The New Church Youth Worker

March 1, 2008 by RevLurch.

I’ve never been the “Pied Piper” type pastor, especially with youth, because I’m just not cool enough. The kids think I’m uncool so I don’t try to hide my uncoolness. (is that even a word)

For our Middle School confirmation program we use the Faith Inkubators model. I hesitate to call it a curriculum because it is a whole lot more than that. You have to really teach and interact with the kids and embrace the whole concept rather than just teaching at kids one day a week.

I received their monthly e-newsletter today and found an article by Pete Erickson that talks about the reality of being a “youth worker” today.

Back in an old Faith Inkubators newsletter (sometime around 1997), I wrote that the days of the traditional “Do Everything, Be Everything, ‘Pied Piper’” youth worker/minister are over. This should be nothing new. However, it seems that a few churches still haven’t received this memo.

There are a landfill of resource books and seminar tapes on which icebreakers to do and which Bible studies to lead, but all the great resources in the world can’t stop many great missionaries from flaming out. How does this continue to happen?

We could point our fingers in a lot of directions: pop culture, poor parenting, Facebook, whatever; but as my mother used to say, “When you point your finger at someone, you have three others pointing back at you.”

Yes, we as a church still need to take the blame for the futility of some of our youth programs. We continue to give permission to parents to drop off children so we can train up their child. We still can’t handle the volume or the problems that accompany this. What can we do?

That is the question these days isn’t it? What can we do? Pete has some ideas. Read them here. Then, after you read them, feel free to post some of your own here.

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