Youth ministry isn’t about fun
How one youth leader stopped being a chief counselor of fun and discovered something better.
I am sitting in a nondescript church fellowship hall, attending a gathering of the church’s youth group. Over the next hour, three people—a man in his fifties, a woman in her early thirties, a boy in tenth grade—get up and tell stories. Their stories all are in response to the same text—Matthew 19:16–30, the story of the rich young ruler—and the same prompt, “Tell about a time when the good was a difficult or confusing surprise.”
As the stories unfold, music, laughter, tears, and friendship encase the stories as much as the four walls of the fellowship hall. It’s a beautiful example of a youth ministry that is much more than an adolescent religious holding pen.
In the final 15 minutes, the youth group leader, whom I’ll call J, laces these three stories together, drawing people deeper into the biblical text. She focuses in on the rich young ruler calling Jesus “good” and Jesus telling him that only God is good. She then invites the room to gather into groups of three or four, making sure each group has at least one young person and one not-so-young person. In the groups, participants end the night by praying for one another.
