The increased popularity of extreme sports is one proof of this true desire for a challenge. Extreme sports is all about the challenge. Another proof is the increase enrollment in AP and IB education programs. Some youth want more challenging curriculum so they feel challenged in their education. Their education means more than seat warming for something that is easy for them. They will take a C in an AP or IB class over an easy A in a regular class.

Be sure in your youth ministry to set the challenge of what a life of faith is which is a challenge. You will be growing true disciples and teaching new converts the true way of faith. The challenge will be respected no matter what their personal decisions are. And remember, youth ministry is part of a lifelong journey. The challenge you set will go with them throughout their lives even if they don’t decide to follow those few short years you have with them.

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.

In some areas the weekly youth meeting is a part of the community. In some areas the weekly youth meeting has become something on a long list of choices to squeeze into a schedule. To change up the weekly schedule is not a statement that the church is giving in to society. The reason to do it should be to help parents take back their rightful role of raising their children spiritually. Parents are already taxi drivers rushing through traffic to get their children to what is important. Sometimes getting to that weekly youth service after a day of work and traffic is quite a bit of stress.

Some churches operate that the church building should be open every night of the week otherwise the church would not truly be helping the community. Good theory but what is sacrificed for that theory is family time and I believe the church should be the greatest supporter of family time.

Take a good look at your church schedule. If Sunday mornings is the planned time for the family to be in church, make your Sunday school program better.  Maybe more like the weekly youth meeting. Maybe planning something better and more memorable once a month would be more effective than a weekly thrown-together youth meeting that a youth forgets what was taught two days later. Maybe meet after school. Maybe do more small groups.

The greatest youth ministry planning you can do is to help your parents do their job which is to raise their own children spiritually. This goes back to those office hours you put in. With your resources, you can create tools to help parents do their role better. Moms & Pops Stuff is a great resource as you are giving them ideas that they can do in their own time. Create such resources and such opportunities so spiritual growth happens outside of the youth meeting. Parents do have countless more hours of influence in their children’s lives than you do.

When Brenda’s youth group did a summer mission trip, she did not go.  The entire trip was headed by one of the pastors who is also a parent.  Several other parents went.  Another adult, who prior to this trip just prayed for the youth, led one of the teams.  If Brenda would have gone too much “stuff” would have automatically fell to her to do when everyone who went was just as capable. Plus the safety of the youth was never compromised. The parents were set free to do what comes natural.

For some of you because you are paid, you think you could never get away with this because then what would the church be paying you for?  The turth is they would be paying you to move around the adults in your congregation to be a part of the youths’ lives. That takes preparation and work, lots of it. Lots of office hours.

Remember that a youth ministry centered on you doing everything turns into a “(insert your name here) youth ministry” and not one centered on the youth of your church.

Some churches do give large budgets to build the ideal youth room and often that budget money is spent to make the youth room look like a high-tech Starbucks. If you’ve got it, use it. If you don’t, do not fret that you don’t and spend your time wondering ‘only if…” That musty couch which was dumped on you may be that sacred place for some of your teens. You can make that musty couch a sacred place too.  (C0ntinued…)

More thinking on this…

Syncretizing Youth Ministry

“Had you knocked me unconscious, dragged me to this space, and woken me up by throwing cold water on face, I would have had no idea I hadn’t been kidnapped and taken to the local mall. In fact, that is why I had the sensation that I’d been there before.”