Is Youth Ministry Dead?

Posted on Dec 1, 2011 | 16 comments

is youth ministry dead Is Youth Ministry Dead?

 

Is Youth Ministry dead? 

The definition of dead from dictionary.com says,

1. no longer living; deprived of life: dead people; dead flowers;dead animals.
3. not endowed with life; inanimate: dead stones.
4. resembling death; deathlike: a dead sleep; a dead faint.
5. bereft of sensation; numb: He was half dead with fright. My legfeels dead.
 
Last week, I was chatting with a friend who is interested in becoming a youth pastor.  He is a gifted young man, and has a passion for youth ministry, and music.  When I see this guy, I see tons of potential for ministry.  While we were talking over coffee at starbucks, he mentioned that he met with a church planter who has been really successful.  When this young man asked the church planter if he was interested in hiring a youth/worship pastor the church pastor/planter said, “We can’t afford to hire a youth pastor, and besides youth ministry is a thing of the past.”  When my friend went on to say is that this church plant can’t afford to maintain an attractional youth ministry model.  It made me think, is youth ministry dead?
 
If you want to be a pastor at Mars Hill Seattle you need to eventually move onto become a campus pastor.  Being a youth pastor isn’t good enough anymore.  You need to move on to something age appropriate.  Some people need to move on, but not everyone.
 
I don’t think that attractional youth ministry can survive in an economy of recession.  Youth ministry is more than attracting kids. Rethinking youth ministry has a great image that you need to check out on missional youth ministry.
 
Do I think that youth ministry is dead?  No.  I wish that young church planter would ask how could we reach teens in our community, with the resources we have, and with the leaders we have.  I think we need to move away from looking at other churches/youth ministries when it comes to reaching our communities.

 

What do you think?  Is youth ministry dead?  Is it necessary?  
Check out our free ebook!
The ebook is titled: 5 Ways To Communicate Effectively in a Digital World. Did I say it was free?
ezinelayingcurvy Is Youth Ministry Dead?
ribbon blue Is Youth Ministry Dead?
lock Is Youth Ministry Dead?
We hate spam just as much as you
  • Anonymous

    Great thoughts & question.  It’s actually something that I think about quite often. There are models of youth ministry that are: unsustainable, shallow, too flashy, and focus on the wrong things…for sure. 

    Unless we have a major cultural shift among the teenage population & another major shift within our churches and there ability to pastor and disciple those teens, I think youth ministry is here to stay (in one fashion or another). 

    PS- This have been a tremendous blog to read. You’re putting in a lot of work (I can tell) and it’s paying off. Thanks!

    • http://www.youthministrymedia.ca kolby milton

      Thanks Ken for the comment. I really glad you are enjoying the website. I agree that youth ministry is here to stay. We need to start thinking about how to reach teens in our community, and not like the church down the road.

  • http://twitter.com/averageym benjamin kerns

    what a fun conversation to have.  there is no way youth ministry is dead.  and i don’t think attractional youth ministry is dead either.  as long as there are attractional churches, which most are, there will be attractional youth ministries.  in a recession we have to be a little more creative, but we must be attractive in our approach to ministry.

    missional youth ministry is a great idea, but not a reality.  to be missional means to have a sense of identity and call.  students have neither.  they have the beginnings of those, but their primary task is identity formation.  and i think that identity formation happens mostly in community, in an attractional context.  

    then missional as a fruit of that.  

    http://www.averageyouthministry.com/2011/01/31/your-students-are-not-ready-to-live-missionaly/

    peace!

    • http://www.youthministrymedia.ca kolby milton

      Ben,

      Thanks for the comment. I agree that youth ministry isn’t dead. It was a great conversation I had with a friend. Attractional youth ministry has a place and always will in youth ministry. I do think that youth groups need to be both missional and attractional.

      btw, I read your post, and I was surprised that santa commented on it. I didn’t think santa was real! haha.

  • http://practicalyouthministry.com Brandon

    Youth ministry is dead but not in the way Webster might define it. It’s dead in the same sense that Seth Godin says that the publishing industry is dead. Yes there is going to be youth ministry and youth minsters for a long time to come. But the traditional experts have lost their authority and don’t have the answers to the discipleship questions that are being raised.

    I saw evidence of this in two places. 1) At D6, a conference about making disciples of the next generation, Doug Fields was an absolute fish out of water. The tweets and conversations that followed his presentation communicated that traditional youth ministry poses more problems than it does answers in the new world of discipleship and it’s experts have nothing to say. 2) Mark Oestreicher’s book Youth Ministry 3.0 demonstrates that the pillars of youth ministry have misdiagnosed the problem and do not have adequate solutions. Mark’s conclusion that the future of youth ministry is communion felt like the weather man predicting that the sun will come up tomorrow all the while failing to mention that a category 5 hurricane is bearing down on us.

    Good question. It is certainly one that is worth discussing. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Godin’s video and wonder if you see any similarities between the way he assesses the publishing world and youth ministry (http://vimeo.com/23585998).

  • Pingback: Re: Is Youth Ministry Dead :: Practical Youth Ministry

  • http://myendofthedeal.com/ Brian Seidel

    Youth ministry is not dead.  I think youth ministry is struggling, and we need a paradigm shift, but it is most definitely not dead.  I agree with Brandon that Marko started down the right road with Youth Ministry 3.0, but did not give enough about where we go from here.  This is exactly what my book manuscript is about, so I actually have a lot to say about this…

  • http://joshrobinson.cc Josh Robinson

    Great thoughts. I think that youth ministry is not dead! But I think that the “build it and they will come” days are long over. I think that in some ways every student ministry will be “attractional” at some point but the whole goal is to lead students to be on mission with serving Christ. If a student can come and be attracted because of relationships and fellowship and then come to know Christ and in turn grow into a leader, that is the goal! In a down economy I’m changing around what we do and making the priority serving and small group driven fellowship.
     Great conversations! 

  • http://twitter.com/sleestac Paul Martin

    Not dead, but should probably be put out of its misery. Like many others who’ve commented, I hope that youth ministry will break into a new paradigm. What that is, is still very undecided, but too many people are looking for it to happen for it to remain the same. It’s a hopeful future.

  • Pingback: Best Blog Posts of 2011 – The Final List

  • Pingback: Do you want to be a guest writer for youth ministry media? - Youth Ministry Media | Youth Ministry Media

  • http://twitter.com/MattMurphymswym Matthew Murphy

    I don’t think it’s dead either.  My thought is that the methods change in how we do ministry.  I think the age of buying 5 dollar pizzas and calling it fellowship is dying.  I see a more missional and service focused ministry bringing up the age and getting us to focus our ministries on being more outward focused than inward focused.  

    • Tonya Berry

      Hey! We resemble that remark! We have stock in Little Caesar’s! Ha ha! It’s not the pizza that matters most, it’s the relationships. But as long as the Hot ‘N’ Ready’s are still hot and ready, they will still be a part of our Saturday nights at John & Tonya’s house!

  • http://twitter.com/BroBurchett Ryan Burchett

    I’m not sure I’m qualified to jump into this discussion, I’ve only been in youth ministry about 4 years (all at the same church which has been awesome), but I’d like to share one thing that I’ve noticed personally with the students I’ve had the pleasure of ministering to: If students really feel like they’re a part of a family of believers who really care for them, they will continue on with you in your ministry, regardless of your talent and/or use of cutting edge technology. I agree totally with a point made by Benjamin, where students really have neither a sense of calling or identity…..that’s what the majority of our teenage years are about; posing the question and finding the answer to “Why am I here? What is my purpose? Who am I…..” etc. The majority of the students involved in our youth group here, which is roughly 80-90%, come from un-churched homes. They simply started coming to church because of a wonderful, mission-minded senior adult who lived near them and invited them to join our bus/van route that would take them to the church and back if they were willing to go.
    And after 4 years of working with these students, even with the few whose families attend church with them, I’ve noticed that they all have one thing in common: They continue attending our youth ministry program, not because I’m some great speaker (because I’m certainly not), not because we have the greatest amount of money and resources (because we definitely don’t), but they keep coming because they feel loved. They know I care for them and they’re lives. They know our church family cares about them. And they know they care for each other, despite coming from all walks of life and social circles.
    It’s the model Jesus set before us that we can’t ever get away from, regardless of how the times change. Ministry is built on loving relationships. If we continue to do that, the rest will fall into place.
    I hope this may add to the conversation positively. Thanks for the posts and discussion.

    Ryan

    • http://www.youthministrymedia.ca kolby milton

      Ryan,

      Thanks for the comment! I appreciate what you voiced into the conversation. I really couldn’t have said it better. Thanks for everything you do in ministering to the teens you work with.

      I don’t think youth ministry is dead. I think it is alive and well, and God will continue to use relationships to move people towards him.

    • Dale S

      A wise youth pastor once relayed a saying to me that I have kept in my heart when working with jr highers 10+ years. “They won’t remember your lessons or even what you said. They won’t remember the games or events. But they will always, always remember how you made them feel, and how, by your actions, you showed God loves them, ”

      I’m not a Youth paster. But someone who loves showing 11-12-13-4 year olds there’s purpose to life, and that God has always a plan for us.

      Loving them is what they will remember, and God’s Love will be imprinted in their hearts because they know people love them as well. :)

  • Tonya Berry

    Youth ministry will be “dead” when evangelism is dead. Then and only then can we stop trying to evangelize youth, the elderly, children, young marrieds or anybody in between. What a silly question in my opinion. Do we rely upon the economy and the government, or do we rely on God for our provision for our budget? And does it really take much of a budget to reach youth? Well my husband and I are teetering on the US poverty line ourselves and we’ve been doing it out of our house, out of our own pockets, for over 10 years. Why? Because most churches won’t, and somebody has to. So my answer to the question is, youth ministry is as dead as our faith and trust in God. Not trying to be mean, just truthful. Certainly a thinker there, huh?

  • Tonya Berry

    One thing that draws kids in is music, but it has to be their style, not ours. That is one thing that sets our ministry apart from traditional ‘church youth groups’, since we’re independent like Campus Life or Young Life, is that we can offer the kids Christian music in any genre, and not have to worry about some out of touch Pastor flipping out on us for playing music that he thinks is ‘worldly’ because they don’t play it on the Gaither Gospel Hour or whatever. We need to start supporting our Christian bands and artists, and networks like RadioU and TVU, and stop worrying about whether or not the music is too hard for our own personal taste. I think it’s a crying shame that bands like Avenged Sevenfold are thriving even among Christian kids when bands like Theocracy (look them up on YouTube) write songs like “Absolution Day” and “Laying the Demon to Rest”, with a sound almost exactly like Avenged Sevenfold, and yet most teens I meet who like Avenged Sevenfold have never heard of Theocracy. Why? Because most Christians have turned their back on their own musicians. We need to open our minds and come down off of our ivory towers of thinking that ministry has to be the way we say it should be, and start using the tools that God has provided us with….with wisdom, of course. Just remember…with many kids,Toby Mac and Barlow Girl just don’t cut it. Please help them open their minds and realize that Christian music goes way beyond Winterjam. Blessings!