When Youth Work Is Supposed To Be Difficult

This morning I had a great chat with a leader of a national youth project that develops events and camps where young people are expected to work hard, study and learn more about God. It runs totally counter to much of our popular youth work models, but is also exponentially growing and spreading nationally every year, developing incredibly enthusiastic and mature young people.

In contrast, one of the most popular youth work models of the last few decades has been the ‘Funnel Method.’ Made popular by Dough Fields’ ‘Purpose Driven Youth Ministry,’ the idea is to run several projects aimed at different crowds with different content and funnel young people down from easy-to-attend, accessible events, into deeper more clearly Christian groups.

In the funnel method, you effectively start with a large crowd event that makes connections and does very basic (if any) Gospel teaching. From that first connection, you invite attendees to a slightly smaller, but still accessible group (like an Alpha Course) that goes into a little more detail about the Christian Faith. The next step is to look for conversions, and move those into a smaller and more specific group aimed at new believers. You then develop this further into yet again smaller and deeper groups, ending with a core community of young people who are leading and maturing.

Fields goes into great detail about how this is done, and why it can be successful; and he’s right, it can be very successful if it’s done properly, is well resourced, and if it matches the needs of the context that you’re in.

So What’s The Problem?

The funnel method can be a little ‘bait n’ switch’ calling young people to a fun event without being honest about what you’re doing. Jesus always immediately called people to Himself without needing to warm them up. It can also create a fragmented youth ministry complete with worn-out and under-resourced leaders.

The bigger problem though, is when the vibe of the first accessible project trickles down into all the others. This is when the funnel method is done badly, or is being pushed into a context that doesn’t fit it.

What I mean is this: If you’re finding it hard to get attendees at the smaller projects it’s easy to water down the content, and add more comfortable activities taken from the larger events. This is especially true when young people are introduced to you as the ‘fun group’ but now you’re asking them to do ‘boring stuff.’ So every project becomes a games night with a God slot, or a disco with a couple of Christian songs thrown in. Your real discipleship never gets off the ground.

The Candy Culture

If you haven’t yet seen ‘That Sugar Film’ by Damon Gameau, or Jamie Oliver’s American ‘Food Revolution’ then you should! Not only will these freak the sugar right out of you, they go into detail about the biological changes that happen in your body in a sugar heavy diet.

Tim Hawkins, in ‘Fruit That Will Last’ makes this same link to sugar-styled youth ministry projects. These are projects that dial up the fun and stimulus constantly, without demanding any real work at following Jesus. He says,

“‘Hype’ is like sugar in your diet. A splash of it every now and again livens things up amazingly. Life gets a little dull without it. But if your total diet is sugar, then it won’t build ‘fruit that will last’. Feeding kids on sugar will always have 3 results

1. an initial rush of energy
2. then they will be flat
3. then they will be fat.”

If you never move into a real space where young people have to work at their relationship with Jesus, coached by leaders who genuinely walk with and educate them, then you’re creating a youth ministry without lasting believers.

These young people will not be able to grow and develop into fully functioning members of a church, or be able to rely on God in a substantive way when life gets real. If they are able to do these things, then they’re probably being mentored by something or someone outside your youth work – which makes your ministry pretty redundant right?

The Bible’s Pattern

Young People throughout the Bible were educated by their religious leaders. In fact, it was only relatively recently that education was separated from religion. Robert Raikes founded the Sunday School Movement to teach young people in church that weren’t being educated by the state.

In the Old Testament, the whole nation of Israel was involved in teaching about God’s promises. This was a constant thing which was woven into the fabric of their lives.

‘These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live… 7 Impress them on your children’ [Deuteronomy 6:1-7 ].

In Proverbs, we are given a complete educational theory that revolves around young people learning God’s own wisdom.

In the New Testament we are introduced to the method of Jewish Education, the latter stages of which was used by Jesus with his young disciples. Young people who go to school for a couple of hours every morning, 5 or 6 days a week to simply memorise huge portions of the Old Testament. Then they were taught how to study and apply these teachings wisely to their lives.

Education Vs. Youth Club

What we have done, I fear, is spent a huge portion of the last half century doing is driving a wedge between school and youth ministry. We don’t ever want to hear ‘this feels like school’ from a young person. Our mission has been to make everything fun, unique and distinct. There is definitely a lot of good that has come from this approach too! It’s also hard to blame us, considering the among of expectations and undue pressure our school systems place on young people’s shoulders.

There’s also a ‘baby and bathwater’ metaphor that comes to mind, however. We all too easily straight-jacket ourselves into just doing cute things to the point where we lose any cultural expectation to study, learn and develop.

Bringing It Together

We really need to harmonise some learning environment culture with our youth projects and ministry. There needs to be an expectation of hard work and education that happens in our youth work projects. Times do need to be set apart for real Bible Study, meditation and reflection. Space needs to be given over to substantive ethical and philosophical discussion. This can still work in a funnel method, but you need to make clear boundaries and set genuine expectations which you stick to right from day one.

Let’s not be afraid to be educators, and lets not freak out at the idea of doing real Bible study and deep reflections. We are youth workers, so have the right stuff to make this engaging, relevant and authentic. Let’s get stuck in!