If you’ve been in youth ministry for any length of time, you have probably heard of the one-eared Mickey Mouse (surprisingly, I couldn’t find a suitable picture online and didn’t feel like making one myself, so hopefully you are familiar with it). For years now we have spoken out against creating a separate “youth church” attached to the “real” church and argued for the need to include the youth in the full life of the congregation.
I agree that the youth ministry does not need to be a completely self-sustaining, segregated, holistic ministry apart from the wider ministry of a local congregation. As Chap Clark says in this book Hurt, adults in general have abandoned teenagers, and the church does not need to contribute further to that. But honestly, most youth ministries still have some degree of significant autonomy apart from the whole life and ministry of a congregation. It may not be as bad as it once was, but I would venture to say that we still spend a fairly significant amount of time in youth ministry still in the one-eared Mickey Mouse mode.
My contention is that perhaps we should use that to our advantage. Mark Ostreicher makes the point in Youth Ministry 3.0 that, in general, youth culture is on the leading edge of culture in general, and to an extent I think he is right. What if, in the church, we used the youth ministry to lead the congregation-at-large towards habits and practices that they otherwise would not consider. When you introduce change in any group there are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards (see this Wikipedia article for an introduction and The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk for a theological and missional treatment of the subject).
If youth ministers are by nature innovators and teenagers are often innovators and early adopters, then church leadership (youth ministers, pastors, elders, deacons) should look to the youth ministry to set in motion a process of change. Since we are already operating autonomously in certain regards we won’t face some of the hurdles in a youth ministry that you would if you attempted change in the wider congregation. The same thing, and perhaps to an even greater extent, applies to young adult and college ministries.
In a way, approaching youth ministry this way fights the one-eared Mickey Mouse model. If we want the whole church to begin to move in a certain direction and start by focusing on setting that in motion in the youth ministry, it acknowledges that the youth ministry is connected to and significantly influences the whole congregation. I wonder if this might also apply to dying denominations as well.
So what do you think? Can youth ministries become labs of ecclesial innovation and change? Or am I just being manipulative and trying to force top-down change?
adam. you are not smoking crack. i think YM needs to be paving the way for how eccelsiology needs to be orchestrated. what if YM was radically different than what BIG CHURCH was doing? would the youth pastor still have a job?
before youth ministry becomes the lab, we need more yp willing to abandoned their models/theology/tradition/paycheck.
if we want change, we (yp) have to give up complete control, which means our future is completely unpredictable.
the ability to change means you love the means and don’t focus on the end. to lead the change within youth ministry we need to start creating problems. we need to allow people to see the difficulties youth ministry is facing.
we are not only called to be changed and to embrace change but to be the catalysts of change. change is about creating the future, not controlling it.
like this post – that’s some good thinking. i think we’ve all seen at least a few student ministries lead their churches in terms of innovation and creativity – i know it certainly seemed like ours did in the way of overseas missions and community impact.
one caution i think we should consider is that not all youth pastors and youth groups are on the cutting edge of innovation – they are not all early adopters. same applies with adults – not all of them are late majority or laggards. so i think we have to careful to not assume that just because a person is a youth pastor that he or she is willing to be risky, creative or try new things. i’ve met more than my fair share of youth pastors that are only interested in the status quo.
good post!
Tony, thanks for pointing out the not all youth pastors and ministries are on the innovative side of things. You’re right, but I think that in general, youth ministries are often earlier adopters than the rest of the congregation, simply because they by definition have less history because of their age.
Here’s a problem I’ve run into when trying to implement the change you spoke about…
In my last church, I saw this same phenomenon and tried to use the youth group to bridge the existing gap between our church and the one across town. Ours was the more “conservative” of the two churches, while the other church enjoyed more freedom.
Just about the time the kids were bonding (as were myself and the other youth min) I tried to suggest that our leadership get together.
What ended up happening was that our pulpit minister and elders met with the other church’s leadership and grilled them on why they did certain things. Unsatisfied with their answers, they turned on me and suggested that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to “fellowship” with that other group.
All of a sudden, that church-wide change that was being led by the youth group turned into “Oh, those kids are just young and idealistic. They’re not thinking clearly…”
Needless to say, I was gone from that church in a few more years.
You’re more likely to meet with success if you move a FAMILY MINISTRY (or some ministry with adults) into a direction you’d like to go. make sure parents are on board, too, or you’ll never get anywhere.
Franklin, good thoughts from someone who has actually tried this. I haven’t put this idea into practice very much, but it was just a possible conclusion I came to by drawing on some of the material I mentioned above. I’m not even sure I agree with the idea! Thanks for your insight.
matt, what you speak of is actually highlighted as one of the models on ‘four views of youth ministry & the church.’ i believe its referenced as the preparatory model where the youth group is prepped to start their own church.
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Views-Youth-Ministry-Church/dp/0310234050
i’m okay with being an early adopter/innovator to do ministry as a youth ministry but i also use that ethos to move it into the church. the youth ministry, as well as children’s & special events, are always given permission to try stuff out where the traditional sunday service might be that sacred cow. continual taking advantage of the permission eventually takes ahold of the full church. a subvert way of bringing change possibly, but still keeping with the body of the church.
I don’t think we should expect the youth of the church to ALWAYS move the congregation-at-large to change.
Sometimes it’s got to be the other way around. Parents are called to lead and guide their kids into godliness and a Christlike lifestyle.
But we can and do learn from each other.
I know that in our church, which has a large and active Bible quizzing group among the teens (about 40 teens active in quizzing in a congregation of 300-400), that we now are starting to see more adults memorizing the scripture than we used to.
They do it because they are inspired by the example and dedication of the teen quizzers. And they do it in an effort to lead by their own example.