The Church as Pace-Setter in Caring for Young People

“If youth ministry is really about saving kids from the acidic culture (which is bad) then youth ministry can easily slide into the wing of the church that ushers kids into conventionality. In other words, youth ministry is doing a good job when kids act and look conventional (happily religious). It could be argued that it was this driving need in light of a new radical youth culture in the 1970s that motivated parents to financially support a youth worker in their local congregation (not just at the denominational level)—they wanted someone with the expertise to make their kids conventionally religious kids (that showed this by being ‘good’).”

From web article by Andy Root Is Youth Ministry Working Too Well? Is it Making Kids too Conventional?

Root’s point is well-taken. Youth Ministry is not alone in promoting conventionality; any form of evangelical ministry can be about promoting a gospel that provides a better option for men, women and children. The last thing we need in our age is more option-preaching and teaching.

But there’s more. Is Youth Ministry working too well at rescuing youth from the evils of cold North American culture because it’s a follower of the other institutions that have concerns for the physical, educational, social and emotional well-being of youth instead of being a pace-setter for them?

One of the reasons I was drawn to this article by Root is that it interacts with Chap Clark’s book, Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers (Zondervan, 2004).

When I re-read portions of that book recently, I was caught up short on how little the nature, calling and ministry of the local church was presented. That is, even though Clark develops in his book the acute need for acceptance, belonging and purpose that young people have, and how so often they are trying to communicate to older generations that frequently ignore them, he seems, whether intentionally or not, to marginalize the church’s central function of being the guide for all other institutions that are involved in the care and nurture of youth.

Clark spends time on matters of place and institution. He identifies the locations where youth socialize and interact: peer groups—he calls them clusters—and sports teams, school, the family, and two or three other places. Each of these spheres have a role for nurture and care. The church gets Appendix A at the back of the book.

Throughout the book, Clark genuinely breathes with strong systemic vision in his way of offering assessment of need and how to go about meeting that need. Youth live systemically. They intersect with and walk in the warp and woof of various institutions. Clark reaches out to institutions across the youth-world landscape; he’s to be applauded—his zeal is contagious about calling adults to care for hurt students of today’s America. But if the standards for that care get underscored in the realms of education, social interaction, mentoring by athletic coaches and so on as the pace-setting standards, we’ll end up nurturing conventionally acceptable kids. The work of restoration regarding those who are hurt requires the Savior of the world (John 4, the woman at the well), and being brought into the life and faith of person-to-person discipleship in the church. The church must get the attention as pace-setter of all other institutions, especially when we’re talking about relationships: the care and nurture of hurt people.

In this way, Christ’s church must get Youth Ministry’s attention. Until that prodigal son, Youth Ministry, comes home he will waste away in the pleasures of a Gospel-less life. Teens will get help, but still will hurt.

G. Mark Sumpter