Jonathan Gosden wrote:

If you did want to pursue something specifically youth, I would consider a ministry based around individual mentoring relationships rather than trying to get the kids to commit to regular “group” meetings. Get your leaders to stop putting there energy into new creative group ideas, and encourage them to put their energy into simply getting to know the kids. Give each leader one or two kids each. Your leaders’ time might be better spent visiting some of the extra-curricular activities that kids are involved in. Go and watch their football games etc. Help with homework. Offer to read through lines for the school drama etc. A 30 minute coffee straight after school can be more valuable than a 2 hour Friday night activity, and has less impact on the leader’s and youth’s diaries.

If youth need to all be in one place at one time every week, let it be Sunday’s service & coffee afterwards.

Change the youth ministry from a group focus to simply a relationship building one and see where it goes from there. As these relationships continue to develop and grow deeper, encourage/teach the leaders to allow their own relationship with God to impact their relationship with the youth. This discipleship/mentoring relationship provides a model for the youth to follow as they allow their relationship with God to impact their relationships with friends.

Let the youths’ relationship with God transform their existing social networks, rather than creating new ones.

Just a glimpse of my vision for a youth/young adults ministry that incorporates the words “relationship”, and “coffee” as much as possible!

~~~

A response

The two excellent ideas suggested so far for encouraging young people – combining with other churches, changing the focus from ‘group’ to mentoring – raises a couple of other issues.

1. Young people do need to relate to other young people for socializing and faith-reinforcement, but this can be done in other contexts than the local church. Scripture Union camps etc., for example, are renowned for providing this…

2. I grew up in a church where there were only three or four families with children/young people. The reason we all ‘kept the faith’ was not primarily to do with what happened in the ‘youth group’ (there wasn’t one), but, rather we were influenced by the deep commitment/spirituality of our elders. As Lyle Schaller puts it, children and young people are not primarily influenced by Sunday Schools etc., but ‘they’re in church taking notes’ (metaphorically, if not literally).

Raises the whole issue of the ‘entertainment model’ for youth today. Certainly there are factors at work which are unique to the last couple of generations (TV-driven consumerism for one), but I believe we need to resist this as the primary modus operandi for the formation of young people. Our daughter Lindy’s faith (she’s an urban missionary with UNOH in Springvale)

was significantly forged in a nine-month mission and study trip to Asia with YWAM when she was 18.

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.org.au/index.htm (9400+ articles)