Consumers, or Sons and Daughters?
A few weeks back I was having a conversation with a local youth pastor. This young man has been involved in youth ministry for 15 years and has worked with young people in a variety of capacities. In our conversation I shared with him the story of the Youth Venture Teen Centers and the work of Visit Ministries in helping churches to plant their own centers. I told him stories of the launching of our centers, the incredible impact in the lives of youth, and the enthusiasm with which churches from across the country have caught the vision and begun reaching the young people of their communities. There were many amazing things I told him in our time together.
But of everything I shared, there was one thing in particular which caught him off guard.
I shared how in our mentoring program we sit down with the students and read through our mentoring books with him. This surprised him so much he genuinely thought I might not be telling the truth. He said, “I don’t want to say I don’t believe you, but you really get an unchurched young person to sit down and read a book with you?!”
As surprised as he was to hear this, I was equally surprised by his response. To me this was an obvious part of our ministry – almost not worth mentioning. Of course we sit down with the students and read the mentoring books with them. We have been doing it for 30 years and it still happens every day at the centers.
As I thought back on our conversation later, I realized that his surprise shows us something very important about the state of youth ministry in our culture today.
We have been taught a wrong message and it has led us into great error.
We have been told that you must entertain young people to reach them; that what kids need most is to have fun. Therefore our efforts have been focused on making youth outreach as fun and exciting as possible. We put on big events, with rock star worship bands and celebrity pastors. We do our best to compete with the culture in how entertaining we can make our program and we follow the latest trends.
Where has all this left us?
Are we reaching more kids? Are we having a greater impact in our culture?
None of these things are bad in themselves. Giving kids a great time and creating memorable experiences are great ways to gather a crowd, but they fall short of the ultimate goal.
You will never entertain a kid into the kingdom.
In our attempts to relate to young people we have forgotten the most relatable thing of all – FAMILY.
The greatest need of young people today is for family. Their own families are broken and they do not have deep meaningful relationships with adults. They are dying (sometimes literally) to be a part of a family. I have covered this topic in more detail in the blog post The Power of Family. Suffice to say here – young people are molded in the context of family.
We have forgotten this truth and have failed to apply it to our attempts to reach the next generation.
We have treated young people as consumers instead of sons and daughters.
Something powerful happens when you begin to view the young people you minister to as sons and daughters to develop instead of consumers of whatever product you offer. They begin to open up, they begin to trust, they begin to connect. And you will begin to find an almost insatiable hunger for the relationship you are offering to them.
This is why it is so difficult for some people to believe that we can get a young person to sit down and read a book with us; and it is the reason why it is so easy for us to do.
When you treat young people like consumers – if you buy the idea that their greatest need is to be entertained, then something as mundane as a mentoring lesson will seem unthinkable. But if you treat them as a son or daughter, then you will see hearts open and lives begin to transform.
The future of youth outreach does not look like the past – it looks like family. The question every church needs to grapple with is, “How do we build family with the young people we minister to?”
