Modern Youth Ministry: This Ain't Your Father's Potato Sack Race!

I feel like an old geezer when I say this, but kids today face a completely different set of challenges than I did when I was a kid. When I was in high school, we had drugs, there was violence, and we faced issues of abuse and abandonment... but when I was in school, our society still had a moral compass. Churches were still strong, and grounded in the word, and things were more real.

Today, we live in a virtual world. Churches are trying everything they can to get peoples' attention, to the point that the Word of God is being drowned out in all the noise and confusion. Meanwhile, our society continues to struggle. Families are falling apart, opportunity and hope is dwindling, and caught in the middle of all this are the youth of our communities.

Kids today face challenges unlike anything the current adult generation has ever seen. First, they are being told there is no hope. America is in decline, our economy is in decline, and our global influence is in decline. Therefore, the job opportunities and upward mobility that has been afforded to previous generations is not being afforded to the up-and-coming generation. (Now, we know that in America, a person creates his own opportunity, but I don't believe our youth are being taught this on a wide scale.)

Furthermore, our kids are being told to accept activities that are abominations to God as normal, and in some cases, are even being encouraged to experiment. Compound this with the ever-spreading availability of pornography and sexual degradation, and you wind up with an environment where kids are more susceptible to sexual abuse than ever before.

As if all this wasn't enough, drugs have become more of an epidemic today than they ever have. Eradicating methamphetamine from our communities today is about as practical as eradicating fire ants. Kids are either being raised in homes where drug use is rampant, or in neighborhoods where drug use is rampant. They are being exposed to drugs at a younger age, and more people are pushing for drugs to be legalized.

On top of that, an extraordinarily high number of kids today have parents who are no longer together. The norm is for the kids' parents to be divorced, if they were ever married in the first place.

All this creates an environment where kids are having to learn to cope. How do you deal with things if you haven't see your mom in over 6 months? Or if your father is incarcerated? Or if your best friend is pregnant? Or if your boyfriend/girlfriend just broke up with you following your first sexual experience? Or if you have been abused and you feel like you have had your soul ripped out of you? How do you cope?

Now I know I have painted a pretty bleak picture here, and I don't want to make it look like ALL kids have these problems, but a significant number do. There are still many good parents out there raising their kids. As churches, we need to come along side these parents and back them up, and help them. However, even kids who come from good homes are surrounded by kids who struggle, and the church needs to learn how to minister to youth in these circumstances.

Youth ministry used to be so simple. You'd have a Bible lesson, then go outside and have potato sack races, or that silly relay thing where you would run around the cone, and pass the egg to one another using only kitchen spoons. However, today, we have to consider who the kid is, what their needs are, and share God's word with them in a way that it helps them. We have to share with them Who God is, and how He loves them and is concerned for them, even with everything going on in their lives. That is the challenge, and the mission of modern youth ministry... and we need to figure it out, or we won't be able to minister to the next generation of adults, or the next generation of kids.

My solution is to be more personal... and be more real. We have to take a more personal interest in the kids who come to church, encourage them, disciple them, and actually let them know we care. This means more than counting heads, it means to actually take stock in who is there during youth events. This also means to be more proactive. Know what is going on in your youth group, and try to help guide your kids through the challenges they face.

It all goes back to love. We have to operate out of a genuine love (agape) and concern for the well being of our church kids. Anything less will be ineffectual.

Youth ministry isn't about grooming the next generation of church people, having a young and vibrant church, and it definitely isn't about being cool. It's about making disciples, and that is a very personal process, an involved process, and it involves a lot of time and sacrifice on the part of the one making disciples.

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to comment.