When Youth Work Is Supposed To Be Difficult
This morning I had a great chat with a leader of a national youth project that develops events and camps where young people are expected to work hard, study and learn more about God. It runs totally counter to much of our popular youth work models, but is also exponentially growing and spreading nationally every year, developing incredibly enthusiastic and mature young people.
In contrast, one of the most popular youth work models of the last few decades has been the ‘Funnel Method.’ Made popular by Dough Fields’ ‘Purpose Driven Youth Ministry,’ the idea is to run several projects aimed at different crowds with different content and funnel young people down from easy-to-attend, accessible events, …show more content…
So What’s The Problem?
It can be a little ‘bait n’ switch’ calling young people to a fun event without being honest about what you’re doing. Jesus always immediately called people to Himself without needing to warm them up. It can also create a fragmented youth ministry complete with worn-out and under-resourced leaders.
The bigger problem though, is when the vibe of the first accessible project trickles down into all the others.
What I mean is this: If you’re finding it hard to get attendees at the smaller projects it’s easy to water down the content, and add more comfortable activities taken from the the larger events. This is especially true when young people are introduced to you as the ‘fun group’ but now your asking them to do ‘boring stuff.’ So every project becomes a games night with a God slot, or a disco with a couple of Christian songs, and your real discipleship never gets off the ground.
The Candy …show more content…
In the New Testament we are introduced to the method of Jewish Education, the latter stages of which was used by Jesus with his young disciples. Young people who go to school for a couple of hours every morning, 5 or 6 days a week to simply memorise huge portions of the Old Testament. Then they were taught how to study and apply these teachings wisely to their lives.
Education Vs. Youth Club
What we have spent a huge portion of the last half century doing is driving a wedge between school and youth ministry. We don’t ever want to hear ‘this feels like school’ from a young person. Our mission has been to make everything fun, unique and distinct. There is definitely a lot of good that has come from this approach too!
There’s also a ‘baby and bathwater’ metaphor that comes to mind, however. We all too easily straight-jacket ourselves into just doing cute things that we loose any cultural expectation to study, learn and develop.
Bringing It
This morning I had a great chat with a leader of a national youth project that develops events and camps where young people are expected to work hard, study and learn more about God. It runs totally counter to much of our popular youth work models, but is also exponentially growing and spreading nationally every year, developing incredibly enthusiastic and mature young people.
In contrast, one of the most popular youth work models of the last few decades has been the ‘Funnel Method.’ Made popular by Dough Fields’ ‘Purpose Driven Youth Ministry,’ the idea is to run several projects aimed at different crowds with different content and funnel young people down from easy-to-attend, accessible events, …show more content…
So What’s The Problem?
It can be a little ‘bait n’ switch’ calling young people to a fun event without being honest about what you’re doing. Jesus always immediately called people to Himself without needing to warm them up. It can also create a fragmented youth ministry complete with worn-out and under-resourced leaders.
The bigger problem though, is when the vibe of the first accessible project trickles down into all the others.
What I mean is this: If you’re finding it hard to get attendees at the smaller projects it’s easy to water down the content, and add more comfortable activities taken from the the larger events. This is especially true when young people are introduced to you as the ‘fun group’ but now your asking them to do ‘boring stuff.’ So every project becomes a games night with a God slot, or a disco with a couple of Christian songs, and your real discipleship never gets off the ground.
The Candy …show more content…
In the New Testament we are introduced to the method of Jewish Education, the latter stages of which was used by Jesus with his young disciples. Young people who go to school for a couple of hours every morning, 5 or 6 days a week to simply memorise huge portions of the Old Testament. Then they were taught how to study and apply these teachings wisely to their lives.
Education Vs. Youth Club
What we have spent a huge portion of the last half century doing is driving a wedge between school and youth ministry. We don’t ever want to hear ‘this feels like school’ from a young person. Our mission has been to make everything fun, unique and distinct. There is definitely a lot of good that has come from this approach too!
There’s also a ‘baby and bathwater’ metaphor that comes to mind, however. We all too easily straight-jacket ourselves into just doing cute things that we loose any cultural expectation to study, learn and develop.
Bringing It