Christian skill set: the goal of youth ministry

Christian Century, Sept 7, 2004 by Michael Warren

THE IMPORTANT QUESTION about youth ministry is not "Where are the kids?" or "What should we do with them when they show up?" but "What is the nature of our community?" What are the discipleship skills appropriate to those who have moved beyond childhood, and how can a community exhibit those skills in a way that attracts the young and draws them to inspiring mentors in faith? By what criteria will people know if they have developed the religious abilities appropriate to their age?

Young people are clear about what competencies they consider important for their lives. They know that those who wish to participate in sports must develop a clear set of abilities. A person can't simply walk onto an athletic field and demand to be placed on a team. She needs to show the abilities required by the sport. And whatever one's individual skills, one usually qualifies for team membership only if one's skills can be blended into team play. They also know that the pursuit of athletic abilities, though exhausting and even tedious, is no dour endeavor. It takes place in at celebrative atmosphere, where levels of competence are appreciated, acknowledged and celebrated. The exhilaration of achievement compensates for the effort put into exercising one's skills.

They also realize that one must know how to write standard English in order to quality for higher education. And they know that securing paid employment requires having the right skills for the position. There is no argument about these things; society has taught them these truths.

Young people are often less convinced of the need to develop abilities in other crucial areas, such as in relationships and in parenting. As one 19-year-old told me, "I don't need no marriage course to tell me the kind of person I like." I hope he eventually came to see that recognizing the kind of person one likes does not represent the full range of skills necessary for a good relationship. Similarly, when I told a new mother I was sending her two books about parenting, she told me (again using that double negative), "I don't need no books to teach me how to love my baby." True, but by itself love may not be enough.

Most of the young people I meet believe religion, particularly Christianity, is an area of life requiring no special skills. Religion, they think, refers to an optional interior attitude. It consists of having nice, loving thoughts about God. The idea that a religion requires a discrete set of practices that forges a distinct way of being in the world--that religious practices, like an athlete's training, are more geared to developing abilities than a set of thoughts--is something many have never considered. If there is a practice to religion, they think, it consists era single activity--an activity they reject: at tending religious services. In their equation, if you love God, God knows of your love and you don't have to be part of a religious assembly to show that love. If you do attend church but don't love God, you are a hypocrite. So the best way to avoid hypocrisy is to avoid going to church.

Can ministry to youth reclaim its connection to the tradition of formation in discipleship as a set of practices necessary for "seeing the Lord"? Can youth ministry succeed in this if the ecclesial assembly does not itself embrace these practices and celebrate them?

One approach to youth ministry is evident in an antihunger effort by a Christian organization dedicated to alleviating hunger and poverty in economically distressed areas of the world. Attempting to involve thousands of U.S. youth in a fast to raise money for starving children, it produced an ad that read, in part:

   Make your mark through the planet's coolest event!
   More than 600,000 young people in the U.S. will be
   part of it. Twenty-one other countries will do it. It's a
   gathering of global proportions! It's World Vision's 30
   Hour Famine--the worldwide event you and your
   group won't want to miss. It's fun. It's free. And best of
   all, the 30 Hour Famine lets you make your mark on a
   world that's seriously hungry. So hungry that 33,000
   kids die every single day from hunger and hunger-related
   causes. Kids you and your
   group can help save. How?
   When your group goes without
   food for 30 hours to raise money
   for hungry kids, you will save
   kids' lives! That's what makes the
   30 Hour Famine a cool event....
   Don't miss out on the fun. You
   can make a difference--you can
   save kids' lives.

The work of this organization is admirable, and it has raised young people's awareness of hunger. Yet this particular ad seems to trivialize the energies of the young. The fast could have been successfully publicized without calling it fun or misnaming it as a famine. Young people are quite capable of being motivated by things other than "fun." They can be invited into solidarity with the hungry and the poor in a way that does not trivialize their energies and capacity for thought.

Variations of the message that efforts to be in solidarity with victims are fun and entertaining can be found throughout youth ministry. This ad just tapped into the genre. As we approach youth work, we must ask ourselves what kind of invitation, less manipulative and truer to young people's capacities, might help them to understand the global realities that lead to starvation. To find a better way to do youth ministry, we need to begin by asking the young what they themselves see as the supreme sacramental moment of their church gatherings over the past year.