Goal of Youth Ministry

Wow. Good article (about an article from Walt Mueller of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding) around what the goals of youth ministry really are. When I was growing up things were pretty focused on getting the "hands raised" and getting people to cross an imaginary line that took you from heaven to hell. A lot of youth pastors that I've talked with wrestle with this same concept of what people believe progress and success looks like in a youth group. How do measure discipleship?

We’re too focused on getting kids’ hands up that we don’t offer a way for the one who raised the hand to learn about the necessity and shape of the changed life that should begin the minute the hand goes down. Or, even more troubling, we focus only on getting kids’ hands up because our theology of salvation has failed to include a place for what happens after.

The result? Add up the numbers that are yours, mine, and everybody else’s. Pretty impressive, huh? Until we ask the same question Skinner asked over 25 years ago: “Where are they?”

Believe it or not, Jesus didn’t just come to save us from our sins. The way many of us have been raised makes this statement sound like heresy. But it’s not. The real heresy is the belief that Jesus only came to save us from our sins. Think about this: when we pray the words “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” we are asking God to unleash his Kingdom through us as we live his will and his way in every nook and cranny of our lives and His world. True conversion reorders and transforms both the now and then.

I love how Charlie Peacock describes conversion and the place of the converted in the world: “The story of Noah and his family challenge the common misconception that the redemption story is about God’s saving individuals out of the world. That idea reduces salvation to personal escape from the evil physical world to a blissful spiritual heaven. In reality, redemption history is about an ongoing story and process where people are saved in the world. The way they are saved out of the world is by God’s choosing them for himself, removing them out of the world’s ways, giving them his ways, and then leaving them in the world to continue the work he has assigned them.”

Looking back, I'm not sure how I made the transition from the "Crossing the line" mentality to coming to see salvation as a redemptive process. The bottom line is that I no longer size kids up and try and guess where they're at, just so I can move them across a line. With Junior High, you're forced to take a big picture approach to their growth. By staying away from the "Cross the line" mentality, it's that much longer, but after seeing my youth group kids 10+ years later, it's clearly the better approach.

Tags: Walt Mueller, Youth Ministry, Salvation