A Neo-Youth Ministry will contain significantly less traditional educational time and programs than current youth ministry practice. For some reason, we have been taught to equate depth and maturity with Bible knowledge. I would say that a lot of youth groups have about three main “programs”, each of which tend to center around Bible knowledge: Sunday School, “youth group”, and small groups. In each of these contexts the “meat” is portrayed as being the lesson, sermon, or study time. Any relational benefit is secondary.

A common desire of teens (in my experience) who are ready to “take their faith to the next level” is to participate in a more “in-depth” Bible study (usually in Romans). My response to them has been to say that when they actually do the things that characterize “shallow” teaching (like love your neighbor, forgive your friends, get along with your parents) then we will begin that more “in-depth” Bible study.

A Neo-Youth ministry will not measure depth by Bible study, but by action. We cannot exist in order to fill the brains of our students. We exist in order that lives may be transformed. One of the key cultural myths in American that the church has bought into is that knowledge is the most important factor in affecting life-change. Well, I disagree. If that were the case, tobacco companies and fast-food chains would go out of business, 16 year-olds wouldn’t speed, and people wouldn’t take on more debt than they could afford. It is a factor, but not the factor. No, education alone does not change people. The Holy Spirit does, and the means by which the Holy Spirit works is the church.

Instead of studying educational techniques and theory, a Neo-Youth Minister will study practices and seek to ingrain spiritual practices in the lives of their teens.

The recent Halo 3 controversy has caused quite a stir among some theologians. Go here for my post that links to other relevant discussions about the ordeal (the comment section over at The Fire and the Rose is especially intense).

My current intention is not to deal with Halo 3 specifically, but it provides a context for an issue that I had planned to blog on in this Neo-Youth Ministry Series: the bait and switch. The bait and switch originated as a marketing strategy. I tend to see it often at car dealerships: they advertise some fancy car at an unbelievably low price in order to get customers to walk in the door. Usually, they will only have one of those deals available, which is sold very quickly, so when subsequent people walk into the showroom, they are shown many of the other “great deals” on the lot that they hadn’t come to see in the first place. What baffles me is that this actually works and people will buy a car they hadn’t actually come in to see.

Well, if it works for marketers trying to swindle people into a car they don’t need, surely the church can use it, right? So, you have churches that advertise and push “fun stuff” (like Halo 3 on plasma TVs or a raffle for a free iPod) in order to get kids to come to church. While they are there, they also get to “hear the gospel”. They came for Halo, but they accepted Jesus while they were here!

Many things are troubling about this. First of all, means are separated from ends. The end result is a good one: introduce people to Jesus. Somehow, American evangelicalism has searched through the Bible in order to find biblical goals, but thinks that the Bible is silent on the means by which we achieve those goals. Thus, we think that we are in charge of finding whatever method “works best” in order to achieve our biblical goals. So, if the best way to get teenagers into a church building is to offer Halo 3 on A/V equipment costing thousands of dollars, so be it. We’ll do anything we can for the sake of the gospel, right? I don’t buy it. I mean, is the gospel really that weak? I believe that the scriptures not only tell us to make disciples, but also prescribes the kind of life that leads to accomplishing this goal: a life of hospitality, prayer, sacrifice, compassion, and love.

Second, such an approach short-changes the gospel. The gospel is more than a message that people come to hear. The gospel is something that the church bears in the way we live our life. Yes, that will include our speech and our telling of the hope of Jesus, but part of our message is how we embody it. To say that we will do anything to get people to hear a lecture on the four spiritual laws is to short-change a holistic, biblical understanding of the gospel. Scot McKnight’s book Embracing Grace is a good introduction into a holistic understanding of the gospel.

Third, such an approach is ecclesiologically weak as well. Drawing from above, the assumption is that the goal in evangelism is to bring young people to us in order to hear our message. So, instead of living creatively and missionally, evangelism becomes nothing more than a function of the size of the youth ministry budget. The more money at our disposal, the cooler things we can use to attract youth to hear the gospel. So are poorer churches not in a position to spread the gospel? Are plasma TVs necessary for the Spirit to move? Instead of relying on our budgets, I think we need to rely on the creativity and discernment of our youth and adults to–through the Spirit of God–see into the lives of those we know who do not know Jesus and share with them the hope that we have in him.

The rebuttal against my argument usually goes something like: that sounds great, but it doesn’t work in real life and ministry. My guess is that when people say, “doesn’t work,” they are saying, “such an approach would get me fired” or, “that would shrink our youth group.” That may be right. But the problem in such case is not with the methods or the results; the problem is in the expectations of parents and congregants (and even ourselves) we are supposed to live up to. I fully acknowledge that such a Neo-Youth Ministry approach might cost many people their jobs or shrink a youth group for a period of time. Youth groups could very well benefit from such pruning. I do believe the eventual result will be sustainable faith practices in our teens that nourish faith and commitment to Jesus and his church. Anything else is just video games and cool toys.

My good friend Noah recently recounted a phone conversation he had with an Acquire the Fire representative. I had a similar conversation not too long ago. Now, my problem is not necessarily with Acquire the Fire, but I am quite skeptical of the big-event circuit in American youth ministry. Here’s the typical recipe:

• Large stadium (anywhere from 3,000-60,000 people)
• “National speakers” (whatever that means)
• The “hottest” Christian bands (if DCB isn’t on the docket, don’t even bother)
• Maybe some dramas or comedians (or both)
• Extremely expensive A/V systems, lights, lasers, smoke machines, etc.

Events like this bother me for a few reasons:

• The first problem is that for whatever reason these events tend to become normative for the Christian life. Students who go to events like this think that the Christian life is the most real, most alive, most vibrant at events like these. Faithfulness to God is associated with emotional highs and feel-goodyness. We are left thinking that God is not present in homework, chores, friendship squabbles, and other stuff of “real life.” (By the way, Eugene Peterson has been instrumental in helping me develop a theology of the everyday. You must read him. Everything he has written. No joke. I’m working my way through his stuff.)
• Because of the above, I am worried that these events are put on by organizations that must turn a profit in order to stay alive. When normalcy is determined by a group of people who must make X amount of dollars to sustain themselves, I get nervous. (I’ll take this point to say that churches are a little different in that they (should) rely on gifts, not selling things, to sustain themselves. However, I do believe that most churches operate at much too narrow of margins.)
• These events are divorced from local contexts. Identical events happen in Texas, California, Florida, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.
• In my experience, these events appeal to the emotions, but not the passions, of teenagers. Teenagers are extremely passionate people, and we should be tapping into that passion. But passion is different than emotion. Emotions tend to be the end. People think the emotion is real. Passion tends to spur action and impact. (This isn’t very well thought out, but I’m leaving it in.)
• You shouldn’t have to pay $400 to get “recharged” once a year. I remember going on a certain trip every summer that was quite expensive, but my friends and I looked forward to it because it was where we got recharged every year. But recently I have been thinking about practicing sustainable faith. If our faith is based off of one yearly event, we aren’t sustaining ourselves throughout the year. There is something missing in much of our ministries when we and our students aren’t practicing the kind of faith that can sustain them in their everyday lives.
• Many of these events are quite repetitive in nature. They don’t change much from year to year and have almost identical messages. I know of one specific “national” youth event has been saying the same thing for the past 10 years.
• They all claim to change your youth group’s lives. If they really did, they would work themselves out of a job.
• These events create Christian celebrities. There is no need for Christian celebrities. Period. Yes, there are certain people whose wisdom and discernment can change the landscape of Christianity, but that is because they have been gifted by God, not because they are just “really cool.”

Instead of “outsourcing” our big events to organizations that don’t know us, our kids, our churches, and all the rest, we should strive to make our ministries local and contextual. My favorite way of going about this for “big events” is retreats. I think retreats planned by people in our churches are great ways to connect at a deeper level with our kids. You also get to spend a lot more time with your kids at a retreat than at a large event where your behind is stuck in a chair all day.

This might be a good time to make a disclaimer that I’ve probably made somewhere during this Neo-Youth Ministry Series: in no way am I questioning the purity of motivation of people who do the kinds of things that I tend to disagree with in this series. I believe most people love Jesus deeply and are trying to do what they can to follow him. I simply think that pure motivation isn’t enough. We aren’t given the scriptures for motivation, but for obedience (among other things).

Local. Contextual. Yeah, your kids might not get butterflies in their stomachs from being so close to the stage that David Crowder was spitting on them, but I think that’s a good thing.