I find it very hard to operate sometimes because I have so many unanswered questions in my head! These are some youth ministry related questions I am going to try and work through over the coming months...
Feel free to give me your answer before I give mine, you may save me a lot of thinking pain!
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- Are youth ministries essentialy just competeing with each other?
- Is there are such thing as too much bible study? - especially if you are young
- What does effective mentoring look like? How do you do that with a high school aged person?
- Is there a theology of youth ministry? Or is it just our theology of church that affects how we should think about what the bible says about how we do youth ministry?
- What would your standard Friday night youth program look like (for years 7-10 and VCE aka 11-12 students)?
- How do you get youth to participate in bible study?
- How do you promote ownership of the youth ministry by the young people who attend?
- Can a youth ministry set the agenda for the mission and strategy of the church in which it operates?
- What is a Youth Minister supposed to do anyway?
- How should a church juggle the many different demands of all the different congregations and groups that seek it's attention? What priority should be given to youth ministry? How do you ensure that the right priority is given to youth ministry given many of the key players (aka youth) are too young to participate in church activites (i.e Annual Meetings, Parish Council)?
I may add more later...
1. Some are. It is something all youth workers must deal with in their own hearts. The community I work in has a great youth pastor network where we meet together every week and have done a lot of ministry together. A few of the churches in town don't participate and some of them are even quite competitive but for the most part there is a great spirit of unity for which I am ever so thankful.
ReplyDelete2. No, but there is such a thing as studying with the wrong spirit. So often our Bible study ends up being about proving somebody wrong or finding pride on our knowledge rather than learning about God's love and how that affects my relationships with other people. I heard a pastor say recently that Paul's exhortation to Timothy to, "flee youthful passions" was "about the immature pleasure of arguing in order to show off, having fun by making someone else look stupid, an unrestrained ego brutalizing someone else, smart-alecky cleverness displaying itself and scoring points."
I think he is right. If our Bible study leads us to these "youthful passions" then maybe we should take a break and do a bit more listening and praying.
4. Some people have done good work on a theology of youth ministry but not much has been published. Really, from my understanding, we fit into the larger scope of God's work in pretty significant ways. One of the problems, though, is that we have defined "youth" quite narrowly. I think in a more proper understanding of youth both you and I would be in that category. I love that rabbinic discipleship took like 20 years to complete.
Chris, these are great questions. The one's I didn't say anything about are definitely questions of my own and reading blogs like yours and other friends of mine gives me good insight and a framework from which to process these questions. I remember David telling you and I that until there were more students he couldn't really offer any advice and, I don't know about you, but I felt so ill-equipped. When I look at this list of questions that feeling comes back. Thankfully God doesn't call the equipped he calls the willing! Peace to you brother!
Chris - it looks like you should take a few youth ministry subjects at Ridley. We address many of these questions, allowing you to perhaps solve or at least continue to wrestle through the issues surrounding these questions with other people who are asking exactly the same thing! In the meantime keep reading the books on your bookshelf!
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