Youth Ministry Re-Imagined: Ministry in a Time of Transition

A little over two months ago I sat down to have lunch with Mark Oestreicher, the president of Youthspecialties, the world’s largest youth ministry resource provider. Marko, as he is called by, well everyone, was kind enough to grant me some time to discuss the changes in youth ministry that he has witnessed and prompted him to write Youth Ministry 3.0: A Manifesto of Where We’ve Been, Where We Are, and Where We Need To Go. During our lunch over tacos and great salsa he pointed out the importance for churches to understand that teenagers are growing up in a time of liminality. I pretended to understand what he meant. Later, dictionary.com informed me that liminality is “the condition of being on a threshold or at the beginning of a process.” Marko continued to explain that our culture and specifically youth culture has undergone significant changes over the last two decades and that the models churches have used to help students find a path of spiritual formation are no longer working. Marko writes “While there’s wonderful stuff happening in youth ministry all over the place – in pretty much every youth ministry – our impact, the transformation of kids’ lives, seems less than we’d hoped” (Oestreicher, 24).

Which brings us back to liminality. Our world and how we relate to one another is not what it used to be, but we also have yet to arrive at what it will be. This gives us a tremendous opportunity to experiment, to dare, to re-imagine what spiritual formation with teenagers can look like. I am convinced that what youth ministry will look like 10 years from now hasn’t even been thought of. This is an incredible time to be in youth ministry.

If there is one word that captures the process we must enter to remake our youth ministry it is re-imagination. We must re-imagine what it feels like for a teenager to experience a sense of belonging at a time when institutional loyalty is at an all time low. In a world in which online social networking provides the illusion of intimacy we need to re-imagine what true communion – true community with Jesus in the middle – can feel like. In the midst of a youth culture that has come to distrust the ability of facts and information to communicate deep truth, we need to re-imagine how experience shapes spiritual formation.

In order to get there, we have some experimentation to do. Marko summarized the road ahead for youth ministry as a process. “We’re going to have to work this stuff out in the coming years through radical experimentation, glorious failures, unfortunate rabbit trails, ticked-off parents, decreasing numbers and a host of other challenging – but 100 percent necessary – speed bumps… One thing I am sure of: Tweaking things won’t get us there” (Oestreicher, 82 – 83). This summer our youth ministry leaders are engaging in a conversation about what it can look like for our congregation to re-imagine youth ministry for the 21^st century. We would love for you to join the conversation. Email us. Stop us in the halls at church. Ask lots of questions. If you like to use technology to communicate, we have set up a small blog at www.youthministryreimagined.blogspot.com that will have each of these articles posted and then space for you to comment. The way forward isn't clear yet. It might not be clear for a long time. But our youth ministry team is convinced this congregation can find and thrive in a youth ministry re-imagined.