What Are Youth Ministries For? - Pt.2 - Biblical Foundations of Youth Ministry

I remember one particularly galling Wednesday night several years ago. The previous days had brought a familiar mix of high-effort, low-response, excitement, frustration, and discouragement, all in one package. And when I walked away from a house that night I had just one simple question: Why? Let's face it: There are times in youth ministry when you walk away from a small group study or a conversation with a family or a late-night program, and the thought occurs to you ... "Why I am doing this? Is there any good or compelling reason that I continue to pour heart and hands, effort and energy into this work of youth ministry … or am I just keeping the car running?"

 

A few months ago I was at a conference where I got to hear Simon Sinek give a short talk on "The Power of Why." His thesis: Why drives the how, how results in what. But this is the reverse of our normal practice where we focus on what, argue over how, and rarely figure out any justification for the whole enterprise.

So is there a clear "why" for youth ministry? Why this work with students, this endeavor within (or without) our churches to seek out and minister to teenagers? What do we find in Scripture that convinces us that this work matters and God calls us to it? 

The more I reflect on these 15 years in youth ministry, the more convinced I am that youth ministry is really just one of the manifold ministries of Christ and His church. It is highly-contextualized ministry to adolescents that can take a myriad of local forms that all look to Scripture for both guidance and goal. I make no claim to have THE biblical theology for youth ministry, but I can attempt a few words of call, challenge, and comfort that have lead me to a theology for it for our day in the church. This is my why. This is what I believe.

1. Youth ministry is mission work. The reality is that we have been called by a missionary God: A Father who sent His Son (for us!) and His Spirit (in us!) that we might be adopted into His family, united to Him as sons and daughters, renewed in His image and participating in His kingdom. I'm growing to love 1 Peter 2 more and more: "you are a chosen people, a royal priestshood" ... to what end? "So that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light."  We in youth ministry get to stand at the foggy adolescent intersection of childhood and adulthood, family and friend, church and wider society. We stand and say it, sing it out: The praise of God to those who are adrift in the fog and lost in the dark.    

2. Youth ministry is corporate work. It is the church's work. The Church is the body of Christ, and where He is working, there the Church is to be found.  This family of God, this fellowship of Jesus, is sent (via the Son's command! Matt 28:18ff, John 20:21-22) on the mission of making disciples to Jesus. Though we love the church and are passionately committed to it, we point to Christ, not to it (or ourselves) - we want to see students called to a robust, sticky faith in Jesus Christ that is poured out in love for God and for people. 

3. Youth ministry is family work. God desires for these broken human families to play their part in telling his story of redemption. God has designed the family such that parents have the primary spiritual responsibility of telling the story of God's grace in creation, redemption, and restoration and then leading kids to know God, to love him heart, soul, mind, and strength with an everyday faith (Deut. 6). 

4. Youth ministry is student work. The church faces a world in which many adolescents are both far from God and in the dark - and yet none less than Jesus Himself is seeking them through the work of His Spirit.  Where possible, the church must partner with the family for the sake of declaring the gospel to the next generation (Ps. 71:16-18). But just as the church doesn't forsake the parents but must equip them to (re)discover their God-given role in the discipleship of their kids, it must not also forsake the kids and students who do yet know Christ. That means the work of training and equipping adults and students from the church to go out and share in the mission: Seek students, stand with them, speak out for them, love them, and bear witness among them to Christ at work in their midst. 

5. Youth ministry is welcoming work. The church must welcome kids/students into its communal life of worship and witness and BE the extended family of God to those who have been abandoned. If Paul can talk about the church as the place of new humanity in Christ where Jew and Gentile stand before Christ together, it damn well better be the place for adults and kids together, too.  As the church welcomes kids, it welcomes the Lord Himself (Mk. 9:33-37). Our welcome here is our worship (Rom. 15:7-9). Part of making a home for them means taking pains to teach them and make the long-term commitment to walk beside them into maturity as a whole human being renewed in Christ and ready to take up their vocation in this world. 

6. Youth ministry is desperate work. To persist in this ministry you must heed the call of God to know him for his sake, to follow him in full knowledge of the cost, and to boast only in his cross,. You must loosen your control, let go of outcomes, and lift your eyes to the risen Christ who speaks to your timid heart: "Take courage! It is I: do not be afraid… and I am with you. Always." Fix your eyes on Him, make your prayer that of Paul in Phil. 3:9-14, and devote yourself to the work of the Lord because none of it goes to waste (1 Cor. 15:58).

Andy Cornett is the Director of Student Ministries at Signal Mountain Presbyterian in Chattanooga, TN. Andy earned a Masters in Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA and has over ten years of experience in youth ministry.

Less "god", More Jesus

This is our final post in our series on the cultural trend coined "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism". Check out the rest of the posts in the series here.

You know this feeling. You love teenagers, you hang out with them, you’ve studied and prepped for a talk, worked hard on a program, taught about Jesus and following him, and ... at the end of the day, you find your beloved teens kind of unable to talk much about what they believe. Everybody wants to be “closer to God.” But when pressed, nobody has much in particular to say. You wonder ... what is going on here? Are we that ineffective?

Your teens might be suffering from a case of MTD. According to “Soul Searching,” Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) has become the “de facto dominant religion among teens.” Though it’s without creed or organizers, MTD functions like as a parasite to its host, the church. Its chief tenets are that God wants us to be good (and get along) and go to heaven when we die, God wants us to be happy, and God is there for us if/when we need him.

Why do your teens have it? Turns out, they probably caught it from the adults at your church. In her absolutely devastating and wonderful book "Almost Christian: What the Fatih of our Teenagers is tellin the American Church,” Kenda Creasy Dean takes the argument further into the Christian territory of local church youth ministry. Dean (who was one of the researchers/interviewers on the NSYR that formed the basis of “Soul Searching”) offers both diagnosis and prescription for treatment. (Confession: this book is brilliant. I have read and reread it and have heard her speak; if anything good comes out of what follows, it’s properly her thoughts, not mine). I just want to focus on one tantalizing prescription:

Less “god,” more Jesus.

Dean notes that most of the teenagers in the study seem paralyzed when asked about Jesus himself (yes, of course, some did better than others). But here are a few observations that ought to both comfort and encourage us:

1. MTD banks on a default, ahistoric deistic concept of “G/god;” Jesus is vastly different, particular, personal.
2. MTD has some basic beliefs/practices, but it can’t tell a compelling story or capture your heart; Jesus is the best Story and captures hearts (and thus minds and bodies as well).
3. You can’t love MTD – but you can love a Jesus who has first loved you. (And as Dean says, “you learn best what you love most”).

Since reading the book, here are a few practices I’m learning to adopt in talking with students.

1. Start asking students about their relationship with Jesus - not “God.” In English, God is the default word for a deity, so those three letters become a box in which just park our own conceptions/feelings/thoughts/beliefs on the divine. We could talk about “God” all day and not being talking about the same “god.” As Christians we believe in One God- in the three persons of Father/Son/Spirit, and it’s time for us start using those names and asking students about Jesus. Who is Jesus for you? Do you sense that Jesus is with you? For you? What is one thing Jesus is doing in your life right now? And when you are done, pray with them and for them – to Jesus.
2. Use “Jesus” (and God, and Father/Spirit/Son) as subject, not as object. Talk less “about” God: talk more about what he has done, is doing, and will do. When God is the subject, it’s clear he is doing the action. We all know the red letters in the Bible of what Jesus says – but do you talk about what he does? I haven’t done this, but I want to go through a gospel and list out all the verbs where Jesus is the subject. With God (and particularly Jesus) as the subject of our sentences (past/present/future), we emphasize his ongoing, active presence in our midst.
3. Get personal: talk about your own faith story and what Jesus has done/is doing in your own life.  Let teens see the personal difference that Jesus Christ has made in you. Where possible, be explicit about the links between what you do and why. If you are taking some steps in following Jesus, be clear about his love that motivates you. If you are taking some risks in faith, be clear about your trust in him and his leadership. Model this yourself. Ask your leaders to do this. Ask parents to do this with their own kids (it has a huge impact).

It seems like the more personal God gets, the bigger difference he makes. But wait– isn’t that the whole story revealed to us in the story of Scripture? A Father who graciously sends his only Son and gives his Spirit freely that we might be united to him? Thought so.

Andy Cornett is the Assistant Pastor and Director of Student Ministries at New Hope Presbyterian in Fort Myers, FL. Andy earned a Masters in Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA and has over ten years of experience in youth ministry.

The Busy Youth Minister: Living in the World of Doing

Student ministry in the church plunges you into the world of doing. You are constantly planning, preparing, writing talks, hanging out with students, doing busy office work, making endless attempts at communication (calls, Facebook posts, texts) with parents, leaders, etc. The work never ends. There is always more you can do at the end of the day. And you know it matters. Lives are at stake. You can work yourself to the bone and still feel haunted by Jesus’ call in Matthew 11 to come to him ... but you can’t see how his burden is light and easy when to you it seems so hard.

But let me assume that you want that life. You want a close fellowship with Christ in the midst of a busy life and work in church world. You see your need for the grace of Jesus for yourself and not just for your youth ministry and others.  Here are a few key elements, knowing that how you or I observe them must remain flexible and may often change.

Scripture and prayer. Indispensible.  We have to begin and end here, for both what fuels us and what we have to offer others flow from the same source.  My usual pattern has been to read, study and try to pray through a different gospel each month, plus taking some time in Psalms and other parts of God's word.  This year I want to read/pray the gospels again, particular seeking Jesus' leadership through the Spirit, and read through all of Scripture. To this end, we youth workers shouldn't hesitate to teach out of our personal learning OR let our teaching (if pre-determined) be an opportunity for our personal, prayerful learning. Calvin once said “prayer is the chief exercise of faith.” If kingdom-living is the with-God life, then prayer from a worshipping heart occupies the central place.  This is probably my #1 need and desire in 2012.

Read theology and read for fun. What? Read theology in a disciplined way? Isn't that soul-killing, straight-jacketing academic stuff? It can be, but it doesn't have to be. It's amazing the way some of the older writers (who started and ended their days on their knees in the church) fuse devotion and exposition and exploration. And if you don’t get what the Trinity has to do you with your life in the Spirit, you are missing out on the great resources of the gospel. Theology is essential to student ministry because in our actions with students, the very character, heart, and intention of God is meant to be on display! (If you don't believe me, be convinced by 2 Cor. 3-4 or reading Kenda Creasy Dean or Andrew Root or Christian Smith or Kara Powell.) The fundamental question we are facing now is "what is God really like - and what does that mean for me? For us? For our world?" You need heavy stuff to help you with that. And read for fun. Read genres outside of ministry: fiction, biography, culture - whether novels, magazines, websites, or hobby-related materials. It keeps your mind sharp and it widens the circle of stuff you know. Plus, you'd be amazed how it works into conversation and teaching.    

Community. I had an experience this fall that drove home to me the necessity of really living and loving and ministering in community. I cannot recommend enough the words of Henri Nouwen here: ministry is always communal and mutual. For me, that means four primary things. First, with Robin (my awesome wife). Second, with close friends - honest conversations, and (if not local) solid letters/email and seeing each other during the year. Third, community within your church. I am a strong advocate for finding real spiritual friendship and community among the people with whom you minister, whether leaders, parents, friends, or even a small group. Fourth, you must have a team of leaders who you equip for ministry. Nothing is as anti-Jesus and soul-killing in student ministry than to bear the burden and shoulder the work alone.

Body.  I am more and more convinced that we live in a gnostic culture (read theology for that) and how we practice life in the body is going to be more and more a part of our Christian witness. Now, the paradox is that our culture worships health and we obviously don't want to go that far. But working yourself to the bone and neglecting your body isn't healthy or God-honoring.  Our eating, our sleeping, and our physical exercise matter if we want to run the race of the ministry that God has entrusted to us. I cook a lot and try to eat well. I exercise most weeks.  Since you have to start somewhere, my minimum goals for this year are 6 hours of sleep a night and at least 10 miles of running each week.

Sabbath. Where to begin ... through a teaching series last spring I became convinced that we need to recover a practice of the sabbath. I'm no strict sabbatarian, but the practice matters and Jesus makes it clear that it was made for us. There's a negative/abstinent dimension to this (stuff you don't do) and a positive/engaging one (stuff you intentionally do). Figure out a way to take a day off of your work. For me that means a day off of technology, too - no Facebook, Twitter, phone, email, and laptop (as much as possible, they stay on the desk and powered off).  I like to read for fun, try to talk with friends, exercise, cook a lot, and spend as much time as possible with my family. The tough thing for me is that the only day I can really do this is Friday - and when you are youth worker, that doesn't always work.


The call of Jesus is clear: “Follow Me,” he says to us – not in addition to the work he has called us to as laborers in student ministry, but in its very midst. May God draw you deeply into Himself.

Andy Cornett is the Assistant Pastor and Director of Student Ministries at New Hope Presbyterian in Fort Myers, FL. Andy earned a Masters in Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA and has over ten years of experience in youth ministry.

But Did We Make It Sexy?

Every youth worker knows the dilemma of talking about sex with teenagers. On the one hand, simply say the word and you will get most people's attention. On the other, it's really difficult to hold or keep that attention and gain a hearing for the deep, life-giving, biblical truths you want to teach (right?). I can think of times where I talked to students and you could hear a pin drop - and times where one mis-spoken world tanks a whole evening.
Last year, in an effort to gain attention and look at some cultural realities, I pulled some blunt lyrics from five gritty, popular songs on sex and had students come forward to do a solo "dramatic reading." Honestly, my hope was the relevance of the songs and a look at the lyrics would create some discomfort that we could talk about as an entry to the Scripture that evening.  But the opposite happened: everyone started singing the songs with no embarrassment! I'm not sure we ever really landed the point I wanted to teach that night. I walked away with my own discomfort: in trying to make the message sexy, did I just sell it out?
By now we know that our message and medium are intertwined - so much so that the medium becomes the message. How you say something fundamentally shapes what you say. It's just as true for our teaching on sexuality.  On Christianity Today's website, Sarah Pulliam Bailey posts an interview with Christine Gardner, author of Making Chastity Sexy: The Rhetoric of Evangelical Abstinence Campaign. (The link takes you to the print view of the article for easy reading: once there, you can follow the links to the article’s original context). She talks about the difference between some American and African programs in terms of both what they call students to and how they appeal to them. In the short interview (I want to order the book), Gardner seems fair, critical, and points in some promising directions. Read it!
She ends with this zinger:

"I wonder if a more richly theological under-girding to some of the programs could help lengthen those commitments. When the going gets rough, and there is no marriage partner on the horizon, and the abstinence pledge starts to grow cold and stale, what is going to be there for them? I hope that it's something more than a funny skit, a dramatic rock song, or a winsome testimony from a cute guy. I hope there is something deeper from God's Word that's going to stay with them."

Please God, let it be so. And let's each of us go back and think hard about both what we say and how we say it. Before you teach on sex again, may I encourage you to stop, read these questions, and then jot down some of your own responses?

• Have you ever used "sexy" to sell your teaching on sex? Where? Why?
• What is our primary motivation to get students to consider a chaste and abstinent life?
• What's the difference between calling students to abstinence or to chastity?
• What kind of life or experience are we promising down the road?
• Where has "individualism and self-gratification" crept into our teaching about sex?
• Have you ever used an abstinence pledge or purity ring in teaching about sex (or been to an event that does)? What role does the pledge or ring play? What gets communicated to students who break their pledge or go against the symbol of the ring?
• The interviewer suggests that abstinence must be part of a larger endeavor, and Gardner calls that living out a bodily commitment to “become like Christ.” How do you situate your teaching like sex in this larger call and context?
• After reading this article, what is one way you want to re-evaluate your teaching on sex or one significant change you need to make in the message or the medium?

Biggie Size Your Grace in the Pursuit of Holiness

The Rooted Blog welcomes a new contributor, Andy Cornett. Andy is an assistant pastor and student pastor at New Hope Presbyterian Church in Fort Myers, FL. Andy holds a Masters in Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA and is ordained in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Andy has done student ministry for over a dozen years and brings much to the table for Rooted.

We need a big, thick meaning for the word “grace” and how we talk about it. For many (and I include myself here as too often stuck in this), grace is that thing we only talk about when we’re telling what God has done for Jesus on the cross to save us from of our sins and bring us to Himself. It’s the word we often use to describe some arrangement between God and Jesus that lets us off the hook and gives us eternal life. And then we fumble around with words like “works, obedience, rules, habits, laws” for stuff we’re supposed to do now.

I don’t think that’s enough. If that’s all it is, we’re in cheap grace mode. We need a bigger picture of grace.

Let’s get heavy for a moment: For Calvin and many others in the Reformed tradition, there is the grace of justification (done for us) and the grace of sanctification (done in us). Both are in Christ. They are not separate – they are twin graces, or rather a double movement of the same grace. It is the double embrace of God: Christ embracing us by the Spirit in our sin to bring us to Father, and Christ by his Spirit embracing the Father for us, making the perfect response for us, in our place, on our behalf. These graces are joined.

r If we talk about the first without the second, we are doing cheap grace.

r If we talk about what God saved us from and forget to proclaim what he is saving us for, we are missing the point.

r If we talk about the indicative of justification and don’t follow through its outflow in the imperatives of sanctification, we risk becoming hearers of the word only, and not doers of it.

r If we do the first without the second, we communicate that God’s grace doesn’t mean much of anything for the realities of our daily life and the web of relationships that enmesh us…

r If we talk about the first apart from the second, we’re caught in the language trap of telling people about what God did for them and then struggling to tell them what they’re supposed to do now (which undercuts the truth of the first).

Now let me be clear: I believe that at root the gospel is the announcement that Christ died for our sins, once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. It is fundamentally something that God has done for us, in our place, on our behalf to bring us into his family, to make us his sons and daughters, to give us his own nature and life. It is the astonishing gift of God that floods our hearts and minds. But the announcement is the beginning, not the ending. It’s the doorway, not the house or estate we now live in. If we do not follow that announcement with an unpacking of how now we have crossed from death to life, that we have been rescued/delivered from darkness into light and now must walk as children of the light, we’re not being true to the gospel. Titus 2-3 makes it clear that devoting ourselves to doing good is the only natural response to the grace, mercy and kindness of God who saves us through rebirth in Christ and makes us heirs with him. It makes it clear that God’s grace is our teacher to say “no” and renounce certain ways of life, and say “yes” and rediscover new ways of living that fit who we are now in Christ. These, too, are God’s grace in our life.

Grace is no one-pump gift dispensed from the heavenly realms – it is the constant, steady flow of the life of God himself both for us in Christ and in us by his Spirit. It is the astonishing giving which leaves you speechless. Grace simply IS. Grace is the source for all life lived in the kingdom of the Son of God, and it is marked by righteousness, peace, and joy instead of me and my load of stuff. This grace must be taken far more seriously than we take sin or the fear of lapsing into a legalism. Grace is the Spirit teaching us to trust the Father as we yield our lives in obedience to his Son our Lord.

If we fail to call to students to a life of joyful obedience through the grace of Christ, we have missed the point. If we aren’t calling them to hear his words and put them into practice, then we’re not talking about the Jesus revealed in Scripture. If we talk about grace without connecting it to the discipling work of the Holy Spirit in us, leading us to be an apprentice of Jesus, it must be some other kind of grace than that which Paul was so passionate about. And if we are not talking about a grace-powered life in the kingdom of the Son whom God loves, here and now – then we’re missing out on the joy of pointing students to something way bigger than anything this world can offer.

For God’s sake – don’t back away from it.