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Love You In The Lord
Youth Outreach
Radically Outrageous
For Jesus
Youth
Ministry and You
Parents do
it, priests do it, even teachers in their schools do it, let’s do it,
lets work with youth!
It may sound a little
trite to paraphrase an old song but it helps to make the point that a
lot of people minister to the young every day. They may not be running
youth clubs, leading youth prayer groups or organizing scouts and guides
but they are there, the hidden force for youth ministry.
When a parent puts down the newspaper and takes time to talk to or
challenge their teenage son or daughter they are ministering to the
young. When a person stops to pay attention to their young people and
they see the young people looking bored, that is youth ministry. When a
teacher, after disciplining a difficult pupil, enquires more gently
about how things are going at home, they have moved into an informal
role and are ministering to youth.
Youth ministry happens when an adult steps out of their normal
preferred pattern to engage in friendship with the world of a particular
young person or group.
Why friendship? Youth ministry happens most effectively within a
network of friendship, confidence and freedom between a caring adult and
a young person or group. For that reason training alone cannot qualify a
person as a youth minister, it is the young person who qualifies the
adult for this role by giving them their trust, allowing the adult to
work with them.
Without the freedom and trust that friendship brings, the adult
remains an instructor or a provider of entertainment. When the adult is
trusted, hearts are opened and confidence established. A balanced,
appropriate affection is able to be expressed and the adult is invited
into the world of the young person to respect, affirm and guide the
young person along their own unique faith journey.
Youth ministry is therefore a difficult and delicate task. It should
not be left to the experts, it is too important. As for the Church, the
task of caring for our young people lies squarely at the church door: it
is the responsibility of all the congregation, not just the youth leader
or the one in charge of the altar servers or the music group. Notice
that the task does not lie at the door of the preacher. The task
belongs to each of us as part of the church community.
What can the average busy adult do to support young people in the
church?
The first thing they can do is to recognize them. They are the
endangered species that lurks at the back of our churches, just inside
the door, present but already absent. They occasionally emerge from the
shadows, from behind the pillars of the church, to do an occasional
reading, to play an instrument or serve in the shadows of the church
ministry. Generally they linger by the papers at the back of the church
hoping that they will be given bread not stones but often slipping away
unsatisfied.
In what way can adults minister to those elusive young people.
Here are some suggestions that might help. Try exclusively focusing on
ministering to young people in clubs, schools, on the streets and in
residential centers and not just churches only. It is his wisdom that I
am offering.
Smile
at them
The first
lesson we need to learn as adults and potential youth ministers is that
we can appear to young people as aliens from the planet Zog.
We wear different clothes, listen to strange music and use language they
would never think of using. Anyone who has seen films about meeting
aliens knows that the first thing you have to do is to smile at them!
Let them know you are on their side and friendly mortals. Many have
spent their lives working for the young and the title that they often
wear with pride is “A Real Friend of Youth”. Friendship and youth
ministry both begin with a smile.
Become
explorers
Adults
should always make the first move with young people. We would be
doing what God did; He moved into our world to share the journey with
us.
We adults need to step into their world without putting our foot in it!
We can make the first move by realizing that their world is not our
world, their concerns may not be our concerns and their dreams not our
dreams.
We step on to holy ground and into mystery in a particular way when we
move into youth ministry, we become respectful explorers of what God is
achieving in their lives.
Breaking the ice needs some thought for the adult; is not a good
beginning to remind them that you used to bounce them on your
knee!
Finding out what they are interested in and asking them about it is much
better. Finding out what they are good at and being genuinely impressed
is even better.
Build
Confidence
The heart
of young people is a fortress that can only be opened up from the inside
by building confidence from the outside.
“Confidence sets up an electric current between the young and the
adult helper. Hearts are opened and weaknesses made known. The goodness
that is generated enables the helper to bear patiently the weariness,
annoyance and ingratitude of the young.”
The young person, on meeting an adult, will wonder if they can trust
them.
“Can this adult be trusted not to treat me as a child, not to make me
feel small?
Can this adult be trusted not to laugh at my mistakes or
awkwardness?
Will this person recognize me as a person and not a retarded young
adult?”
The pressure is on the adult to prove their worth perhaps time and time
again before the young person is likely to have real contact with them.
It is only when that bridge of confidence is built in freedom from both
ends that real youth ministry begins.
Optimism
and forgiveness
The
greatest act of faith as an adult is to believe in the goodness of every
young person. In early days young people were mistrusted and exploited.
Many adults have stood out as one who defended and befriended them.
Today young people are still likely to be blamed for the ills of
society, assumed to be out of control, on drugs, or involved in violence
and crime. In fact most young people lead good lives with a generosity
and awareness that often goes unnoticed and unsung.
The facts today tell a different story: young people are more
depressed, and more than twice as likely to attempt suicide than any
other age group. Boys are slipping behind in their educational
achievement and girls are increasingly likely to be victims of violence.
Young people are the most precious and yet most vulnerable part of
society and that is still true today.
The cure for this exploitation is encouragement and optimism, helping
young people put their mistakes behind them and to begin again.
Forgiveness is another act of faith that we must make happen every day.
Our goals should be to help young people find in adults a genuine hope
for growth, forgiveness and change.
“Always be optimistic about the goodness of young people and never
give up hope. Our Lord did not break the crushed reed, nor quench the smoldering
wick, he is our model.”
Be
consistent when things go wrong
You may
have got the impression that your youth director or pastor is soft with
young people, far from it.
Most leaders expect young people to stick to their promises and keep the
rules that were agreed. We must remind them of the rules often and
disciplined them when the rules are broken, but this should all be done
in what is the best interest of the young person.
It is easy for adults
to slip into a powerful parental role when things go wrong partly
because the adult feels let down and partly because they are worried.
What starts out as a well-meant reprimand can turn into World War III
and leave a barrier like the Berlin Wall.
We know how difficult
discipline can be and so we offer some advice to adults about what to do
when things go wrong:
| DO |
DON’T |
| Calm down
and deal with your own anger first |
Use
corporal punishment
while your are angry and mad. |
| Make sure you
know the facts and the young person knows why you think discipline
is needed |
Isolate or
ignore the young person for long periods |
| Sort it out
quickly and then forget it. NO REMINDERS, it’s history |
Punish a
whole group for the sake of one or two |
| End with some
reassurance that your relationship is still friendly |
Make the
young person feel small in front of others, especially their friends |
I have presented a very positive, encouraging picture of youth
ministry for two reasons.
Firstly, because it is a difficult and embattled discipline in the
church at the moment, and secondly, because it is a vocation, a way to
God, which is available to many more people than ‘professional’
youth workers.
Youth ministry is embattled in these times particularly in the area
of child protection. There is a suspicion around all those working with
the young, including parents, that they may also be harming young
people.
The recent epidemic of child abuse cases has had a huge impact on the
confidence of those who work with youth. It is vital now that those in
contact young people know their responsibilities and know how to work in
safety with them. It is also important that such people don’t lose
their common sense and confidence about working with the young.
We recognized something that may not be obvious to those involved
with working with young people: they make us think and they challenge us
to change. It is our belief that working with the young opened adults to
God in a particular way; it was a vocation.
Young people change your life, they throw you off-balance, recognize
your faults and tell you, test your compassion and generosity; in giving
you a hard time they bring you to life.
It was in those turbulent relationships that many of us have heard
God calling us to life and into partnership with others working for the
young. We adults have found a way to God and made life-giving
connections with others to form a youthful church. As adult we
grew in wisdom and wholeness as we worked with our youth. The young
people came to life and the church body which worked together to help
the youth grew in a way that challenged and transformed the world of the
young of our time.
We can do the same today by reaching out in friendship to the young
around us and, at the same time, listening for the mystery of God’s
presence unfolding in their lives for a new millennium. |
