You are not big buddies. I heard yet again another story about a family who is no longer a part of my church (moved away) who is still angry at a former youth pastor who let her daughter ride on the hood of his car around the church parking lot. I hear such stories all the time with the youth worker thinking he/she is "cool." You have been entrusted by the parents with the welfare of minors. That means you have to be concerned with safety and safety means rules. Rules need to be enforced by the authority and that is you. You are an authority figure.

Don't worry. As an authority figure your youth will still like you because in safety and authority there is comfort and security. In comfort and security anyone can learn and that is what you want to see happen which is why you work with youth. Even if you are 18 years old and in charge (the age when I started) you need to separate yourself as an authority figure.

Spend Purposed Time at the School

If you can, yes. But don't just do it by visiting at lunch. While the youth you are visiting go crazy with appreciation for your visit, you have just used the school's generosity to further push your agenda and not help the school. We love teenagers and want as many to be saved as possible. You have righteous and pure motives. But that is not the agenda of the school. Their agenda is to educate students and they need all the help possible to help achieve that. We see the "tribe" gathered in one location which gives us easier opportunities. The school sees the "tribe" gathered as their responsibility and they are already fighting losing battles with attitudes, violence, and apathy. Just to name a few. Some schools want help from the church, but it is not in the form of a Bible club or your lunchtime visit. Further in the reality of these times of higher security, your visit during the most unsecure time of the school day may actually not be a blessing to the school. Ask any teacher or security person, lunch is the most nerve-wracking time.

Take that time and actually help the school. For many practical ideas, go to our oft-mentioned resource at www.wildfrontier.org/blessschool.htm. In doing so you will be helping the school with their agenda and your youth will still go crazy with appreciation for seeing you in their territory.

Initiate Involvement with the School

As Steven McFarland, former executive director of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom said, "I've had a lot of calls about how to get by the schoolhouse gate in order to share their faith, or get kids to come to a Friday night concert, or have an assembly where we sneak the gospel in at the end. But in nine years I have never had a single call from a pastor, a youth minister or a parachurch ministry asking me what the First Amendment will allow them to do to help their local public school." (Joseph Loonte, "Bullet Proofing Our Schools...With Faith," Citizen, April 2000). Ponder that one in your prayer time for a while.

Two ideas you can borrow: Your church is a public facility with walls, roof, bathroom and seating capacity. Just like you can use your building for community events, the community can use your building. One specific use that many schools, particularly middle schools, could benefit from your church building is your "auditorium" and sound system. Your sound system is better than most schools have. And with budget cuts affecting such clubs as drama, you could offer your building for practices and performances.

Here is another idea. Teachers are underpaid and are in the constant crosshairs between the parents and the administration. This is the teacher's number one complaint about their chosen profession. Do something extravagant and creative for no reason at all for them. If you did this only once a year, your church will be reflected upon fondly for the rest of the school year and the next school year. I know. I am at my school quite a bit and hear the teachers talk.

Purposely Celebrate Rites of Passages

Without purposely doing it, we have turned over rites of passages to the peer culture. Prom has turned into all kinds of other "adult" behaviors away from the presence of adults such as drinking, reckless use of vehicles and sex. While graduation still involves the family, right after the actual ceremony the new graduate takes off with his/her fellow new graduates to celebrate minus the adults again in the same reckless "adult" ways. Then they take off for beach week or whatever week is in your area to live like what they see on MTV's Spring Break. Only they have to live with the results.

Your youth ministry is a great place to take this responsibility back. It is a responsibility. To help both the parents and the youth workers to take this back, we have compiled a downloadable resource with all sorts of ideas. You can find it on our website.

Purposely Provide Spiritual Markers and Memories

You will know this is a good youth ministry idea by taking a quick analysis of your own life. Imagine drawing out or telling your own spiritual journey story. No matter how you got to God I guarantee it is a path made up of strong and emotional memories. It wasn't the powerful sermons you heard and it wasn't your attendance to a certain youth group--unless you were personally and emotionally connected to the group experience.

A good use of your time would be to plan such spiritual markers and memories. Whether they are rites of passages, out-of-the-ordinary-God-experience events, and/or relationship builders with the church family. Your time investment will have the best returns. Your youth will remember this more than any of the messages you will have preached.

Here is a truth. If youth have no important memories of the faith, of the church, of an experience with God, of worship, or of spiritual feelings, they will find themselves in a faith vacuum as young adults.

Your youth ministry is one of many youth ministries in your community but it is still part of the youth ministry movement of your community.

Many years ago my pastor preached this message again and again. It is one of the big reasons why I became a part of that church and have been there for fifteen years. Our church practices that we are part of the Church of Manassas. Our church family is only one part of the larger church. I take that attitude with the youth ministry too. If a parent wants his/her child to attend a youth group with a weekly meeting, I have no problem with that. I do not fear losing that youth to that youth ministry or that I am in competition for that youth. That particular youth and family has simply chosen that they want weekly meetings as part of their spiritual journey. As long as I know that I'm in alignment with what God is doing at my part of the Church of Manassas, I can bless the other branches with my wonderful youth. I also know that due to the parent ties and the ties to the entire church family that my church will be the youth's church forever.

Youth Ministry is a Tool for a Life's Long Journey

We get to work with these wonderful teens for just a few years of their overall life. But these teens have a long life to live overall. Our job as youth workers is to plant and water and to do that well (2 Corinthians 3:6 7). We are to provide a foundation for faith to grow on. We are to provide a mirror for their faith. We are to give them spiritual markers where they can look back when re- evaluating their faith and say at these points I know God is real and was real in my life. The youth ministry is not the "most important" anything. It is a wonderful tool provided by a church through your leadership to be "along the way" in that youth's life journey.

There are some great people in youth ministry. More often than not, when I am brought in to speak somewhere I meet people who are better than me. These are people I wish I was like more. I love to watch them work with their teens, ask them questions, and soak what I can so I can become more like him/her.

I am hopeful for youth ministry not because of what I see in youth ministry resources or what I read on the internet but because there are so many people like the people I meet who have found their place to love and serve God. They are, in their many individual and unique ways, touching teens lives which will affect life on earth and in eternity.