Youth Ministry Mini-Series: Post 2--The Rise of the Church of Cool

Here’s the crazy thing about youth ministry. Like so many other things in our world, it didn’t exist at the turn of the last century. Youth ministry in churches really didn’t begin until the mid 1960s, when churches realized they were seeing a decline in teen participation. Before this teens were in worship with their families, then perhaps in an age-appropriate Sunday School class, but the concept of a professional youth minister just didn’t exist. All the adults in a community were the “youth ministers” and all contributed to looking out for and discipling one another’s young. Kids belonged to the entire community, this was their church too.

As culture around the world headed more and more towards entertainment, churches began to feel like they had to compete. If children’s and youth programming wasn’t cool, exciting, and flashy, no one would want to hear about Jesus. Therefore it became of the utmost importance that we throw numerous extravagant events throughout a school year, and invest large sums of time and energy into figuring out how to make church “cool.” We celebrated the fact that we had a ton of kids show up for our big events--which I agree, is better than nothing, but it didn't seem to be as important that we didn’t see them the rest of the year. Years slowly slipped by and the youth programs at giant churches seemed to explode. Hundreds of kids showed up for youth groups, cool camps and retreats, and monthly special events. Smaller churches watched this and felt dismay--without the resources to pull off these types of events, how would they ever reach teenagers? Some smaller churches tried emulating what they saw going on, but taxed their volunteers and resources to the max attempting to pull off what a church with a giant youth budget could handle.

Having fun, age-appropriate programming is important. I am NOT in any way saying “get rid of youth group, or get rid of children’s programs!” I am NOT saying "lets make church boring," or "lets never play music a kid would recognize" (on the contrary, I think both these things are essential). I absolutely think camps, retreats, and events are VITAL to a health youth ministry for a variety of reasons. But I see three main problems with this intense focus on creating the ultimate “church of cool.” First, if we’re trying to be cool, as “cool” as the world around us, 9 times out of 10 we are going to loose. These kids have grown up in and are saturated by a culture of entertainment. Their attention spans are getting shorter and shorter thanks to technology and television. Everything around them is in place to suck them in and entertain them. Unless we’re going to hire professional event planners for our youth programs, the average youth director doesn’t have the training and shouldn’t have the time to create monster events to entertain kids. If this is our goal I think we might be missing the mark of what discipleship is--Jesus didn’t plan cool events, he simply invited people to be with him, to live life with him--and I think that’s what kids are actually hungry for these days. They don’t need the church to entertain them, they need the church to provide space where adults invite them to “come and see” something different than the world might offer.

The other problem I see (that kind of goes along with the first problem I mentioned) is that as Christians we should be offering kids something that looks different from the world. What a huge majority of kids are not getting anywhere in life are deep, meaningful, authentic relationships with adults who know their names, know their stories, and love them without an agenda. Most adults in kid’s lives are present because they need something from the kid. A coach needs a kid to be excellent at their sport. A teacher needs a kid to pay attention, follow rules, and perform in the classroom. Music instructors need kids to practice at home, and show up ready to demonstrate improvement. This isn’t to say these adults don’t care about kids, most of these adults love kids a lot--but the systems around us demand that kids perform in these settings to gain approval and attention from adults. Kids are smart--they figure this out at a super early age. They know what their second grade teacher expects of them, and this may be different than their 3rd grade teacher, so they quickly learn to read a situation and adapt their behavior to impress whatever adults are around. By the time they hit high school they have this down to a science. It takes at least a year of an adult just being present, engaging a student in conversation for a student to begin trusting that the adult doesn’t “need” something from them. The encouraging thing though is that the church is the one place where it is truly possible to let adults step in and be counter-cultural! Adults at the church have the opportunity to invest in a kid just because they love that kid. They shouldn’t need anything, they should be able to look at a kid and say “I love you just where you are. You don’t need to perform a certain way in order to make me love you more.” As we do this, we actually are given opportunities over the years to nudge and encourage a student to grow in certain ways, especially as we adults demonstrate we don’t have it all figured out either and are growing ourselves in ways too. The church is the one place where adults can truly communicate to students, “hey we’re all on this journey together, we’re all trying to figure this out together...lets walk with one another as we do.”

The third big problem I see with the “church needs to be super cool” mentality is one I’ll talk about in a future post, but that is the problem that arises when teens do graduate from high school, and what happens to them when they all of a sudden are asked to participate in the “adult congregation” when they’ve spent their whole adolescent journey separated from most of the adults in the congregation. The research here is a bit sobering.

When we first arrived at our new church, an elderly man came into my husband’s office and said “I have a challenge I want to issue to you. I want you to create a youth program here that is different than what the world out there offers our kids.” This is solely my own opinion (that’s the benefit of a blog, it’s my own opinion--you can totally disagree with me!), but what I think is different is not planning more and more fun events. What would be different and counter-cultural would be to create a space where a large team of adults show up every week to engage kids in conversation. It would be counter-cultural to create small groups where students and adults interact weekly and share with one another how they are wrestling with their faith, how their faith connects with life at school and work and in the home and with friends. It would be counter-cultural to invite them into things like sabbath keeping and rest instead of filling our calendars with more and more activities. We do fun events because they are important--they help earn us the right to engage in conversation with students. But we have to recognize that unless we have a designated space and time for kids and the adults to continue interacting the very next week, those relationships won't continue.

How about you? What’s been your experience in youth programs? What should the balance be between being “cool” and being “deep?” Those of you working with students now, what is your perception of what student's greatest needs are?

Have a blessed Holy Week, and stay tuned for post #3: The College Transition Project, coming early next week.