Youth Ministry

The Fall, the Family, and the Covenant Community

October 26, 2015 by Mary Davis

DANNY MITCHELL

October 21, 2015

The methodology of any church’s ministry to adolescents should grow out of a marriage between biblical theology and ministry context. If we understand ministry to youth in its simplest form—believing adults from inside and outside the nuclear family who invest of themselves in children and youth— then we can begin to see how discipling the next generation works itself out within the Covenant community. I am of the opinion that after worshipping God, the raising and discipling of rising generations and the passing on of the faith to that generation could be viewed as God’s covenant people’s primary responsibility.

If that last sentence is anywhere close to being correct, then on some level, every church should regularly evaluate whether ministries to the rising generations are enough of a priority within their body. However, debating that issue is not the purpose of this article. Instead, I want to focus on the role that the Covenant community plays in helping parents with the raising and discipling of their children in a fallen world.

The cultural mandate in Genesis 1:28 set a familial trajectory for our first parents. They were to be fruitful and multiply, not just for the sake of having children, but for the stated purpose of filling the earth and subduing it. Implicit in this mandate is the responsibility of raising their children to be able to fulfill these responsibilities as well. The children to come would need examples, lessons, love, and discipline for this great task.

The Fall didn’t take away Adam and Eve’s parental responsibility. Scripture bears this out in several places ( Psa. 78, Deut. 6), at the same time showing that the design God had for familial relationships was marred by sin. The epicenter, ground zero, for sin’s disastrous entrance into the world was the family. Sin focused on the family after the Fall when Cain killed Abel. After the flood only one family inhabited the earth but sin tore it apart (Gen. 9:18-28). Leading up to the formation of God’s covenant people in Genesis 12, the family clearly needs help.

Let me state the obvious: The family still needs help today, and if the Lord waits another century or two until his return, then the family will continue to need that help. As long as parents with a sinful nature continue having children, born with a sinful nature into a sinful world, parents will struggle with the responsibility of raising and discipling their children. Even though, in Christ, our sins are forgiven, and even though the Holy Spirit enables us to die to sin daily, we continue to need help raising our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

This is one of the reasons that the Lord formed his covenant people. The family doesn’t exist in isolation but as part of a larger family. Together, that larger family surrounds the parents and their children so that the covenant community participates in the raising and discipling of the children within that larger family. When this happens, parents, children and the covenant community begin experiencing one of the covenant blessings of being part of God’s people.

This perspective of youth ministry moves the question of models and methods from a primary question to a secondary question. As long as families within the local body are not trying to raise and disciple their children in isolation, as long as the covenant community isn’t trying to isolate youth ministry from the body, as long as adults in the congregation invest in the lives of adolescents, and as long as pastors and elders view this call to disciple the rising generations as a primary responsibility of the Church, then youth ministry can move from a programmatic ministry of the Church to a ministry that emphasizes multigenerational relationships with the covenant family. In this way, programs will exist to serve these relationships, instead of programs existing because of the lack of relationships between the adult members of the body, and the rising generations.

Because I have been in youth ministry for two and half decades, I know that paragraph oozes with “Pollyanna”-thinking about the church and its ministry to youth. It saddens me that that is the case. Perhaps moving from questions about proof texts for youth ministry, to developing an understanding of the theology of next-generation ministry (within the context of covenant theology) would help the Church see these ideas not as “pie in the sky” thinking, but as biblically informed ideas for the church.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go plan games for youth group while the adults have Bible study in the fellowship hall. I wonder if blindfolded kickball is a good idea?

Youth Culture Moment: Afraid to Listen

October 26, 2015 by Mary Davis

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DANNY MITCHELL

October 21, 2015

One of the challenges of being an adult who works with mid-adolescents (13-18 years old) is age. Each year you grow one year older and become one year further removed from the world which teenagers inhabit. I continue to believe the best way to enter into this world is to ask good questions and listen well when the answers are given.

Listening well to teenagers is a skill that takes some practice. Our default when we listen to someone who is younger than us is to rush to give answers, solutions, or instructions before we have actually listened to and absorbed what they are saying. Believe it or not, teenagers hate when adults do this. In fact, adults hate when it happens to them, but for some reason we find ourselves doing it constantly to teens.

Why is this dynamic so prevalent? I have been playing around with a theory for a couple of years (this is a scientifically unproven theory yet it seems to have some merit). I believe one reason adults talk so much at teens instead of listening first is that we are afraid. We are afraid because we don’t understand the world in which they live. We are afraid because we don’t think the young person likes us. We are afraid because we don’t know the right answers. As result, we start dispensing advice before we have listened, giving answers before we know the issue, or talking about ourselves to show how well we relate in order to cover our own fear.

I mentioned earlier that learning to listen well is a skill that takes practice. Part of that “practice” involves working to become becoming bi-lingual: an adult who is willing to spend time learning about, and interpreting, youth culture. It has been helpful for me to think in terms of becoming a generational missionary. Just as a missionary must understand the cultural context in which they are called to serve, a generational missionary who is called to cross-generational ministry needs to learn the many nuances of the rising generation. That is not to say that we have to do it perfectly. The rapidly evolving youth culture landscape makes it impossible for not only adults, but teens as well, to keep up. However, I am suggesting that we need to be intentional and earnest in our efforts to learn the world of teenagers—not to judge, not to fix, but to learn, so that we can become better listeners. It is only after we have listened well that we should speak.

Case in point: I learned a new work last night. According to an Anderson Cooper special on CNN called #BeingThirteen: Inside the Secret World of Teens, “lurking” is a verb that means being present on social media without posting. I learned several things last night as I watched Cooper’s special, which I believe will help me be a better listener to the teenagers with whom I speak. Because I am about to recommend that you track down the show and watch it, let me give a word of caution. At times, it is hard to watch because it is scary to think about social media’s potential (especially potential for harm) among middle school students. But I was reminded last night that when Jesus looked over the city and saw those who were harassed and helpless, he had compassion. He also saw a field that was white unto the harvest, i.e. an opportunity for the gospel to work. The other thing of which I was painfully aware last night, was that even though I am adult, social media eats up more of my time that it should. Something about a plank in my own eye kept bouncing around in my head.

Let me end with your youth culture homework: Make a point to watch it. If you can’t, check out the short promo video:

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Book Review: Youth Ministry in the 21st Century

October 26, 2015 by Mary Davis

DANNY MITCHELL

October 22, 2015

Youth Ministry in the 21^st Century: Five Views. Chap Clark, Ed. (Baker Academic, 2015)

Writing book reviews can be a tricky thing.

After all, a book review is ultimately only one person’s opinion about a particular book. I have often wondered why I should trust the opinion of a reviewer that I most likely don’t know, about a book that I have not read. And yet, I regularly find myself reading these reviews to help determine whether I should purchase a book.

If you find yourself in a similar conundrum regarding this review of Youth Ministry in the 21^st Century, let me cut to the chase and say that this is an important enough book in the evangelical youth ministry world that every youth ministry practitioner should take the time to read it. Whether or not you like the book, or are able to find direct application to your ministry, is something that you will have to decide. But the book merits serious consideration for those who work with junior high and high school students.

There are three reasons that I am able to make such a bold claim about this book.

First, to my knowledge, this is the only time any attempt has been made to present a theologically conservative “Reformed” view of youth ministry through a publisher that appeals to a broadly evangelical audience. While I believe that a Reformed view of youth ministry is more comprehensive than Brian Cosby was able to present in this book (you can read more of his view in his book Giving Up Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry From an Entertainment Culture) and while I do not agree with every aspect of Cosby’s presentation of Reformed youth ministry through a “means of grace” grid, I am glad to see Reformed Theology being discussed in the same conversations where youth ministry in being talked about. It was particularly helpful to read Dr. Cosby’s critiques of the other views (Gospel Advancing, Adoption, Ecclessial and D6 view). He does a solid job helping readers see pros and cons of each authors presentation of their view. It is my hope that this book will help move more and more youth ministry discussions toward the theological foundations that we should be building our “Reformed” youth ministries on.
The second reason is that the predecessor to this book, The Four Views of Youth Ministry in the Church, was written about 15 years ago. This book played safe by not diving deep enough into the underpinnings of each view. The book gave us fresh categories to classify the models of youth ministry that we were employing, but not enough foundational depth to help us when the inevitable shifts in youth ministry methodology came. Youth Ministry in the 21^st Century seems to make some corrections in that area. The rejoinders written by the authors, after each view is presented, help the reader see more clearly the strengths and weaknesses of the various views. I am not much of a fan of youth ministry books that focus on discussion starters “that will get any student talking” or “101 surefire retreat ideas.” What I am a fan of is a youth ministry book that pushes readers to think deeper thoughts about youth ministry, especially when that book helps us connect the dots between our theology and our methodology. Thankfully, Youth Ministry in the 21^st Century, is a book that does both of those things well.
The last reason has to do with the timing of this book. We are emerging from a period of about ten years when a glut of negative research suggested that youth ministry wasn’t successfully discipling young people into a lasting faith. In the youth ministry world, this was like the shifting of tectonic plates and many of us were shaken to our ministry cores. Books like Youth Ministry in the 21^st Century are helpful as we continue to move beyond the research toward new solutions. Through its thoughtfully written views of youth ministry, this book reminds us again that youth ministry is not dead. There are men and women who are called to the next generation who wrestle with not only the methods and models of next generation ministry, but the theology behind them. I anticipate that if you read this book in its entirety, you will, at times, be bothered, encouraged, and challenged. The beauty of a book like this one is that in the written interactions between the authors, we see that when a mutual calling is shared, respectful dialogue is possible even when there are points of disagreement.

You won’t have to agree with everything in this book to find it valuable. In fact, excluding Brian Cosby, I may have found more with which I disagreed with which I agreed. But I am certain that this book has helped sharpen me in my calling to work with the next generation.