Building an authentic youth ministry vs. a social club. [Guest post]

This guest blog post is from Nate Hultz, Pastor of Student Ministries at Stonebridge Church in Findlay, Ohio.

I can remember when my first youth pastor position took off. In the beginning of that ministry, there were around 25 faithful students who were attending our Wednesday night services. After a year of learning the community its students, I was able to put together bigger and better events along with creative Wednesday programming. Within that year, we went from around 30 students to reaching over 100 teenagers. The church and the leaders of the church were excited about their youth ministry because of all the kids that were starting to come.Three years later, I took another position in another church in a different state. People told me that many teenagers would a leave a church after a youth pastor relocates to another ministry. The transition caused me to ask a few questions:Did our church fail to help students on their own journeys where they were too dependent on me?Do they not care about teenagers?

Did I fail to create a youth ministry where discipleship was stressed and where building leaders was a value?

The truth is that I didn’t know the answers to those questions. Being a young youth pastor, I failed to recognize the importance of assessment in my youth ministry. So many people in the church, including myself and the pastors I worked with, felt that I was doing a tremendous job because of all the teenagers that were coming. Any assessment I would have done at that time would have been positive, or at least I thought so. It seemed everything was so good because I had created a social group that people loved to come too. Where I failed was to create a youth ministry that breathed life into teenagers and adult leaders.

Since that situation, I have had opportunities to understand the importance of assessment and discipleship in youth ministry. Here are a few ideas to consider when building an authentic youth ministry.

1. It’s a heart issue. After I heard the news of how many students had left the youth ministry along with a few adults, my heart sank. I started asking all kinds of questions about what I did wrong. I realized that I was dealing with eternity here. Was I more concerned about my image or teenagers living for Christ? It hurt. I never what that to happen again.

2. Create a youth ministry that could grow and survive without us. I operate under the understanding of what would happen if I die. Who will continue to love and invest in the lives of teenagers if this were to occur? We have to disciple adults to lead with love, strength, humility and power. My goal is to see the youth ministry completely function without me by investing into adult volunteers for the work of ministry.

3. Aim for discipleship versus building a program that functions like a social club. Teenagers need to see Jesus, walk with Jesus and lead for Jesus. We can always hangout and enjoy each other’s company. However, students who are followers of Christ need to know and understand how and why we follow in the footsteps of Christ. In turn, they are to disciple other peers who know and who do not know Christ if we are to build the Kingdom of God.

I will never create a social group again to show how many teenagers I can get to group. My flesh longs to do it at times, but we must fight that urge to build disciples so the Kingdom of God can grow through multiplication.

Social Club or Youth Ministry…Where do you land?

Thegreypony

Sometimes it’s difficult to convince church leadership that an increase in numbers doesn’t necessarily equate to reaching more people. Just because you walk into McDonalds doesn’t mean you bought the hamburger; your presence in McDonalds isn’t counted in the number served. Likewise, just b/c a kid attends your programming, s/he isn’t necessarily being discipled to. The proof’s in the pudding – where are those kids 5 yrs. later? What does their walk look like? Unfortunately, too often the powers that be in top rungs of church administration seem to focus only on the number of kids you bring in…
http://practicalyouthministry.com/ Brandon

Thank you for the transparency and your reflections. Love to hear your thoughts on how you focus on disciple-making and what you think contributed to the social club problem.
http://www.terrylinhart.com Terry Linhart

I hope Nate can jump in here on this. I’ll see if I can get him to respond to that question, Brandon.
Nate Hultz

Hey Brandon,
Great question. When it comes to disciple making, if there was a straight easy answer, probably most of us would be doing it. There are a few things I do or am trying to do. My whole goal is to get adults and students living life together. So our youth ministry recently began in home/wherever small groups that teenagers connect with on a daily basis. We do go by sex but not age or grade. In this, we do sermon based discussions from the previous Sunday nights. The goal is to accomplish 1 specific task each week in our small groups. If we talked about why we spread the Good News, then they have to somehow engage in a conversation with a friend who doesn’t know Christ about Him. Then bring it back to the group and talk about it. My goal is to train and equip my adult leaders to train and equip students who hopefully will train and equip a friend or two who do not know Christ. They are working on making disciples themselves.

When it comes to a social club, it is important to have games, fun and food because it creates opportunities for friendships/relationships to be built. However, I want to create students who want to live their life for and with Christ. When I was in my first ministry, I did whatever it took to get kids to a Wednesday night meeting. Yes there was scripture, teaching, singing, etc., but I never helped them to create accountability which helps to live a life for Christ on a daily basis. I want there to be a place for kids to feel comfortable and safe, but I also want to challenge them and help them live for Jesus after high school. Sometimes it isn’t very popular but the results have been so much better.

I hope this helps a little. Like I said, if there was an easy way, we all would be doing it. I feel that investing in adults to invest in students to invest in peers is the way to go. Being very intentional instead of closing my eyes and shooting an arrow and hoping I hit the target.
Nate Hultz

I completely agree. I think the reason that is so happens to be that some many of our adult leaders in the church have business backgrounds. Numbers only matter to them. They don’t see faces or understand what they are going through on a daily basis. This is why youth ministries/pastors/directors/volunteers have to fight hard to show the church, especially the leadership, that this takes time (years, not days, weeks and even months). It is a shift that must happen for the future of the church to understand life change in teenagers.

Terry Linhart

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