Post-Pandemic Youth Ministry: Adjustments To Get It Right. . .

I wish I could say that the days of believing that bigger is better in the world of youth ministry are long gone. But they aren’t. My travels now take me to a variety of churches large and small. Depending on where I’m at, I either get the initial facility tour with narration punctuated with either great pride, or great lament. At the larger cutting-edge churches, I stand in wonder and awe as proud youth workers show me youth facilities that combine coffee-shop ambiance, amusement park fun, and the theatrical environment and technology of a cutting-edge video recording stage. During many of those tours, I thank the Lord that I’m no longer my 80s youth ministry self. If I was, the envy would kill me. At the smaller more traditional and budget-limited churches, my tour-guide is usually apologetic as they grieve the fact that they just can’t measure up to the big church in town. “Cutting-edge” for them is using a beat-up DVD player to show a movie to a youth group made up of seven or eight kids. . . . who are all, by the way, jockeying for position on a pair of rust colored cast-off youth room couches that no longer have legs. Okay. . . so those are stereotypes. . . but you get the point.

Sadly, those of us who do youth ministry have sometimes morphed into a way of pursuing our high-calling in not-so-admirable ways. Even more sad is the fact that we don’t even know it’s happened. Perhaps it’s because we’re too busy “doing” for God that we’ve lost our ability to slow down and let God tell us who we’re supposed to be and how we’re to do what we’ve been called to do. Is it possible that in an effort to do great good for God, we are actually doing something horribly bad? I’ve also wondered if in our efforts to promote and further the Kingdom of God, we might actually be keeping kids from going deep in the things of the Kingdom. Sure, cutting-edge sound, computerized lighting, and a couple of nice smoke machines help to get kids in the door. They are all great ministry tools. . . or maybe not. Do they facilitate a deep and lasting faith? I don’t think any of us would answer “yes” to that last question. Yet our growing fascination with and dependence on that stuff might be evidence of an unconscious nod in the affirmative. Could it be that we’re nurturing kids into a spectator-faith that won’t be (nor should it be) the least bit compelling when boredom sets in (the novel always gets outdated and as styles change at a faster and faster pace) or the power grid goes down?

I recently talked to a friend who got to speak to students at one of those cutting-edge places. Their technology was so advanced that he had to visit the venue a couple of days early so that three – yes THREE! – tech guys could make sure that his computer would mesh and function with their system, which by the way, was set up in a huge and extremely impressive room. Two days later, everything ran with seamless precision as he was projected and amplified to a room partially-full with a group of 45 high school kids. I’ve been in settings like that myself, where being tethered to the latest and greatest technology impedes the relational intimacy that could and should be, replacing it with the feel of a major performance. While my friend’s hosts should certainly be commended for their stated commitment to doing these things with professionalism and excellence, I sometimes wonder if excellence with ministry props and performance leads to the medium being the attraction rather than the message. Or, as Marshall McCluhan once wrote, maybe we’re making the medium the message. . . and we aren’t even aware that it’s happening.

My friend also told me about how the state-of-the-art room was regularly being used. His hosts explained that on any given weekend there are three times when the church congregation gathers. And every time they gather on the campus, the adults go to the main service while the teenagers worship together in this place that’s all their own. I’ve heard this same story countless times over in recent years. Thirty-five years ago my younger self would have embraced the opportunity to rescue my students from the boredom of “big church” if I had had a trendy place for them to gather together with their peers for a “relevant” worship experience all their own. After all, the older folks didn’t understand kids and how to minister to them. I could have easily administered the antidote to boredom by simply giving them what they wanted. I have to admit, there were many times during those years when that was the criteria for my ministry decisions.

But age, numerous mistakes of my own, a few years of watching a changing youth culture and the effect it’s having on kids, and what I hope is a deeper understanding of God’s heart for the church as found in the Scriptures has turned me around. In fact, I’ve gone from celebrating when large numbers of kids are drawn to the church, to wondering if we’ve done a good job of getting them to the church building. . . . but not to a deep understanding of the life-altering message of the cross.

It’s ironic that one of the marks of today’s emerging generations is a deep need for community and connectedness, and yet we plan and program in ways that cut them off from experiencing community and connectedness with people who aren’t their own age. It’s also ironic that while we say we want to see our kids embrace Jesus and mature into a deep faith that’s integrated into all of life, we separate them from the wisest and most seasoned members of the body. Not only that but we cloister them together with their peers in a trendy room designed to draw and keep them, which might actually promote the irrelevance of anything in the church that exists outside of that room. This is tragic. This also isolates them from the people who populate “big church”. . . the very people who God has gifted students with to influence and support them in the context of community in ways that lead to deep maturity. What we’ve done is extend Chap Clark’s “systemic abandonment” into the very system that should be caring the most for our students!

Have you ever wondered what the way we’re doing youth ministry today will look like when we have the advantage of ten or twenty more years under our belt? I wonder if history will remember these youth ministry years as a time when we did just about everything with tremendous excellence. . . . except for leading kids to Jesus, building their faith, and integrating them into the larger body of Christ. That would be a tremendous shame because, after all, that’s what’s at the crux of who we are as youth workers and what we’ve been called to do. And here’s the good news: pulling that off doesn’t require money, electricity, fancy technology, or big rooms. Instead, it requires a handful of people who love Jesus, love kids, and love to show and tell the greatest story – the story about the redemption of our broken world.

Why then, do we make it all so complex? Maybe the Coronavirus pandemic will result in youth ministry changes that facilitate what should be happening. I sure hope so!