The magic word that churches have for youth ministry…
[The following is an extract from Rebooted.]
There is a magic word, known throughout the Western Church, for youth work – a word that magnificently summarises the complex needs and rich desires of the Church towards young people. That word is ‘something.’
“We need something for the teenagers.”
“Can we hire someone to do something with the kids?”
Something, however, doesn’t demand a vibrant tapestry of theology, or really any Biblical knowledge. Something doesn’t require us to undergird our youth ministry with a foundation of well thought-through, Bible-driven principles. Something – at its most monstrous – creates a youth work that develops independently from the church, and independently from the Bible.
Something can be a youth ministry that has developed around an understanding of the particulars without any foundation in the essentials. Often, the signs of this are youth ministries that changes shape every six months or so as one idea is exhausted, and another is needed to stoke the fires of novelty. Novelty is like a stone skipping on a pond: It will bounce for a while and maybe travel quite a way, but eventually it will stop and sink.
I want to contend that this relentless drive for something has made us a little woolly around the edges. We need to be honest and wake up to the real implications of proof-texted daily readings, spoon-fed Bible stories, and broadly low expectations for God’s work in teenage work in Church environments. If today’s Youth Workers were yesterday’s youth, then we clearly have our work cut out for us nurturing young people who can build tomorrow’s church. ‘Something’ just isn’t enough.
The Missing Bible
The Bible is like a large cavern filled with gold coins, jewels and priceless valuables, and we as Christians have been given shovels, wheelbarrows, and JCB excavators in order to mine its depths and take home its treasures. Every time we delve into the Bible, we are the richer for it.
When it comes to the practice of Youth Work, however, the Bible can easily become conspicuously absent. When we dive down and uncover the foundational principles that drive and undergird our youth work, the substance of it isn’t always there. The essentials are missing, or they are based on something other than the Bible.
It’s not that the Bible isn’t in our youth ministries at all, but sometimes it feels like passages have been sprinkled on later as an afterthought, or simply wedged in to add some mildly relevant proof-texts. It’s as if youth ministry’s foundations were assumed to be so glaringly obvious that we simply couldn’t miss them. The truth, however, is that youth ministry is fraught with exactly the same dangers as any other kind of ministry, and young people are not waiting to suddenly flower one day while we keep the seeds safe for that day. Young people are growing roots everywhere and they’re looking for solid ground – both spiritually and practically.
Nothing about youth ministry can be assumed or taken for granted; we must search the Bible for our youth ministry just as we do for our own growth, and as the church does for its own identity and direction. We must undergird everything we do in youth work with the Bible.
This difference is prepositional: Do we add the Bible to our youth ministry, or does our youth ministry emerge from the Bible? If we were to pull a loose thread, would we find the scriptures woven into the entire fabric of our practices, right through to the initial conception and underlying strategies? Or would we, perhaps, find a basically humanistic approach to youth ministry, shunted into a slightly different direction with some Christian ideology thrown in?
Let’s be clear from the start: ‘youth work’ or ‘youth ministry’ isn’t strictly in the Bible. You won’t find a plethora of youth clubs, summer camps, lock-ins and nerf wars in the pages of Scripture. Please don’t shut this book just yet, however, because all the component pieces that make up the youth work essentials are in the Bible! Principles like age-specific groups, relevant teaching, one-to-one discipleship, small group work, partnering with parents, developmental formation etc., are in the Bible. The Bible is the best youth work guide there is!
A Biblical Famine
It’s not that we youth workers don’t love or use the Bible. Of course we do! We know in theory just how good and enriching the Bible can be. But the question remains, do we actually know and understand enough of the material ourselves to build consistently on it, and point clearly back to it in all that we do?
Biblical literacy has fallen significantly and — if the statistics are to be believed — we are now facing the first generation of biblically illiterate youth workers. A study by LifeWay Research[i] in America found that 55% of regular church attenders didn’t actually read their Bibles more than once a week, and 1 in 5 never read it at all. The story is similar in the UK. A ComRes survey[ii] found that only 35% of church-goers read their Bibles every day and a YouGov report[iii] found that only 14% of young people could properly differentiate a Bible story from other Children’s stories and fairy tales.
Amos, on point, says
“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. [Amos 8:11, ESV]
Throughout chapter 8, God’s people were warned of a great lack. Worship songs would turn to wails of pain (vv.8, 10) and the people will be lost and aimless (v.12). This is because God withdrew his voice (v.11). The presence of God was known through His voice and losing it was like losing access to all that brought life. There was no greater fear, pain or loneliness than the loss of the voice of God.
We, however, have full access to His voice – the words of life in the Bible. We should hunger and thirst for it daily more than anything else. Settling for the crumbs under the table when there is a fully cooked feast is just crazy! If God’s people from the book of Amos could see us now, using the Bible so sparingly and timidly — rather than drinking deep from the well — what would they think of us?
Consider that reading the Bible in a year is seen as quite a spiritual feat, but in reality, it only takes three 5 minute sittings a day. We spend four times that eating and drinking, and nearly eight times that on social media.
What about knowing the whole biblical drama so thoroughly that we can place any story or character or idea into its larger context, understanding the links and history that support it, and applying it relevantly to the 21st Century? This is surely a worthwhile venture, and a reasonable expectation for any Christian minister charged with teaching others.
The effect of this famine can be horrific. A couple of years back I was editing a Bible Study for a well-known and widely used youth resource on the story of David and Goliath in 1 Sam. 17. The session was great! Well balanced, good fun, creative, participatory, and with clear formational ideas. All the things good youth work teaching should be! When it got to the text however, everything fell apart.
The writer said, ‘David defeated Goliath because David was strong, David was skilled, David was able, and David knew who he was!’ There was no mention of God at all. Imagine teaching the story of David and Goliath and ending up with self-help and humanism! I’m all for teaching on the clarity of identity – but the story is not about David’s skills, prowess, or great strength; it’s about God; his honour, his glory, and his ability to use the rejected and the unexpected. This is definitely a ‘just look at how epic God is’ passage with an ‘he can use anybody to accomplish amazing things’ application.
One of the causes of this famine can be found on our bookcases. Take a minute and go to a popular daily study guide – either on paper or online. I’m guessing it will begin with a single verse or a short story from the Bible. This might be followed by a much longer explanation, perhaps a reflective activity and, (I imagine) an almost self-help focus on you, the individual. Many Bible studies and youth study resources follow this pattern of proof-text with explanation and reflection with a broad focus on making you feel good: very gently challenged, yet still comfortable. An ordinary Bible study guide can be read in 5 minutes and — with fuller reflection — is usually over in 20 minutes.
Bible study has become an exercise in convenience, helping you to quickly fit it in with your busy lifestyle. It requires require little from the reader and contains limited material that actually needs us to dig deep into a passage. The shovels, wheelbarrows, and JCB excavators are left collecting cobwebs. We leave with trinkets, but miss the gold. It’s now possible that we’ve become so used to the trinkets that we just don’t know what we’re missing.
[i] LifeWay Research: Americans Are Fond of the Bible, Don’t Actually Read It. http://lifewayresearch.com/2017/04/25/lifeway-research-americans-are-fond-of-the-bible-dont-actually-read-it/
[ii] ComRes Research commissioned by The Bible Society: Taking the Pulse. http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/files/our_work/taking_the_pulse.pdf
[iii] YouGov Report commissioned by The Bible Society: Pass it On. http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/projects/Bible-Society-Report_030214_final_.pdf
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
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