by Kate Murphy
After having worked for several years as a youth pastor, I recently accepted a call to be an interim solo pastor. One weekend, Sara, a beloved saint of the church, died after a long battle with Alzheimer's. On Sunday morning I was standing in the choir room discussing plans for the funeral when Jonathan—a high school sophomore—walked in. “Deanne,” he said to the music director, “I heard about Sara, and I thought you might need me to take Libba's spot in the bell choir this morning.” She gratefully accepted his offer and excused herself from our conversation to review the music with him.
It was a pretty mundane exchange, but I was blown away. It's remarkable enough to see a 16-year-old boy drive himself to church early to join a bell choir comprised of adults in their 50s and 60s. But even more intriguing was Jonathan's perceptiveness. Not only did he know that Libba was Sara’s daughter, but life in the church had taught him to anticipate congregational needs. He knew that Libba played with the bell choir, and he realized she probably couldn't play that morning. Unprompted—I checked with his parents—he offered to fill in.
This couldn't have happened at any of my previous churches—though it's not Jonathan's faith that's of a rare caliber. It's his connection to the congregation.
I've always met young Christians through youth programs. I've been hired by churches so committed to the discipleship of their young people that they've dedicated resources to creating specialized curriculae and activities. These churches expect regular events that are created exclusively to minister to young people.
But I wonder now if we're ministering them right out of the church. Unlike Jonathan, the kids I've previously pastored never sat around a table with adults at church-wide fellowship events—they had their own program options. They've never worked side by side with other members to put on a neighborhood vacation Bible school—they were off on their own mission trips.
When the youth were asked to contribute to the larger church, it was usually through manual labor, the only thing we thought they were capable of doing. Yes, we may have let them plan and lead one worship service a year, but we never dreamed of asking any of them to sit on the worship committee or serve as a regular worship leader. The message was that the church existed to serve them, not the other way around.
Kenda Creasy Dean and others warn that when our children and youth ministries ghettoize young people, we run the risk of losing them after high school graduation. I saw evidence of this in Jonathan. Over the years I've worked with young people as passionate and serious about their faith as Jonathan is. I think I've done youth ministry with integrity.
But I may have been unintentionally disconnecting kids from the larger body of Christ. The young people at my current congregation—a church that many families would never join because “it doesn't have anything for youth”—are far more likely to remain connected to the faith and become active church members as adults, because that's what they already are and always have been.
Kate Murphy is the interim pastor of Hickory Grove Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
February 4, 2010
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34 comments:
Pastor Murphy articulates very well something that I have believed for a long time. We cannot expect young people to understand what it means to be part of a Christian community if we isolate them from that community, or practice tokenism once or twice a year in something called "Youth Sunday". In my small parish, we have two high school students, only one of whom actually attends church. We cannot offer him a "youth group" but we can offer him a place to use his gifts as part of the whole body of Christ. In our highly commercialized culture, a "youth program" can be an attractive commodity for families looking for a church to attend, but I agree that ghetto-izing youth can make them feel the church has nothing to offer them once they graduate.
Rock on, Kate! You have given voice to something I have valued for years--the place of young people in every facet of the life of the church.
The big assumption here is that youth would WANT to be a part of a Christian community sitting around a table with 50 and 60 year olds. I think the prevailing mood in congregations that if the group on the "outside" doesn't want to be a part of the community, then it's the problem of the outsiders. It would be a good thing if youth did participate with older generations, and the reflection on encouraging faithfulness in youth is a good in theory, but I'm not sure we're dealing with a ghetto here.
I have seen the same dynamic in the churches I've pastored. The small churches without youth programming include youth holistically in the life of the church. Granted, not all of them want this. But I'm surprised how many rise to the challenge. Last Sunday our pianist was snowed in and a 17 year old got up to play the piano on the spot. That same Sunday, a different 17 year old nominated the name that was selected for our new CyberCafe. Another young person, 2 years out of high school, volunteered to serve on the planning committee of the CyberCafe, as did yet another high school senior. So we only have a handful of kids, but look how thoroughly involved they are in the life of the church.
Youth ministry is supposed to mentor students as they become adults and disciple students in their faith journey. We seem to expect that once they "graduate" from youth group that they are ready to enter into the "real world" of a congregation. How can we expect them to be a part of the larger Christian community later in life if they are never truly introduced into it early on? The transition must begin right after confirmation (or be a part of the youth program throughout) if there is a hope that the church life drop-out rate after high school is to lower. In small churches or churches without a youth program, integration of the youth with the rest of the church is natural. The challenge will be integrating larger congregations with strong, independent youth programs.
There are all kinds of issues with youth ministry (as necessary and hard as the work is). Many youth ministers are simply immature adults. But this is a helpful perspective. And the "ghettoizing" works both ways - our old people need to know that their voices, talents, and ideas are wanted and needed in all aspects of the church's mission as well.
Someone smarter than I once remarked that church is one of the last places people of different generations regularly gather. One of the dangers of the worship wars is that new worship styles (can) threaten to divide up our congregations generationally. Thank you for this. As a small church pastor with just a handful of youth myself, I found nodding along as I read.
I agree with Average Joe. There has always been a frustration in churches about "why don't the young people help out more?" but I think part of the problem is that congregations expect young people to engage with them within the same cultural boundaries as adults do.
If young people need to be at the centre of what the church does - then it's because adult congregations need to be taught and shown how to love them and tolerate young people as they are, rather than only when they behave like adults.
From an "immature adult" youth worker ;-)
Anyone here heard of The LOGOS Ministry? Check it out; youth ministry done by the entire congregation allowing the church to be the church.
www.thelogosministry.org
I applaud Rev. Murphy for her insight on the topic of youth ministry. One of the things I have noticed in my church is that the youth sit together during worship. I understand they like to be with their friends, etc., but I also wonder if we aren't all missing out on something. When I was growing up, we had a youth group but the youth sat with their families. I think they have more connection to the church when they sit among the members who represent the generations than when they sit apart from the congregation.
The discussion has made me wonder if my boomer generation, having been catered to by vast youth ministries, expects as a result, that the church serve them forever, expecting nothing in return ...
Cus the site keeps telling me my comment “Must be at most 4,096 characters” (which it is), I am splitting this update into 2 parts.
As another “immature adult" youth worker I think the problem is that most churches stop almost all programming between the ages of 18 & 30, which is the age range which we normally loose our youth.
In the Lutheran tradition I’m a part of, we expect our youth will graduate at 18 & go off to college. From there, we expect some form of campus ministry will be there to catch them & minister to them.
The problem with that thought is we are able to just pass them off & no longer need to program for them. The city I live in (a metro area of about 1 mil) has a major university & community college (both have 25/30k students each) & there is a campus ministry program in place.
The problem is campus ministry really only works well in a setting where the people who attend school live on or around campus. Here in our city, our schools are very much commuter schools, in the youth continue to live at home as they go to school. Thus, they really never leave their home congregations. But yet, because we expect them to use the campus ministry, we now have no programming for them.
I dislike when people say we specifically program for youth & make it sound bad. We program for other ages in the church, so why not the youth? We have groups for retirees, we have adult eating groups & we have men’s / women’s bible studies that meet at 8am (or any other time). We have choirs that for the most part are specifically made up of older people & many other programs that cater to people 30+. So why not program for the youth?
There was something missing in my list. Did you notice it? Young adult ministry. I don’t understand why we expect our youth to stay in the church when we do not program for them after high school. We program for everyone else & are shocked when they leave? Really?
Part 2 of 2
Even Sunday school programs which for the most part are directed towards youth, just stop at the end of high school in most churches. Sure a lot of us have “Adult Sunday School” but again this is more directed at the 30+ crowd with nothing to fill in that gap.
Now I’m not saying that by programming for youth & young adults this will fix all of our problems & youth will stop leaving the church. I would be naive to think that. We have other problems that cause our youth to leave the church. One of these is the way in which we do our services.
Most churches still use organs or pianos for most of the music. What is not is filled in by choirs and bells. At churches that have a contemporary service, the whole service is done in “contemporary” style or at least a style we think to be contemporary. Problem here is we are fixing one problem, while making people choose one thing over another, which then in the process causes division.
Another problem I see is in our Pastors. Their job is to preach a message to the common people (which include children & youth), but yet, at a lot of the churches I’ve attended, I feel like I need a degree in theology just to understand the sermon. I have heard from my youth time & time again, that they do not pay attention during the sermon because its boring & frankly most of the time I would have to agree with them. I’ve attended at lot of different churches in my time on this rock & very few seem to offer sermons that are relevant to me or that I can relate to. (Disclosure: I’m 25).
Now I will say that I am one of the few. I’m much like Jonathan in the story. I was very active in my former church, where I attended during high school & part of college. I was on the church council & when our pastor left, I was on the call committee that called the new pastor. When I graduated high school, I stuck around the youth program, mainly because there was nothing else & started to help out.
The biggest problem is that over all, the youth & young adults are leaving our churches because we do not understand them & in turn they do not understand us. We expect them to change, when really it should be like any other relationship, one where there is give & take.
I think this article raises some good points, but also misses a few... I've been doing student ministries now for over 15 years and I see it as one of my primary responsibilities to integrate students into the life of the church... whether it be helping to serve communion, serving in the kitchen, helping out around the church, serving in the children's ministries area, serving on the Sunday morning worship team or just being present in the services on Sunday morning... I need to work hard to make sure the students in my church are not just connected to me or the student ministry program, but to the whole church. Those who serve in student ministries cannot look at their ministry as an island, but as an integrated, essential part of the whole church where adults regularly see and hear about what is happening in student ministries and students regularly participate in the wider life of the church. Student ministries are not killing the church, rather they can be an essential and integrated part of the wider church and for those who are serving as student ministry pastors, one their primary responsibilities is to make sure this happens. It helps with the spiritual growth of the students and the wider church.
We have such a short sighted view of history. Youth Groups very recently became part of churches. I'm 54 and there were a couple of youth groups around when I became a Christian at 15, but the small church I went to wasn't one of them, and I guess I turned out okay. I have been in the ministry for 30+ years. I don't think having a youth group would have done anything for me. I was actually mentored by a 60+ year old Pastor.
I think the real problem is that most churches are "program oriented" leaving little room for God and spiritual growth. I was thinking this morning that we need to get back to merely following Jesus. The church should just be a place where we follow Jesus together. Forget the programs, fancy mission statements and slogans...the mission is Jesus.
Most of what the mainlines do is really "program options" for the boomer set, but we've become sort of blinded to that and tend to think of it as "real church." A bunch of 50-somethings pursuing their common interests is no more or less real Christian community than a bunch of teens doing the same thing.
Young people may be adults in training, but they are not Christians in training--at least not in traditions where we baptize infants. Maybe there should be less of a push to get young people to sit through boring, interminable meetings so they can "participate in the life of the church" and more of a push to get adults to go on mission trips or pilgrimages, to sing together, to spend the weekends camping and praying, to serve the soup kitchen, to study and learn about their tradition, and to make close lasting friendships. Jesus died at 33; clearly younger folk have something real to offer.
If we are not integrating students into body life and worship contexts, early and often, then yes, we are participating in the killing of the church.
We need to stop with the separate youth service, and get kids involved. For our adults, it means contextualizing our worship for the youth culture, and for our kids, it meals becoming mature to see that they can't always have it their way.
I think everyone who has posted a response has had good points, but If I remember right only one person made reference to the family. Faith is caught more than it is taught. Faith is caught at home...if the youth are not engaged in it at home, they are less likely to be engaged in the church. In most cases youth are not going to come on their own...adults need to step up to the youth (come into their world.) When we "adults" in the congregations (besides those with leadership roles) start showing our youth that they do matter in the life of the congregation (not just free labor)then we will see a change...
I think that this is the same old debate between the perspectives of "purity" and "outreach" in the church. Do we have a "youth program" that makes a church connection with a larger number of teens but, admittedly, engages most of them on a fairly superficial level, or do we focus on inviting a small number of highly motivated teenagers as fuller (read: "better") participants in the whole life of the church? My personal youth ministry experience is that there are a number of those kind of teenagers in every congregation, and that when there is a strong and active youth program, there are MORE of them. Maybe it's annoying to pastors and adult members of a congregation to see groups of youth sitting together, or to feel like the youth group is doing things that are somewhat separate from the rest of the congregation... but I'd rather reach out to and connect with a greater number of kids than do nothing but continuously congratulate the purity and discipline of the few who show a stronger interest in the workings of a congregation. We're an open faith community, not a cloister. Right?
This reminds me of the insights I gained from a seminary class in ministry to children in the early 90s with William Myers at Chicago Theological Seminary; he said the Presbyterian book of order said children were to be in the midst of the worshiping community, and most churches are in violation of that value and standard. He makes similar points to yours by comparing two large congregations in his book Black and White Styles of Youth Ministry.
A different point: In many churches now the kids come from various schools and may see one another only an hour a week at church, rather than every day at school. Perhaps that single segregated hour is more precious because it's rare, or perhaps it makes age-segregation useless and all-ages community building more important.
How about if we just quit cutting up our society along the lines of some supposed generational divide and simply learn how to reach out person to person--treating each one as a valued member in the human species.
Having grown up in the church and experiencing every kind of arrangement, what stands out mostly are the individuals who took time to cross these lines and interact with me with compassion and respond to me as a person.
At times it may be beneficial to group people in certain ways to provide opportunity for bonds on common grounds. At times it may be necessary to dispense with false lines of demarcation in order to learn to minister to and with those of different ways of viewing and living--which also exist within small congregations.
What I am saying is I become concerned about an attitude of seeing people in amorphous groups with one common face while ignoring the individuals that make up the "groups." Still, meeting needs may at times mean providing a group experience based on the identity of the persons themselves, rather than some preconceived identity one may superimpose on others--not knowing them as persons with needs and gifts.
I agree with pastormack and one of the anonymous commentors regarding the negatives of age segregation across the spectrum, including, but not limited to, segregating people under age 18.
I am in my late 40's and for the past 3 years have been a member of a PW circle consisting mostly of 70 to 90 year olds. This group is much more like me in their views on life, opinions, faith, and much more accessible to me, than the groups that are my age. I have learned a lot from being with these women, and I have laughed a lot. Many of them are now single, as am I. We all love our independence. Had I been forced into a PW or Sunday school group based on my age I would have been missing a lot.
As several of the other commentors said, I think the key is to be sure and make choices available to people of every age. Some youth will want to be together, and others will want to join with different age groups.
What is missing in this discussion about whether young people serve or see themselves as needing service misses the point. Before my oldest daughter entered confirmation, she and I had the opportunity to see a friend's son's bar mitzvah. The service was all about right of passage in the context of the temple community. The message was that we are here for you as you begin to take on more responsibility as an adult, both in the temple and in real life. You have a community of people who care about you. The message was affirming about the journey, in fact identifying the journey for my friends' son. I have yet to see that basic message conveyed in any confirmation process my three kids have tried to go through or gone through in several churches. The modern Christian church has lost the connection to what this period of time means to these people. So, to ask them to serve, or to perceive them as expecting to be served, without affirming their place in the journey of life through the church seems almost an afront. They are not being served very well except in these random kind of connections with people that happen or don't happen in a haphazard way totally outside confirmation and usually outside youth groups, from my observation. My son is 16 and has ushered in church for three years. He won't go to the youth group. He finds it phony, much like Holden Caulfield would, I imgagine. What he likes is talking with the adult guys, learning about the real workings of the church from the scuttlebut and being shown the ropes of collecting money and the bread and wine, being connected to a guy thing that also gets him out of sitting in a pew for one and a half hours, a ridiculous proposition for most boys. No program in our out of a youth group would have led him to this. He was allowed to explore. And he luckily found a way to help him see himself grow up. He's getting what confirmation failed to give him, a sense of himself in the world.
I would like to recommend a book called "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers" by Christian Smith. It has some very good research looking at the lives of youth over the last 20 years and impacts of ministry with, for and to youth. It looks at the declining #'s across the board in all denominations and makes a good argument for what seems to be going wrong. However what I enjoyed about the book and it's supporting research is the longitudinal reflections of those who are in the church as adults and the significant commonalities of strong faith family, giving youth a purpose in the congregation as well as faith training and education seems to be what is keeping people connected in faith through the years. There are other research projects going on across the country that are coming up with similar findings.
Great article! I am in an NCD with a senior high youth group of...wait for it...3. Youth group isn't working for us. With the help of some amazing colleagues, who have come to similar conclusions and read some books, we've talked aobut: Those that stay in the church aren't typically the youth group "rock stars," but those who participated in the life of the church (quoting my friend here).
So we're trying to do something as a group once a month, but really, they are involved in worship-offering, greeting, set up and break down (NCD!), scripture reading, etc. My hope is they will experience the Holy Spirit working through them and see how integral they are to the Body.
Rev. Tricia Dillon Thomas
Thank you for giving voice to a conversation that is long overdue. For far too long we have ignored integrating the whole body of Christ and allowed one part of it (the youth) to either be marginalized or endulged (chose the descriptive that fits your situation). Either way, we set up a situation that fails to teach everyone how to live, love, and accept one another as part of God's family.
I'm enjoying reading these thoughtful exchanges. As you know, there is no ministry formula that guarantees youth will become Christian adults.
I was fortunate to grow up in a church that was large enough to have an active youth group and small enough to integrate youth into the life of the church. My family was very involved in everything. The four of us kids are now in our 40's and 50's. Half of us have continued to grow in faith and be active participants in a church. The other half? Well, even though they have fond memories of childhood and teen years in church, they "don't have much truck with religion."
Approaching ministry with youth and adults in a thoughtful way that continually discerns what seems to be working and what other ways might there be and how do we best serve Christ at this time in this place ... this is challenging and often painful.
Thanks to Kate Murphy for raising a thought-provoking question. If only there were a clear way to proceed.
I find this very helpful. As a pastor and parent who was a youth ministry director for nearly 30 years, I found it a refreshing re-framing of ministry "with" youth.
Let's include youth and support initiatives but not set up a system where their main energy is directed towards their own rights within the system.
Mary Bennett
I attend a small church without a youth group. While it might look integrated, it really isn't.
Almost all of us are at the church events, but it's somewhat awkward. Sometimes we've wondered why we are there.
Even on Sundays when about a quarter of the church is made up of childless members under the age of 30, sermons always center around husbands/wives dealing with their children and grandchildren because the pastor admitted doesn't want to "preach to the minority" or "cater" in the ways that he feels other churches do when they have inclusive sermons.
I find this isolating as a 20-something. I can't imagine how the teens are feeling.
The young are looked to serve as everyone else does, but for some reason, it seems taboo to serve us in any way.
There is no mentoring of the young and single unless we are one of the fortunate ones born into Christian families, which several of us aren't.
Otherwise, anyone unmarried at our church is very much alone in our walk. We are members of a church, but are not quite members of a church community.
Although the picture looks perfect from the outside, we are a very disconnected church.
The other members are not going to change because they are comfortable with things as they are. Every time the issue is brought up, words like "catering" and "pandering" immediately pop up and discussion ceases.
But, I feel the younger crowd is ready for a change.
At least if we had groups for the 35 and under crowd, there might be some sense of belonging to a church community.
I have served churches where youth group was a church within the church; I have served churches where there was significant multi-generational integration; and I've served some in-between.
There is some correlation to church size on the spectrum above, but it's not a hard and fast rule.
As at least one has commented, a larger, programmatic church can be intentional about integrating youth into the full life of the church. It takes work and intentionality.
Rev. Murphy rightly challenges the tendency to ghettoize youth (or any group!) within the church. This is not to say there cannot be group meetings, but that the church identity needs to continually be framed and re-framed as "one body" bound together in Christ.
Like worship music, architecture, or any number of areas in the life of a church, there is no magic bullet of sound, light, or program. Rather, whether in a large, medium, or small church - whether 100, 20, or 3 youth, we must foster a sense of family around the community of the church. Each size church or program comes with it's own curses and blessings; it's how we understand the church that matters.
We mustn't DO church; we must BE the church.
This is an excellent, thought-provoking article by someone with a pastor's heart.
Robert Austell
Charlotte, NC
http://robertaustell.blogspot.com
Thank you, Kate, for a very thought-provoking question. Many things I've been thinking have been said. Two things have not . . .
First, we never consider this problematic concept of "adolescence" within these discussions. We assume the teen years to be a time of "storm and stress" demanding certain ministry approachs. Google "The Myths of the Teen Mind" and you'll find an interesting interview on this topic from Minnesota Public Radio.
Second, I wonder if we are too "church-centric". Our conversations always seem to come back to discussing ways to keep youth involved in church. Does the church exist for the sake of the church or for the sake of the world? My hunch is that youth have disengaged the church because the church has disengaged the world, not because we are lacking "good" youth ministry (whatever that is).
Jonathan found a connection with someone's deep suffering, and he responded from that place where he knows what it means to suffer. There is much suffering in our world. Young people are aware of it. If we ignore it, they will ignore us. If we engage it and teach them to engage it, they might just discover what abundant life truly is.
Great Post! And before I comment I will confess that I didn't read every single comment as thoroughly as it probably merited, so forgive me on that, but I wanted to chime it ;-)
I'm w/ Pastor (Rev.? Kate?) Murphy in that I think that youth ministry and the way we've done it is one of the big reasons that the 18-30 yr old demographic is missing. And it's the fault of the adults in the congregation that hire a 20 something or a college student to be the youth minister and then think they've done their job. So yes, from that stand-point youth ministry is killing the church.
Really fast, I've got a master's degree from Fuller in Youth Family and Culture and have been in "youth ministry" both as the primary youth leader and then as a diocesan youth leader for over 11 years (now on sabbatical).
Kids and teens need connections to non-parental adults in the congregation in order to connect to the congregation as a whole. This doesn't have to be a formalized mentoring "program" (I think too often we substitute programs for real community), but it does have to be intentional on the parts of the adults (and we have to make sure our kids are safe, harder at larger congregations sometimes). How we do that is different for every church, and teens need safe places with safe adults to hang out and ask questions and be themselves.
I don't know exactly what this looks like, but I know what it doesn't look like. At coffee hour at the church I'm currently at, I'm the only non-parental adult besides my husband who talks to teens. All too often when I'm engaged in conversation with a teen, an adult will come up, interrupt and then talk to me like the teen's invisible. I always pull the teen back into the conversation somehow, but then the adult usually leaves.
Need young people in your congregation, folks? Start by respecting them just like you would an adult and, oh, shocking! Talk to them.
(excuse the sarcasm as I'm largely preaching to the choir here ;-) )
Perhaps the reason for the youth dropout rate from church is that the church service itself is a bad idea, or at very least poorly structured.
I was part of an anglican church for many years and before that, a pentecostal church. The Sunday School and youth programs I have been a part of were all interactive. Bible discussion, prayer, question and answer sessions... On top of that the kids could easily take ownership in planning activities, leading worship, or whatnot - it ended up being more of a community with events, instead of events with community.
In contrast, the church service limits interactivity to worship in song. It got to the point where even I didn't want to go to church anymore because it was essentially a really boring show. And even the most hip and with it churches have just upgraded the show quality instead of finding ways to actually mentor people.
So why are we surprised when we have trouble getting youth to transition from an interactive environment where they can learn about God to a sit down and shut up environment where they can learn about God when the service is over? Can we patch the old garment with the new cloth?
Maybe it would be healthier for the whole church instead of transitioning the kids to participate in the service we transitioned the adults into a more interactive gathering to discuss the things of the Lord, and scrap this whole show format that we tend to call "church."
As a Youth Worker and a mum of two beautiful children I am constantly amazed at the potential of youth. We forget that the Word stated that once we have become believers, young or old, we become brothers and sisters in Christ. The same Holy Spirit in a 50yr old is in a 3yr old.
I would like to encourage people to start thinking out of the box... children have an ability to bring God's Word if we would just let them.
My son at 5yrs old was eating mash potato and gravy one night. During the meal he boldly stated that his meal reminded him of Jesus... "the gravy mommy is our sin but when we eat the gravy the potato is white again... just like when Jesus comes and lives in our hearts!" That object lesson, as simple as it is, has touched many lives.
Jesus loves children and accepts them unconditionally. It is time we did the same.
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