A strange title, I know. After all, much energy and talk is dedicated to youth ministry in a manner of speaking, but it is a ministry that is about a ghetto.
When we speak of ministry to our congregations, we speak in broad open terms. We do ministry. Ministry is about visiting our parishioners; shut ins, providing pastoral care and support during difficult times, programs and education and making sure to provide a relevant worship experience with good sermons.
And then we do youth ministry, which is somehow separate from the above. It is about games, and making Jesus fun, praise music and being a teenager’s buddy. Maybe we have watch Dogma one too many times, but we treat our youth different then we do anyone else. We dress up our liturgies and beliefs in praise services with the Buddy Christ and more often than not, it is an afterthought.
Seriously, ask yourself how often your priest visits shut ins, elderly and the parish list. Hopefully quite a bit. Then ask yourself how often does your priest make an appointment to visit a teenager and sit down with them in a home visit? Not very likely that they search out the teenager specifically, but will perhaps at best visit a family as a whole. In fact, we go so far as to hire specialized workers, Family and Youth Ministry specialist to talk to this minority and group that we have unintentional other’d. We create special rooms for them away from everyone else, where hopefully they will not disturb the rest of us. And we create events tailored for them and only them. In essence we cut them off from the rest of the congregation, from the body of Christ, and then we wonder why they don’t feel connected or comfortable in their church.
I don’t mean to belittle the ministry the dedicated Family and Youth Ministry specialists provide, but my question is why don’t priest and pastors visit teens? Why do we treat them differently? And why are we surprised when they act differently?
For far too long we have forgotten youth ministry and have asked others to do it. We have delegated an entire area of ministry to others. And then we ask ourselves, where are the youth? Why aren’t they in church?
Seriously??
I mean, have we bothered to develop a relationship and build trust with them like we do their parents and grandparents? Are we there while they face difficult choices in life? Stuff surrounding sex, drugs, bullying, selfhood, becoming an adult, becoming a Christian? Are we walking with them in their journey of faith? Are we taking them as serious as we do Mrs. X, head of the altar guild and lifelong parishioner?
And when they finally come out of those teen years and move out of their parents home are we really surprised that they don’t want to be part of a community of believers? After all what have we done for them? We ghetto-ize them, we trot them out to be cute for us in front of the congregation, we make them servers when old enough, but really spend no time with them and then they leave to go away to university and that is the last we see of them.
Youth ministry, like any ministry, is about relationships. It is about building trust and being there in difficult times to be a friend, a guide, a mentor, and a spiritual advisor. It is about teaching them how to rely upon Jesus Christ, how to pray and to discern where the Holy Spirit is calling them in their lives.
In effect, youth ministry is just ministry and the sooner we stop labelling it as something other, the better off we will be.
Interesting and thought provoking. I think we do more ghettoizing than just youth though – ACW, BAC, Chancel Guild (at St Pauls Cathedral exclusive to women), Bible Study’s during the day (often targeted to the retired), etc. And sometimes, I think that’s okay. I think the church needs to meet people where they are, and not try and be one size fits all. Specified Youth Ministry (when done well) can be really effective at reaching young people. When Grayhame Robert Bowcott came to Saint Paul’s a few years ago, it was transformational – specifically because the youth of the parish were given something “ghettoized” for them. When I was 14, you couldn’t have paid me to sit down and chat with our 70 year old smelly priest (he likely wasn’t smelly – just an adolescent memory) and truthfully, he did not have the gifts to minister to me and my friends the way he did for other demographics within the parish. A great youth minister (who you remind me of) was the one who connected with me. When I came of age, (between 17 and 22) I, like most young people, had no interest in church – and that was okay too. Because when I was ready, I was able to recall a place where I was cared about and provided for and knew I could return. Really appriciate you blog Marticus, always gets me thinking. This one is an important discussion to be had!
I think some groups are okay, but you are right that we do ghetto-ize others as well and limit involvement by holding events during the day.
I think it is important to put the youth, like anyone else front and center. Let them be readers, intercessors, sides people, lay admins and everything else.
We need to learn to walk with them where they are, talk with them and be that person in their lives that they con trust and come to. How is this done? The old fashion way, earning their trust. Spending time with them, going to their ball games and plays and showing them we care and support them. It requires lots of work but worth it.
You couldn’t be more right about where their place is in liturgy – if there is a place that should never be ghettoized it is at the gathering of the Mass. I think you are correct about the need to walk with them in more personal and meaningful ways, and identifying gifted people (both lay and ordained) like Matthew Arguin and Sharla Malliff-Ciupak, I think we begin to take great steps towards a more inclusive church. I am just a big supporter of both Children and Youth specific ministry and think that some people have the gifts for it and should be identified, and some don’t and need to take time to identify those that do. But as a message to clergy – I couldn’t agree more – ministering to only those who one is comfortable with (often to the exclusion of young people) does not make for a mission shaped church.
I think you hit the spot with this one Marty or is it Marticus lol. While the programs held specifically for the youth are great, one on one efforts need to be made too. It’s not a situation where one needs to replace the other but creating a nice balance between the two instead.
On a side note we can’t take up the spotlight though because then we are doing the exact same thing to other people. We don’t want to exclude anybody but like I said find a nice balance in all aspects.
One of the advantages that I had in growing up in the church was that from a very early age I was invited to be part of the life of the church. I was a reader (children and youth did the epistle reading every week), I was a server (classic role for a younger person), I cut the grass at the church, I was part of the youth group (that group existed on again and then off again for years), I went to youth Synod, when I crossed the 16 year old threshold I became a Lay Delegate to Synod and I ran the youth group. I was always involved. From what I understand, my experience was unusual. In a broader context I think we have done a great disservice to the church and to it’s younger members by not involving them more seriously in the regular, ordinary goings on of the life of the church, both in inviting them into ministry and ministering to them like anyone else. One example of our failures has come in that, there is a whole generation (or two) that don’t know how to worship properly because they are sent downstairs for Sunday School and miss out on listening to readings and a sermon, on confessing their faith in the creed, on praying with the community and confessing their sins. When it comes time to sit in the pew or choir or sanctuary they don’t know how to worship because we’ve never given them the opportunity to. Having said that, I have found it very difficult to overcome the prevailing “wisdom” that suggests that ghettoized (oops, I mean youth sensitive) ministry is the only way. In my Rector’s report at vestry I called on the members of the congregation to get to know the children of the parish and actually talk to them. I have reminded them on several occasions since and nothing has happened. At the same time I have been informed by a small, narrow group that we need a children and youth ministry coordinator and to change the music, and… in order to “get the youth back.” What you’ll notice is that the regular members of the congregation are not responsible for any of that. Unfortunately in making it a ghettoized ministry we also made it someone else’s responsibility and, as a church, we don’t know how to minister as a community. To minister to the younger members of our church family I think goes beyond just the priest (who at least in this case does know the kids and spends time speaking with them like others in the congregation). I think members of the congregation need to participate and get to know all the members of the church family young and old. Most of our churches aren’t that big so there’s no reason it can’t happen. There is a place for specialised youth stuff especially in relation to fellowship and teaching, but that shouldn’t be separate from the life of the community. Ultimately I do agree with you, Marty, that relationships are the key, but a broader spectrum of relationships will make it less about the priest and more about the church as a whole.
I couldn’t agree more. I was looking at the problem from my perspective only, but you have brought to light another key aspect of what it means to be fully the one body of Christ. Ministry is shared with all. It is just to bad that people look to the priest to do ministry, create relationships and care for others. We must stop asking the clergy to do all and have the laity pick up their baptismal ministry and call. How to do that, I am not sure yet, but I think it involves living missionally in the parish. Think outside and service and the habits should form…I think.
I think my failure has been in not making the case for a community approach to children and youth ministry persuasively enough or strongly enough. Priestly ministry at its best is all about enabling and encouraging the ministry of others and obviously I haven’t done my job well enough to bring that to pass. I do have to say though, that it is a little bit of an uphill battle too because we have 30 + years of people and leaders in the church saying that a dedicated and separate ministry to children and youth is the only way. It has become the truth in spite of an awful lot of failure (certainly not universal failure). The people we are trying to enable and encourage in their ministry are often unable or unwilling to objectively assess the results of the last 30+ years and say, “that’s not working, let’s try something different.” The suggestion is that we need to keep trying to do it better (because what we’re trying to do is different, except it’s only different from what was being done 30+ years ago, now it is the same). In reality I think a missional focus is probably the only way to accomplish what we need to accomplish and I suspect it is going to take the church a full generation to shift gears and really and truly take up the approach to ministry that we are called to in this time and age. As has been said before, as a church we exist not for ourselves, but for others. Living that truth out is part of what we’re called to enable and encourage. I’m going keep following Jesus that way and I’m going to keep hoping that others will follow there too resulting in a strong, lively community of faith which loves and cares for people of all ages, all the time.