I've done a lot of youth events
over the year, some significant youth events over the years,
and was really known in that circle, in those circles rather,
as one of the go-to guys for events that related specifically
to young people. Although it's never been the
majority of my schedule, there had always been 10 or 15 percent
of my itinerant schedule that incorporated these significant
youth events. So I've been there, and most
of the things that I was doing were things that involved the
most significant, the largest, the most well-respected youth
ministries in local churches and also parish church youth
ministries in the country. Being at these events was like
casting pearls before swine. These events looked the same.
They sounded the same. These youth pastors were just
sort of reincarnations of the same guy. The events themselves
were sort of reincarnations of one another, always trying to
outdo one another, and it was wholly ineffective. The fruit
that was born in these ministries and through these events was
negligible. In fact, success in these youth
ministries was always determined the same way. The successful
person coming through the youth ministry usually went on to become
a youth minister. The people who were most committed
to the youth ministry were the ones who became workers in their
college ministry, or workers in their youth ministry, or youth
pastors themselves. There was no sense of a broader,
bigger picture of preparing young people for full-orbed adult Christian
life and experience. That's why youth ministry is
not the term anymore. Now it's student ministry. That's
the term nowadays. The terminology has changed.
Sort of like global warming changed into climate change. So now what's
happened was Youth or teenagers were growing up beyond their
high school years and falling out of church because they were
never part of the church as a whole. They were always part of a subculture
within the church. So what do we need to do? Well,
since we created a philosophy of ministry, since we created
an ecclesiology that looks completely different than the church as
a whole, What we have to do in order to retain these people
longer is to incorporate them into a college ministry and a
singles ministry. So now the youth pastor is no
longer the youth pastor, he's the student minister because
the ministry now incorporates people all the way from their
early teen years through their mid-twenties and sometimes even
beyond. So again, the fruit of this is
just a self-perpetuation of this cottage industry of subculture
ministry.
The Danger of a Youth Ministry Sub-Culture in the Church
There is a crisis. Christian youth are rapidly leaving evangelical churches for the world. This well-recognized disaster has been the topic of significant discussion in recent years for both church leaders and modern news media. DIVIDED follows young Christian filmmaker Philip LeClerc on a revealing journey as he seeks answers to what has led his generation away from the church.
Traveling across the country conducting research and interviewing church kids, youth ministry experts, evangelists, statisticians, social commentators, and pastors, Philip discovers the shockingly sinister roots of modern, age-segregated church programs, and equally shocking evidence that the pattern in the Bible for training future generations is at odds with modern church practices.
He also discovers a growing number of churches that are abandoning age-segregated Sunday school and youth ministry to embrace the discipleship model that God prescribes in His Word.