Finding leaders for youth ministry

Darin Stevens is one of the leaders of Reign Ministries in the UK. www.reignministries.co.uk 

“How can we find leaders to help with our ministry?”

Whenever I talk with other youth ministers and they share their biggest needs, ‘more leaders’ usually ranks first or second.

I was lamenting the difficulty of finding quality leaders with a ministry friend this past week and he said, “Ok, tell me about your current group of young people.  What are you doing to raise up workers?”  This one key question led into a great conversation that brought me back to the basics and clarified where we need to improve.

Because we strive to follow Jesus’ methods for mission, we have been looking a lot at the Gospels and the book of Acts with our trainee youth ministers.  It strikes me that when I read episodes like Jesus feeding the 5000, he didn’t struggle with having enough people to pull it off.  Sure, he was the Messiah and could have bypassed the needs for leaders altogether.  He could have had the meal appear in each person’s lap.  (service time McDonalds would be proud of!)  But he didn’t do it that way.  It says in Mark 6 Jesus ‘directed them (the disciples) to have all the people sit down in groups…so they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties.”  He then gave thanks for the loaves and fish then ‘gave them to the disciples to set before the people.’  Jesus had the leaders he needed to care for the crowd so it didn’t become a mass of people pushing forward for food.  Perhaps the whole point of the miracle in the first place was to give these key workers crucial experience in ministering to people?  The disciples didn’t want to get involved with the problem.  But instead of sending them away, Jesus set up a fast food takeaway, and taught the disciples unforgettable lessons in the process.

It’s also unbelievable to read about the Church’s birthday in Acts 2.  On that day alone, 3000 people were added to the church!   When I read this I ask myself, ‘what would happen in our ministry if 3000 people were added in one day?’  Talk about a need for more leaders!  How could this new community possibly support such a sudden surge in numbers?

In Matthew 9, Jesus is on his final ministry throughout Galilee, travelling with his disciples.  The disciples had watched and joined with Jesus in teaching, healing, casting out demons and showing compassion for the crowds of people.  Jesus knew he was not going to be around much longer to follow up, so he pauses and tells his disciples to pray for more leaders for the movement.  No, wait a minute, he tells them to pray for ‘workers’ for the harvest, not leaders.

What’s the difference?

We would love for you to join us in one of our training opportunities where we fully flesh this out, but for the sake of space, we will summarise.

In Jesus’ ministry we can see him calling followers to ‘come and see.’
We see him calling disciples to ‘fish for men.’
We see him calling out twelve to be apostles or to be leaders in the movement.
All disciples were workers in the Kingdom, fishing for men.  But not all disciples were apostles or leaders.  We cannot expect to find leaders, if we have not raised up disciples or workers.  Raise up workers, and leaders will emerge from the ranks.

You may be thinking, “are we just arguing over semantics here?  I don’t care if you call them workers or leaders.  Either way I need some of them to help with our ministry.”  Stay with me here for a minute…

How can I raise up workers?  Like everything else in life, this will take longer than I want it to.  And I’m going to have to say ‘no’ to some good things now, so that I don’t have to panic over a lack of leaders in the future.

The best place to start looking for workers is among teenagers themselves.  Movements of Jesus are most powerful when we see young people sharing their faith and caring for their peers.  Teenagers expect adult helpers to talk about God and follow God.  But it’s exceptional when they see people their own age doing this.

Because we believe in equipping young people to lead the ministry, we are constantly challenging them to talk with their friends about God and to care for their friends’ spiritual needs.  But we cannot expect teenagers to share their faith, eventually care for small groups of their peers and even lead whole areas of the ministry just by challenging them and giving them the opportunity.  This is too big of a step.  We have been trying to raise up spiritual leaders without first raising up workers.  We must go back and help them take little steps along the way.  Little steps that could progress like this:

• Picking up empty cups and straightening chairs after the drop-in
• Helping to do the washing up after our weekly church meal.
• Bringing an icebreaker or song on CD for our next gathering
• Praying for someone in the group who has a need
• Going on a mission abroad to serve and share faith with people I don’t know (it’s safer!)
• Writing a text to someone outside the church group who is having a tough time
• Sharing my faith story with a friend
• Starting a group I can invite my friends to in order to talk about God

We need to prompt young people to take loads of these little steps.  And we need to make a big deal out of it when they do.  Equip young people to do this work of the ministry and then leaders will start to emerge.

We have been learning a lot in this area, thanks to a few guys from SonLife Classic and Global Youth Initiative who have been studying the Son’s life for many years and passing their insights on to us.  They have helped to map out 7 stages that we are trying to follow for raising up ministry leaders.  All this deepens our conviction that Jesus’ life is the best model for reaching young people today.

Need adult leaders?

My gut says the process isn’t that different with adults.  Too often we find a willing spirit and throw them in the deep-end, only to see them burned out a few months later.  We must identify willing adults, but ask them for small commitments and help them make baby steps from the start.  As they serve, interact with teenagers and catch the vision of the ministry, some of these adults will start to ‘pop’ up and have the confidence and desire to lead in bigger ways.

Youth Evangelism in a post modern world Part 2

Darin Stevens continues his exploration......

PAST EXPERIENCE
We were fortunate enough to receive lots of training during our formative years in how to share our faith.  We sat in youth ministry classes at university and seminary and travelled for multiple summers on overseas mission teams.  It was invaluable experience that grounded our relationship with God and gave us the courage to talk with others about God.

We were excited to put this training and experience into action as we moved to Bicester, England.  We knew we would have lots of opportunities in the schools and community to talk with people about God, many of whom would be thinking about faith for the first time.  We were ready to share the good news about Jesus, answer questions about the existence of God, objections to the credibility of the Bible and questions about the historical reality of the resurrection. Our expectations were met and exceeded as we almost immediately engaged in spiritual conversations and started to meet with young people to explore faith.

But a funny (actually very frustrating) thing started to happen as we engaged with these teenagers.  We soon discovered they really didn’t have too many problems with the classic objections to the Christian faith.  On the contrary, we found most teens have some level of faith in the existence of God.  They accept a person named Jesus actually lived and probably rose from the dead and they have either a positive curiosity or at least neutral view of the Bible.  So it seemed we were wasting a lot of time answering questions they did not have.  How frustrating is that!  
We finally grew tired of answering questions people were not asking.  We had to figure out a different way.  

But we had never been trained to answer the type of question we kept hearing. That is, Why should faith mean anything to me?  In fact on reflection, it seems to us that relevance is the key apologetical question of this generation.  How do you connect teenagers who have grown up in a post-Christian culture with a God who seems so irrelevant?

PAST METHODS
How can we help lead teenagers toward faith in God?  It’s good to ask what has been done before.  I mean, why reinvent the wheel if someone has already figured this out?  

We found we could not rely on our past experience or training, so what about going back to Jesus to see what we can learn.  That seems like an appropriate place to start, yes?  What did Jesus do?  Encountering the person of Jesus has shaped how I share my faith.  I see how to live in an attractive way, how to ask good questions and how to help people get off the fence.  But the frustration I run into when I look at Jesus’ approach to people is this; Jesus was already starting with a primarily Jewish audience who were raised to believe in God.  So there is a lot that just does not translate to the young people I work with.  The teens I work with have not been raised to believe anything.  

Ok, how about the Apostle Paul?  His audience was primarily Greeks who did not know God, so maybe we can find some clues from him.  Paul’s message to the Greeks in Athens continues to be used as a great example of how to lead people toward the gospel.
But I am again left questioning.  Paul’s audience did not know God, but they did have spiritual beliefs, misguided beliefs to be sure, but at least it was a starting point.  Paul was able to start with their belief in many gods and use that as a springboard to the gospel.  But the teenagers we relate to typically have no developed spiritual beliefs.

Both Jesus and Paul’s methods leave me with nagging questions about how to share my faith effectively today.  So what have others been doing?  A quick look at the available evangelism tools and curriculum from the past 50 years or so until the present quickly reveals an emphasis on the ‘harvesting,’ or commitment stage.  They help challenge people to commit to something they have some basic understanding of, but have not yet accepted personally.  
In the UK less than 1% of teenagers attend church. It has been said there is ‘no residue’ of the Jesus story left among teenagers here today.  So while they have heard of Jesus, they have no real understanding of him.  In short, you cannot ask people to commit to Someone they have never really met.  

So the tools from the previous generations do not help young people start the journey.  How about the recent emphasis on the need to present the Big Story or metanarrative of the Bible?  This is a step in the right direction because it addresses the fact you cannot simply start with Jesus and expect people to understand the gospel.  Instead, we have to go back to the beginning and tell the whole story of God’s plan to rescue humanity.  In many ways, this is what Paul was doing in Athens.  
While I find this new emphasis helpful and one we use in grounding already Christians in their faith, it still seems like one step too far along to serve as a starting point.  I need to know how to help people want to start the journey

So is it hopeless to think we can help teenagers get interested in God and start a faith journey?

Youth Evangelism in a post modern world Part 3

Darin Stevens concludes his exploration.......

A NEW APPROACH
One of my youth ministry professors always liked to quote the proverb about leading a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. “That is true, she said, but you can feed the horse salt!”

So how do we ‘salt’ the young people of this generation to even be interested in God in the first place? How do we help them begin a faith journey that ends in a restored relationship with the Father?

Over time and with much discussion, we have developed a process we think helps invite the young people of this generation into a restored relationship with God. It begins by helping people see the relevance of exploring faith and starting a journey towards God. We have been trialling and adapting this process with teenagers in the last few years and have been encouraged with how it has worked. And while the process is geared mainly for a group setting, I find myself using this process in my own conversations with people.

STAGES OF A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

1. Realise I am a Spiritual Being
As we begin, we attempt to answer the question, ‘what does it mean to be spiritual?’ We try to show that all humans are spiritual. Each of us has a mind, a body and a soul and we all have thoughts and feelings that cannot be attributed to just the mind or just the body. We humans today spend most of our time trying to develop our mind or satisfy our body, but we rarely think about the spiritual part of us.

Most of the focus in this stage is on trying to ‘bubble’ up spiritual thoughts and feelings. We work through things like our response to suffering, our attempts to connect with someone or something bigger than ourselves and our questions about an afterlife. When one of these thoughts or feelings gets exposed, we point to it and say, ‘there, that is a spiritual thought or feeling.’

Key Question: Do you agree that you are spiritual?

Invitation: Do you want to talk more about how to be filled spiritually?


2. Explore the Relevance of a Connection with God
What difference does it make to have God in your life? As Christians, we believe the God of the Bible is the one to fill us up spiritually and complete us as humans. We spend time comparing and contrasting biblical, historical and modern examples of people who claim to have God in their life and those who claim to not want anything to do with God.

As we explore the life stories of people from Joseph (yes, the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat one) to Corrie TenBoom to Homer Simpson to Christian teenagers in our group we ask, ‘what difference does it make for these people to have God in their lives or not in their lives?

Key Question: Do you see the positive difference God makes in people’s lives?

Invitation: Do you want to find out more?


3. Encounter the Person of Jesus as one Fully Connected with God
If ever there were a person to look at and consider what difference God makes in a life it would be Jesus. Jesus was a human who claimed to have God fully in his life. We are not trying to make the theological point here about Jesus being fully God and fully man at the same time. And we are not yet presenting Jesus as the one who takes away our sins to make us right with God. At this stage, we are simply presenting Jesus as a human who is the best example of what effect it has to be fully filled with God.

We show that because Jesus had God in his life, he cared for other people, he was actually a religious rebel, he helped and healed the sick, he was a good friend and he could talk directly with God.

Key Question: Do you want to have God in your life?

Invitation: Do you want to find out how to have God in your life?

(Incidentally if people say they do not want God in their life or don’t seem very interested, we say, ‘that’s ok, we still want to get together as friends. But there’s probably not much point in continuing to explore this if you are not interested in God.’)

4. Discover how to Re-Connect with God
If you want God to fill up your life, it is important we look more closely at the person of Jesus. Jesus is the one who can bring you to God. In this stage we present the key concepts of the gospel that most evangelistic tools and curriculum start with. We present the problem of sin, God’s eternal plan to rescue humans, our inability to get back to God on our own and Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

Some may think this is too far along the journey to bring up sin. They may argue that we need to start with showing people they are sinners. “Help them see they are on a sinking ship and then they will want to reach out for the life preserver. But this isn’t really the issue we face. The young people I talk with are not reluctant to admit sin. (many young people I talk with want to share with me all the sordid details of recent sins they committed!) So the problem isn’t willingness to admit sin. The problem is again relevance. Why does my sin matter? If I do not see the point of having God in my life, the fact that my sin stands between us doesn’t really bother me.

Invitation: Do you want to start a relationship with God?


5. Start a New Relationship with God
If God has already figured out a way to bring me back to Him, what do I have to do? In this stage, we try to uncover perceptions about what has to change in a person’s life to allow God to come into it. We answer questions and continue to scatter in faith stories of Christian teenagers from our group. We help young people start a relationship with God by asking Him to be their rescuer and leader.

As I mentioned, we have been trialling this process and we have been encouraged by how well it has worked, especially in helping teenagers start thinking about God. We still have a lot of questions and we are continually introducing new methods as we go along to reinforce these concepts.

We invite you to share your thoughts and ideas as you try to help teenagers in your context make their spiritual journeys toward God.

 Darin Stevens is a youth worker with Reign UK which offers training programme for missionally minded youth workers up to Bachelors level. There are presently funded vacancies for European youth workers to be train and study from a local church base in the UK. For more information visit www.icy.org.uk or contact Darin  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Youth Evangelism in a post modern world. Part 1

Youth Evangelism in a post modern world. Part 1- Darin Stevens

I was recently helping out at a weekly youth drop in and only one teenager showed up.  Ian was 18 and had come along for a couple years now to kick the football around and shoot some pool.  Occasionally we had group discussions about God, but Ian usually kept quiet and didn’t show a lot of interest in the conversation. Well, on this particular night I was surprised when Ian decided to stick around, despite the social awkwardness of being the only teenager around.  We made small talk while shooting pool and then Gemma*, the other youth volunteer, and I started talking about God.  The two of us had never really had a chance to get to know each other because of the usual noise and chaos.  But on this night, we ended up having a half-hour conversation about how God first came into our lives and changed us. Ian listened quietly to the entire conversation (while thrashing me around the pool table). 

I was so excited that Ian had been around to hear us talk openly and meaningfully about God.  I was dying to know what he thought.  So on the way out I asked, “What did you make of all that?  That’s probably the most conversation you’ve heard about God in a long time, huh?”
“Yeah it was interesting,” he replied.  (then silence)
“So did it make you want to think about things some more?”
“Hmmm…I don’t know.  I think it’s good that you have faith and that it’s helped you.  I know it’s real for a lot of people. (silence again) But I’ve never been able to really see the point of it for me.”  
And that was that.  Ian didn’t say anything else.  
What could I say?  Gemma and I had just shared some of our most vulnerable experiences; God had brought healing from the loss of a loved one, acceptance in the midst of a painful broken relationship, peace and purpose to life.  It was so real and so relevant.  And yet Ian could not relate any of this to his own life.  How could he miss it?  

We spend most of our time in youth ministry trying to get teenagers interested in God in the first place, trying to help them start a spiritual journey.  We often ask ourselves, ‘How do you help a young person in the 21st century come to faith?  They just don’t see the real world connection of God to their own lives.’  We know many other Christians are asking these same questions.  Like you, we are learning (and having to re-learn!) a lot as we go.  Over the next few weeks I'll share our discoveries on the way.

Darin Stevens is a leader of Reign Ministries which networks and trains youth leaders in the UK. In partnership with ICY UK, they offer European youth leaders funded opportunities to train and get youth ministry experience in the UK. Visit www.icyuk.com