Clearing through the mess and misunderstandings around youth and children’s ministries …

It was about five years ago this month I was making my decent down a hill into the greater Las Vegas area from spending time in Minnesota, and the view was anything but appealing.

On the horizon was the city, but layered over the metropolitan expanse was an ugly brown haze hugging the cityscape. As I neared the city limits, the perspective changed, and the view of the city appeared to clear. It wasn’t that the haze of dust had disappeared, it was that I was now in it, and so it wasn’t as perceptible as it had been from a distance.

I’m reminded of that picture as I follow some of what is happening regarding ministry to youth and children today. There have been efforts to look afresh at our approach to youth and children’s ministry, and we’re finally acknowledging the ugly haze that has engulfed both for far too long. The news about both is somewhat mixed … it seems like we’re finally facing up to the fact that much of what has been done as “youth ministry” for the past couple of decades has been an ugly failure, and too much of our efforts in children’s ministry have been ineffective. I don’t intend for that statement to be a “broad brush” – certainly there have been many “successes” along the way, but in general, there’s been a great deal of “missing the mark.”

It sounds like we’re finally admitting that we’ve spent the past couple decades making youth ministry more about pizza parties, “lock-ins,” and a grand assortment of entertainment to attract herds of teens than we have about making disciples of them. Multiplying the size of youth groups has been the driving concern, and in the process we’ve failed to make new disciples of many (most?) of them.

We haven’t faired much better in children’s ministry. We’ve misunderstood that children’s ministry is more than just telling Bible stories, it’s also introducing children to Jesus and teaching them about Him. More often we’ve just followed a curriculum “scope and sequence” delineating what Bible story to tell next.

Fortunately, there’s more talk today about where we’ve gone wrong, and what we need to do about it.

A KEY FUNDAMENTAL
Looking back at how most of youth and children’s ministry was conducted, we can see how a key fundamental was missing – the essential role of parents.

In the past, too much of our approach to youth ministry specifically, and some children’s ministry, was to take on ministering to youth as if it was the sole work of the church, almost completely overlooking the greater role of parents. The primary spiritual teachers and models for children and youth are not children and youth pastors, but parents! Even early in the Old Testament we read how parents were instructed to use all of life as a curriculum to teach their children about God …

“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,” Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

Our practice in the church for a couple decades was to separate youth and children from their parents in church gatherings and hand over to youth and children pastors the job of ministering to these young ones. We placed the emphasis of youth and children’s ministry on youth and children’s ministry workers rather than on parents.

We got it backwards!

Instead of understanding that parents are the primary spiritual teachers and models to their own children, and that the church supports those efforts, we’ve failed to equip parents to be effective at evangelizing and discipling their own children and instead poured resources into forms of entertainment to form youth groups that spent little time and effort evangelizing and discipling youth.

We’ve also misused children’s ministry, making it more of a babysitting service so parents can be “freed up” to attend worship services and provide a place for children to be away from adults. We used to think kids couldn’t understand or “get anything out of” being with their parents for at least part of church services. And let’s be honest — a lot of adults thought the presence of children in church service was a distraction to the grownups. Some of the results of all this is that children and youth haven’t had the example of their parents and adults in a worship setting, and haven’t experienced the benefit of being included in real ways as part of the church gathered. The worst of the results is seeing a multitude of young people leaving the church altogether once they graduated high school, most not to return again.

FLIPPING THE FOCUS
Some exciting things can happen, though, when a church flips the focus of youth and children’s ministry being centered on vocational ministry leaders and instead start with the understanding that parents are the primary spiritual teachers and models to children, and the church should support and equip parents for that very important role in the lives of children and youth.

Some key ways I’ve seen or led churches to “flip the script” included these steps:

PTF became a focused ministry – Instead of spotlighting children’s ministry and youth ministry as what those ministry leaders and teams were doing “with” or “for” children and youth, we implemented a comprehensive Parent-Teacher Fellowship, focusing on:

• • Teaching parents, and constantly emphasizing to them, that they were the primary spiritual teachers and models to their children.
  • Equipping parents with a methodology and tools for them to be able to effectively teach the Gospel to children and to youth.
  • Communicating to parents in advance what would be taught to children and youth in our church programs and providing parents ideas for them to lead that teaching in their home.

In other words, we changed the focus of the church efforts to equipping and supporting parents in their evangelizing and discipling their own children, and that the church would support and contribute to that. For too long, youth and children’s ministry pastors had little interaction with parents, but in a true parent-teacher fellowship model, ministering to parents to equip and support them is as important as directly relating to kids and teens.

BUT THERE IS REAL VALUE IN CHILDREN’S AND YOUTH MINISTRIES
There are some today who would rather do away altogether with church ministries for children and youth, partly because of past failures, but there is a vital need for both of these ministries.

First, when Jesus commissioned His church to go make disciples of all the world, He did not mean to make disciples only of adults, He included EVERYONE in that! There are many, many, many people today who will testify that they came to know Christ through children’s or youth ministries. That’s because of two reasons:

One, not all parents are Christians. Many are not, and would never do anything to teach their children about God and their need to have a covenant relationship with Him. So many stories can be told how children and teens with non-Christian parents have come into a relationship with Jesus Christ because of children and youth ministries standing in the gap created by unbelieving parents.

And two, many parents who profess to be Christians do little or nothing to evangelize and disciple their own children! One survey conducted by Scott Free Clinic a few years ago revealed among the parents surveyed one reason why they lack in their spiritual leadership of their own children is they don’t feel like they know how to be spiritual teachers and leaders in their own home. This is where the church can be of great value in coming alongside parents to teach and equip them in how they can be effective spiritual leaders in their own homes, as well as provide support and contributions to those efforts (the “PTF” or parent-teacher fellowship model).

A couple of other benefits about ministry to the young.

It can be very beneficial for children to be in the church’s regular services so they can see their parents and other adults as the church gathered and in worship. However, there can be real value in dismissing children during the time allotted for preaching so they can be taught age-appropriately. Some push back at that claim, saying they have seen children understand some things from sermons by sitting (or fidgeting!) through a message constructed for adult comprehension, but the fact is that children do not have the cognitive development to adequately comprehend teaching delivered at an adult level. Again, some push against that fact, but if you suggested that we do away with elementary and middle schools and place all children in high schools to learn alongside teenagers, do you think they would go along with that idea? No! Because children cognitively develop at different levels as they age, and should be taught in a manner that is developmentally appropriate. The same is true in the church.

And regarding teens, it’s simply true that they have a “herd mentality” — they enjoy, and at times prefer, the company of other teens. There can be positive benefit in teens coming together to share in the fellowship, worship, and service of Christ — but not at the expense of being separated from the church gathered. They should be fully involved church services because they have the cognitive development to do so. But additional opportunities to gather with people their age can be provided, and that mutual living out of faith among their peers can help them carry on living out their faith among peers and others in secular settings.

CONCLUSION
Just because we’ve made a mess and had some misunderstandings in children and youth ministries doesn’t mean they aren’t needed and they don’t have an important place in the church. They do! But that place and work isn’t one of replacing the priority role of parents. Children and youth ministries that come alongside parents to help and equip them to minister to their own children, and also stand in the gap when parents aren’t interested in teaching their own children, can be used by God to bring children and youth to Christ.

Here’s to praying we clean away the ugly haze of just settling for entertaining young people and getting serious about what the church can and should do to make disciples of everyone.

Scotty