vulnerable young people.

Personal boundaries and healthy safeguarding practices are necessities for today’s youth worker to be in their post for years to come. Longevity demands healthy practice and accountability – things that are often neglected by incarnational models of youth ministry.

Conclusion

Incarnational ministry has become something of the prosthetic spine of youth work. It’s spinal, in that it runs right through the structural centre of many of our approaches, but it’s prosthetic because it’s a poor substitute for the real thing. To challenge this has been somewhat taboo. It’s the third rail of youth ministry. Step on it and you die.

That said I don’t think incarnational youth ministry is theologically grounded. I think it represents a serious misreading and selective reading of the Bible. It bypasses how that Incarnation has been classically understood and misappropriated – dare I say hijacked – a significant truth about God’s person for a cool sounding term.

I know ‘incarnational’ is unwritten into our methods. For some of us it feels part of our blood, it’s become a key part of our ministry identity. I don’t want – in any way – for this to pull the rug out from someone’s feet.

There’s goodness to retain. We might want to consider re-naming our approach as relational-contextual­ rather than incarnational, rediscover the importance of proclamation, and create a wider base of ministry that happens outside of our purview and inside our boundaries

 

Photo by Will O on Unsplash

“Everything is permissible…” helping young people understand the balance between grace and holiness

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When working with young people we need to teach them about grace. We need to help them know, love, and swim around in the depths of God’s riches given to them at Christ’s expense. We also, however, need to help them wrestle with holiness and obedience – what does it mean to live righteous and follow Jesus in how they act every day.

This can be a knife-edge balancing act and can swing from side to side depending on which topic we’re looking at from week to week. For me, I tend to swing to ‘grace’ whenever I’m teaching on God’s character, but swing to ‘law’ when I focus on our responses. We’ve got to cut through this disconnect and show young people the real harmony between the sides.

Living in obedience is the joyful overflow of inhabiting God’s grace. We’re saved by grace alone, but there is something about obedience that keeps us continually receiving that salvation. In the same way, I buy flowers for my wife out of love and not out of duty. My marriage is not contingent on buying her flowers – but it’s a great way of kindling our relationship. On the flip side, if I spent my entire marriage ignoring my wife and never doing anything for her – or even speaking to her – then I can’t guarantee that our relationship is going to last.

“We need to help young people take real, solid responsibility over their own faith – this isn’t about making it easy, it’s about making it real.”

How a young person chooses to live every day is important. Their media diet is important. Their ability to say no is important. Their resilience is important. Their friendship choices are important. We need to help young people grow as obedient followers of Jesus, without all the silly cumbersome legalism that we too readily dump on them. We need to help young people take real, solid responsibility over their own faith – this isn’t about making it easy, it’s about making it real.

This is going to take a couple of posts, but I thought we should begin by talking about one of the most misquoted and misunderstood verses in the New Testament.

‘Everything is Permissible’

Twice in 1 Corinthians Paul says that all things are permissible (saved by grace right?), but not all things are helpful.

‘“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.’ (1 Cor. 6:12, ESV)

‘“All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up.’ (1 Cor. 10:23, ESV)

I recently read an article on Game of Thrones where 1 Cor. 6 was misquoted as saying ‘everything is permissible, but not everything is helpful.’ We can’t get at the author too much, however, because almost everyone misquotes Paul here! What’s missing is the quote marks, but oh boy do they make a difference.

Paul is playing devil’s advocate by slightly sarcastically pseudo-quoting his Corinthian reader saying ‘hey, but I’m saved by grace, so I can do whatev, right? Who are you to tell me no?’

The examples Paul gives for this are cheating someone (v.7, 10), wrongdoing (9), sexual immorality and promiscuity (9, 18-20), stealing, getting drunk, and mocking (10). Because of these things church members were taking legal action against each other (1-6) and the terrible result was increasing division (vv.1-6, 7, 14-16).

Paul was speaking into a ludicrously messy situation where church members were dragging each other off to court, completely bypassing how they were supposed to treat each other as newly formed brothers and sisters in Christ.

On one side of the division there was a misapplication of grace and on the other side a misapplication of law. Paul was directly addressing the issues on the first side in the beginning of his pseudo-quote saying, ‘everything is permissible’. It might just as well read, ‘Hey, I can steal, get drunk, and mock people, right? Who are you to tell me no?’

The author of the post I mentioned above said ‘is watching Game of Thrones permissible? Yes! Is it helpful? That is for you to figure out’. Is that a legitimate way of using this passage? Well only as much as saying something like ‘is murder permissible? Yes! Is it helpful? That is for you to figure out’ A murderer isn’t barred from the Kingdom of God, but that doesn’t mean crack on.

What does ‘helpful’ really mean?

Using a devil’s advocate quote of Paul as a propositional way for us to measure our consumption choices is altogether the opposite of what Paul was trying to do.

Yes, it’s about grace, but it’s about holiness too. The word ‘helpful’ here (συμφέρει) is the same word used by Jesus in Matt. 5:29 when he tells us that it’s better (more helpful) to pluck out our eyes and cut off our hands if they could possibly cause us to sin. It’s also the same word used in Matt. 18:6, when Jesus said it would be better (more helpful) for us to be drowned than cause a ‘little one’ to sin.

And there’s the point. What standard do we set for holiness, and what things will we sacrifice for it? Is it permissible? Sure – in the broadest possible way in that it won’t block the initial open gate to Heaven. But does it ultimately bring glory to God, unity to His church, and provide a consistent standard to His children? Could it eventually steal our salvation? Do our actions – including what we watch on TV – bring the waveforms of our hearts more in line with God’s, or do they clash? Do our habits resonate with or detract from the strength and clarity of our full-throated pursuit of worship? This is the truer reading of 1 Cor. 6.

“We need to teach grace as the overwhelming reality of their situation, and from that, call them to walk with us on a genuine journey of holiness.”

Our job as youth leaders is not to help young people feel comfortable – it’s to help them feel loved by God. Our job is also not to make the Christian life easy or palatable – our job is to make worshippers who run the race marked out before them right up until the end. We need to equip young people for the long haul. We need to teach grace as the overwhelming reality of their situation, and from that, call them to walk with us on a genuine journey of holiness.

There’s really a lot to being a youth worker. Do we take this seriously enough? Food for thought!

 

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Awkward open prayer in youth groups – Comic

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Chloe’s back – fresh from her Uni offices and with her weirdly wonderful wired brain – to give us some insight into those more awkward moments of open prayer in youth clubs.

 

 

 

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

Is our language becoming idiographic again? Communicating with emoticon culture.

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I’m currently sat in a little café just outside of Mullsjö in Sweden, trying to send a text message to a local. Try as I might, however, my indoctrinated little British phone just can’t do it! The message icon keeps flashing up with a little “!”. Clearly this means ‘something is wrong, and this hasn’t worked’. When I click that icon, another pops up, an unfinished circle with an arrowhead which clearly tells me, ‘click here to retry.’

It strikes me that this must part of my phone’s latest update, because when this happened to me last year in Norway (name dropping the Nordic countries!), it said ‘message failed’, rather than “!” and ‘retry to send’, rather than the little circle arrow.

I know instinctively, however, what these little phone icons mean. They appear everywhere in my everyday digital world. Sometimes, when cooking I look for that same ‘retry’ button in real life… usually shortly after realising my stove doesn’t have an ‘undo’ button.

In a Western world of emoticons, glyphs, and symbols, icons are becoming a far more regular part of everyday life.

It’s not like we didn’t use symbols before. The well-dressed silhouetted people on doors tell us where to pee, and £, € and $ signs tell us that we’re about to spend money. These, however, represent top-down imposed and generationally broad ideas that have been widely used for quite a while. This new generation of icons which we communicate with, however, are growing right out of the beating heart of youth culture – driven by the consumer habits of the populous. Vox populi vox dei!

A youth language revolution

Is it possible that our young people are actually shaping the biggest change in our language since the beginning of the last century?

It’s as if young people (by whom I’m talking about late millennials and the digital natives of Gen Z) are leading a somewhat natural evolution of language right before our very eyes.

Idiographic vs. alphabetic languages

When I lived in London I decided to try and learn ancient Assyrian. Why? Kicks and giggles, I guess. Needless to say, I didn’t get very far.

Assyrians used a system called cuneiform to write words. Cuneiform is a nifty system of pressing wedge-shaped lines into soft clay before it hardens. In the earliest forms of cuneiform, the lines actually made recognisable pictures to represent a clear idea of what was happening. So, a picture of a face could mean ‘speak’ or ‘eat’. A picture of fire could mean ‘hot’ or ‘cook’. The picture gave you an idea to interpret into meaning, which is what’s known as idiographic language. Eventually these pictures became simpler, and finally just the most basic outlines of the picture remained as the beginnings of an alphabet. Basically, what they had were emoticons; ideas that – correctly interpreted in context – conveyed meaning.

What cuneiform and other idiographic languages did was to create simple ways of recording and communicating. In contrast, our later alphabetic languages are far more complex and can groan under the weight of their own convolutions. In ideographic languages, not a lot of detail or embellishment was given or was even needed. It would just have taken too long as the clay would have dried out before we got through a sentence!

Because of the simplicity, context was always really important and without knowing the people who were writing, it would have been easy to misunderstand what was being said. You needed a greater personal connection between the reader and the writer, and the readers had to be interpreters first.

Sound familiar?

The rise of the emoticon from youth culture

Last week Archbishop Justin Welby tweeted the entire Lord’s Prayer using nothing but emoticons. Hacker Noon wrote a post on exactly how to communicate using nothing but emoticons, and Psychologist World recently published on the emotional benefits of communicating with emoticons.

Icon-driven, or idiographic language is freshly becoming part of our everyday communication again, and this neat change is being driven by the chief digital consumer: young people.

Almost all of our work with young people relies on communication. From advertising events, forming communities, establishing order, sharing Jesus through the Bible, talks, videos and creativity. Communication is at the core of what we do.

Communication that assumes interpretation

I wouldn’t suggest for one moment that we switch to an emoticon-driven language, but I’d implore us to be more aware of the internal processes of young people when receiving our communications.

Young people are not just being lazy or simplicitic; there are layers of interpretation going on in how they communicate through icons. Just like an hour glass, large ideas are being funnelled thorough deceptively simple iconography, then opened out again though individual processing.

This makes young people incredibly interpretive of ideas that come out from communication – more so than in other recent generations. It would be a mistake, therefore, to assume that simplified methods of communication – such as emoticons or icons – means simplified translation, reception, or interpretation of language.

Interpretation of a simple idea to a complex one is now native to our young people’s everyday language. This means it’s potentially easier for them to misunderstand because most of our communication goes the other way: We translate complex ideas into simplified ones.

Much of our teaching is making Gospel stories and big ideas digestible, but the simplified end point might then be read, deconstructed, then reconstructed by a young person naturally and immediately into something totally different, leaving us confused: But we were so clear and simple – how did they get that out of what I said?

Starting to move with the evolution of language

When you read a list of emoticons, you have to understand the person speaking, the context it applies to, and then make some quick interpretive choices as to what’s being said. Young people do that at an alarmingly natural pace. It’s as if their brains are actually changing shape around their everyday language habits. If we keep on communicating without this awareness we are going to be left behind.

There are sometimes, therefore, when we will need to say what we mean without embellishment, metaphor, or story. We might need to be let our teaching and discussions to become much more complex, allowing for the interaction of more complex themes.

There are other times where we’re better probably communicating through questions, rather than just making propositional teaching points. We also shouldn’t assume that our classic talk structures – including three stories, two metaphors, one video, and two application points – will necessarily connect into one big idea for the young people without an overtly clear lead for that.

I think this also gives us amazing new opportunities to have much more complex conversations after the initial round of communication. Now that young people are more naturally making interpretative links, we can have longer and deeper discussions as an overflow of their own immediate internal cognitive processing of language. Internal critical thinking may be the surprising but very welcome manifestation of this change.

Finally, adding the pictorial element to modern language engages different parts of many young people’s brains than traditional prose might do on its own. This could create easier ways to be creative with young people, and should provide for much more effective ways of moving head knowledge to heart knowledge.

Language really is everything. Side-line it at our peril, yet exploring its evolutions with our young people can yield amazing fruit.

I’d love to hear about how you are engaging the natural, daily heart languages of young people to share the message of Jesus with them. Comment, or drop me a line! Thanks 😀

Photo by Fausto García on Unsplash