4 Views Of Youth Ministry - The Strategic Approach

April 12th, 2007

by large young people are mere spectators in a middle age church… In these cases young people live on the margins of the church…

The Strategic Approach to youth ministry is probably my favorite model out of the four described in the book, I like it because it’s probably the most removed from the traditional church view of youth ministry, it sees youth ministry as about creating a faith community rather than spiritual daycare. In this model we move beyond the typical factory based ministry in which we see young people passed through the church as a car would pass through a manufacturer’s conveyor belt. In a factory an item is passed from one area to another as small pieces are added or tightened or checked until the finished product is complete, similarly in a factory-like youth ministry we see children passed from preschool to junior school, into youth group, into the young adults ministry and then out of the factory floor comes a fully completed mature Christian.

“factories utilise an assembly line to create a product, an automobile moves along the assembly line, workers contribute towards the finished product by inserting a part, tightening bolts or welding a joint into place. At the end, a car rolls off the conveyor belt ready to be sold.”

The problem that a factory-like approach has is that the youth ministry only gets to work with young people for a particular length of time, the discontinuity of this approach will sometimes see young people come off of the factory floor and find themselves without a community that accepts them and leave the church .

“The church must view youth ministry not so much as a means of turning out models of Christian living in order to perpetuate existing church ministries, but as the best opportunity to launch a vital Christian witness to shape the faith community for the next generation.”

The strategic approach starts with the vision of planting a community of faith, it starts with a youth pastor and ministry team that works with a group of young people as they grow up through primary and high school ages to disciple, train, encourage, apprentice, mentor them into a mature faith. Unlike the factory floor the youth ministry doesn’t pass the young people from one station to the next, instead the youth pastor and their community works with a specific group of young people over the space of time until which time they are able to move from the parent congregation to plant another church/faith community.

“Youth pastors should become spiritual midwives and assist in birthing new churches. They would begin as age group specialists but would be chosen to work with a group of students from the time the young people entered high school until they reached their mid-20s. The primary objective would be to develop a team of spiritually mature young adults and plant a new church”

Rather than youth ministry’s role to be to look after a number of young people until they can join the rest of the congregation the ministry’s aim is to nurture leadership, faith, mission so that those involved can assume roles of leadership in a new church plant. Rather than being on the margins young people are seen to be completely involved in the life and growth and mission of a church.

One of the possible outcomes of this kind of approach is that leaders and young people may pick up a sense of something greater than just the normal youth group activities. In a program based ministry young people and leaders may start to wear out, but if the end journey is that of a church plant then ministries may find that leaders and young people may make choices to stay at local universities and work places so that they can participate in the vision. People in a factory ministry however may see a better option, or get tired of their job and seek to leave.

“Church leadership has treated youth workers as novice adults rather than permanent parts of the church’s strategy of discipleship and evangelization.”

This model also sees the role of the youth worker/pastor as something more than a caretaker of young people, instead it sees them as a minister in training, an apprentice in the ministry team who will soon be sent out to pastor and plant a new congregation.

If this model is adopted by congregations then these are a few changes that will need to happen…

Adult congregations, like parents must prefer to sacrifice their own lives so that the next generation might live and grow
Youth ministry must not be seen to be at competition with the existing church
Youth Workers must be viewed as Pastors/Ministers
Young people must be seen as people who are shaping the church and being shaped
Young people must lead in mission efforts

It’s possible that the strategic approach could be seen as giving up on reforming the existing church… We’re talking about pouring new wine into new wineskins…

Well, I think that lists many of the strengths, weaknesses and mutations of this particular model of youth ministry, if you really want to dive into it more I’d suggest giving the book a good read.