future of youth ministry: From nice to risky, The

Group, May/Jun 1999 by Mcluen, Tiger

In the fifth installment of a yearlong series, veteran youth minister and educator Tiger McLuen exposes a common, but unbiblical, goal of today's youth ministries: niceness

Brian was fidgeting in the hallway outside the church council meeting room. A stem-- looking council member had asked him to answer a few questions about his youth ministry program-questions Brian knew would be flavored more by accusation than curiosity. Inside the room, his reception was cool. It was quickly clear that his job was on the line.

Some months before, Brian sensed his youth group was in a rut. The kids were nice, but so what? As far as he could tell, the program lacked real life-changing impact in kids' lives. So he started taking a few risks. Instead of talking about evangelism, he surprised kids by involving them in an evangelistic outreach at an outdoor concert. Instead of talking about serving others, he took them on a spontaneous service project in the neighborhood surrounding his church. Instead of talking about prayer, he had his teenagers walk in pairs through a troubled area of his city, praying silently for the people they passed. In the back of Brian's mind, he expected church leaders to affirm him for his creativity, energy, and evangelistic fervor. Since his changes, the youth ministry was growing.

But it was evident the council members, some of them parents of his kids, were seriously upset about Brian's choices.

baiting the trap Brian was caught in a subtle trap that's common in churches today. It's the trap of niceness. The bait looks something like this: The primary job of youth ministry is to give kids a nice program with nice activities for nice kids who?/lJ behave even more nicely as a result. I call this kind of thinking a trap because it has nothing to do with biblical ministry. "Nice" is not a biblical word-it's nowhere in my concordance. Serving and following Jesus is not about niceness. In fact, only someone ignorant of Jesus' life would describe him as nice.

In our momentum toward a safe, nice, professional ministry world, we've lost something of our calling. It's the joy of risktaking. It's the excitement of trying something with kids before it's been tested and sanitized. We've sacrificed the power of surprise for the deadening influence of sameness. A risk-less youth ministry is definitely safer-it keeps kids safe from profound opportunities to change and grow. When we remove risk from ministry, we also delete passion. When our goal is niceness, we're blind to our ministry's growing irrelevance.

risk born

out of Vision I advocate a return to risk-taking in youth ministry, but not irresponsible risk-taking. I'm proposing we recapture a willingness to take risks for the sake of our ministry vision. Following God's will is a valid reason to risk, but padding our numbers or our egos is not. I think risk-taking is valid when the point is to. . .

* more effectively share Christ with this generation;

* help kids grow in their faith;

* stretch your adult and teenage leaders;

* challenge the church to reclaim its counterculture calling; or

* model for your kids what real leadership looks like.

Risking may mean adding a mission trip to your calendar, or skipping a denominational event in favor of something outside your "pond," or saying no to something you always say yes to, or hiring a part- time intern to help you, or moving your ministry toward a cell-group model, or actually praying, or training your young people to lead, or delegating more of your responsibilities, or asking yourself: "Why are we doing this? What's the point?"

Simply, try something new. Break your mold. Dream new dreams.

momentum-- producing questions I'm sure you've already heard the Seven Last Words of the Church: "WE'VE NEVER DONE IT THAT WAY BEFORE." When we move from nice to risky, we challenge that unwritten creed. And that means you can expect opposition. So start by asking yourself: What does risk look like for me? How can I better pursue my youth ministry calling? What is it kids need that I'm not giving them?

I don't want to get you fired-I want to see you fired up. Let's all take the plunge by risking one big new idea between now and the end of the year. Follow Jesus.

Tiger McLuen is a 25-year veteran youth leader and executive director of Youth Leadership's Center for Youth and Family Ministry. He also teaches youth ministry at both Bethel and Luther seminaries in Minnesota.