Parents certainly don’t feel like they are the #1 influence in their teen’s life. Even if you show them all of the studies that support this true fact, parents live with the “teenage monster” in their home.  Think about it.  Who is telling them that they are the #1 influence?  Certainly no one in pop culture, unless they catch those anti-drug commercials and believe them.  They don’t see it in their teen’s actions.  This is a role you need to fill for parents.  They need you to be their cheerleaders.

Parents also feel like they are racing against time.  Suddenly their babies are within years of leaving the home, heading off to college, getting married, etc.  Just as the darling cherubs turn into teenage monsters, they are also realizing that there are only a few short years left while they are still under their influence.  Of course, parents will always have influence but for this short season they have legal covering and influence in a way that completely changes when their child turns 18.  To maximize these last influential years is a role the youth ministry can certainly fill.

Parents are also literally racing with time.  There are so many things, mostly good, that absorb all of a teen’s time.  School stuff, athletic stuff, music stuff, leadership stuff, social stuff,  and hopefully spiritual stuff.  The home too often becomes a drop-off service and a place for the teen to sleep. Family meals are too often in the family car.  Here you have a role such as providing tools such as “Taxi Drive Time” in Moms & Pops Stuff to maximize those times.  Another role is for the youth ministry to provide something in that schedule that makes room for the teen and parents to communicate, disciple and challenge each other.

Steve Wright in his useful book, ReThink, came up with these further excuses as to why parents are intimidated to be the passers on of their faith to their teens:

• I can’t disciple, because I’ve never been discipled myself.
• We pay the youth pastor to do that.
• I’m just not a teacher.
• I don’t know the Bible and can’t answer their questions.
• My kids won’t listen to me.
• It’s too late; I would start this if I’d known about it before my kid became a teenager
• We’re not cool enough to relate to our kids; the youth pastor does that better
• I’m too busy providing for my kids’ needs; I bring them to church to take care of their spiritual needs
• I’m not qualified; I’ve never been to seminary

Blah, blah, excuse, blah, blah, excuse, blah, blah.  But these excuses still are too true to too many parents.  The youth ministry must help overcome these excuses.  Whether the excuses are valid or simply excuses the truth is teens take their spiritual cues from their parents first.  That is fact.

So parents feel intimidated to pass on their faith to their teens.  You want to grow the spiritual life of your teens.  This then surmises that one of the best roles you can serve as youth leader is for you to encourage your parents to step out beyond their fears and have these discussions.

P.S.  A truth that parents will often need to be reminded of:  When a crisis comes up, teens always want their parents first.  Texting and cellphones are only increasing this tether parents and teens will always have.

P.S.S.  For the teens that come from non-Christian homes, they are taking spiritual cues from the parents of their Christian friends who invite them to youth group.

We’ve been doing our form of CFBYM for nine years now.  What has happened (but didn’t expect to have happened) is the parents of upcoming 6^th graders and younger cannot wait to enter the youth ministry.  The tween can’t wait to get older and enter the youth ministry.  That is a common experience.  But since we require the parents to also enter the youth ministry at that age, they are actually looking forward to the teenage years with their child.  I’m not exaggerating.  This is because they know they get to be a part of the youth ministry which assays their fears of being a parent of a teenager.  They know and they have seen how parents of teens are supported by the church family.  How often does inviting the new 6^th graders to the youth ministry become a rite of passage also for the parents?!  We have stumbled into this wonderful truth.

You can also provide this rite of passage for parents and bless them at a time when they need to be supported the most.  But how do you do that?

• First you need to lose your intimidation of parents.  While they think you know more about teens than they do, you know they know more about teens, their teens specifically, than you.  So intimidation abounds in every direction.  Now that this is acknowledged, move on.

• Whenever you are in the vicinity of parents, extend warm and genuine friendship to parents every time.  And honor parents in every public and private conversation you have with students and everyone in the church family.  Sit with them at the school events you attend.  Meet with the parents over a meal.  Not the teen in the parent’s presence but with the parents.  Before you meet, Google where he/she works and learn more about that business and the job.  Lead the conversation with some good questions about their world.  Keep the conversation purposely away from your agenda for the teen.  And at some point directly ask each parent what his/her dream is for his/her child.

• One practice of incorporating parents more into the youth ministry is to invite them to be a part of your volunteer staff.  Some parents make great volunteer staff and you will be blessed to have them and all of their spiritual and parental insight to mix with the teens.  But this role does not fit all parents.  It is more important to the parents that you release them to be the spiritual influencers of their teens first, then possibly become part of the volunteer staff.  Singly dealing with parents like they are volunteer staff or an extension of volunteer staff is not meeting the needs of parents and is also using them to further your agenda.  That is so typical of a Brenda-Centered Youth Ministry.

• Partner with other church leaders to join you in purposely encouraging parents in their role of passing on their faith.  This is open to so many ideas.

• Join parents in genuine prayer for their teen.  This can be done together, corporately, or in your own prayer closets.  Just do it.

• Encourage parents in every which way that the best way they can help you is to be active in personal ministry at home.  To help them have family chapels or spiritual discussions, over-resource them.  Further build up their confidence by giving them so many tools and resources that they will feel confident in their attempts to find one form that will eventually fit into their family dynamic.

I do not believe these practices are inclusive.  Are there practices you’ve made with parents that you would like to share here to complete this list?  Submit these to Amanda@wildfrontier.org.  We are actively seeking 150-word submissions for our new interactive digital magazine, YM Shorts.  What you have tried is exactly what we are looking for so please submit so others can find success as they become cheerleaders to the parents of the teens.

As part of our Lenten observations this year, each week (including Easter) a teen is teaching an object lesson to the church. These teens are the recipient of years of children’s sermons, particularly at Advent, so I thought I would create a little holy tension in them by proposing they teach the church family in a way they were recipients of when they were younger.

The volunteer the first week was a new member to our group and not the recipient of those children’s sermons. But he volunteered to do the first week, much to my surprise. He experienced lots of holy tension as he set the stage for the following weeks as well as being new to the church family. What would inspire the “new kid” to volunteer for this project at all–and for the first week? I thanked his parents because their impact was obvious. Yet still what drew the “new kid” to this challenge?

For the second week, a longtime teen in our church volunteered. He too was nervous to do this as he’s on the shy side. Still he willingly volunteered. The holy tension only grew in him as his spot in the Sunday morning lineup got bumped as our worship band went in another Holy Spirit-led direction. He waited through song after song after prayer after song for his time to teach. Yet when he finally had his turn, he wowed the church family with his depth of teaching and a personality that few have seen. This was quite a memorable day for Randy, which became more memorable by experiencing the amount of holy tension that he did.

My definition of holy tension is nerves, often created due to a challenge, that create a spiritual marker in a teen’s life as a memory when reliance on God was needed and God showed Himself faithful. Holy tension is found in favorite Bible stories–maybe this is why they are favorite Bible stories. When the friends of the lame man saw that the house Jesus was in was full, their love compelled them to the rooftop as an access to Jesus. They experienced holy tension as they opened up that roof and lowered their friend. When Ananias was told to find Saul, he experienced holy tension. Wasn’t this the same guy who wanted to kill all Christians, thus himself? Yet God had spoken and he had to go, nerves and all. When Peter got out of the boat to walk on water, he had holy tension and then a great memory. For those few moments, he actually walked on water. If he hadn’t moved on that tension, he never would have experienced something so memorable. Randy has had many memories from his 17 years in our church yet his Lent teaching will be one of the stronger ones he retains as he experienced a lot of holy tension that day. And to this I say, amen.

A commonplace for holy tension is on a mission trip. When that teen has been asked to dig a latrine hole and the boys in the group didn’t really attempt but she did and dug out most of it (true story), holy tension was there and this is a strong memory for her. When a teen is asked to lead worship for a youth meeting, holy tension is created. It is when that holy tension is no longer recognized in that worship leader that you have an ego problem with that leader.

Another commonplace for holy tension is at altar calls or times of commitment. If a teen just needs to lift his/her eyes to make a commitment, not a lot of tension is created. But if something more is asked of him/her to make this commitment, holy tension is created–memorable holy tension. The danger here as we’ve all seen too often is when that holy tension changes into manipulation. When you are the one planning, plan the right holy tension for those commitments.

To simplify, here are three reasons why you should provide times of holy tension:

1. To create an awareness that God is alive and actively working in their lives.
2. To provide opportunities that shows that God is faithful.
3. To provide memories which will be spiritual markers.

Truth is holy tension generally happens by either Holy Spirit-led opportunities or when a challenge has been purposely planned. The Holy Spirit-led opportunities are ones I’m continually grateful for. They are also random. For me personally (and maybe you), I have to continually work on my Type-A-personality-driven heart to not miss them. As for planning the challenges, this is something I do purposely plan at my church and something I challenge you to plan. Here are some ideas to help you plan this way:

1. Live in your holy tension and let it be known. This is not something just for teens. Recognize the times in your life when you experience holy tension and then share your stories. More importantly, share your current stories. Our personal holy tension stories from our teen years have already made their way into many of our teaching moments. Also share your current stories.
2. Ask good questions often—those questions that make you go hmmm. Jesus did this I believe hoping to create that holy tension in his listeners.
3. Expound on teachable moments. Those are the Holy Spirit-led opportunities. When you see one, highlight the holy tension.
4. Create challenges for your teens to experience holy tension. If possible, personalize these challenges as often as you can.
5. Demystify failure. Failure is a part of holy tension–recognize it as so. Failure does produce tension. With some insight and guidance, that tension can turn into holy tension. The danger is to minimize the failure and miss the teachable moment.

John Ortberg, teaching pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, formerly of Willow Creek, had this to say about the importance of demystifying failure: “Teach that failure is essential to learning. And it’s not the same as competence. I read a study involving a pottery class. They divided students into two groups. One group would get A’s by making one really good pot. The other one would get A’s by making 50 pots, no matter what they looked like. Guess what? The students in the 50-pot group made the best pots! They’d make one and it would be no good. And they’d make another one, get a little better. They’d make another one, get a little better. They just kept learning how to make better pots.

“The one-pot group put all this pressure on themselves over one pot, but they never learned how to make a pot well because they didn’t fail enough.” (Leadership Journal, January 1, 2004) (Side note: How much do your overachieving-and-stressed-out teens need to receive this message?)

Take a moment to remember the memories of what has happened in your last year of youth ministry. Do you see now in hindsight these times of holy tension for individual teens or for your entire group? Do you see times that were Holy Spirit-led and just happened? Also do you see times where you purposely planned holy tension? Holy tension is a great tool in the spiritual formation of teens. Now that it is identified, continue on.

Wild Frontier has long been talking about how important the church family is to the youth ministry.   Proof is our sister site of ChurchFamilyBasedYouthMinistry.org (or http://cfbym.org/).  Don’t you find this curiously wonderful that social science studies have identified how important the church family is to a child’s and teen’s development?

Also the experts agree that children are “hardwired” from birth to connect with others.  Because they are hardwired this way, the more we focus our time, attention, energy, and resources on forming strong bonds with our youth, the more likely we will prevent problems from arising.

From the report, Hardwired to Connect, ten essential traits of an authoritative community were identified.  Read this list and see how much a church family fulfills this need.

• It is a social institution that includes children and youth.
• It treats children as ends in themselves.
• It is warm and nurturing.
• It establishes clear limits and expectations.
• The core of its work is performed largely by non-specialists.
• It is multi-generational.
• It has a long-term focus.
• It reflects and transmits a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person.
• It encourages spiritual and religious development.
• It is philosophically oriented to the equal dignity of all persons and to the principle of love of neighbor.

Isn’t that curiously wonderful how all of these experts have described the work of the church family?

In light of this report, also consider this statement from Dr. Christian Smith from the Wave 2 of the National Study of Youth and Religion:  “Given that part of attracting and maintaining young (church) members likely involves being a relevant and supportive social institution in the lives of adolescents, congregations should note that only about half of their adolescent members (on average) feel very good raising their problems in religious congregations.”  (YouthandReligion.org, February 2009)

Science has found that teens need authoritative communities to thrive through adolescence and the National Study of Youth and Religion has found that around half of adolescent members feel their church is an authoritative community.  The questions now become, how many of those ten traits does your church family have?  How can you use your church family more in the youth ministry program?  Are you in the way of the church family being an authoritative community or are you helping them grow to be a better one?

Frankly, I’ve heard some whines from youth workers about the church family.  One such whine is “The adults (they are often all lumped together into one antagonistic group) don’t understand the teens and don’t know how to let the teens be teens.”  There is a lot of backstory missing on that one, and that backstory has many variations.  However the core truth is you need to do what you need to do to bridge the adults to the teens and the teens to the adults.  If there was a backstory of damages to the building, identify that history and encourage all to move on and grow.  If there is a backstory of teens not acting respectful when with the “adult church,” work with your teens on better etiquette as well as understanding holiness.  The bottom-line is your church set you apart as the youth leader because they believe in good ministry to their youth.  The church family actually wants the teens there otherwise you wouldn’t be there.  It is your role to bridge the two together.  May I suggest that your best role is to bridge those two together?

Another whine I’ve heard is, “Some adults have a knack for connecting with teens and some don’t. I want my teens around those who have that knack.”  So who decides who has that knack or does not have that knack?  And meanwhile an entire church family of adults is turned away because they don’t have that perceived knack.  Is this perceived knack often judged by you?

Another whine I hear (again too often) is how kids from non-church homes are left out when there are so many church adults, particularly parents, involved.  I’ll quote Mark DeVries on this one:  “One of the strangest objections to Family-Based Youth Ministry has been that it leaves out the kids who don’t come from Christian homes. In reality, it’s the traditional youth ministries that are most prone to orphan kids. They carry young people until they graduate from the youth group, then leave them with limited ties to the world of Christian adults. Family-Based Youth Ministry, on the other hand, seeks to provide an extended Christian family of other adults in the church (i.e., Christian parents on loan) for those kids who don’t have Christian parents of their own.” (YouthMinistry.com)  Before this “Hardwired to Connect” report was released, DeVries described the authoritative community of the church family.

Back in 2005 I wrote another Pair of Cleats on sort of the same subject.  I quoted a look at two churches from a book written back in 1991 entitled Black and White Styles of Youth Ministry: Two Congregations in America by William R. Myers.  What I noted back then was how one church was an authoritative community (though I didn’t name it that) and how the youth of that church were not abandoned (this was written right around the time of Chap Clark’s great book about society’s abandonment of teens entitled Hurt).  That church definitely made an impression on me and how I lead the youth ministry at my own church.  There is something to all this research that has got to move us to including the authoritative community of the church family to our youth ministry plans.

And this is not a one-way process.  Yes, teens need to interact with adults (volunteering in other life of the church activities is a great method), but the adults also need to reach out to the teens by recognizing them as individuals, not just as part of the group.  Both sides need to see and recognize this as a joint goal and this is where your role comes in.  You can do this.  You can be this great chess master.  You have one big chessboard with the prize being the faith and formation of teens.  In this role you are moving all of the pieces of the church family to interact with the teens.  Not just yourself and not just the adult volunteer staff and the Sunday School teachers.  Every person from the widows to the nursery workers is your beloved pawn, rook, or queen to be a part of this authoritative community.

P.S.  On a more positive note, the Wave 2 of the National Study of Youth and Religion found that 78 percent of teens found their church to be inspiring and 71 percent say their church is warm and welcoming.  Only 13 percent say it is boring.  Only 13 percent.  This stat needs to be searched out more but we’ve all been caught off guard by the numerous studies that show that teens do want to hang with their parents.  Perhaps this group also has a new respect for church?

P.S.S  From the Hardwired to Connect report:  “To help kids, authoritative communities must be strengthened by society in every way.  That includes the simple things such as volunteering and knowing the name of the paper boy, talking to the boy who bags your groceries.”

You do this day in and day out as a lover of teens.  You can also teach your church family to do this too.  They can be an authoritative community to more than just the youth in the church.  How hard is it to remember or look at the nametag of the boy who bags your groceries and say his name?  Or cheer and encourage other team members on their daughter’s soccer team?  Or one of many other simple ideas you can think of and teach your church family to do.

I know no one intentionally grows the youth ministry to be separate from the church but this has become a problem in youth ministry.  Much has been written about the problems of age-segregated programming in church life.  I don’t need to rehash that here.  Anyone who has read a youth ministry blog is well aware of this without having to read more about it.

Growing a youth ministry that looks like your church is more than that problem of separation.  The problem is having a passion-filled youth ministry that is one way and the church family operating in a different passion.  For example if your youth ministry is an outreach youth ministry, your church needs to also be an outreach church.  The entire church family is needed to be supporting those teens who are coming in.  The support has to come from more than just the youth group wing.

The first thing to correct this separation or continue the course you are on is to find out why you were hired or nominated?  Do you know why the committee or pastoral staff thought you were a fit for this particular church family?  There was something about you that the church wanted.

Johnny Robertson, a United Methodist pastor who just hired a youth pastor, said he relies heavily on an applicant’s references before bringing an applicant in for an interview.  During the interview process, he looks for desirable traits of character, faith maturity, social skills and work habits. These four traits are considered above actual work experience as he feels that these are internal to one’s makeup to teach.  Another UMC pastor, Carness Vaughan of Central UMC of Rogers, Arkansas, said they feel they can teach organizational skills and volunteer recruitment so they are looking for someone passionate about “walking closely to Christ and a passion for loving kids into a relationship with Christ.”

Another senior pastor, Jay Foley of Community Christian Fellowship of Siloam Springs, Arkansas, said he looks for someone who loves “the church (whatever its form or flavor) is the Bride and Body of Christ.”  Another important trait is someone who “is holistic in his/her understanding of the local congregation–a person who is definitely called and equipped (the order is important) to minister to youth, but at the same time understands that he or she is a part of a pastoral team and that together we work to equip the saints for the work of ministry.  He specifically does not want someone who uses “a post-modern persona to justify a ‘I’m the only one qualified to understand how to do youth ministry’ and someone who doesn’t view the whole of Christianity with one brush stroke and “not some specialist who either doesn’t know how, or doesn’t want to minister to anyone over twenty one.”

Perhaps your church used the contemplative practice of Liturgy of Discernment or something similar to decide on you.  This is a prayer practice that Mark Yaconelli introduced to the youth ministry world in his teaching and book on contemplative youth ministry.  In a nutshell, it is a prayer practice designed for committees/staffs (communal) to lead them in decision-making in the work of the church ministry.  That would be quite the blessing to find out if this is the way you were hired or nominated, wouldn’t it?

Either way you were hired or nominated, you came into this new role with your education and your youth ministry library of knowledge of how you want to do youth ministry.  Truly, this is probably why you were hired or nominated.  When you were asked questions during the interview process you gave the answers based on your knowledge of how you want to do youth ministry.  This is a youth ministry vision you have spent many hours praying for and asking God to birth in you.  The answers to the hiring committee’s questions came easy because this is something you deeply know and deeply believe in.

Yet somewhere in here is where the disconnect happens.  The youth ministry you want to do somehow becomes something that doesn’t look anything like the church family of which the youth ministry is a part.  This is especially so, if the youth ministry you introduce has the mentality of being a segregated arm of the church family.

How long was it until you realized how little of your youth ministry education didn’t truly apply to your real church situation?  How long was it until you realized that the youth ministry plans in books you’ve read didn’t fit into your everyday situation?   We all chuckle at this awareness and wonder out loud how our professors and these great authors think they’ve got youth ministry figured out.  Some of us even love to bash these youth ministry greats because it gives us a chance to share our practiced wisdom.

Despite knowing that these youth ministry greats don’t have a clue what your local situation looks like, we still rely heavily on their wisdom.  We read, learn, and try these methods.  We know the goal that we want.  We also know the day-to-day real life situation.  So a new idea is tried, maybe an idea which you read about from a book or heard about at a youth conference.   But we forget that the youth ministry is a part of your church–not a part of these other churches.  And because we are the experts, people get behind us and the idea.

A hero of mine, Brian Farmer of First Baptist in Salisbury, NC, has just completed 21 years in one church.  I’m only at 19 years at my church.  In writing for Wild Frontier about his 20 years, he said “One of the reasons given for the short stay for many student ministers is that they have a ‘packaged ministry’ that is good for 2 to 3 years at most.  When all of the elements have been used, it is time to move on.  If you stay in one place for a long time, you have to continually search to be fresh and of substance or you will not be ministering.”  You can easily see this situation and how people got behind the ideas because of the expert but the ideas didn’t match what is happening with the church family.

You have been matched to lead a youth ministry at your church.  All of the books, resources and youth ministry conferences are good and necessary.  That knowledge just needs to be filtered through what the vision of your church is and applied only if it will grow the youth ministry to look like your church.

Honestly sometimes it is the senior pastors who push for a type of church-family-segregated program.  Senior pastors have also read all of their books, have their seminary training, and their conferences just like us.  Senior pastors sometimes don’t think through all of the ramifications of offering the new and better alternative youth ministry which they have learned about.  Senior pastors don’t think these ramifications all the way through because they’ve got you to do that.  What they do know is they want their church teens safe in the faith.  They’ve relegated all that application to the specialist they’ve hired/nominated.  In doing that they’ve indirectly segregated you from the church family.  As one former youth pastor confessed to me, he let his senior pastor pigeon-hole him into an entertainment youth ministry even though he knew in his soul he wanted to move to a more church family-based youth ministry.

Another problem is us.  In the history of youth ministry, many senior pastors have extended grace to their youth workers for their crazy ideas trusting that you know what you are doing.  It may not jive with the practices of the church or the church vision, but there is a trust in you that you know what you are doing.  But do we always?

We’ve all heard this common youth worker whine, “This is going to get me fired…” The “this” is a large variable of ideas.  Whether this comment is made at a youth worker network meeting or a volunteer staff meeting, it is said because too many of us love the role of rebel or instigator.  We love stirring things up for the kingdom of God in radical ways.  Which we should do but why does doing that give the feeling that you may get fired?  And why is there a bit of pride behind that flippant statement?  This is a favored tension by too many youth workers and furthermore this role of rebel or instigator is beloved and respected by peers.  This does not make it right though.  If you believe in your soul that you are to be a rebel or instigator in the local church, work for a church that has a senior pastor who also feels that is his/her role.  These do exist.

So how do you grow a youth ministry that looks like your church?

1. Start by finding out why you were hired or nominated.  Let this research be a reminder of the parts of you that the committee or pastoral staff believed in about you.  Write those qualities down and then spend some time finding your current self in those qualities.  Have you strayed?  Have you changed?  Has your plan for youth ministry changed?  Did the church get the wrong perception of you in the beginning?  Does it turn out that you have theological differences with the church?   What is repairable?
2. Find out or remind yourself what your church is.  What are the prominent practices of the church?  Every church is part of the Church of your community but what are the particular characteristics of your church?  How does your youth ministry reflect your church?  Make a list and compare.   Your church has a special role to play in the entire Church of your community.  Is your youth ministry reflecting this?
3. When you do want to make a change, invite your senior pastor, the pastoral staff, the elders, and/or the volunteer staff to join you.  You don’t need to go through all this to make the decision to teach a unit on Old Testament heroes or to plan the summer camp.  But if you are feeling God’s leading to include parents more or to start small groups or to start a paintball ministry, invite your church leaders to join you in this decision-making. One of the best practices to do this right is through the Liturgy of Discernment.  This practice can be a great  platform for you and your leadership to grow together more.
4. You need to remain pliable during this process.  As a church leadership team takes the steps to discern, the decision may be that the youth ministry should not go in that direction.  Maybe you did hear from God with the original idea but after going through this process, hopefully you also now see what the best direction is for the youth ministry so that it stays true to the vision of the church.
5. Ask for an evaluation of your youth ministry every three to six months.  Yes, that is quite often and may be cumbersome.  But after time, it won’t be so cumbersome and you, as well as the church leadership, will be able to keep the youth ministry looking like the church family.
6. Leave a huge paper trail of everything you are doing in youth ministry.  Put together monthly reports for the elders, even if you are never asked to do this.  When good ministry moments happen, write up the story in an e-mail and send it to all of the church leadership.  If something didn’t go as planned, review your process of the event in a memo to your senior pastor.  This is a good practice in general.  Even more so as a way to keep your youth ministry looking like the church family.
7. In exchange for all this openness you are giving the church leadership, you gain some leverage to help them put a more teen-friendly emphasis in the church family, particularly during the Sunday morning worship experience.  This also helps the youth ministry look more like the church family.

For example at my church, I have put together a working document of teaching illustrations which use all five senses and can be effective in a congregational setting for my pastoral staff.  I send this to them updated every few months so they can pull ideas from this as they plan their sermons.  Because of my relationship with them, they are open to such “outside-the-box” sermon illustrations.   Now that they’ve been trying them out for several years and hearing the positive feedback from the entire congregation, such five senses ideas are a common Sunday morning experience.  This is just one way I’ve helped our church become teen-friendly.  During Sunday morning services you can always catch me taking notes here and there.  That is when I get inspired as to how the youth ministry can be a part of the service for next week or the next church calendar season.  And because of my relationship with the pastoral staff, I very often get my way.

What if you work in a dysfunctional church?  They do exist.  In this process, you need to ask yourself why you are there.  For example, if you have power-hungry, top-down leadership, you could turn into a power-hungry, top-down leadership youth leader as you try to protect the youth ministry from the leadership.  You didn’t mean to become this and you probably wouldn’t see it until it was too late. The intentions were honorable but in the end, this church may be a bad fit.  It may be time to let go and find a church that will look like the youth ministry you want to grow.

The blessing in all this is when you grow a youth ministry that looks like your church, you will be blessed with the reward of longevity.  You will be able to be around to see your sixth graders graduate from high school.  Maybe even see the ones currently in the nursery graduate.

Another blessing from longevity which comes from growing your youth ministry to look like your church is the trust you gain.  When church leadership and parents know you are going to be around for the long haul, they will more easily get onboard with what you are planning because they know you will be there to see it through to the end.  They also have learned that the entire church will be affected by your “crazy” plans—and be excited about it.  That means full support.  What could you do with full support?  Start dreaming.  It is worth growing your youth ministry to look like your church.

From that “read more,” here are two comments from high school students that stand out to me:  “School does not teach us many practical life-skills.  I do not need to learn trigonometry.  I don’t need to know how to structure an analytical essay on some boring bit of literature.  School is a waste of time.  Property development and multi-level marketing is where the money is.”

And: “I’m in high school, 10th grade, and honestly I have to agree here.  High school is just a mindless barrage of trials to see how low you’ll sink to get an A+.  There is literally nothing I am learning right now that I can or will use in my future life, except maybe algebra.  I want to be a concept artist for a video game company.  I’ve been dedicated to this decision for years now.  But in the last two years of my academic life I have learned exactly nothing that would help me become that.  And it’s precisely because of that I’ll end up working in a McDonald’s for the next 30 years.  Thanks high school.  Seriously, I’ve had to do my own research and teach myself about the gaming industry, and to me that’s all I should be doing right now.  But apparently, doing menial projects week after week about a book that relates in no way to the present day is more important.  Once again, high school, I can’t thank you enough.”

Here’s an educated opinion on this same line of thinking.  Robert Epstein is a renowned psychologist who is raising the question that teenagers or adolescence is obsolete.  Not just the high school education but the life stage of adolescence. This paradigm-thought was birthed in him from observing his sons.  “I just got curious about it because my second son was very mature. I recognized when he was 14 or 15 years old that in some ways he was more mature not just than his older brother, but he was more mature than I was. That made me curious. I began to wonder why my son was getting in trouble for stealing my truck, when in fact he could obviously drive. Why couldn’t he just drive? Why was he stuck in high school where he was doing well when it was obviously a waste of his time? Why couldn’t he start a business at 14 or 15, which he was obviously ready to do?”  From this viewpoint he did his research and is actively raising the question to every audience if adolescence is a myth. (“Teenage Turmoil?  Not So Much, Says Author of Teen 2.0,” U.S. News & World Report, April 2, 2010)

Did you realize that the creator of Chatroulette is a 17-year old teen from Russia?   The creator, Andrey Ternovskiy, says he has been coding since age 11.  His dad taught him.  He’s Russian and I’m not familiar with their education system, but what does our education system have to offer someone like Andrey other than a paper diploma?  The Russian education system didn’t have staying power to offer Andrey because he’s a high school drop out and that paper diploma is not necessary for his bright future.  I have an 8th grader in my youth group who is reading A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking (physic theories behind quantum mechanics, relativity, etc.) as pleasurable reading.  What does my youth ministry offer someone like that?

Right now the top ten jobs in-demand in 2010 did not exist in 2004.  How does a public school education keep up?  Teachers are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist which will use technologies which don’t yet exist to solve problems we don’t know are problems yet.  And too often these teachers are teaching with science equipment from the 1990s.
I have a now-grown-youth who is one of those called-by-God teachers extraordinaire.  She teaches high school seniors—and not those high school seniors who want the more demanding work.  She has the ones who want to pass her English 12 course just to get that diploma.  I asked her these questions and Syn-D Lazo’s response is, “They (her students) have little use for Macbeth and The Canterbury Tales.  It is not good to fill their minds with information that will just take up space where useful ‘career’ information can go.  So, I typically try to go light rather than have them memorize things that will just take up valuable brain space (and let’s be honest, can be Googled later if necessary).  I’ll be honest, the math I learned in high school is only good for figuring out sale prices and making sure I have enough money to pay my bills.”

High school education is broken.  This matters to youth ministry because we model youth ministry somewhat to the education system.  They enter when they enter middle school and they exit when they graduate high school.  One of the results of this modeling we youth workers are finding and everyone has an opinion on (including us) is that youth ministry does not have staying power.  By the time graduation comes, how active are your seniors in your youth ministry program?

So here is my Wild Frontier thought for you.  What can we do differently with our mini-adults who are yet minors and are also living in delayed adolescence yet are able to make life-impacting differences?  What do you do with a rebelutionary in traditional youth ministry?

Another thought.  I’ve had this item for so long that I don’t remember where I got this from.  It is from some youth pastor’s blog from about four years ago.  Apologies to the author.  To quote this anonymous thinker, “I think youth ministry must reconsider the fact that it has embraced a power-structure that subjects adolescents to ‘giving their all to Jesus’ with little risk to the youth ministry or the youth pastor.

“And we wonder why they don’t stick around after high school. Let’s just say, we can’t blame the senior pastors. We maybe have to look at ourselves.”

Chap Clark also mentions this in Deep Ministry in a Shallow World:  “Church and parachurch youth ministries tend to be far more supportive of adolescents and less agenda-driven than nearly every other system in their young lives.  But we still represent a huge, often faceless organization—the Church.  Kids perceive us as being more committed to getting them to participate in our events and trips than to them as individuals.  In my discussions with thousands of students, many have confirmed that this is one reason for their apparent spiritual lethargy and lack of consistent, free, and passionate growth.  They simply do not trust the adults who run programs.  As much as they may like us, most will hold back at some level because they see us as adults with self-serving agendas.”  (Chap Clark, Deep Ministry in a Shallow World, p. 71)

Teens are a part of a youth ministry with a power-structure that benefits the youth leaders and the other adults in the church family.  Teens are a part of a school system with a power-structure that benefits the teachers.  Those SOL tests are not to test the proficiency of the student but that of the teacher.  Is it no wonder that they check out when they are approaching self-reliancy?

Ponder.  Pray.  Let these Wild Frontier thoughts sink in.

A paraclete is someone who walks alongside someone.  We’ve got our cleats on to walk alongside you.

Creating memories and experiences for your teens is one of the bottom-line goals for youth ministry.  It is certainly what we at Wild Frontier have learned over our twenty years of searching and questioning.  Experiencing is also the number one task in Faith Shaping and is at the core of spiritual formation.

Experiencing just so happens to use our senses and frankly, the more the senses are used the better.  Science is proving that the more senses are involved in the learning process, the greater the experience and the greater the memory that is formed.  Since providing memorable experiences is such a large part of youth ministry, I want to encourage you to purposely try to incorporate as many of the fives senses as possible into all that you plan.

You know this to be true whether or not you have knowingly put senses and learning together.  A youth pastor, Ray Ko, sent me an idea he has used.  Instead of teaching on Matthew 9:35-38 to develop a strategic plan for outreach ministry, he took his youth group to the neighborhood coffee shop.  After observing for a while, he gave his group guided questions such as:  Observe the people around your table. How many of them are male and female?  Describe them–clothing, education, etc.  What is your impression about their conversation?  Can you figure out their needs through their conversation?  Because all five senses were involved with this, don’t you think the experience was caught by the teens?   This is what our Location Lessons download is all about.

Another fact is some teens prefer and actually learn better from auditory or visual or hands-on learning styles. Those with learning disabilities will also benefit from this multi-sense approach to whatever you do in your youth ministry program.  (Don’t hate that word program.)

Can you guess right now which one of our five senses is the strongest memory-provoker?  Hopefully you guessed smell because that would be correct.  Yet I doubt that was your guess.  How often do you intentionally incorporate smell into your programming?  Honestly, it is rare for me to do it and is still not easy now that I’m learning and brainstorming about it.

The sense we most often go to is sight.  We do this with PowerPoint or a video or the actual Word of God.  We do this because we know that this does help the retention of our teaching.  However in Googling this topic I learned that “even though nearly 100 percent of visual information can be retained over short periods of time, this drops to 50 percent within 3 months.  Olfactory (smell) information, on the other hand, averages 80 percent recall after a brief time–and stays at 80 percent over at least a year. (McAleer, 1985.p.71)” (ThinkQuest.org)  From these findings it becomes easy to see why Scent Marketing is popular.  When you walk into a certain store, you may notice a certain cologne smell wafting through the place.  The idea is to associate that smell with those clothes so you buy both.  This idea was also used in a teen pregnancy prevention campaign.  The smell of dirty diapers was put on a scratch-n-sniff and distributed to teen boys.  This has proven to be somewhat effective in early survey results.  (Salon.com, January 27, 2010)This challenges me to incorporate smell as much as possible.  But how do you do that in youth ministry?

One simple way is to incorporate a smell into your youth room.  Hopefully it is not dirty socks smell!  Designate a smell whether through candles, plug-ins, incense, etc., and consistently keep it wafting–consistently for years.  When you walk into a public school, does that smell immediately remind you of your school days?  This is what you are going for in your youth room.  It is such a smell that they will always associate to a safe place where they learned more about their faith.  A smell that when they smell it at age 30, it will bring a smile to their face as they remember what they learned associated to that smell.  Unlike that public school smell, this will hopefully bring back happy thoughts.

Taste is another strong sense.  For example, think of your favorite home-cooked meal from your childhood.  When you taste that food as an adult, does it bring back some memories?  Or do you have unpleasant taste memories such as when you ate something just before you had the stomach flu and that item became your toilet content.  Just the smallest taste of that food the next time can make you nauseous.  Taste and smell are closely related. If you’ve ever had a cold during Thanksgiving dinner then you know that this great taste experience is lessened when you can’t smell it.  I’ve recently challenged you to incorporate the church kitchen into your youth ministry plans.  This is all about using this taste sense.

Another sense that is easy for us to incorporate is hearing. Teachers have incorporated hearing into teaching methods for years such as by encouraging students to read aloud or say vocabulary words aloud.  This helps improve the memory of such words for that upcoming vocab quiz and hopefully throughout life.  Historically Black churches have also long incorporated this in their preaching methods by having the congregation repeat back a certain phrase from the sermon over and over again.

Lastly there is the sense of touch.  The skin contains more than 4 million sensory receptors–mostly concentrated in the fingers, tongue, and lips–that gathers information related to touch that gets sent to the brain for processing and reaction which then becomes memories.  For example, holding a 9-inch nail becomes much more memorable than simply hearing how that nail pierced Jesus’ skin.

As you may be surmising, incorporating the five senses into your programming is a bit of work, especially for some of the senses.  Some youth workers will spend a great amount of time and labor on an edited video used for one week’s lesson which provides a visual and audio memory when in that same amount of time maybe a simpler video could be used while adding another sense or two with it which would actually make the lesson even more experiential and memorable.  I’m hoping to encourage you to simply discipline yourself to process your plans through all five of the senses and see what you can add to enhance the memories.

To help here are some ideas you can use:

Write Your Story (uses all five senses)
Ask your teens to write a short autobiographical story about the summer mission trip. But instead of the traditional event reporting, challenge them to incorporate all five senses into their telling of the story.   Some of your mission trip experiences come equipped with strong smells associated to them!  Be thankful for those strong smells now.  Having your teens write down such memories will help solidify those.

The Thread of Habits (sight, touch)
This is originally a “children’s message” but the point is still powerful and useful.  The only supplies you will need are a spool of thread and a pair of scissors.

Find a volunteer.  Wrap the thread once around the arms and body of the volunteer.  Ask the volunteer to break the thread.  It will be easy to do.  Wrap the thread around 3 times.  Have the volunteer attempt to break it.  It will be more difficult.  Continue upping the wraparounds until the volunteer is no longer able to break free.  Using your volunteer as an example, transition to how we easily get entangled in our sins and cannot get out.  Ask the group some pointed questions such as “Does anyone set out to develop bad habits on purpose?”  Keep your volunteer tied up during this because he/she will have great insight to add to the discussion.
After a good discussion, use the scissors to set the volunteer free.  Teach how our best efforts are not enough to stop our bad habits but God is able to set us free.

Candles in the World (sight, touch, taste)
Before your meeting, purchase large birthday candles and a large plain-frosted sheet cake.  For the message ask:  Who has been a light in your life?  Who has shared with you a better understanding of God?
In response to the message invite everyone to celebrate the candles in their lives by having them light one candle in honor of that one person and placing it into the cake.  When the candles are all on the cake, turn the lights off and notice how much light all the candles give off together.  Point out how you may feel like a little light in the big world but if we are all such lights for other people like the ones the candles represent, we all can be this bright.
Then eat the cake!

Hungry for God (sight, smell, taste)
A George Foreman grill or other tabletop grill works great for this. Use Matthew 5:6 and talk about being hungry and thirsty for the things of God. As you are doing this, start cooking steaks on the grill in front of everyone.  Make the steaks as fragrant as possible.  Keep teaching without mentioning the grilling steaks. As the smell grows and mouths water and stomachs growl, discuss the same kind of desire and yearning for things that please God.  For closing, give everyone a bite of the savory steak.

Crucifixion Cross (all five senses)
For a Good Friday service or another cross time, pass out a 9-inch nail for everyone to hold.  As they are silently pondering that nail going through Jesus’ feet, have a person out-of-sight hit a nail with that echoing thud into the cross or piece of wood.  While this is happening have another person or two drop red rose petals along the aisle every time that nail is hit.  This will give the appearance of drops of blood after hearing the heavy hammering.
In the story of the crucifixion there is reference to a mixture of pain killer and vinegar.  Something else effective is having the strong sour smell of vinegar waft through the room.  It is tough to smell but the crucifixion is tough to stomach already.

• Don’t call it “adult church.”  Don’t even intimate that it is “adult church.”  This service is for the entire church family so be sure that every part of your language and body language communicates that point.

• Never criticize.  Never criticize your pastor in front of the youth or the parents.  You two are serving together and should have the entire church family in mind as you serve.  Even if some of your youth are caring enough to confront you about why they don’t like Sunday church services, don’t offer up excuses in your pastor’s defense.  Give him/her your full support no matter what.  Then schedule a meeting with your pastor to discuss your teens’ concerns.

• Creative teaching methods.  Ask your pastor to add some creative teaching methods to the sermon.  Some pastors may be stuck in their ways (a stereotype that is often not as true as the stereotype) and may not respond to a direct request.   But did it hurt to ask? However some pastors, because they do love their teens, may respond openly.  If he/she seems open to some creativity, help by providing resources.  Give him/her websites, files, books, etc., of ideas he/she can possibly use. If your pastor does add something creative or something to get beyond the speaching-to-a-passive audience method, give him/her proper props.  Such good feedback will almost guarantee another try at it.

• Standing ovation.  When your pastor is finished with a particularly clever and/or interactive sermon, as a youth group stand and give him/her a standing ovation at the end of the service.  This is something you will have to talk about, create a signal sign for, and practice prior to actually doing it to pull off the surprise effect.   However such positive encouragement will certainly encourage your pastor to try such a sermon-type again.  And if there would be anyone in the congregation upset about a creative element in the sermon, they couldn’t be upset anymore if the youth gave a standing ovation.  Further, can you imagine the response any visitors would have?  They would obviously think that if this is a church where teens give standing ovations for the teaching of the Bible, this must be an innovative church worth joining.

• You use creative teaching methods.  Not only during youth group but on those special occasions you get to preach to the church family.  Incorporate what you do in your youth group to the church family.  As you are preparing for this certain Sunday, you will gain an understanding as to why pastors fall back on the speaching method of teaching so readily.  With speaching the outcome of the message is more controlled and more predictable.  When you add creative teaching methods, you are adding unknown elements and you may not be able to work the sermon back to your closing challenge which holds the purpose for why you are teaching.  Push through the uncertainty and teach creatively.  See what sort of feedback you get and subtly spread that feedback back to your pastor.

• Encourage your youth to e-mail sermon illustrations to your senior pastor.  Of course, let the pastor in on this idea.  Your youth are already watching stories, viewing YouTube, maybe even writing poems or stories.  Encourage them to pass these on to your senior pastor.  Give them his/her e-mail and turn them loose.  The first time your senior pastor uses one of their ideas, everyone else will get on board so encourage your senior pastor to use one idea as soon as possible.  After a time, your senior pastor can put together an e-mail list of resource help for future sermons which your teens can then find specific illustrations for him/her.

• Personal audio/visual assistant.  Some pastors are not as technologically savvy as you so adding such creative teaching elements may be intimidating just because he/she wouldn’t know how to do it.  Offer up a youth or two (who are reliable) to serve as Sunday morning audio/visual assistants.  Arrange for them to meet with the pastor, hear what he/she wants done and set them loose to arrange it for Sunday morning so your pastor has no worries about this part of the message.  After several sermons the pastor and his/her assistants could be a fine-tuned preaching machine.  And these privileged youth will have a closer relationship with the pastor which will spill over to the rest of the youth.

• Senior pastor as regular youth teacher.  At least quarterly invite your pastor to teach at a youth meeting.  The reasons why are many.  The pastor will get to know the youth a bit.  The youth will see firsthand that the pastor is behind the youth ministry and does love them.  And the youth will get used to his speaking style which will help during church family services.

• Take notes.  Not write notes.  This is an obvious idea and often recommended so think of it more this way.  Teaching your youth how to take notes and how to make an outline from the sermon (3-point sermons play perfectly into this) will be teaching them a skill they can use in school and which they will definitely need for college.

• Secret words.  Ask your pastor to plant 5 funny or bizarre words into the message and keep those words a secret between the pastor and the teens.  Have your pastor give these words to you to pass on to the teens so you can explain the secret.  Another twist: ask your teens to give 5 words to the pastor which he/she needs to incorporate into the sermon.  Again, this is a secret between the pastor and the teens.  While the teens are listening for their secret words, they may also catch another truth or two out of the sermon.  And more importantly, they will know that the pastor is interested in them.

• The next question.  Some preachers are preparing fill-in-the-blank sermon outlines which are included in the bulletin to help everyone with the message.  This is a good start.  I know pastors think they are being so trendy by doing this but, as teens know too well, life is not fill-in-the-blank.  As well as filling in the blank, encourage your teens to write down what the next question should be under a fill-in-the-blank point.  Maybe it’s a question they can answer for themselves.  Or maybe it is a question that he/she doesn’t know the answer for.  Encourage each teen to e-mail you their “next questions” from the sermon and promise you will e-mail back an answer.  Not only will this involve your teen in the sermon, you will get a chance to answer real questions from them.

• Teach your traditions.  Some of the disconnect may be from the younger generation not “getting” the traditions of your church.  I picked this idea up from the back page article from the Youthworker Journal (September/October 2007) called “Stirring It Up.”  Tom Bergler opined about the adolescence of the church (the one including adults) saying, “Spend some of it trying to get young people excited about the rich heritage and traditions of your church.  Don’t be so eager to appeal to students in their language that you forget to teach them the foreign language of the biblical faith.” Brilliant.  Some of us have been so long in our church traditions ourselves that we have simply forgotten that our youth feel disconnected from them.  Can you imagine the creative teachings you can come up with to bring the awe and respect back to such traditions?

• Vocabulary lesson mixed with Balderdash.  During a sermon a new word or several new words could be used.  Have the teens write down the new word and try to guess at its meaning.  This may distract him/her from the sermon a bit but he/she will still be learning.  Encourage the teen when he/she gets home to look up the new word and find out what it actually means.  Then ask him/her to apply it to his/her regular vocabulary for the week.

• Learn through art.  For your creative types, provide sketch paper and charcoal and ask them to sketch what art comes to mind from the sermon.  Keep the supplies in a plastic container so they are always available in the sanctuary (but hide them throughout the week so others won’t play with the supplies).  Encourage the teens that their art can be realistic or abstract.  Encourage them to let the Holy Spirit use the pastor’s words and their vision to create something.  Designate a bulletin board for these pieces of art noting the name of the sermon and the date so that everyone in the church family is blessed by the insight from your talented youth.

• Set up questions in the bulletin.  Make the adults in your church family talk to the youth.  This “little” contact with others in church will greatly increase your teens’ experience in church.  Although you love your teens and know how unscary they are, other adults don’t always see that.  They are often intimidated by teens, especially when they sit in packs.  Ease this fear or help it to go away completely.  One idea is to put in one simple and non-threatening question for the adults to ask the youth weekly in the bulletin.  Examples of such questions are: What was something joyful that happened this week?  What are you most looking forward to this week in school?  These require more than a yes and no answer and they often require a sentence or two.  That small start of conversation will grow week to week.  I’d say “money back guaranteed” on this one but Pair of Cleats already isn’t costing you money.

In closing, the Lifeway Research study on why young adults leave the church has been getting lots of press, blog notice, brainstorming conversations, etc.  Lots of great ideas will come from this research.  With that background, I would like to close with this quote from yet another Youthworker Journal (May/June 2007)  by Gene C. Roehlkepartain of Search Institute, “All young people feel that they need more and better relationships with adults.  (But) it’s striking how few young people have good, sustained relationships adults with in congregations.”

And I will add this quote from Chap Clark referencing his study of midadolescence and the abandonment that they feel, “Lastly, the most effective thing we can do to foster spiritual maturity in our children is to integrate them into adult relationships in the body of Christ. Because midadolescence developed due to our collective neglect and abandonment, we must undo its effects by bringing adults and kids together. Young people should be allowed and encouraged to participate in adult Sunday school and Bible study classes, go on men’s and women’s retreats, and serve on ministry and service teams with adults. The more your child feels that they are part of something bigger than themselves and that they are included in not only a family but the family of God, the more they will allow themselves to be drawn into a level of faith that will strengthen and lead them for the rest of their lives.” (Center for Youth and Family Ministry)

The Lifeway Research study is highlighting that there are things the Church can do to stop young adults from leaving. All of these fifteen ideas are attempts to do just that.

Your Wild Frontier challenge is to create a youth ministry program that is more than a youth ministry.  What needs to be added, dropped, or changed so that your youth can come near and direct with the entire church family?  Can your Sunday mornings (which is the largest church family time) change so that your youth are sitting at the “big table” and not at the “children’s table?”  Have a sit down with your pastor and see what the two of you can come up with.

Myth #9 – The Bible is only taught in church.

We youth workers do like to talk.  And we do like our “youth talks.”  Youth talks are an important part of youth ministry because part our “programming” (see Mythbusters) is teaching.

To answer what we should talk about, I’d like to start with the following quote from William Berger, a camp director. He posted an answer to a youth ministry series of questions for the blog, Life in Student Ministry.

“The pastor gives a few random verses to go with the topic and in 20 minutes the teens walk away with nothing more then its bad to smoke or its bad to hate people or something like that. Please don’t misunderstand me, there is definitely place for topical messages because we need to hit on the issues they face, but I feel as if that’s all that occurs from 6th grade to graduation. In my youth group while I was growing up I received topical messages for all that time and when I got to Bible college I couldn’t answer a single question in the Biblical Introduction class.  I didn’t even know all the books of the Bible.  All I could say, sadly, is the content of a few famous Bible stories from Sunday school.  We need to have a plan.  Youth pastors need to have a goal when the kids arrive in 6th grade.  They need to begin by teaching these kids the fundamentals of their faith and move to what they believe as Christians and why they believe it.  They need to learn how to share their faith and argue it.  They need to know how to teach someone a Bible lesson and disciple someone.”

Amen to that.  As a church youth worker, teaching the Bible is something we should be doing first.  This is what separates us from all of the other community youth programs.  Besides teens are already receiving plenty of peer pressure, sex, alcohol talks from school health, science and maybe other classes.  They also get these talks from parents in actual conversation or from nagging or from picking it up subliminally.  Even non-Christian parents do this (though we may not always agree with their moral message).  TV also gives these messages.  So do after-school activities.

I know why we feel the need to talk on these topics.  We want to prevent teens we love from making these painful mistakes.  We see teens making these mistakes anyway.  And we want to teach on these topics because we want to add the Biblical perspective.

However, I’ve learned something.  When you teach Bible lessons (which is why they are scheduling church into their busy lives and it is what they, at least visiting teens, expect to get from a church), these topics naturally come up. They naturally come up because questions and answers are on the minds of your teens and your youth group is a safe place to ask those.  You don’t need to do a series on, say, peer pressure.  Teach through a book of the Bible and in your teaching or in your breakout sessions or in your hands-on activity, your teens will talk about peer pressure and whatever else is currently happening in their lives.  This stuff always comes up and because you are already in the Bible, you are giving the biblical perspective.

Also, too often a topical teaching comes across as “Don’t, because the Bible says so.”  I know.  No one actually says that or teaches that.  But if the topic is taught and a Scripture is part of the conversation to support it (and it is often a weak supporting Scripture), this is what is taught.  I’m afraid the findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion found this to be too true.  I’m afraid too many of our college freshmen in Bible colleges are also finding out how little of the Bible they actually know.  This does fall upon us as youth leaders.

Here’s another twist on why we should teach more Bible.  The September/October 2006 issue of Youthworker Journal had an excellent article from one of their columnists, Patton Dodd.  To quote: “A few years ago, I was a teaching fellow at Boston University for an undergraduate course on the Bible.  On the first day of the fall semester, the professor opened the class with a touch of drama.  He walked in just as class was to begin, stood in silence at the front of the room, and waited for the students to turn their attention forward.  Once they did, he looked, scanned the room and the class, in perfect King’s English, recited the 23rd Psalm.

“At the end, the professor allowed the psalm to hang in the air for a moment, then asked if anyone could say where the poem came from.  We waited through several seconds of silence.  ‘Anyone?’  We sat through more awkward moments.  Was this start-of-school nerves, or did these kids really not recognize one of the most famous psalms in Western civilization?

“‘Any ideas at all?’ the professor pressed.  This time, one hand rose shyly.   A girl gave her best guess.  ‘From Coolio?…’  The professor shot a glance at me, his young graduate student who should know all things pop culture.  I looked at my shoes.  ‘Coolio?’ he said with a game smile.  ‘You need to clue me in.’  ‘He sang that song from Dangerous Minds about walking through the valley of the shadow of death.’”

The article goes on to name other guesses the students had.  Such guesses were “Sheep” from Pink Floyd, Pulp Fiction, U2, the Beastie Boys, and Dogma.

Patton Dodd is not the only one to figure this out.  Mark I. Pinsky wrote for the e-newsletter “850 Word of Relevant” (July 30, 2007) about the new Simpsons movie: “Serious discussions of faith, spirituality and religion now take place regularly on Fox, Comedy Central and Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim. For the first time in history, young Americans seem to be learning more about religion-their own and others’-from TV than from their own worship traditions. And why shouldn’t they? They spend far more time sitting in front of the small screen than sitting in church.”

Get it?  Our teens are being taught Bible.  It’s being taught all over in pop culture. But it’s not necessarily being taught correctly.  This is why Time (April 2, 2007) devoted a cover article to the Bible being taught in public schools.  The Bible is so prevalent in our culture and society that many public high schools feel they are not offering a complete education without covering this piece of literature.

Teaching this piece of literature is a core part of being a church youth leader.

I recently heard about a Bible camp speaker who decided that his message time was so important to those teens’ lives that he went hours over the allotted time thus not allowing the teens to have their scheduled late evening game time and also got them to bed way past “lights out.”  For the next night he went over again but he also handed out flashlights to the counselors and instructed them that those teens who fell asleep were to get flashed by the flashlight to make sure that they stayed awake.  Sadly to some, this is the image of what teaching the Bible is.  While this story is true, the image is not true.

There are thousands of creative ways to teach the Bible.  If you have a creative mind, you can come up with your own thousand ways.  There are many good published resources full of creative ideas to come up with another thousand or so ways to teach the Bible.  There are networks of youth workers in your area who are full of creative people to “borrow” another thousand of ideas from.  There are thousands of resource websites of more ideas you can “borrow.”

Here’s another idea (borrowed from Youth Ministry in the 21st Century/Rick Lawrence).  Divide your group into small groups for one evening.  Assign each group to come up with their own five most important basic truths of the Christian faith.  Gather everyone back together and have each group share their five.  Then as one group, make a final set of five to ten truths.  There is your outline, straight from the youth, for the next year.

When teaching the Bible you also have the power that is available through the Holy Spirit working for you because God has promised us that His Word will not go out void.  Also in 1 Timothy 3: 16 the Bible says,  “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness”.  So take advantage of this extra power and teach the Bible to your youth.  They and you will be the richer for it.

Written by Brian Farmer

Conviction can be a hard thing to be hit by, but it can be a quite positive impact when we respond properly.  I was listening to a top secular radio station in a larger market area when I heard some surprising news.  I learned that recent research has shown that Southern Baptists were the fattest of all denominations and were on average much fatter than the general population.  I had heard this before, but it really sunk in this time.  The show hosts were also going on and on saying stuff like, “I guess since they don’t drink or do anything else, they just stuff their faces.  Everyone has to have a vice.”  I found myself thinking, “Shut up and play some music” because I didn’t like what I was hearing.

Being a Southern Baptist I soon thereafter attended our state convention, and I saw evidence that the research was correct, especially when I looked at my fellow ministers.

It hit home even stronger when it got personal.  I thought I was doing pretty good, in comparison, especially as I had dropped about 20 pounds in the previous few months. Then at a doctor’s appointment I heard the nurse call out my weight.  241. OUCH!  Even though I am a pretty big guy, and former college football player, that was just too heavy.  I was one of those Southern Baptists with a weight problem.

I thought about the pastors at the convention.  How many of them have preached that their church members, and especially our students, needed discipline while their stomachs literally slapped their thighs when they walked in some instances?  I know I have encouraged my students to be more disciplined. How hypocritical! We call on our students to do the things we are not willing to do.  Were the radio hosts right?  Are our lives so miserable that we have to stuff our faces to get real pleasure? I didn’t believe so, but that is what we are showing to the world.  Many who are not Christians view those who are as fat and ignorant people.  Too often when they look at us we confirm that they are at least half right in their beliefs.

Now before you think it is only a problem in the Southern Baptist Convention, think again.  There were several other denominations who were also packing way too much unnecessary body weight, according to research, and Christians on average were fatter than the general population.  To quote Paul, “this should not be!”  Now before some get understandably upset with me, please hear what I am saying.  I know that there are some who have medical conditions which cause them to gain and retain weight.  However, these medical conditions are relatively rare (and being a Christian is not one of those conditions). The biggest condition for most of us is we put too much food into our mouths.

I then realized that change needs to happen and it needed to start with me.  I have known for years it was a bad witness, but I had overlooked MY responsibility.

I have tried successfully to lose weight many times in the past.  I have worked out hard and built muscle only to have the muscle slip away again.  I needed to do something and I wanted to do something that would last.  This time I started with committing myself to being a better steward of the body God has given me and started working on this process in HIS power.  With the encouragement of my wife I didn’t go on a diet or start an exercise regiment, I CHANGED MY LIFE!

I love to eat.  It is hard for me to eat properly.  I, like many other ministers, have a family along with a demanding ministry which makes it difficult to find time to work out.  However, I realized that if I were in better shape, I would be a better husband and father as well as be a better minister.  I began to eat less and better.  I will admit, for a while it was hard.  Then it actually became easy.  Cereal is often a great snack which is a much healthier substitute.  I substitute yogurt for ice cream.  When I go out to eat, I avoid places where I tend to overeat.  I began walking with my wife.  A mile at first, now nearly 4 miles, and now wearing 10 pounds of ankle weights with my doctor’s blessing.  Not only did this improve my cardiovascular health, it also strengthened our marriage with the extra time together.  I also try to work out with weights at least 30 minutes a day 5 days a week.  If I miss a day, I move on and work out as soon as I can and do not obsess over missing a day.

I admit, some days it is a chore to wake up a little early to work out.  But by days end, I am glad that I did.  If you think you do not have the time, look at your schedule.  Are there time wasters in your life?  TV, unnecessary chatting on the computer, etc. Are you doing things God never called you to do?  I didn’t think I had the time, and on rare days I do not, but overall I am able to find the time because along with my quiet time, it is a priority.

As a result I have lost 41 pounds and I feel great.  I no longer need steroid shots in my knees for pain.  I sleep much better and am snoring a lot less.  I tend to get more done–even though I am spending several more hours a week exercising. I have more energy and serve my church with more efficiency.  People I come into contact with say it is like I am a different person.  It has opened up many witnessing opportunities for me, especially when people want to know “my secret.”  I truly say it is a God thing and then tell them how it has happened.  It is amazing how the physical is a bridge to the spiritual for many people.

For many of you, this may not be a problem.  But for those for whom it is, NOW is the time for us who work with students to be leaders in showing discipline.  When we show our students that we struggle but God can give us power to overcome those struggles, they can relate to us in a better way.  Obesity is a problem like never before among the poor and young in our country.  We need to show them how to live in a world saturated with unhealthy food options (often in our youth rooms) and still maintain a healthy weight.  I do not completely deny myself of food which is not healthy, but I partake sparingly.  I can enjoy a Krispy Kreme chocolate covered crème filled doughnut (my favorite) on our once a month doughnut Sunday, but I do not eat 5 of them as I have done in the past.  If the food is fattening and my only choice, I eat a smaller portion.  If I have a healthy choice, I take it.  When my students see me doing this, they realize they too can make wiser choices and that can filter into other areas of their lives.

Again, many people may hold on to their belief that most Christians are fat and ignorant.  If we do not make them half right at first sight, then maybe they will give us a chance to change other impressions as well.

Brian Farmer is the formerly fat Associate Pastor and Minister to Students at the First Baptist Church of Salisbury, NC.  He has been there since 1988 and is a 29 year veteran of Student Ministry.  He is happily married and the parent of two college students.  He also likes doughnuts, not donuts.

Myth #5 – With proper planning, I can grow my youth group.

I am going to draw on my veteran-status (I’m not young and hip anymore either) for this one.  From my years of involvement and networking, there is very little we can do to make a youth group grow.  We can read the books, attend the seminars, change our programming (because we do program), and implement ideas we glean from other youth ministers which may make our youth ministries better.  But better doesn’t mean growth.  Growth just happens.  It happens at some churches and it doesn’t happen at some churches.  Some churches just get a small youth group despite all efforts.  Some churches get a large youth group.  Growth is a supernatural thing, something that God has ordained for some and not for others.  It has little to do with our works.  It has all to do with God.

I can’t back this up with anything more than my years in this ministry.  I’ve seen many youth workers get caught up and burned out in works to grow something and I’ve seen growth just happen.  I can only surmise that it has all to do with God.

Myth #6 – Bigger youth ministry is better.

In the Youthworker Journal (March/April 2006), Steve Gerali did a series on the seven deadly sins.  For the sin of gluttony, he titled the article “Bigger is Not God’s Blessing.”  This is a look at gluttony that was not expected.  To quote:

“Youth workers in small ministries fight to be bigger.  They look at other churches and want to be like them.  I have watched many youth workers leave churches to go to something bigger and ‘better.’

“…Youth workers in bigger churches are always striving to be bigger still.  There seems to be a rush of satisfaction with having many.  This rush drives their desires for more.  The status of being the very best, doing the very best, and having the very best is fulfilling.  I was talking to a youth pastor who told me his church youth ministry was the biggest ministry in the city.  He then tacked on, ‘It’s great being a part of something awesome that God is doing.’

“This kind of ambition is what the early church fathers saw as gluttony.  …Youth workers of bigger ministries have achieved a status, believing that they are the only ones who are doing ministry right and the believing that their ‘fat cat’ status is a reward from God.

“…Gluttony is a lifestyle of desiring more.”

Do I need to comment on this?

Myth #7 – Youth ministry is broken.

I’m getting tired of reading the posts and the blogs about how youth ministry is broken.  As Mark Senter foretold to us in his 1992 book, The Coming Revolution in Youth Ministry, youth ministry was nearing 50-years old and every other cycle of youth ministry changed after that 50-year mark.  Youth ministry as it was known 30 years ago has changed greatly in the recent 15 years.  We could whine that it is broken or we can embrace that the next revolution is happening and get on with following the plans God has laid out for you to do to see what this next revolution will look like.  I think these are exciting times in the youth ministry world.