Youth

There are certain lessons I have learned over the last decade and a half in youth ministry. I learned early on that taking students to play paintball really means open season on the youth pastor, and I learned that something always gets broken during a lock-in. I figured out that playing dodge ball allows me the opportunity to get back at “that” student, and I realized that the back seat of the church van provides students with way too much privacy. I have observed that youth group couples rarely last and that most parents judge a youth program by whether their child is having a good time at youth group. I found out that playing youth group games in the sanctuary never ends well and that students seldom bring Bibles to church. I also realized that the most effective way to help students connect the dots between faith and life is having a youth group that worships together, prays for each other, and participates in missions experiences.

taking students to play paintball really means open season on the youth pastor…

At YXL this past summer (CEP’s denominational leadership conference for high school students), the Lord blessed us with great times of worship and prayer. It seemed to the leadership of the conference that the next step would be to take on a mission trip as many of these students who would like to go. Though we attempt each summer to incorporate some type of ministry experience into the conference, like street evangelism or a service project, this would be our first attempt at a full blown mission trip. Because as a conference YXL hopes to help students better understand how to be leaders in both the church and the kingdom, it was important that our mission trip be connected with a local church and allow students to engage with people who are not involved in a church.

On December 27th, students and adults from seven states and one foreign country gathered at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville, GA for a day of training, team building, and corporate Sabbath worship before heading to our final destination, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Our host church, New City Fellowship Chattanooga (www.newcityfellowship.com), allowed us to join with their new church plant in the East Lake neighborhood of Chattanooga to lead a Christmas VBS program and do work projects in the community. Hope for the Inner City (www.hope4.org) provided our lodging and Brian McKeon, director of 3RInternational mission agency, served as our coordinator for the trip. During the course of the week, we painted rooms, cleaned church basements, raked leaves, went door to door visiting folks from the neighborhood, picked up kids in the church van and put on a one of a kind YXL Christmas VBS program. But of all the things that happened during the week, it was the times I saw the light bulb switch on in students’ minds about the relevancy of their faith to all of life that made the late nights, early mornings, and sleeping on the floor worth it.

In certain circles it is currently en vogue to question the effectiveness of what has been happening in youth ministry over the last three decades. As a result, many of us are rethinking our youth ministry paradigms and methodologies. However, I left my week in Chattanooga reminded again of the many lessons I have learned in youth ministry. Foremost on my mind was the connection between faith and life for students that happens when they worship together, pray for each other, and participate in missions experiences. Perhaps the answer to all our questions about effective youth ministry can be found by allowing students to do those three things.

For more information about YXL, check out our website – www.pcacep.org/yxl – or the website about our sister conference in Glorieta, New Mexico – www.yxlglorieta.org.

I have a confession to make. The pressure was on and in the heat of the moment I succumbed to what Jason Stephenson, youth director at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, labels the “pragmatism of youth ministry.” In the last issue of Equip to Disciple, I stated that the first question that should be asked about youth ministry is not programmatic, but should concern itself with the theological foundation. Yet when a pastor looking for a youth director called and asked what the distinctives of a Reformed youth ministry were, I forgot my own sage advice. After describing the discipleship programs of several PCA youth ministries, the pastor stopped me and pointed out that nothing I had described was distinct to a Reformed youth program. Without intending to, I had fallen into the trap that so many of us who are engaged in student ministry find ourselves in: looking for a program or event to solve all the problems in our youth ministry. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with programs or events; however, I am more and more convinced the proper foundation on which to build and sustain a youth program is God’s covenant relationship with humanity.

From the origin of your calling to work with the next generation to the importance of assisting parents in raising their children, a covenantal understanding of scripture has multiple implications for youth ministry. Let me try to whet your appetite by highlighting just two of the many aspects of this special relationship between God and man that have direct bearing on how we do youth ministry.

First, the covenant is relational. In it the Lord declares that He is our God and we are His people. This statement helps us begin to develop a proper view of both God and man. How many self-absorbed or self-loathing teenagers could use a youth ministry which helps them understand this distinction? Implicit in this relationship is responsibility. For example, we have a missional responsibility to be a blessing to others. This gives a better foundation for why we do those summer mission trips to exotic locations and those service projects in the inner city.

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The second aspect which has direct bearing on youth ministry is that the covenant is about community. Through salvation we are brought into a community that not only shares a common bond in Christ but also shares in joy, pain, and accountability. That one idea of covenant community alone can help us better know how to address the inevitable issue of cliques within our youth groups.

Now, I know that in today’s spiritual climate words like doctrine and theology are often labeled as boring and irrelevant. I know for some the thought of trying to teach a doctrine as deep as the covenant to a room full of junior high boys causes you to break out in a cold sweat. I also fully appreciate that advertising your next retreat as “The Retreat of the Covenant” would be a tough sell to high school students. That being said, what I am suggesting is that we should think theology before programs and work to understand and integrate the covenant implications of our relationship with the Lord into the DNA of all we do in youth ministry. Our challenge is to avoid the temptation of running to and fro looking for the next big thing in youth ministry until we have evaluated our programs based on our covenant relationship with God. Then maybe, just maybe, the next time a pastor calls asking about the theology of youth ministry, I can remember my own advice.

1. For further reading on the subject of the covenants, I recommend the classic The Christ of the Covenants by O. Palmer Robertson. For those who want a good summation of the doctrine, I recommend Making Kingdom Disciples by Charles Dunahoo. See especially chapter 5. For those who want to understand the covenants in relation to teaching it to the next generation, I recommend Heirs of the Covenant by Susan Hunt. For those interested in a primer on Covenant Theology for high school students, new believers, or people investigating the doctrine for the first time I recommend What is Covenant Theology: A Contemporary Explanation of Biblical Covenants by J.H. Varner.

I recently heard a veteran PCA youth pastor say that only 6% of the current generation of students claim to be evangelical Christians, compared to 65% of the Baby Boomer generation. I then read an online study conducted by LifeWay Research (www.lifeway.com) which found that two-thirds of adults between the ages of 18-22 who were involved in church as high school students will stop attending church for at least a year, with only 35% of those returning to regular church attendance. Also, researchers such as George Barna, Walt Mueller, and Christian Smith are finding a disconnect between what evangelical teens profess to believe and the moral choices they are making, especially in the area of sexual activity.

It is hard to know what to make of these statistics, but I am convinced that they should lead those of us involved in youth ministry to start asking each other honest, hard questions about student ministry in the PCA. Jamie Lambert, youth director at Covenant Presbyterian in Fayetteville, Georgia, pointed out to me that in order to find the right answer, you have to ask the right question. I believe this axiom can be rightly applied to the trends above with the question being: What is the theological foundation that empowers youth ministry?

My concern is that without a clearly-developed theological foundation, we a re building our youth programs on sinking sand. For example, there was a time when those of us in youth ministry thought the answers to the spiritual problems facing teenagers could be found by getting them to attend youth events. So we spent money on technology and marketing, wore chicken suits at youth group, and gave away t-shirts at every event. Success was determined by how many students showed up. We then read that we needed to be “relational” to be successful. Borrowing ideas from Young Life, we started “meeting students on their turf.” Then someone informed us that we needed to be relevant, so we learned the idioms of the day, grew goatees, listened to popular music, and added a few profanities to our vocabulary. Doug Fields came along and told us to have a “Purpose Driven Youth Ministry,” so we all wrote carefully-crafted purpose statements. Now the Emerging Church folks are pushing us to be missional, authentic, and to rediscover the ancient (for more on this topic see A New Kind of Youth Ministry by Chris Folmsbee). So we are burning candles in our youth rooms, working to build community in our youth groups, and talking about social injustices around the world. Yet no matter which of the latest methods we try, the statistics continue to grow more alarming.

This is why I believe the first question of youth ministry is one of theological foundation. I am convinced that the particular model of ministry that a church uses is secondary to the theological foundation on which the model is built. I will suggest in the next issue of Equip that God’s covenant relationship with humanity is the proper theological foundation for youth ministry. However, I am afraid that all too often the theological implications of that relationship have little to do with the planning of our youth ministry calendars.

Is youth ministry a lost cause in the PCA? Absolutely not. There are hundreds of churches doing great work around the country, as well as a number of quality youth ministry resources within the Reformed community. For a list of these refer to the youth ministry section of the CE&P website www.pcacep.org. However, for many of us it is time to deconstruct much of what we have been doing in youth ministry in order to build a proper theological foundation. Somehow the cart (the ministry model) has gotten ahead of the horse (the theological foundation). Getting those back in the proper order is, I believe, a process that will begin when we start asking the right question. What is the theological foundation that empowers youth ministry?

Danny Mitchell will become the new Coordinator of Family and Youth Ministries for Christian Education and Publications in June 2007.He will succeed Dean Conkel, who returned to local church ministry in June 2006. Danny graduated from Covenant College in 1992 with a BS in Biblical Studies and will graduate from Covenant Theological Seminary in May with a Master of Divinity.

Danny has had good experience in youth ministry prior to and during his enrollment at Covenant Theological Seminary. He has worked at both New City Chattanooga and New City St. Louis. Danny has also served as the camp director at Camp Westminster in Conyers, Ga., youth director at Carriage Lane Pres. In Peachtree City, Ga., and as a youth intern at Lookout Mountain Presbyterian. Danny and his wife Mary Pat are already familiar with the CEP family. Danny worked as a member of the PYA, now YXL, task force and Mary Pat is a former CEP staff member.

Danny and Mary Pat met at Covenant College and have been married 15 years. They have two children, Claire and Benjamin.

Coming from a military family, Danny lived in many different places during his early year s. He moved to the Chattanooga area as a high school freshman and became a believer at age 18. He says that he was greatly impacted by both the youth director and a male volunteer in the process of the Lord drawing him to himself.

Danny’s 17 years of experience in youth ministry will serve him well in his new position with CEP. Danny says that even in college he had a specific sense of calling to work with teenagers within the local church.

When Conkel left the position last year, Charles Dunahoo, CEP Coordinator, began a search that took him through many r