Flowing out of all of the other roles of a Neo-Youth Minister (especially theologian, pastor, prophet, and spiritual director), a Neo-Youth Minister must be an interpreter. By this, I mean that the youth minister must be skilled in interpreting the following realms:

• Culture. A Neo-Youth Minister must be able to make sense and extract meaning out of the cultural phenomenon that drive society forward at such a rapid rate. Interpretation is needed in the following cultural areas:
  • Technology. What is the prevalence of the iPod doing to our kid’s awareness of the world around them? How does social networking effect students’ ability to have a conversation? How does Wikipedia impact study habits? I am a firm believer that use of technology is not spiritually neutral. We must interpret the effects of the various technologies in our lives and the lives of our students.
  • Magazines. This probably lies more in the realm of females than males (since teenage boys pretty much don’t read anything longer than a box score). But, what are magazines like People and Cosmopolitan doing to influence our teenagers? What behaviors are they normalizing? What behaviors are they undermining?
  • Books (or lack thereof). What does the abysmal reading rate of today’s teenagers mean?
  • Television. Television has been ushered into a new age. Shows like Heroes, Lost, and 24 are very different than shows that dominated the previous ten years. Why are these shows thriving and what does it mean to our teenagers?
  • Music. Teenagers are still the music generation. Many teenagers have music playing whenever possible, made all the more common by technological innovations. What does this constant exposure to music do to our kids?
  • Education. Education is a cultural phenomenon. How our kids are educated and their experience of school has an immense impact on their worldview, values, and definitions of success. Does the gospel have anything to say about this?
• The Bible. On this, I will simply say, “Duh”.
• Personal experiences. When things happen in the lives of our students, we must be able to at least provide clues to what those experiences might mean. How are these experiences (or lack of experiences) shaping the lives of our students? Is God trying to say something in the midst of all this? Are there deeper issues going on that the student is trying to repress or unaware of? Will we have an answer when they ask why? Do we have the ability to help them make the difficult decisions?
• Corporate experiences. When things happen in the lives of our ministries, will be know what significance they hold and how to handle it? Sometimes a student’s personal experience might become a corporate experience (the unexpected death of a parent, for example). Or these might be “planned” corporate experiences, like a mission trip, Bible study epiphany, or congregational struggle. Will we see the significance in all of these different situations? Will we be able to make sense of them or just try and keep the ball rolling regardless of our situation?

An interpreter is one who speaks theological significance into all of the above. The above are not just random things that happen to occur in our lives and our students’ lives. No, the kingdom is at hand and in our midst and will speak significance and truth into the events of our lives. A Neo-Youth Minister must be such an interpreter.

Where this act of interpretation really gets important is in the act of synthesis. To put it simply, as I understand it, synthesis is the interpretation of multiple interpretations. We must take the sum total of our interpretations of all of the above and make some sort of coherent interpretation of them as a whole that will effect the future direction of our ministries. With that, the task of prophetic imagination will begin.

I believe this will be my final post in regard to the characteristics of a Neo-Youth Minister. Fear not! This is not the last post of the series. I will continue the series with some Neo-Youth Ministry Methods.

While many full-time youth workers carry the title of “Youth Pastor” I wonder how many take the role of “pastor” seriously. If we are going to forge a new, authentic way of doing youth ministry, then the youth minister must take seriously their role in the pastoral care of the congregation. I believe that some of the most beautiful times in the lives of congregations are when a member gets seriously ill or dies. It is at these times, when the rug is pulled out from under families, that the church shuts up and starts putting up by caring for their families in any way they can. An elderly lady gets sick, so the church supplies an army of casseroles because the husband never cooked a day in his life. A husband passes away suddenly and the church takes care of the yard until the wife can decide what she needs to do. People go and visit hospitals. People pray. Yes, times of crises seem to me to be when the church is at it’s best. How can youth ministers be pastors in such ways on a regular basis?

To students in times of real crisis. Yes, there will probably be that time in your ministry where someone dies or gets a serious disease or gets pregnant. In these moments we must be present. We must speak carefully. We must listen deeply. We must not offer insights into the “whys” of the event but speak always of the “now and always” of our presence.

To students in times of fake crisis. More often, there will be the college rejection, the breakup, the failed test. As people who have come through such things, we know they truly are not the end of the world. But that doesn’t mean we need to tell our kids it isn’t a big deal. In the moments when their worlds are shattered, we must be present, just as in any real crisis. If we have been doing a good job of discipling our students, then perhaps they will take such things in stride. And if they feel like the weight of the world is crashing down on them, perhaps we haven’t been doing as good of a job as we thought. Regardless, in the middle of a painful event is not the time to talk about things that are really more important.

To parents in times of crisis. Of course, when tragedy strikes, whole families are shattered. We must be present to parents and families as well.

To people “outside” of our ministry. Yes, I know it is the pastors’ job to go visit sick people in the hospital. But we learn so much in the midst of adversity. It might be once every 5 years or more that a tragedy strikes a youth in the congregation. But on a weekly basis there are elderly people in the congregation who are in the hospital, dying, or slowing losing the ability to live independently. Being present in such times makes us humble, makes us better people. It makes us more like Christ.

We often think of pastoral care during times of great adversity and crisis. And while such times are difficult and potentially powerful, they often come few and far between in youth ministry. But pastoral care is nothing more than truly caring for people. Certainly we are called to that with the students and parents in our churches.

To forge a neo-youth ministry, youth ministers must lose the sometime fulfilling roles of administrator, financial planner, budgeter, and event coordinator to get back to the business of caring for people. We need to become pastors again. Show your students and parents what truly matters to you: them.

I have to admit, I may be a little biased with this first attribute of a youth minister able to transition towards a Neo-Youth Ministry. During my junior year of college, I gave consideration to going into the world of academics and heading straight for seminary (and a subsequent Ph.D.) after undergrad. But my wife had plans of med school, and I didn’t want to be living off of student loans, so I defaulted back to the original plan of being a youth minister. I still have dreams of one day doing to seminary and possibly completing a doctoral degree, but for now, I do youth ministry and plan on continuing that for a long time.

Regardless of my own personal bias, I am convinced that a full-time youth worker needs to take seriously, or at the very least be consciously aware of, his or her role as a theologian. Now, I am not advocating that youth ministers start working on systematic theologies (although that might be nice) or giving lectures on propitiation and supralapsarianism. However, I am convinced that we are all theologians at one level or another, whether you are a trained academic theologian or an atheist. No matter who you are, you have some concept of God (or non-God) in your head that fundamentally affects the way you live your life.

As people called to disciple teenagers, youth ministers are concerned with teens orienting their life around the Way of Jesus Christ; ours is an explicitly theological endeavor. Yet, many youth ministers (and senior pastors and parents) tend to deemphasize the role of theologian when it comes to being a youth minister. They are expected to plan fun events, counsel, and teach Bible studies. And somehow they are supposed to shape the community of God without being a theologian (how you can teach a Bible study without being considering yourself a theologian is beyond me).

Well, it is high time that churches realize that we are theologizing our teens no matter what we do. The question that youth ministers need to begin to ask is “what theology are we communicating?” Given what I teach, what theology does that communicate? Given how I teach, what theology does that communicate? Given the way in which we gather and structure youth group, how are we theologizing our teens? It is not a question if you are imparting a theology to your students, but what kind of theology.

When you come to this realization, there tends to be a “Oh wow, if everything we do contributes to the theology of our teens, then 1.) What kind of theology should we communicate? and 2.) How do we go about that?” This is why the youth minister must become a theologian. The first step is to determine what you want to be communicating to your teens. This comes through Bible study, reading, discussing, etc. in order to highlight the most important theological facets of your ministry. Many youth ministers go through this stage initially during college or seminary. Others do it on the fly by reading and studying theology and the Bible. Regardless, foundational to your ministry must be the various theological components that you want to shape the lives of your students. Thus, you must become a theologian.

Next, you have to figure out how to communicate this theology, which turns in many ways to the discipline of practical theology. If you want to communicate the truth and relevance of the Christian community (ecclesiology) but the only time your kids gather is in a group of 150 for games, songs, and a sermon, then you are embodying something different than community. You are teaching that the Christian life is consumption of propositions from a single, authoritative, human source.

Rather than asking, “How can I teach about this theological truth?” a better question to ask would be “How can our community embody this theological truth?” Too often we think that if we cover a topic in Sunday school or small groups we have succeeded in communicating the important theological truths to our students. We need to get beyond that and help shape our practices in such a way that it complements and reinforces our “book” theology.

I am not saying that teaching theology in Sunday school or small groups is pointless, because it is not. Teaching in such a setting gives students the language to describe and interpret their experiences and practices. But talk alone will allow other experiences and practices to shape our students in contradiction to the theology they are “taught”.

Youth ministers are doing theology whether they know it or not. The goal is to become conscious of this role, define our goals, and implement those goals holistically. A Neo-Youth Ministry must take seriously the youth minister’s role as theologian.

Having given some attention to the actual term youth ministry, we now turn to the role of the youth minister (or pastor or director, whatever the exact title may be). Before diving into what might be the role of the youth minister within a Neo-Youth Ministry, some things need to be said in regard to the nature of the office itself.

I am of the opinion that when the church finds a robust, biblical, missional ecclesiology the need for a dedicated youth minister may very well disappear. Teens and their parents will be fully integrated into the life of the congregation and will be a part of the missional nature of the church. There will be no need to quarantine youth to their own rooms and programs except for perhaps a very limited time. Regardless, a full-time youth minister may not be necessary. (In fact, full-time staff may not be necessary at all, but I’m getting off track.)

However, because of the current nature of youth ministry with its current reliance upon full-time youth workers, it would be naïve to expect churches to be able to function without a youth minister overnight. Of course, there must be a transition period which takes youth ministry from where it is today towards a Neo-Youth Ministry. The youth minister will be integral to shaping and leading that process. It is out of this context, acknowledging that youth ministers may ultimately be unnecessary but integral to the process transitioning to their unnecessary-ness, that I offer a renewed job description for the youth worker.

In order to envision a Neo-Youth Ministry, the youth minister will need to take on the following roles:

1. Theologian
2. Spiritual director
3. Youth Advocate
4. Pastor

There might be some other emphases that I’m leaving out; I’ll unpack that as I go.

The next few weeks will be spent elaborating on how all of the above roles will help cultivate a Neo-Youth Ministry that moves beyond youth ministry as it is typically practiced and has the possibility of re-shaping the church’s ecclesiology as a whole.

Continuing to examine the term youth ministry, we now turn to the word ministry. This will probably be a fairly brief post, since I don’t have any real training in Greek.

My interest in the term ministry is that it appears that in popular usage it is taken to mean a specific Christian program or institution. You hear the term used all the time like this. At church you probably hear something along the lines of “there is an exciting new ministry being started in order to serve the poor in our community” (or anything else, just fill in the blank). Or, on Christian radio you will hear pleas to “support this ministry” (i.e. radio show).

The problem I find is that this usage of the term ministry trains us to think in terms of programs or institutions when we hear the word. For us, this means that in popular usage the term youth ministry automatically conjures up thoughts of programs and institutions meant to minister to young people. This severely limits the ability to be creative and innovative in ministry if the assumption we are operating out of is that youth ministry is by definition a program or institution.

In the Greek, the word diakonia is the one we usually translate as ministry in the New Testament. However, this word can also be translated as service. Whenever people are serving, they are doing ministry, whether or not that service is attached to a particular program or institution.

What if when we thought of youth ministry we thought of any way an individual or a church serves adolescents rather than programs for adolescents? Using the new definition, youth ministry can happen outside of the normal confines of a program designed for a group of adolescents. When an elderly lady in the church knits a blanket for one of the girls in the church who is in college, she is doing youth ministry. Parents who take time out of their day to read scripture and pray with their children are doing youth ministry. The lady who prays for the teenagers in the church without anyone knowing is doing youth ministry. Adults who clean up after the junior high students who forget to throw away their plates after a pot-luck are doing youth ministry. None of these requires a program, but they are all youth ministry.

When we begin to take a more organic view of the word ministry, a whole new world of opportunities for youth ministry opens up free of the burdens or limitations of programs or institutions. With such an understanding we have the necessary foundation for being truly creative and innovative as we move forward with a Neo-Youth Ministry. Or perhaps to put it in more theologically correct terms, such a definition of ministry can give “ears to hear” what God might be speaking to us in regard to youth ministry in the 21st century.

[If anyone with experience in the biblical languages comes across this post feel free to add to or correct my assumptions about the usage of the word ministry.]

In order to begin to re-think what it might mean to do youth ministry, to formulate a Neo-Youth Ministry, we should probably start out by coming to grips with the term “youth ministry”. To begin, I’ll be examining the word “youth”.

“Youth”, as it is defined in most church ministry contexts refers to students in middle school (sometimes known as junior high) and high school. Depending on where you are in the country, this includes sixth or seventh grade students through twelfth grade students.

An initial observation of this term brings to light that this kind of ministry is extremely narrow in scope. Even if we grant the broadest possible definition of “youth” (sixth through twelfth grade), we are still only talking about seven years of a person’s life. Before sixth grade, the person is in a children’s ministry for eleven or so years. After graduating high school, the typical person has another sixty-two years of life left.

With such a definition of the term youth, youth ministry is by its very nature a highly focused effort because of the narrowness of its scope, encompassing only 9% or so of the average person’s life. Yet, chances are that more money is spent in a church on this particular ministry than any other.

Secondly, drawing from above, when we say “youth” we need to begin to think about adolescents, regardless of age. We have usually defined our ministry boundaries according to cultural standards (6th-12th grade), which leaves students out to dry once they graduate. The statistics to show what sort of impact “youth ministry” has on high school graduates are abundant. And embarrassing.

We need to consider how it is we serve adolescents, understanding that the adolescent life-stage is lengthening on both sides. Children are entering adolescence (both physically and sociologically) in the tween years and adolescence often extends through college graduation. If we don’t think of adolescents when we say the word “youth”, our ministries will end up being short-sided, which seems to be the current state of youth ministry.

A Neo-Youth Ministry begins by realizing that when we speak of ministry with “youth”, we must keep in mind the big picture and strive to disciple adolescents all the way into and through adulthood.

As most of you very well know, the prefix neo simply means new. In order to affix this label to a word, the “new” understanding of the word must be so different than the previous understanding to warrant the neo prefix, rather than just slightly adjusting the meaning of the old word. However, at the same time, the “new” understanding must resemble enough the old term in such a way to warrant affixing the neo to the old term, rather than creating a completely new term or reclassifying altogether.

To give a really poor example: For centuries Christians were concerned with maintaining orthodoxy, which simply meant believing the right things. Although the various aspects of orthodoxy may have evolved a bit as time progressed, there was no need to reclassify every reiteration of Christian doctrine with a new word to describe orthodoxy. However, when Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Paul Tillich began to propagate a theological program that was markedly different from their contemporary orthodoxy, yet maintained the same aims and goals of historical orthodoxy, the term neo-orthodoxy was coined.

In simple terms, when you designate something as neo-[something], it is markedly different from the [something] but enough like the [something] to continue to use the word.

That is why I would like to use the term Neo-Youth Ministry to describe what I hope to do in youth ministry. The goal is still the same as it has always been: we want to see young people come to know Jesus in such a way that they will become lifelong disciples of him and live their life in the way of Jesus. Thus, I am keeping the term “youth ministry” because in many ways the goal has not changed. However, when you say the phrase “youth ministry”, people tend to have a preconceived notion of what that means, which hinders our ability to adapt, innovate, create, and move forward as an institution. My goal is to do more than just refine or adjust how “youth ministry” is done. I want to completely re-imagine, redefine, and rethink how we understand and go about helping young people become lifelong followers of Jesus. Thus, I would like a completely new classification for what it is I am envisioning. I call this Neo-Youth Ministry.

Some of the building blocks toward Neo-Youth Ministry simply lie in pointed reflection. So, I will begin a series on what I see as some of the components of Neo-Youth Ministry. I foresee at least three additional posts and a conclusion as part of this series. Perhaps it will grow as I think and pray over these things.

May God direct us in the way of discipling our young people.