Back in an old Faith Inkubators newsletter (sometime around 1997), I wrote that the days of the traditional “Do Everything, Be Everything, ‘Pied Piper’” youth worker/minister are over. This should be nothing new. However, it seems that a few churches still haven’t received this memo.

There are a landfill of resource books and seminar tapes on which icebreakers to do and which Bible studies to lead, but all the great resources in the world can’t stop many great missionaries from flaming out. How does this continue to happen?

We could point our fingers in a lot of directions: pop culture, poor parenting, Facebook, whatever; but as my mother used to say, “When you point your finger at someone, you have three others pointing back at you.”

Yes, we as a church still need to take the blame for the futility of some of our youth programs.  We continue to give permission to parents to drop off children so we can train up their child. We still can’t handle the volume or the problems that accompany this. What can we do? 

Here are five FINKThink wishes we can re-examine and re-dream (is that a word?) that will help to ensure the longevity of our youth ministries (and youth ministers):

1. “Team vs. I” - Youth workers will no longer be facilitators of programs, but teachers and trainers of small group leaders. The responsibility will be to train, equip and send out teams to do ministry and then move on. Youth workers will be educated in understanding family systems and management rather than song leading and lock-in planning.

2. “Time vs. Money” - The most valuable, guarded asset people have today is not their pocket book, but their calendar. Most families won’t bat an eyelash at spending $30 to send their child to a lock-in, but if you ask for volunteers to work in the gym at your lock-in, you’re looking at a lonely sign-up sheet. Families need to have a vested interest in being a part of a “program.” Let’s get rid of the word program and replace it with relationship. If we pay special attention to the relationships you build with families you won’t be able to keep them away from church.

3. “Basic Needs vs. Meta Needs” - For so long in youth ministry, the emphasis has been in terms of the “meta needs” of children.  Meta needs deal basically with knowledge, goodness, beauty and truth. While these are wonderful goals of understanding, we’ve completely missed the boat in terms of attending to the real needs of kids.  It’s like we’re trying to build a house starting with the chimney. The “Basic needs” of people deal with safety, belonging, love and self-esteem. If we don’t concentrate on these needs, we’ll never have a foundation for getting to the higher levels of understanding. (See “Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs on Wikipedia if you want more)

4. “Topical vs. Contextual” - In the realm of study, we’ve long been under the assumption that simply because the Bible is the Bible, kids should automatically be able to understand and apply it. While there might be truth in that statement, young people yearn to know about their place and role in this world. Relationships, ethics issues and real life examples of faith alive in the scriptures are what really peak the interest of young people.

5. “Mission Field vs. Church Home” - Jesus never said, “Stay here and make disciples!” He said “Go and make disciples!” Our churches can give thousands of dollars for mission work and evangelism committees can hold two-hour meetings about the guest speaker they’re bringing in to talk about mission, but unless we go out in the communities and bring the message of God’s love through Jesus, we are in trouble. Martin Luther defines sin as closing in on one’s self.  The trend will be to stop thinking of churches as the place where mission occurs and use it as the base to launch out into the real mission field: the world.