A few weeks ago I was running a quick errand to the grocery store. I was purchasing some iTunes gift cards for a mentor group I was leading. After paying for cards and meandering my way to leave the store, I walked by those common strange looking rectangles that sit by the door and instantly an alarm sounded that told everyone in the story a customer was leaving and attention must be paid immediately to what is a concern for everyone.
I looked around and noticed there was no one around me walking in so the alarm was definitely meant for me. I then stopped about steps outside the store, turned around because I figured someone would be looking for my receipt. I walked back in and to my surprise no one was looking and no employee was coming to check my receipt.
I wasn’t too surprised by this, but the fact a loud alarm caused no one to even look told me the effectiveness of this alarm wasn’t doing it’s job for anyone. For some reason I then started thinking about youth ministry and some of the ways we do this too.
There are factors that have shaped the approaches we take in youth ministry. For many of us we have taken on a ministry that reflects a lot of what we saw in youth ministry growing up. Some of us have attended schools that have taught an approach to youth ministry that the school may not have even been comfortable with, but did so because “it’s what always has been done as far as youth ministry is concerned.”
We can’t even hear the alarm
For some of us in youth ministry, there has been an alarm that is sounding for awhile, but we’ve gotten so caught up in our schedules, routines, habits, “to do” lists, and approaches, we’re missing the fact an alarm is meant to get our attention. Yet we aren’t even hearing it.
For some of us we’re just meeting the expectations of what our parents, students, and fellow staff members have of us that we can’t even see the end product of the kind of student that is graduating from our ministries.
Allow me to interject the fact that I’m a very slow learner. It takes me time to “get it.” As I look back on the previous church I was a youth pastor, my heart breaks as I look at the places of many students since I resigned there nearly 4 years ago. Several of them are not even following Jesus or a part of a ministry that helps to foster their faith development. While there are many factors, I have to blame myself for a lot of this. It appears I unintentionally created an idol out of myself.
It was great that I had tangible relationships with many of them and yet several are doing well, but for many of them, it appears I taught them to worship at the feet of their youth pastor rather than the feet of Jesus.
The alarm was sounding and yet it appears I just didn’t hear it because it appeared as if everything was okay or perceived to be. I look back now and there could have been a few things that would improve their spiritual development.
Have a Plan
For me to have put into place a strategic plan of what I would have wanted to see accomplished by my students year to year, I feel as though I would have been working towards a goal that would have given students a better chance at following Jesus upon completion of high school and beyond.
Having a plan in place obviously doesn’t guarantee the success of every student, but that plan would have invited more students into opportunities that would have increased their chance success upon completion of high school.
Spiritual Formation for Families
I feel as though for me to focus more energy on parents as whole is to increase the possibility of the above mentioned plan as a partnership is being created between the church and the family. For me to recognize and encourage, even foster the spiritual formation of families would help the kingdom as a whole. The church has to trust the families and the families must trust the church.
Encouraging relationships outside the ministry
There are untapped relationships with our students that extend beyond our ministries. These relationships hold the natural keys for students to experience the Body of Christ. When these relationships exist, students are formulating more of an experience geared around what it means to be a part of a community. Without a sense of community with the church-wide body, their time is limited with us if we don’t help these relationships. We can’t do it by ourselves.
With this being said, the future of youth ministry is good hands if just listen to what the alarms are saying. I guess a better to ask is, “can you hear the alarm in your youth ministry?” What is it saying?
You’re loved.
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