For a few years I was heavily involved in Youth ministry. Every week for every year I would find myself watching sixth graders grow up, enter high school, have a personality flip, learn to drive, grow into maturity, and then graduate.
I seen kids who were the most rambunctious in our Youth room grow into some of the most trusted leaders for the rest of the group.
But as the years went by, I found myself questioning: “what is actually our goal as a Youth Leader at this point in time in these kids lives?”
Often when people think of Youth ministry they think back to a time where all of their friends from high school would meet up to go to a Wednesday night service of some kind. Many people think back to the humiliating but hilarious games they would play. Many remember the music the wanna-be-cool Youth Leader would play(I personally would play a hip-hop playlist mixed with some early 2000’s Christian rock). Many remember the weird air in the room when that one couple broke up and everyone tried not to acknowledge it.
But for these students who attend Youth ministry during that season of their lives from 6th-12th grade, Youth ministry is often a lifeline. Even if these students are not able to properly communicate the weight they are placing on Youth ministry, as a leader you begin to see the weight as you watch these kids grow and ask questions.
As a Youth leader, whether volunteer or as a Youth Pastor, the questions these students will ask over their time attending are questions that expose you to the reality that these kids have suddenly felt the weight of the world be placed on their shoulders. Some quicker than others but all eventually.
Youth Ministry I have come to believe is maybe the most important ministry specifically because of the time in life this operation takes place in.
From 6th-12th grade, a student will have their bodies change causing them to be overly aware of every little insecurity they have about themselves. A student will suddenly acknowledge the time they have left until they are forced to be responsible by society. A student will over the course of these years find themselves detaching from the systems they grew up in in order to explore what else is out there. For many parents, their teenagers are the ones now introducing them to the world instead of the other way around. Teenagers are explorers at this time in their life. They are making a quest not only of discovery for the broader community that they live in but also for themselves. They will explore who they are by asking questions many of us adults will try to run away from in our later years.
Attachment Theory
When a child is born they immediately have one attachment that they have been depending on for the previous 9 months. This primary attachment is their mother. Their mother feeds them by way of her body. The mother protects the child, by way of her body. The mother develops the child by way of her body. The child is fully dependent on this attachment.
As a father you are like a secondary but still primary attachment. The child will not need you in the same way, especially early on but you will play a vital role in this child’s development, especially as some of those roles the mom played early on shift more to you.
What we have here is two foundational pillars in this child’s life that they depend on in order to survive. This is attachment.
In an ideal world, parents are the child’s main attachment. Ideally this attachment is birthed out of love. And as this child grows into maturity, the child will eventually reach a stage where they begin to detach. They will begin to wander away from ma and pa in order to try and fly on their own even if it’s just for a little bit in the beginning.
This initial stage of attachment last for a while, but around the time this child enters middle and high school, this initial foundational season of attachment begins to change. The child begins to really wander away from the tribe. And in wandering away they begin seeing how far they can go. They try new clothes, they test new personalities, they question their place within the tribe.
Youth ministry exists within that season of detachment. And I believe the more aware Youth Leaders are of what these students are going through developmentally, the better off these students will be long term.
Youth Ministry in function can often be operated as a placeholder ministry. It’s that place you go to for a few years before we enter real spaces within the church. It’s treated light heartedly for many. It’s often used to compete with other areas in the broader community that are also appealing to students this age. Those other areas being local sports teams, band, clubs centered around common interests, etc.
But I believe Youth ministry when done right or approached with the right view of their place in the students life can actually foster an environment that is safe for a child to detach with the best hope for this kid to return to the tribe ready to be the next leaders of the tribe.
Our goal with Youth ministry is not to replace the parents. It’s not to entertain the students in hopes that the entertainment will keep them away from the bad things in life. Youth Ministry instead comes alongside parents as the child detaches from them and gives the parents proper resources like godly mentors to step into this kids life and point them toward the way of Jesus that will actually allow them to develop the way they need to with the resources they need to do it properly.
Salvation By Attachment
Understanding a proper view of what happens at salvation is critical to understand how the church can build a Youth Ministry program that actually fosters real discipleship.
Discipleship should always be the primary goal for a local church. Discipleship is the process that takes a person from a stage of immaturity to maturity. Discipleship is what every person is invited into with the faith community in order for that person to become a fully active and responsible member of the tribe(the church). In discipleship a person will learn the values, the customs, the thought process behind which every member will enter the world with in order to make decisions that reflect back the ultimate value the tribe is built on. That ultimate value being the glory of God. We are created beings meant to worship God through all that we do. But we do not do this act of worshipping God in everything naturally.
In an ideal Eden we would have all fallen into line to worship God rightly and naturally but because of the effects of sin entering the world we are chronically unable to perform these acts of worship in our work, in our singing, in our marriages, in our parenting, in our activism. Our nature has been flipped. So discipleship is the process a person goes through to turn unnatural things to them into natural things.
We all have experienced discipleship at some level.
You may have been discipled into washing dishes by hand. Growing up your mom pulled you up next to her at the sink, gave you a sponge and guided your hand across the filthy plates as she showed you the act of cleaning your dish-ware. Cleaning the plates was not natural to you, making them a mess was. But thanks to your mom for teaching you how to wash those dishes, fast forward just a little bit of time, you are now washing dishes without thinking twice about the “how” of washing dishes. Washing dishes is second nature to you. It’s normal. It requires little thought.
Musicians after being taught how to play an instrument go from naturally making horrible screeching noises as they improperly strum the strings of a guitar, to now after a little bit of training are able to strum the guitar on a moment’s notice creating a tune that soothes the state of their environment. Their inability to play well at one point was natural to them, until the ability o play well became a natural part of them.
A salesman does the unnatural work of talking to strangers by walking up to them and pitching their products not because it comes easy to them, but more likely because they have been trained to live in the uncomfortable of trying to convince people who are uninterested in their product into people who are interested and willing to sacrifice for it.
This is discipleship taking place over every sphere of our lives. This is our primary task as the church. It’s turning the unnatural things of God into natural parts of our lives. It’s creating this ability to make the kind of decisions Jesus would make if he were in our shoes.
How does this take place within the context of Youth Ministry?
Salvation:
Paul says in his letter to the Church of Rome:
How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.(Romans 10:14-15 CSB)
The good news of the community Jesus is building has to be shared with others. In the context of Youth ministry the good news must be preached(proclaimed) regularly. There is no other option. The good news is what invites strangers into the tribe causing the tribe to grow overall.
The good news is as Paul says:
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8. NIV)
Love is central to this good news that we are called to preach. The love of Christ is what draws strangers to the family dinner table. This love is sacrificial, it’s selfless, it’s hospitable. And what this love does is it creates an attachment. Christ attaches himself to us. And we are then able to attach ourselves to Him by way of the Spirit of God transforming us with new hearts and new minds. By this transformative work, the Spirit now gives us the ability to begin doing the work of God that is naturally unnatural to us.
Like the child, being pulled to the side of their mother to wash the dishes, the students in our Youth ministry who were once strangers but now turned family members by way of Christ’ sacrifice, are pulled to the side of a plethora of family members who can help train this former stranger up into the ways of the family.
This is why Youth Ministry must have godly older leaders besides just one Youth Pastor type figure who can preach and draw a crowd. Youth ministry needs other men and women that can pull students to their side and show them the way of Jesus. The ministry cannot be dependent on one person.
What doing discipleship this way will do is create attachments for the students that will be stable in an unstable time of their lives.
In our current day and age, many children are not as attached to their parents as they should be. Because of the high cost of living forcing both parents to work nonstop. and the overall American quest to make it big, many parents(both mother and father) either choose to work outside of the home or are forced to. This creates many avenues to which kids get pulled away from what should be strong, loving attachments. Now, children are becoming attached to the people they are most around. That being their peers in school or day care.
It is good for anyone to have friends. But for a child, socialization is not the primary concern because a child is in a developmental stage of their life. They are highly shapable and moldable. And so whoever they are around the most, they will attach and emulate. Whoever they are closest to is where they will learn their identity.
We live in a day and age where most children find their identity not from their parents or stable pillars in their community but rather through the person the same age as them sitting next to them in the classroom. They find their identity from someone who is also desperate to find their own identity.
What this creates is two people whose foundation in life is built on a sand of a foundation. And so when the wind blows the house will crumble.
Youth ministry can step in to this child’s life by way of coming alongside the parents and being a stable, secure, loving person of attachment for the child.
If we want our students to know their identity should be found in Christ; then they need older, wiser, mentors in their lives who can be like rocks for their foundation.
Youth ministry in short is so vitally important because it is at this stage of life, where core foundational elements of identity are being laid down for a student. The student needs at a foundational level mentors and mentees who will not leave them because of a little tiff or because of disagreement that could have easily been settled.
Most students are finding their identity from their peers. They are chasing after acceptance, they are discovering new pathways in which to explore who they are, these students are testing the limits of what they have been told to be true.
What a solid Youth ministry can do is provide older, wiser, mature believers in the faith who have already learned where our identity comes from.
Our identity comes from God. It comes from the God-man who turned enemies into friends, strangers into family. It’s not based on who we are, what family we come from, what skin color we inherited, or what we are capable of.
No the good news is that our identity comes from the One who created us. Our identity tells us that we are loved regardless of whether we grow up to be successful or a failure, whether we become a criminal or an upstanding citizen.
If you ask anyone what being a teenager was like for them, you will probably hear an answer that essentially says “yeah, I was trying too hard. I was trying to get people to like. me, to accept me, to want me.”
Now imagine if a Youth Ministry knew this was the ultimate craving deep within this group of students and came in every week reinforcing to these moldable minds that there is someone who puts their arm around our shoulder in those moments where we have been embarrassed for trying too hard to fit in and yet were rejected. And in a moment of humiliation tells us: “Hey, I love you!”
These are simple words to many but to our students. they are groundbreaking. They are sign of commitment, of desire, of intimacy.
Those words from coming from Christ let the student know that they are safe, they are secure, they are apart of the family.
Helpful Resources:
- ‘Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers’ By Gordon Neufeld, Ph. D., & Gabor Mate, M.D.
- ‘Gospel Centered Youth Ministry’ edited by Cameron Cole & Jon Nielson
- ‘Renovated: God, Dallas Willard & the Church That Tranforms’ by Jim Wilder
- ‘The Complete Book of Discipleship’ by Bill Hull
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