Okay, we're going to go ahead and get started.
We're running a couple minutes behind, but
I think we're all mic'd up now and ready to go.
I'm just curious, before we begin, how
many in the room are employed as youth
ministers at the moment? Give me a show of
hands. Okay.
Secondary question, non-related. How many of
you all came today specifically to be a
part of the youth ministry component of
lectureship? Maybe you're not here for the
whole thing,
but you are here for today. Okay. This is kind
of an experiment. This is the first time
we've done this at lectureship, and we're
curious to see how many people will be involved
if we start having more youth ministry-related
courses. So just kind of an informal poll
there. My name is Dave Blanchard. I'm a student
here at ACU. I did Youth ministry for five
years in Portland, Oregon. Moved down here last
fall. I'm working on my Master of Divinity,
and I'm surrounded by a bunch of people with a
lot more experience and wisdom than what
I have, so I'm going to be quiet real soon and
let you hear from them. In a minute, we're
going to begin a group discussion, and when we
do, I'm going to ask David to start us
around the table, and if you all would just
introduce yourselves, tell us where you're
from and maybe a little bit about your youth
ministry background, and then we'll jump into
some questions here on our sheets. Before we
do, I want to call your attention to our
schedule for the day. I've written it on the
board. We were given a three-hour chunk of
time, which seems like a lot of time all at
once, so we're going to try to break it up
a little bit so you can stretch your legs. If
you need to get up between these sessions
and leave or skip one and come back for
another, you're not going to hurt anybody's feelings,
but basically every hour on the hour, we'll
shift gears and we'll transition into some
different subject matter, so that's just FYI.
Buddy, could I ask you to start us out in
a prayer, and then go ahead and introduce
yourselves around the table. We'll jump right
in. Father, we're grateful for the cool weather
outside. We're grateful for the rain we
received. More than those things, we are
grateful for
what you've done in our lives and the lives of
those around us in the spiritual community.
Pray, Father, for youth ministries around this
country and around the world as they
impact the lives of adolescents. Pray, Father,
that as you allow us access into those young
lives, that we will be good stewards and that
we will lift you up and they in turn will
lift you up. Pray, Father, that your grace will
always attend with us and that we will
always be aware of it and celebrate it. We are
grateful for all this in the name of your
Son, Jesus. Amen. My name is David Fraze. I'm
the Director
of Youth Ministry at Lubbock Christian, and
also a part-time family minister at the Broadway
Church of Christ, and also the interim youth
minister at the Broadway Church of Christ.
I don't sleep very much. I've been in youth
ministry for a while. I was at Greenlawn Church
of Christ for over 13 years doing youth
ministry. Was out for a few years working just purely
at the university. Started working at the South
Place Church of Christ with students,
just primarily college-age students, and now
started ministry at Broadway. So that's my
ministry background and experience. Buddy
Mills, youth minister at University
Church of Christ here in Abilene. I've been in
youth ministry full-time for 25 years,
minus a six-month stint of general craziness.
I've been at university for 13 years, also
worked in Albuquerque, Little Rock, and Dallas
for a little bit. Started out my ministry
years as a pulpit minister in Batesville,
Arkansas after graduating from Harding, and
then started doing youth ministry after that.
Always felt like I've had a passion for kids
that hasn't diminished over those years, and
still love having the opportunity to work
with students every day. I'm Van Conwell. I'm
the connecting minister
at the Southern Hills Church here in Abilene. I
was involved in full-time youth ministry
for 29 years. I feel like, in some ways, I'm
still able to do a lot of good youth ministry.
Not necessarily wearing that title, but really
have a heart for students. I guess that's
it. I'm Kevin Huddleston. Graduated from Abilene
Christian University a few years ago. Spent two
years in East Texas in Marshall as youth
minister, and have been at the Johnson Street
Church in San Angelo for almost 19 years now.
I love youth ministry. I love kids, and it's a
great thing.
My name is Sarah Campbell. I am a youth
minister, one of two, at Highland Church of
Christ here
in Abilene. I've been on staff at Highland for
the last five years, intern, resident,
intern Youth ministry team, and then a year and
a half ago, I got hired on full-time as
a second youth minister at Highland. You'll
notice we're gathered around a table
today, and if you've wondered what the extra
chair is for, we met together a few weeks
ago to talk about how we would like this
conversation to flow today, some of the issues
we'd like
to address, and we were seated around a table
similar to this, and the more we talked, the
more it became evident to us that what we were
hoping to engage our group in today is
a discussion, one in which no one on this panel
here sees themselves as having all the
answers or any quick fixes to youth ministry,
but these are servants. These are people that
struggle with the same things that you and I
struggle with in their own spiritual walk,
and so rather than having a panel of experts
that's going to tell us how to do youth ministry,
we wanted to just pull up some chairs around a
table, and the empty chair is yours. That
represents those of us in this room, that we're
engaging in this conversation. Certainly
we look out and recognize we have a lot to
learn from you as well, so we hope we'll have
some time to talk to you between these sessions
or later on this afternoon if you can stick
around. The white cards that are passing
around, if
you came in late, if you have a question that
you'd like to have addressed, go ahead and
write it on. Just send that down my way, and if
we've got time, we'll try to get to it.
Otherwise we're going to dive right in. Tell us
today, discuss some of the positive developments
in youth ministry over the last 20 years. In
what ways are we doing a better job now
than we have in the past? I'll jump in. One of
the first things I've
noticed is that the profession of youth
ministry is beginning to come of age. It's
still a
very young profession even now. When we study
the history of youth ministry, we aren't able
to look too deeply into our own fellowship and
our own past. We have to look into a lot
of other places to find out where that began.
We have learned a lot, but we as a brotherhood
of the Church of Christ, we still learn a
little slowly and we stay a little bit behind
the curve. Developmentally among our vocation,
I would
say that we are a far more professional group
than we used to be. The expectations of somebody
coming in and getting a job in Youth ministry,
if you had a bachelor's degree in anything,
they saw that as a guy who was a candidate for
a youth minister, and even if he was a
guy who hadn't finished college and was just a
hard worker, he'd be considered. We see
that as a big development that we've
experienced in the coming years in the higher expectation
of education. The other thing that I'd like to
say in that
regard is the idea of youth Ministry 20 years
ago was more likely to be seen as a natural,
cool, fun place that kids would show up and do.
It was the thing, or more likely to be
the thing. In today's times, it's one of many,
many, many things that compete for the kids'
times. That makes our youth ministry have to
become a little brighter, a little sharper,
in some cases more sophisticated, in some cases
it has to be more rudimentary, more
foundational. Both ends of the spectrum, but
it's got to be smarter today than it was 20
years ago. It seems like 20 years ago, a
successful youth
ministry was based and judged on how many
things were on the calendar. I know I can
look back at even some of my old calendars from
a lot of years ago and think, how did
we do so much and why did we do so much? I
think we've begun to realize that you don't
have to have something every single night
because the kids have something every single
night anyways. But when we do have an activity,
it needs to be solid. It needs to be something
that kind of picks the kids up from where
they're at and gives them, in my mind, a safe
place, a place where they can rest. I'll throw
a book out at you, Mark Iaconelli's Contemplative
Youth Ministry, right now it really speaks just
to that. Now it's okay to say, you know,
tonight, rather than having a big messy event,
you know, tonight we're going to spend some
time in prayer and the kids respond to that. I
think they're longing for something that's
real and authentic. They're bombarded with so
much information and so much going on in
the world right now, especially with access to
the internet, that it's got to be authentic
and real and it's got to be something that
they're willing or able to give up their time
to actually be a part of and get something out
of. So I think that's a big thing. I think
our guys are starting to think as well. Buddy's
right, we usually, what the standard joke,
we're 10 years behind the Baptists and, you
know, whether it's family life centers or
something of that nature, we take it and we
think we were being original. I had a really
eye-opening experience at Fuller Seminary for
two reasons. One, having a doctorate in
youth ministry is an oxymoron in the
theological community. They don't know where to
put people
like that. But we went around the room and I
know most of us are from our faith, tradition,
churches of Christ, and I was kind of floored.
They knew me and we were friends, about 12
of us for four years. We were describing each
other's denominational background, talking
about discipleship, and they stopped me when I
started talking about unity, movement, and
the love of the word. They're like, no, no, no,
y'all are a hybrid Protestant cult. And
I'm like, whoa, that's the international guys.
And they're like, no, it's y'all, not you,
Dave, but you have your own universities, you
publish to yourself, you do your own thing,
you're not part of the dialogue. And seriously,
the only name from churches of Christ that
ever came up in the history of youth ministry
was not even a youth minister, it was Royce
Money in a book that he wrote on family
ministry. We've been non-existent, and so we've taken
things and we've baptized it, whether it's
purpose-driven, son life, or whatever, and
our movement, who prides itself on thinking, we
just take everybody else's, and we weren't
thinking about our own ministry context. And I
think what we're doing, especially in our
church, is training our guys how to think
organically, the stuff that the generation
before mine, sorry, buddy. We've all been doing
this a long time, but it seems kind
of common sense. There's a generation right
after mine that they just weren't thinking
anymore. I think we're beginning to develop
that again. How do you do Youth ministry in
Abilene, Lubbock, or how do you do it in San
Angelo, so it'll hit there. And so we're beginning
to be noticed, and I don't say that in a
prideful way, but people are starting to say, hey,
you're giving to the discipline of youth
ministry, and not only adapting it. And I think that's
something that I'm proud of, because a lot of
guys are staying in ministry longer, and
they're giving back to the professions that
have gone to the big boy ministries. So that's good.
Let me ask a follow-up question. We're
discussing positive developments in youth
ministry in
the past 20 years. Is there anything that we
have lost? Are there practices or routines
that seem to have diminished in that time that
maybe we need to reconsider or reconstitute
in our ministries?
I would say, I don't think this is necessarily
something that we've lost, but I think something
that we need to be very aware of. I think we
need to be very aware of our roots, and
that we need to, there are some traditions that
we have that are good traditions. I think
we live in a culture where kids have very few
things to really tie themselves to the
past. I think we need to celebrate where we
have come from, but not let it necessarily
hold us down to keep us from exploring and
expanding and recreating again.
I think, too, when youth ministry within our
fellowship was younger, and there were fewer
of us out there, there was more of a sense of
camaraderie and networking and being there
for each other. I've been a bit disappointed
lately. It appears that we are operating much
more independently of each other. I was aware
of a guy this summer in another state who
had been in the church for less than a year and
really struggling, really struggling in
his ministry. As I began to just ask him some
questions, he had no one that he was talking
to on a consistent basis, no mentoring
individual. I realized that was something that
was so
critical to me. Because there was a very
generous sense of sharing at that time, no one thought
any less of anyone for saying, hey, I've got a
problem, I've got an issue, I'm struggling
with something. I think partly because we have
gotten more professional and mature and
bigger that there is a sense that we do not
open ourselves up as honestly and openly.
We are not as quick to network. That was one of
the things that blessed me over and over
again was an awareness that I could call the
big Don Williams, the Jim Mosses, the Wally
Wilkersons at any time, and they would make
time to talk with me. I tried to be that for
younger youth ministers, but I'm sensing that's
one of the things that might be slipping away
from us that I really think we need to restore,
that sense that we are in this together and
that we have a great deal to offer to each
other and that we make ourselves available
in that way.
Let me tag on to that one piece. Lubbock Youth
Minister Seminar 100,000 years ago, it was
myself, another youth minister, and we were the
young pups at this one. We were struggling
with all those first 10 years of youth ministry
things, first 5 years of youth ministry things.
As we did that, we were like, boy, we really
wish we could sit down with this particular
- it was John Paul Blankenship. But he was
running the seminar at that point, and we
didn't feel like we could - we didn't feel like
we had a right to access him in
the midst of all his business. I don't know who
told him that we had that conversation,
but he showed up at my motel room door and
says, who was the guy you were talking to?
And I went and called him, and we went down and
had a coke together. He said, listen,
we've got to stick together if we're going to
survive this. I went home to Little Rock,
Arkansas, and I got together with six guys in
town, and I said those very words, we've
got to stick together. We understand one
another's stuff, and we understand the whole thought
of a terrible rotten, no good, very bad day.
From a youth minister standpoint, we understand
it, and it doesn't take a lot of words to
describe it. I decided on that day, same thing
that Vance was talking about, that I wanted to
be accessible, and that I was going to
make myself vulnerable, and that I wasn't going
to get too far away from that and close
all those doors in around me. I would just
invite all of you to go out of here with the
assumption that other youth ministers are going
to be open to that, and that you need
to be open to it, and then pursue it. But
you'll have to pursue it.
I think part of the problem with becoming more
professional is that now they've made
a youth minister, a social worker, an
activities director. They made them all these different
things, and most of us at the table came
because we just wanted to introduce kids to Jesus,
and it was a great time to do that. Now we have
all these different skill sets. That
is a good thing, but the bad thing is it gives
a perception, and I'm not so sure we were
never always busy. I don't know if that's good
grammar. But you do have to pursue, but
I think there's a lot of guys who've been doing
this for a while that get a thrill out
of being pulled by the sleeve. Can we go have a
cup of coffee or something? Because that
gives old people meaning. Did you quit pointing
at me? I'm pointing because he showed up on
the day my wife and I were on our honeymoon. It
was awesome. At the Ski slope, he was there.
His face was still red. It was awesome. But I
found out it's weird doing youth ministry
so long. You go to our conference now, and now
all of a sudden you become the older person,
and it is a thrill to be able to sit down and
talk. I think sometimes churches, because
we're competing for kids, I'll go ahead and say
it. We hire the sharp youth ministry who
can speak and have the skill set because elders
know if we build a good children's ministry,
build it, they will come. That has a downside
to it because we have a tendency to just rip
off sheep from other flocks. And so we began
number driven, and so youth ministers feel
like they're in competition and not trying to
work at it together. So in a lot of our
big cities, the day of the citywide youth
service, it just doesn't happen as much anymore
because this group likes instruments, this
group doesn't, and we get caught up in the
stuff that youth ministers used to be able to
stay away from. And now that's kind of
a downside. And I would add to that a downside
is I think some guys coming out, they don't
have an appreciation for theology and the Bible.
If you're going to have division and
fight, at least know what you're fighting about.
And I don't think some of our guys
don't have the argument, which hurts the unity.
They just say, I don't like you, so you're
the conservative church, the progressive
church, and they don't even know how to have
the argument.
But they know a lot about youth ministry
expert, what they write. Well, Bible knowledge, that's
a, I'm afraid we may be taking a step back.
Hopefully not, but...
I'm going to shift gears a little bit and ask a
big two-part question, one that we probably
can't cover completely in the time we have, but
we'll take a stab. What are the more difficult
aspects of being a youth minister? That's part
one. So what are the hard parts? Part
two is, in what ways may a church family help
support you as you deal with these pressures?
The parents of your teenagers, your leadership,
your ministry staff. So what is difficult
and how can those people around you support you
and help you through those times?
I think a difficulty, a challenge for me was
always such a large constituent group that
you were focusing ministry on, because you're
talking students and their parents, and then
larger church family that you're also
interacting with, and then deacons and
eldership. You
have to have substantial skills in interacting
with a large population of people. And particularly
I've talked to some younger youth ministers who
say, all I want to do is be with the kids.
I just want to be with the kids. And almost
immediately they begin to flounder because
they don't have an appreciation for the fact
that they need to be interacting with mom
and dad and other people within the church
family who want to have relationship, want
to see that. I think the other thing that I've
noticed that's a difficulty is a lot
of times a church, I think an area we've grown
is more churches understand why they want
to have a youth minister and a youth ministry,
as opposed to just doing it because a church
across town does it. But I think sometimes
still there's this attitude that we're having
a youth minister come in because he or she is
going to take care of our kids, lead them
to the Lord, fix everything that might be wrong
with them, which is an enormous burden.
And then some people come in and believe that
they can accomplish that by themselves. And
then almost immediately they begin to struggle.
And I've talked to so many younger youth ministers
who are calling me and they've built the
ministry around them. And I think that's one of the
real struggles, to not see the ministry as to
be built around me. Because when you're
into it four or five years and then you've
decided that you're dying in that model, it's
very difficult to shift. Because you've
communicated to the church that it's all about
me, I have
come here to be the Savior to your youth, fix
everything. You're not discipling other
people who are going to be involved in ministry
alongside you.
And so about year four, when you start to run
dry, and my sense is, the guys I've talked
to, if you're working that model, you end up
burned out, frustrated, and your tenure
is maxed out at about five years. I've never
seen anybody stay at a church longer than
five years that's working that model. So if
you're looking for long tenure, you first
of all got to understand that you're relating
to a large constituent group, more than just
students. You've got to see that. You've got to
develop a skill set to be able to relate
to all those people. And for some folks, that's
very difficult. If you come out and you say,
I just want to hang out with the kids, then
there again, you're kind of predisposing yourself
to really be struggling in that. How can the
church family help, I think, to first of all,
engage you in that kind of thinking? I think
immediately, if you're new to a church, or
if you're in a church and struggling with this
sort of thing, you've got to find some
people that can be mentors, that can come
alongside of you, that can be spiritual examples
to you. You need to reach out to a larger
network of people, other youth ministers.
And you really need to be calling the church
alongside of you. I have been convinced for
a long time that one of our primary roles is
not to do all the ministry to the kids,
but to equip church to minister to its
students, to equip church. And so our role has become
more of an equipper of those who are going to
be involved in ministry. Church can help
us by coming alongside of us and joining us in
that. And Sarah would add?
I was just agreeing. I think coming from
undergrad and going into, well, I did Grad
school and
then started full time. I was very much under
that impression. And even working under a
model that I worked with Jim Hinkle for a long
time in Highland, and even under that
model, it was so not that way. It wasn't just
the kids, it was parents, it was all-encompassing.
But I was under the assumption, well, I love
hanging out with kids, and I love doing ministry
with kids. And that was my total focus. And it
wasn't until Jim ended up moving back
to Memphis, and I became the only one on staff
for a while, that I realized, oh, I got to
have conversations with parents. And I'm
equipping over 100 volunteers that are working
with our youth group on a basis throughout the
year. And so that, I completely agree
with you. The other thing for me, coming out
of, or starting full time was, that was the
hardest for me, was the unexpected. You sit in
a class and they tell you all these different
things, but it doesn't become a reality until
it actually happens. Whether it's a disgruntled
parent that calls you and is upset about
something that's going on, and you really don't know
what to say or how to deal with it, to the
unexpected, which happened two weeks after
I was on full time, which was an accident where
one of the kids in my youth group was
killed on the way home from a youth group event.
So those things, the unexpected would
be a big thing for me, because it's just the
surprises that catch you completely off guard
that you have to learn and grow from through
experience that nothing prior to you can prepare
you for.
I want to give you a resource. Houston Heflin
is at the Richland East Church in, well, Richland.
And he has done kind of a skill set, skill
search, skill evaluation that allows ministry
leaders, youth ministers, to kind of look at
themselves and look at their ministry folks
that kind of ranks them between five different
elements. And I don't want to go through too
much of it, but basically, you know, are you
more pastoral or are you more prophetic in
the way that you do your ministry? Do you like
to come in there and make peace with
kids and work with parents and make peace with
what's going on, or are you trying to
lead in a bolder way? And so you find yourself
somewhere between those. Where is your strength
in that? You might also apply that to a youth
committee, Youth ministry team, to where you'd
say, well, where are the people on this
ministry team? Where are their strengths? Where Sarah
comes in and encounters a traumatic experience
two weeks in, where are her strengths in that?
And then where are her deficiencies in that?
And who's here to pick that up? We have been
asked to be all things to all people. As much
as we are capable, we will be. But there's
some things we are not equipped to do, and
that's why you've got to work with the other
folks in your congregation. School's not over
just because you started a job. School's really
just gotten more intense. And you've got to
learn who those people are, learn what their
skills are. So if you get on to Houston, talk
to him about this PowerPoint thing that he
did in his class that he teaches, and it will
bless the way that you go about ministry,
and it will bless the adults as they evaluate
themselves and you as a youth minister or
you on a youth committee. Richson East in Richson.
To add to that, where the church family, if it
weren't for the Highland Church family,
I don't think I would have been able to survive
that time. All I knew how to do at that time
was to love on kids and love on family because
I was in crisis mode as well. And so I had
to know who the counselors were in the
congregation and who to hook my kids up with
when I couldn't
be that for them. And when it happened, Jim
Hinkle and I were working together, and he
was still back in Dallas, Fort Worth, and I was
here in Abilene. And I remember talking
to him on the phone right after it happened
saying, I can't do this alone. I can't do
this alone. And he goes, you're not going to do
it alone. You have your youth elders.
And I was quickly surrounded by people from the
family that helped me through that. And
David Fraze was one who ended up coming and
speaking to our youth group the Sunday after
it happened because Jim and I didn't have words
for them. And so you have to use the
church family in those unexpected times.
I want to say another difficult thing, too. One
of the things I've always been concerned
about as to how our fellowship has approached
youth ministry is we graduate individuals
and all of a sudden, maybe four years ago, they
were in the youth group, and now they
are leading the youth group. We jump people
into the deep water pretty quickly. And our
approach has been, as far as I can observe,
it's kind of the sink or swim approach. In
my class of youth ministry, almost within three
to four years, 50% of the guys that
started youth ministry alongside of me were
gone at that point. A lot of them were selling
insurance because they couldn't handle it. They
had a bad experience with an eldership.
They'd been indiscreet in some aspect of their
life. They'd fallen victim to sin. And then
another three years out, that graduating class
for me became even smaller.
I find it difficult. One of the things we would
not do, we wouldn't allow someone after
four years of school to practice medicine on
our children. But we do pretty quickly
allow someone to practice ministry on our
children without much training or background.
And I know some people come into that
experience with the belief that, I was not
admired in
my youth group experiences, but now as a youth
minister, everybody's going to love me. They
go in for those kinds of reasons. They go in
for reasons that are not very healthy.
And those folks are immediately immersed in a
youth ministry setting. I think that's a
real struggle. I think one of the things that
church has got to do, church has got to find
ways, and we've got church leaders here and
others, we've got to find ways to, if we want
to reverse that trend, and I think it's still
prevalent to a degree, because I still see
so many youth ministers that are crashing and
burning after just a couple of years.
I think we've got to find better ways to
communicate expectations. We've got to find
better ways
to be alongside of individuals in ministry to
mentor them. We have got to see this more
as a partnership and not as somebody who's now
in charge. And then when they explode,
we just move somebody in behind them. And part
of the problem is those churches which
are inclined to grind youth ministers are the
ones that are most quickly looking for
someone else. And who's the first one up for
that? Someone with no experience, right out
of school. And so they step into the meat
grinder there. And we see men and women just
constantly marching in and out and having bad
experiences, and some leave youth ministry,
and some basically say, I'm going to turn my
back on church because of this. We've got
to find ways together to take care of each
other better. And I think partly what that
means too is younger youth ministers, you can't
go into it thinking you know everything.
You can't go into it being prideful and saying,
I'm smart, I'm now leading this. You've got
to be willing to look for some people to say,
come alongside of me, mentor me, help me,
guide me. You've got to be willing to do that
when you partner with a church in that way.
If not, the likelihood that any given group of
youth ministers as they step off will remain
intact for any time. People tell me, I've never
talked to anybody that said, I hope
I have a very short tenure in Youth ministry.
But I guarantee if you approach it that way,
you will have a short tenure in Youth ministry.
The life expectancy is pretty low. And I don't
know of any other, I mean business doesn't do
this. Business would not jump people in
with that level of expectation without
preparing them and training them and mentoring them
I just want to add to what you guys have said.
I know we've talked about our role in ministry
with parents and working with the elders and
everything. It is essential that youth ministers
nurtures a relationship with a peer group in
the congregation. And you know, if I just
look at my schedule today, there are a dozen,
maybe two dozen, but as you had in middle
school, different football games that I could
go to this week. But sometime I've got to
say, I've got to close the zoo. I've got to
shut this down. I've got a wife and two
girls that need a husband and need a dad. And I
need to stop and be with them. When
I first got to San Angelo in the very first
week I was there, I had one of our elders,
he came up and met with me for about an hour
and we just had a great time. Then afterwards
we walked out to my car and he said, now I
can't make you do this. But I want to just
encourage you, once a month, you and Shelly
leave here on the weekend and you guys get
out of town and you just be husband and wife.
Forget about everything else here, you take
care of your family. There's a resource, Youth
Ministry Management
Tools, that has every form that you'd ever want.
And actually if you're interviewing
youth ministers, what they did was take people
from all over the board and got their questions
and came up with a series of questions for
youth ministers to ask potential congregations
and church leaders to ask youth ministers. It's
really a neat thing and it goes into
all these time management accountability issues.
But again, if you have nice leadership like
what we're talking about, guys that are older
that'll come alongside and say, take a break.
I got in trouble, Lisa and I, this first year
at Greenlawn, we had been married a year,
she was 19, I think I was 21. And they're like,
here, have this church youth group.
I look back on it and think how ridiculous. But
I appreciate the opportunity. And one
of our deacons stopped us and said, you have
taught every Wednesday and every Sunday for
the last three or four years. I'd done some
intern work and they're like, we're going
to tell on you. And went to the elders and
said, you have to go to class for yourself.
And it wasn't until I was in youth ministry
eight years before I think I actually went
to an adult class for myself. And I'm blessed
to have a wonderful wife and great friends
that supported me in youth ministry, but I
didn't know my own peers, except those that
worked in my ministry with me. And that was a
dangerous situation to be in.
I think one thing I love about the resources
and like what Houston has developed and other
things that help you interview right, and
hopefully you're hearing us saying this, sometimes
youth ministers and churches aren't partnered
up very well. They haven't interviewed well.
And so you think you know a church and you
think you know the person you're hiring. I
want you to be aware that you can say the same
thing, but mean different things. For
instance, this is a big deal of a church. I
won't tell you which one that's having a
hard time keeping a youth minister. And the
first question was, do you believe in the
inspiration and unerring quality of the Word of
God? That is a loaded question in the church
today, folks. I don't know if you know that.
Everybody coming out, any one of our schools
will say, sure. But what that question meant
when I started checking with the eldership
is do you interpret this Bible the way we did
in 1950? Two definitions. So the youth
minister comes in and says, I think I want to
bring families into the youth ministry
and I want them to help teach class. And an
eldership can say, no, no, that's
your job. And it gets, it can get that
different because of the way questions are
asked. So
if you are a church leader and you're having a
hard time with the youth ministry, go back
and look at your questions and see if they make
sense within the context of some of these
young men and women coming out. You may see
that some of the questions you're asking may
not get the information you want. And so we may
be parting, you know, pairing ourselves
up in bad ways.
And David, you touched on this a little bit
earlier, but I want to ask the rest of the
panel, as we discuss the difficulties we face
in youth ministry, tell us about your spiritual
practices, your personal spiritual practices.
Through what means are you sustained in your
ministry? If you're expected to be the
lifeblood for so many people around you, how is
it that
you stay spiritually healthy? Disciplines,
practices, things of that nature.
Oh, I'm starting. Y'all are looking at me. You
did say David. I yelled it. I didn't yell
because this is on tape. I mouthed at my intern
up there mowing my yard. He did the other
day, but I like to mow my yard. That's why I
have my interns doing that. I really do
find when I can get away from the office, read
something that's not Bible related, please
don't think I'm a pagan, but let my brain kind
of adventure and be creative. Wonderful
weekends with my wife, things that are Sabbath
oriented and a part of Sabbath is play. I
don't have a lot of money because I'm in
ministry to take money, but just leaving, but taking
a little time each day. I love working in my
yard. I love mowing my yard. I love starting
something and finishing something because that
doesn't happen in ministry very often.
They look back and say, oh, the yard looks
great. That gives me a sense of feeling and
completeness this 24 hour day. It sounds funny.
It's from the Bible that cell phones off,
TV's off. I don't think about or do ministry. I
wish I could say I was perfect in that and
I'm not, but that's my goal to Sabbath. That's
my address. You can come mow my yard. I need
some therapy. Thank you. You want me to say
this on the tape where you live? That would
be awesome. Anybody can mow my yard. That'd be
therapeutic for me. Amen. I hate working
in my yard. The things that I do, I've really
gone through a metamorphosis of what I do
to rebuild. For a lot of years, the way I
thought I was rebuilding was by having success
in ministry. That if I had a great retreat, a
great devotional, a great class, something
where I was getting feedback from my church,
whether it be kids or adults, my wife or whoever
it was, that fed me and in a sense gave me the
strength to do the next week, which I
would try to repeat and do well again. That
comes in a lot of different forms in youth
ministry and it is very unhealthy and
unsustainable. You can't keep doing better.
You've got to
find out what you can do and do it well. I
learned from a third grade teacher when I
was explaining how frustrated I was because
what she heard me saying and what I was saying,
what I was hearing myself say was different. I
was saying, I don't think the kids like
me. I don't think the parents like me. I don't
think my leadership appreciates me. I don't
feel appreciated. She stopped me and she said,
you teach the same age group kids 52 weeks
a year and the next year when you had some
graduate and some come into the group, you
teach the same age group kids again that year
and should you live to work a third year,
you teach the same age group kids. How come you
keep raising the bar if you've got the
same age group kids? She said, you're teaching
the third grade every year. In a very real
sense when we can raise the bar in some areas.
What she saw me doing was raising the bar
and ignoring my sixth graders and raising it up
a notch every year. My expectations
of myself, my expectations of the kids, that
yeah I know I had some sixth graders, but
step up. Instead of allowing them to be
spiritually motivated, spiritual learners as
sixth graders
or 7th or 8th or 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th. I was
creating an unsustainable youth ministry
for myself. I think that's part of the reason I
ended up moving several times. It's because
I got to the point I couldn't live up to my own
expectations of myself, self-imposed,
but I sold and bought you in the congregation
and then you expected of me. Then when I couldn't
do it, I was the hardest on myself to do that.
So without lowering the bar, I would remind
you you're teaching the third grade every year.
That helps me now to be healthier as
I look and realize I'm teaching a finite group
of kids. Age group, maturity, while that does
morph a little bit in society and social
surroundings and all that, that helps me. As
far as spiritual
practices, I used to be, because of those
things, very driven as an extrovert. Very
driven as an extrovert. I wanted to be around
people. I wanted to be praised. It was just
that normal deal. In the last five or six
years, I find myself now enlivened, rejuvenated,
reborn in silence. I ride a motorcycle and I
don't recommend that for everybody, but
I took four days and went riding on my bike. It
didn't matter where I went. I was gone.
I came back from that experience and commented
to my wife, I've never had so much fun in
my life. I haven't talked to anybody in four
days. Now I called my wife on the phone. I
had a conversation here and there, but nobody
came to me and said, what do you think? Can
we do? I found myself back with something to
say because I got to read. I got to sit
and listen instead of sit and talk. So silence
is a very surprising spiritual discipline
for me that's come recently. Like you said,
reading both things you'd expect but not class-driven
material and reading things outside of my
circle. I learned to read fiction. I've hated
fiction all my life. Hated fiction. But I've
learned to love fiction by reading to my children.
But I couldn't, I never allowed myself to enjoy
fiction until I enjoyed it because my
children are loving it. I love to read
non-fiction. That's a refresher for me. I think building
off what these guys have said, spiritual
practice that has been a discipline for me is realizing
I do not always have to be the one available to
every student, every parent, everybody.
I had to come to terms with part of a spiritual
gut check on that for me was having to be
okay with the fact other people could extend
ministry. It didn't always have to be me.
If you're trying to be a part of everything
that's happening in the youth group, you've
got to be on every mission trip. For me, one of
the most freeing experiences I ever had
was when we sent out our first mission trip
that I wasn't a part of. You've got to come
to terms with they won't do it exactly like I
do it or they provide leadership a different
way. There are things that go on. If you feel
like you've got to be a part of everything
that goes on, first of all, I'd suggest you
check your motivation for that. Why do you
feel that way? Secondly, I'd say you're going
to guarantee to wear yourself out doing that.
For me, freeing myself up from an expectation,
I always had to do everything. A lot of times
that's imposed on the churches part too. If you
live into that, they'll certainly grow
to expect that. Second thing that's been a real
blessing to me is to seek out intentionally.
I have several people that I seek to provide
spiritual and personal accountability in my
life. I have two of our shepherds in Southern
Hills that I've gone to. I did this in Atlanta
to seek out people. You might think they need
to come to me first, but I suggest you don't
wait for that. If you don't have somebody in
your life and you need to be open and honest,
these are people you can pray with and should.
Part of an expression for me of a relationship
there is to be able to pray deeply and
heartfeltly with those folks. You need to seek
out people
that can provide you that kind of relationship.
It may be then what you're doing as part of
a spiritual discipline in return is you're
finding someone, perhaps a youth worker in
your church, someone else that you are in turn
providing that to as well. It's kind
of a spiritual discipline that you're giving
both ways. You're receiving that from an older
brother or sister in Christ, but you're also in
turn providing that. You're modeling things.
The other thing I've always said is I don't
want to get caught doing anything by anybody
in my church. I don't want to get caught
praying. I think we have to be more open. We're guilty
I think a lot of times of being ones who we
start a youth gathering with prayer and that's
it. We pray over the meal or pray at bedtime. I
encourage us as leaders to be open to constant
prayer. If you have a student come up to you
and says that he's struggling with something,
I always heard if a student comes up to you and
you say I'll pray with you or for you,
you better do that. If not, you're lying to
them. If you just say hey, I'll pray for you
and then you walk away and forget it, you
better do something intentionally at that
point. Write it on your hand, write it on your
shirt somewhere, pray for them, or better
than that to stop right then and say let's pray.
What does it look like for the others
who are seeing you modeling that as a spiritual
discipline? Then what you're doing, you're
letting that kind of be infectious, then you'll
have people in your group that are doing that
or praying for each other. You're modeling that
as a discipline. Same thing in terms
of scripture. You could say we'll talk about
that later. You say let's get into the Word
right now. I think particularly for us, that
example of modeling prayer is one in finding
spiritual mentors that can come alongside of
you that you can be accountable to and
then finding other people that you can, as a
discipline, mentor them as well.
I'll just kind of tag on to what some of these
guys have said. Definitely the times of prayer
and just quiet reflection. You can't really
appreciate solitude and quietness until you
spent a whole week at a camp full of kids. I've
told some of these folks that are in
here that have been there with me. There are
times when the last thing I want to hear is
my name called one more time. What I need more
than anything else is to be in solitude
and stillness and reflection and hear God call
my name. But if I continue and go straight
from that week of craziness to the next event,
I never slow down long enough to hear the
voice of God. I need to slow down. One thing
that I've got, I have a chair at our house
and it is my place. My wife's sitting here and
she'll know that's my place. There'll
be times when I will go to that chair and I
will just sit there. That's my place. Just
to be with God. Just to feel his presence.
Sometimes I read the paper in that chair too.
But that's my spot. Then I've got one of my
former interns and one of my former students
now over here. One of the things that I love is
going to the gym. I love working out. For
me that is a spiritual experience. To try to
take care of my body and challenge my body
and to kind of go to the next level physically
and at the same time be in conversation with
God while I'm doing it. Mine are pretty similar
to what have been said. Prayer and
Bible and I do journaling. But mine are usually
in spurts and I get these big kicks for several
weeks or several months and then I might have a
time where it's not so much doing it and
then it'll be another big spurt. So mine goes
in spurts. But one of my favorite things
that we have started doing as a staff at
Highland is one week out of the month we leave the
office on a Friday and we go out to, a lady in
our congregation has a ranch and we go
out to her ranch and we spend the whole day as
a staff in solitude. And then we spend
the day eating lunch together. And then we come
back to the office. Sometimes we share
what our time of solitude is about. Other times
we don't have any discussion. But it's
been a real rejuvenating thing for me
personally and also to get to know the staff
better in
a more intimate level. I think to add to, and
this is again the leadership, I think
if any of us here one more time, and Kevin said
it, hate to enjoy your vacation up in
the mountains when you go to summer camp. It is
hard work. And the older you get the
harder it is because it takes you instead of
just the next day going to another activity
it takes you a week and you're sore. You know
it's amazing. But as a leadership go on one
of those things. See what it's like. See why
you want to see somebody not calling your
name for a period of time. This is not original
to me but Saint Ignatius said it. I just kind
of put it for David Fraze to understand. But
this last year especially had one of those
moments where okay you're doing a lot, you're
doing fine, but what are you going to do for
the rest of your life type moments where you
start to cut back things you're passionate
about and try to find out what you're more
passionate about. And when you get the phone
calls all the time and the retreat didn't go
the way I liked it, Van why don't you send
that type stuff. You know I want to live life
and this is again Saint Ignatius but David
Fraze can understand it. I want to live life
for the people that will be around my bed
when I die. And none of y'all are going to be
around my bed. And I love some of y'all
very dearly but you're not going to be there
but my kids will if I do my life right. And
so will my wife. And when I think about that it
sure does slap me in the face really quick
when I'm having a busy day and need to go home.
I don't know if that helps you at all
but it scares the junk out of me so I like
those kind of things.
We are going to need to take a five minute
break, let David get his computer booted up.
You get a sense that we've got a lot of wisdom,
a lot of experience here and there's no way
that we're going to have adequate time to cover
all the issues related to youth ministry.
I want to encourage all of you that are here
though, I know the folks on this panel and
I can guarantee you every one of them has got a
heart for the Lord, a heart for kids
and they are very accessible to you. They want
to see you succeed in your ministries,
they want to see you bless your youth ministers
when you go back to your churches. So the
things we couldn't get to here today, let me
encourage you, grab them after class, get
an email address or a phone number and I know
they'll make themselves available to field
any questions or help in any way that they can
that they want to bless you in that way.
So we'll take five minutes, I want to encourage
you to stick around if you can, I know David's
got something great for us to say and we'll try
to get started right at 3:00.
Man, thank you very much. We do have some fun
videos that will scare you a little bit
and also make you laugh, but I don't think
we're going to have sound. So I'll probably
just skip ahead and you're going to see the
videos sometime. We'll have to do this again
some other moment.
Okay, you notice on the screen I have Archie
Bunker Ministry in a South Park World. Now,
when you've been doing youth ministry a while
and like I've just started stepping into the
Broadway youth ministry and being around kids
where I was the one responsible for the programming
just directly, it has been a lot of fun and I
found out that maybe there's some things
that were used a long time ago that still hit
today and some ways that I've rethought
about youth ministry that have impacted the
youth ministry at Broadway right now. But
you may feel like this at some point in your
life, even if you're 19 doing youth ministry,
that you are Archie Bunker. See, some of you
have no idea who that is except in reruns.
In a world that's much different than the world
that you grew up in because we're changing
very fast. Let me go through this and at the
end we're going to have some opportunities
hopefully to ask some questions.
Is it possible after decades of youth ministry
that things have changed? What do you think?
Now this is fun to me. What has changed since
you were a teenager?
The way they communicate.
How do they communicate?
Text message.
Text message. They can do all kinds of things
at once. I'm speaking to some of you, they
can be writing a research paper, watching a
game and bloop, there it is and their best
friend pops up on their screen. For me, I have
to have everything up and concentrate
on the paper because that's the way God wants
you to do research. Not them. Go to the library
this afternoon and see the way that they're
talking. Some of you in here have probably
already IM'd somebody outside the room and say,
don't come in. Buddy was talking to his
son on his cell phone coming in. That's good
parenting in 2006. What else?
That's good. The world has changed. 9-11 has.
What else? Dress. Have you ever noticed, wow,
the way girls dress, the way guys dress, the
way nobody cares the way you dress. I would
love to have one nice debate over mixed bathing.
That thing. Now we're having debates over
would you please wear a one piece and not one
that's cut up to your armpits, please.
It is amazing the discussions we're having. We
could go on and on, but I think that some
things have changed. As a result, it's very
hard to be a parent or any adult working with
kids today. I love this poster. It's one of the
demotivation.com posters. Failure when
your best just isn't good enough. I think a lot
of parents feel that way. You're crazy.
You do youth ministry. I'm scared to death of
my own kid. Those are the parents coming
into our youth ministries. And right before our
eyes, I want you to notice this lovely
young lady, Brittany Spears, part of the
original Mickey Mouse Club, and look at her today.
Now she has black hair, okay? She used to sing
about M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E, and now
she has this commercial, if you've seen it,
where she touches the doorknob of a total
stranger in the adjoining hotel room, and they
have this wild sexcapade in their imaginations.
It's all to sell perfume. You're like,
Brittany, let's leave the M-I-A virgin
discussion, alright?
What has happened, and we've noticed it as
adults, is in order for a little Brittany
to make it in today's world, just like the
Olsen twins, just like Hilary Duff, just like
Lindsay Lohan, they have to sex them up and
turn them into adults. Have you noticed that?
That will frighten anyone, including myself,
trying to raise a young girl in today's world.
Well, not only adults, and not only the world,
but culture, and the way that our kids look
at us. Now, have you ever seen one of these
expressions on a kid's face? Have you noticed
this? It's all you ever need to know right now
if you're a parent of a teenager. They're
dumped, they're fried, they're rattled, they're
bored. Kids can lie and make you believe the
lie better than my generation ever thought of
it. They are hiding so many little secrets
in their head. Have you noticed that? Cheating.
We talk about it every semester at our Christian
schools. Don't cheat. If you do, you'll go
straight to Hell. I mean, we even try to spray,
you know, scare them to death on that, but they
still will because they believe in their
mind that if you're dumb enough to be cheated
upon, then it's alright for me to cheat. That's
a totally different world view than I had. How
about you? As an adult, stepping into
this world, trying to take care of teenagers,
and you ask them about it, and they give you
this. Would you like to be shocked? I mean,
something? You could lose your soul. There
it is. We're going to kick you out of school.
There it is. I'll just call my mom and go
talk to the dean. It's amazing, the world.
Well, it's also hard to be a kid. You should
think about that. This is a picture of the
sophomore parking lot at Friendship High School.
Kids learning how to drive. Pretty rough world
out there. They live in, and we don't have
time to go into post-modern or modern, but this
is sort of dated from the 90s, but take
a look at that. Some days it took hours to get
dressed. Just do it. Just say no. There's
actual research. We talked about girls' dress,
and a reader on adolescent issues, somebody
did research on girl magazines, and they said
it's kind of a schizophrenic relationship
because half the articles in a girl's magazine
talk about being sexual and how to look sexy,
and the other half talk about don't have sex.
And look at the conflicting messages being
thrown at our young ladies. This last Cosmo
Girl, I'm proud to say that I go to United
and buy Cosmo Girl magazines for my students.
They look at me kind of strange, but in Lubbock
they know me now, and I just buy those kind of
magazines and just see what's going on.
They had an article called The New Virginity,
and the whole discussion on what is virginity,
what is technical virginity, and how do you
know when you're ready to have sex, and it's
pretty alarming. Don't listen to your parents,
it says. Don't listen to preachers. Don't
listen to teachers. Listen to yourself, and
then you'll know when you're ready. Then it
gets kind of schizophrenic again, because on
the other side it says, but it's a gift you
can only give away once, so be careful. I can
agree with that message, but you notice
how confusing and how hard it can be to be a
kid. I hope the sound works on this. It's
one of my funniest things that I've ever seen.
Let's see if it works. It's a blank screen.
It's fun. We'll go on. I love watching, this is
going to be fun too. I love watching Saturday
Night Live, because if you watch Saturday Night
Live and look at some of their commercials,
you'll see some incredible social commentary.
The same thing is true of South Park. Watch
South Park after an incredible event in our
culture. Interestingly enough, like a 9-11,
or the Terry Shavo case, and they come up with
comic impressions of how that event kind
of relates to their culture. Saturday Night
Live did a thing on Fear Factor, where they
took four-year-olds and five-year-olds and
threw them out of helicopters, and it was
all a big gag. And they had this kid eating
maggots, and it said if the breakfast isn't
good enough, he's eating maggots off the
breakfast for their parents. If it's not good enough,
your parents will get a divorce. And I mean, it
was so over the top. Well, that's society
using satire, which means you have to have a
degree of truth for all you English people,
to describe to us what our kids are feeling. It
is difficult to be a kid and the pressure
some of our kids face. This is Axe body spray.
Now it's gone on to something else, but I
love the Axe effect. Junior high kids, if
you've ever done a junior high retreat recently,
they love this stuff. They don't take baths,
they spray Axe on. Okay, that's what they
do. Look at the Axe effect. You spray here and
here, and it gets you here. I've never
seen a junior high girl built like that, but a
lot of our junior high guys are thinking,
if I just got rid of the smell, this would
happen. Incredible sexualizing of our culture.
How many of y'all are aware of PostSecret.com?
If you want to be just totally terrified,
go there. PostSecret.com is a basis for, have
you ever heard of the band All American Rejects?
They had a just off-the-chart single called
Dirty Little Secrets, and it's from this website,
PostSecret.com. I'm not going to go there
because we have children in the room. It can
be pretty graphic, but it's kind of MySpace
taken one step further, where students can
actually scan in cards with their messages and
the way that they're feeling from their
world, and some of those things are incredibly
raw, and it lets you know that there's some
kind of disconnect between their world and our
world. MySpace, Facebook, all this open-air
journaling where kids are just kind of airing
their stuff for the whole world to see. You're
going to see a, how can I say this, an
underground, a deep hurt and angst among this generation
that maybe you and I would write in our journal
or tell a friend. They let the whole world
know. Sometimes they don't think we're reading
that, and that's one of the reasons they go
there. Other times, and I believe probably more
prevalent, they don't care if we're reading
it or not, because it's something that has
changed in their world. We had a class that
we encountered at LCU called Post Secret, and
I've studied teenagers for a long time,
and I left the classroom in tears. Kids
actually took cards, and on this wall made out
of black
plastic, and if you've been to any summer camp,
we have to use black plastic. That's
the rule. They would post cards with their
feelings. Here's some of these. Look at these.
I go to church and believe in God but still do
worldly things and can't stop because everyone
I hang out with does them, and they are fun,
but I want to go to Heaven. Another kid wrote,
I tried to overdose on pills just because I
didn't want to deal with my problems. Goes
on to say that their grandparent had committed
suicide and left a note, and they had questions
about it, and no one answered the questions.
Another one wrote on the board, I sometimes
feel like my dad puts too much pressure on me
when I play sports. I know he wants me
to be the best for me, but he always expects me
to be perfect, and then talks about how
when they go to summer camp, some of the girls,
they hate the other girls because it takes
attention away from them when the guys come
around, because they're not as attractive
or don't see themselves as attractive. Then
this one, I know that you give us grace, but
I feel like I'm not good enough or deserving.
I'm afraid of Hell, but I feel that I've never
been good enough for Heaven, and look at their
theology, total works oriented. I don't pray
enough. I'm disrespectful to my family. I
sometimes hate myself. My boyfriend and I,
we haven't had sex, but we mess around a lot.
It's a different world than you and I grew
up in. I do buy girl magazines. This is one
magazine I bought, Teen People. Notice Hilary
Duff, the sexualization of her. This isn't, oh
my goodness, my rear is big, give me a
good pair of jeans, or I need to hide my zits,
and that's definitely not Leif Garrett up
there on the top right hand corner for some of
you who had girl magazines. I give this
to our students. I'm like, just look at the
messages and see what's going on and see if
the world's any different from when you were
growing up or noticed some of these cultural
shifts, and a girl from tech that's now working
at LCU was in my class, and she's like, oh,
this is rated G. It had Powdered or Puff Girls,
if you know what those are, in the front,
you know, kind of a little advertisement for
that. Right in the middle of this magazine
that I picked up at Walmart this time was this
ad. Y'all seen this? Fragrance, and also
clothing brand. FCUK, the scent to bed. When I
was growing up, they called that child porn,
but this is in the middle of a magazine where
two people are actually, you know, in a sexual
position. You go to California and on Colorado
Boulevard in Pasadena, they have an FCUK store,
and it leaves nothing to the imagination what's
on the shirts. It makes Amber Crombien Fitch
look like kindergarten wear. One of the shirts,
if you're familiar with the term MILF, which
is from American Pie, Mothers I Would Like To,
and you can fill in the blank, their messages
on their shirts reference that. Teachers that
you would like to, and moms that you would
like to. It's a different world. I love this
little research statement. According to research
at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter in
what order the letters in a word are. The
only important thing is that the first and last
letter be in the right place. The rest
can be a total mess. You can still read it
without problem. This is because the human
mind does not read every letter by itself, but
the word as a whole. Pretty amazing, huh?
They know exactly what they're doing. Look at
how this world is different. This quote
from Time Magazine, I'm going to rush through
all of this so we can have a little bit of
time at the end. Will teenagers disappear? Time
Magazine is not a research-based magazine.
It's more popular, but I love this quote. The
question for the new century is, how much
longer will teenagers exist, at least in the
form that James Dean made famous? 20 years
tops is my guess. Teenagers as classically
defined are already dying out, or at least
changing into something different. The buffer
zone they once inhabited is being squeezed
out of existence for two reasons, and listen to
this quote. Children are growing up faster
than ever before, and adults are growing up
more slowly. I believe Walter Kim has totally
stumbled on something, Kern has stumbled on
something that he may not even have been aware
of. Let's take a real quick look through
adolescence. Every sociologist would agree when
these three
questions from young are addressed and answered.
Who am I? Where do I fit? Do I and my choices
matter? Then boom, you have an adult on the
other side. That's pretty classic. Now, for
a lot of us, we had the answer to those
questions when we were 18. Dr. Joyner, my dean, who's
done youth ministry for 30 years plus, his dad
actually took a plate when he was 18,
broke the plate at the table and said, you're
welcome to come back, son, but you're never
going to live here again. Now that, that's
harsh. You better have these questions answered,
but that is something a lot of us grew up in.
It's time, high school graduation, you're
out of the home. How many students after
college move back into the home now? A little bit
of a different world because the adolescent
journey has changed. What does it look like
classically? Notice the incredible graphics
we're using. Standard of adulthood, the cultural
affirmation of a certain knowledge of who one
is, the identity, is in relation to others
as in realized commitment to live with others
in community and a willingness to take responsibility
for one who, for who one is becoming. From
dependence to a time of independence to what
usually used to be around 18, an
interdependence where the adult world is a
little smarter
than they were when I was a teenager and we are
socialized into that world. Here's the
way, well before I do that, let me show you
this. The timing and duration of adolescence,
the timing always begins with women
menstruation. Okay? We have records of women
and their wonderful
day when they become a woman and they start
crying and they run to the store and do all
that kind of stuff. We have actual like
parchment documents of days when women have started.
We know and that's why adolescence begins with
women's menses. Well guys go through
changes but guys lie, okay? We don't show into
a locker room and go, I had the weirdest
dream last night. That's not going to happen.
We lie. Girls don't lie, they're proud. So
you look at the timing of duration, the
beginning, puberty, the physical changes,
that's what
marks the beginning of an adolescent journey.
What do you think marks the end of the journey?
Culture. Culture is what determines when a
student becomes an adult. Why do I put 1900?
Because adolescence and the term adolescent is
something of our modern invention. They
didn't have this problem when Jesus was in the
Bible because you grew pubic hair and
then you could be stoned to death. That was in
the Mishnah, okay? Jesus was 12. He could
now go to the temple. He was part of the adult
community. And so when people go and they
use 1 Timothy, which is one of my big pet
peeves and they say, don't let anyone
look down on you because you're young. He was
30 for crying out loud. He wasn't a teenager.
Teenage things that we think of in sociology,
that is something from the 1900s on. I want
you to look at the beginning and the end of
adolescence. You could have a baby and if
you're like, if they were like my grandmother's
age, you went and got married and you had
a job, correct? Anybody have young married
grandparents? That's what happened. Different
world. 1920s, we started having this 6th grade
level education. Culture, because of the Industrial
Revolution, we need to put our kids in the
incubator a little bit longer, right? So even
though they could have babies and they were
equipped to start their own families, they
weren't ready. And then in the 1930s, it lasted
until the 70s, the birth of public high schools
where we kept kids in school until 12th grade.
Then we had this 13-18. Notice what's happening
to women's menses. It's dropping. Today, the
picture looks like this. 12 by the Center
for Disease Control, but many of you know, like
I do, girls that have babies at 10 or
younger. And culture says, whether you call it
late or early adulthood, as Elkind would
call it, or late adolescence, we're looking at
a journey that's over 15 years in length.
It's a different world to do Youth ministry in.
Would you agree? When I first started
youth ministry, some of these guys could
remember, do you remember the rash of people getting
re-baptized? It's because a lot of our methods
from the 1950s that were carried over in the
1970s is once you know the answers, here,
believe, repent, confess, be baptized, jump
in the water. Developmentally, concretely, I
can teach my six-year-old that, can't you?
But with the lengthening of adolescence,
developmental theory says there's another
higher form of
knowledge called discursive, which means you're
able not only to make a concrete decision,
but look at the long-term ramifications. Well,
youth ministry a few years ago, these students
were like, whoa, wait a second, I made a big
choice, and I didn't understand what I was
doing. So we started having lessons on what is
re-baptism and can there be a re-baptism.
Today you'll find a lot of students don't
accept Jesus until they are 17 or 18 or freshman
in college. Why? Does it mean that we're doing
a bad job as ministry? No. Developmentally,
they're at different places than we were. But
that's part of the problem because we
can be fooled because in sixth grade, they're
in these accelerating reading classes learning
incredible words without any moral mentoring to
what those words mean. You starting to
see the perfect storm conditions here? Okay, so
today, by the way, if this keeps working
the way that it is, girls are just going to be
born pregnant, I'm pretty sure. 1970s,
there it was, five-year journey. Today, early,
middle, and late adolescence. Middle adolescence
is what I've studied primarily in my doctoral
work. This is a new concept. You'll find it
all over sociology, psychology, early and late,
but middle has developed because we've
found that it has its own uniqueness. If you do
youth ministry with junior high and then
high school, have you noticed the difference
between those two age groups? If you're a
parent of a 14, 15-year-old and all of a
sudden, they just freak out on you, they're different,
they don't want to talk to you, it's strange.
The hardest transition, two of them right
here, and then, not when they leave home, but
usually around their sophomore year in
college, when they leave the friendships they
formed in middle adolescence. Boy, I wish
I could unpack this, but I just want you to be
aware of some of the changes. The adult
world, any organization or system, it's always
been like that, and institutional relationships
is for or the adult's in charge. In the 1950s,
some of the worlds that y'all grew up in,
this was more of kind of a ditch on the side of
the road. You know, you wore your leather
jacket, you developed rock music, but guess
what? Even Ritchie Cunningham put a nice bow
tie on to go to work. He had to get rid of the
attitude, only the Fonz was cool enough.
Alright, in the 1970s, remember all the little
hippies, the stuff from the 60s, and them
wearing, they became the yuppies of the 70s,
they still put on the suit and went to work.
I believe this is a better picture of today's
adolescent community, especially in middle
adolescence. The stress and pressure of living
life, primarily academic, is where we find
this pressure. They go underground because, and
I'll demonstrate this, I believe we systematically
abandon our young people to a system. And one
of my passions about bringing family and
listening to these veterans and youth ministry
here, because every one of them, and you've
heard them say that family and church community
should be part of a student's life, but a
lot of our youth ministries totally operate
like parachurches. As long as they keep the
kids happy, everything's good, our kids are
leaving, they're going to colleges, they're
worshiping by themselves at the university
church, or at a thing called Paradigm in Lubbock,
and they are leaving our fellowships to try to
find that something that is real and relevant
to them. Because where church should be the
most safe place, sometimes we're the worst
people of carting them off to their children's
and youth classes and they're never in contact
with the adult world.