Youth ministry: A contemplative approach

Help Wanted: Youth Leader to lead Sunday school and youth group programs for senior and junior high youth. No experience necessary. Start IMMEDIATELY. 8-10 hours a week. Call First Presbyterian.

Every week local churches looking for someone--anyone--to work with their youth place ads like this one at nearby seminaries. Never mind that most seminary students do not belong to local churches, are overwhelmed with school work and are sorting out their own faith; these churches are desperate to find someone who will "do something" with their kids. Punch on to the job listings on the Youth Specialties Web site and you find the same phenomenon: hundreds of churches are eager to find someone who will form their children in the Christian faith.

What's happened? Why are we so eager to hand the spiritual development of our young people to the first person we find who can locate the New Testament and needs a little part-time work? Have we forgotten that one of the most sacred of human activities is sharing the intimacies of our souls, our values and the visions of our hearts with children? This is not a task for overloaded students; it is the privilege of every Christian congregation.

Just as a marriage can be strengthened and expanded or weakened and exposed through the raising of a child, so it is with a church's spiritual parenting. In the formation of children a congregation's spiritual life is revealed and potentially renewed. What do our youth ministries tell us about the health of our congregations? How does the spiritual formation of its children reveal a congregation's images of Christian discipleship? What does it say about the future of the church that we contract out the spiritual care of our youth?

The problem goes far deeper than the neglect of catechetical duties. It is not that we've forgotten how to pass on our faith but that we often can't find any faith to pass on. We're afraid to face the questions, the honesty, the challenges of our young people lest they expose our own doubt, confusion and emptiness. What we fear most in our youth is not their rambunctiousness, but their lack of interest in the Bible, their boredom in worship, their dismissal of church doctrine. We fear their judgment of the church as trivial, even laughable. We don't know how to respond to their questions and behaviors. In unguarded moments we secretly agree with them, yet we hide our doubts behind the whir and buzz of worship and activities and, like the Wizard of Oz, shout, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

But the curtain must be pulled back. If we are to keep young people involved in the church and if we are to renew our congregations, we first must acknowledge that many of our current forms of youth ministry are destructive.

Our current practice, promotion and publishing in regard to youth ministry are still grounded in models developed in the 1940s and '50s for white, suburban, middle-class youth. Although a variety of adolescent discipleship models have come out of communities whose ethnicity and socioeconomic status differ from the status quo, it is the suburban, middle-class forms that dominate the field. Existing strategies of youth ministry are limited and often ineffective because they fail to invite young people into Christian communities in living communion with the Spirit of Jesus Christ; instead, most youth ministries are formed around the following unspoken themes:

• Entertainment. The entertainment model rises out of adult fears of secular society and adolescent freedom. This approach is designed to keep kids safe while creating attractive associations with religious institutions through ski trips, game nights, rafting trips and other fun activities. The "entertainment" model readily accepts the values of consumer culture. Programs are created and advertised like those of any secular youth club. A young person's Christian commitment is measured according to the products and events he or she consumes: "Did she attend the fall rafting retreat? The all-night paint-ball fest? Does he listen to Christian music? Does she own 'What Would Jesus Do' bracelets and a matching cap and journal?"

In this program-centered ministry, the staff, parents and church members act as administrators and chaperones. Though spiritual transformation might occur, it certainly isn't the primary focus. Churches are afraid that if they confront the market-driven values in which young people are immersed, youth will be turned off; better to offer easily consumable, culture-friendly programs with a digestible Christian coating.

The results can be destructive. Treating youth as activity consumers often is a way of turning adults into customer service representatives, not ministers. Not surprisingly, the average youth director quits within 18 months, volunteers are difficult to recruit (it takes a lot of time and energy to keep young people entertained), and youth rarely make lasting commitments to the Christian faith.

• Charismatic youth leader. In this approach, a congregation hires a minister (usually young, attractive and recently graduated from college or seminary) to be solely responsible for the spiritual well-being of young people. The unspoken assumption is that the youth director is the youth ministry. Church members and parents expect the youth minister to mediate the holy through his or her own spiritual charisma. This model is based on the old bait-and-switch ploy: people hope that the youth first will be attracted to this minister, who will at some point get them to transfer their attention to God.

Such a congregation wants its youth leader to embody all the church's hopes and concerns for its young people. Depending on the constituency, youth ministers are expected to be substitute parents who mitigate the growing frustration and tension between adults and teenagers; hip babysitters who keep the youth occupied while the adults attend to the real business of the church; role models who set an example of Christian living that most parents are unable to match; pied pipers who lead youth into compliance with the values and practices of the adult church; and security guards who keep the adult congregation protected from the energies and disruptions of its adolescents.

The youth-leader-as-savior approach, extrapolated from parachurch ministries like Young Life and Youth for Christ, has generally been destructive for all concerned. Alone and segregated from the church community, youth ministers are soon exhausted. Expected to be walking icons of the risen Christ, they are not allowed to be fallible, and their own need for Christian nurture goes unmet. Left as the sole mediator between the adult and youth congregations, youth ministers quickly become isolated, lonely and spiritually alienated. And even with the most well-intentioned ministers, the bait-and-switch strategy rarely works--teenagers often accept the youth minister as their personal savior but are rarely able to transfer their devotion to Jesus Christ.