Youth ministry models come and go. When they are at their best, they are responsive to the cultural needs of the teenagers being served. We haven’t always done youth ministry the way we are now. Youth ministry, at its core, is a missionary endeavor that adapts to the cultural landscape.
As adolescents first emerged on the scene in the 1900s, complete with their own language and interests, the institutional church was slow to respond. Those who felt called to shepherding the spiritual formation of teenagers found they had to do so outside the context of the local church. As a result, the first phase of youth ministry (roughly 1900 – 1950s) was dominated by the rise of parachurch ministries like Young Life and Youth For Christ.
The predominant ministry model for this phase of youth ministry – called Youth Ministry 1.0 by Mark Oestreicher – focused on the preaching of the gospel by men in suits to teenagers using the language teenagers used and topics teenagers were interested in.
The predominant value for youth ministry 1.0 was exchanging youth culture’s norms of behavior for biblical ones. Although these first pioneers of youth ministry were responding positively to their calling to serve teenagers, implied in their methods and message was the belief that youth culture was bad. Over time, this belief would serve to create a divide between the growing power and strength of youth culture and the church. It would eventually lead to the next phase of youth ministry: Next week’s topic Youth Ministry 2.0.
No comments:
Post a Comment