Is Youth Ministry in the Bible?
It’s an interesting question because I had a great conversation today with a friend in Aberdeen, SD (im on vacation) don’t ask why I didn’t go somewhere warm.
But seriously – where do you have youth ministry taking place in the Bible?
There is a good argument that Jesus’s disciples where actually very young making them a youth group of sorts, but still Jesus was probably around 30 because that was a proper age for a teacher of the law back then.
I have opened myself up again to the discussion of what youth ministry is and what forms if any are there. The only thing that I find about youth ministry scripturely is that parents are supposed to raise their children up in the Lord. What about outreach to those that aren’t Christian families? Does that take place in the context of Church families reaching out to other families with youth?
I’m not necessarily wanting to give answers but I have some real questions about youth ministry. I do know that God can and will use the format that you are doing, however, I think it’s good to question and try to revisit what youth ministry is and ways that could be better or should there be a separated youth ministry at all?
I hope I’m not scaring you because it’s not my intention to have you lose your job, but we need to be thinking openly on what the Bible calls us to do and what role as a youth leader do we really need to be playing within the church congregation.
I would appreciate your thoughts and opinions on this. I want to spend a few posts about youth ministry.
Here are some post topics:
- What is youth ministry?
- Where did youth ministry come from?
- What would the perfect youth ministry look like?
- Do we need to change the way youth ministry is done in the church?
I hope that you are as excited as I am to dive into these future topics and if you have some input right now about any of these topics, would you please contact me and share as I might want to call you on the phone and talk with you about it.
It is my prayer to give God the glory and most effectively minister to youth today and I hope that we can gather some great insight into doing this!
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Feel free to contact me through our website or E-Mail would love to talk about this a while.
Sorry but do not want to hang my phone # out to all….
Thanks – I will contact you!
What would the perfect youth ministry look like? Is that even possible? If you’ve found it, leave right away because you’ll mess it up. The perfect ministry will be when Christ returns. But these are my thoughts.
Yeah we most certainly would mess it up [Kevin], but what would be ideal – I’d like to know what is in peoples’ brains when they think of the perfect YM. Maybe there can’t be such a thing but certainly we can think of things that would look different for the better.
God bless you sir; youth ministry is all about the youths in the persiute of thier vision as a group or individual.
-Youth ministry a giving by God the the greator of all things, vew to the fact that you can’t be talking of ministry without a vision, and visions are giving only by God.
-A perfact youth ministry where the youth are serving and worshipping in spirit and in truth(John 4:23-24).
-I think there a great need to change the way youth ministries are done most of our chuches, for there is a lot of portencials and gift deposited inside the youths for them to be use to the glory of God but unless they discover it they can’t lay hold of it, some of the youths think the youth ministry is a man made think and for show.
There is purpose for everything that God has created,and there is a goal for every activity in the body of chrsit. my number is 237 75 08 21 31 thanks and the bless you.
as far as your last question is concerned, “Do we need to change the way youth ministry is done in the church?” may i point people in the direction of a collection of talks given by Mike Yaconelli called “Getting Fired for the Glory of God”. in there he says many great things about what his vision of youth ministry was. one point that stuck with me, as youth ministers many of us despise the “mtv culture” yet some of our biggest youth conferences use the same methods to entertain. So many times our youth ministries have turned into a show, something to keep teens amused. We, myself included need to get out of the entertainment business and back into ministry.
Great questions. Ideally, I think us youth pastors would work ourselves out of a job. Ideally, parents know they are the spiritual leaders in their home and they life lives to show it, working hard to raise their children in a Godly way. If we as youth pastors and the church are able to fully equip them and raise them up, many of the needs for youth ministry would go away.
That’s the ideal case scenario for sure, though
Some question applies to many other common ministry areas: Children’s ministry? Worship ministry? Singles? Young adults? Sunday school?
Our methods will always change, but praise God His grace never does!
The perfect youth ministry?
loving God, loving people, and teaching while equipping others within the youth to do the same.
thats what i believe. i think people look too much into these questions like how many events will we have? what artists are we in touch with to hold concerts? or what i see alot of is lets make this place look better. if people are in need of a church home and come to your church…they arent looking for new stained glass, projectors and a smartboard. theyre looking to be loved, comforted, and to feel like they have a safe place to go share their faith with others without facing persecution like they may at school.
that sound really rude and arrogant. im not trying to be. im just looking at how church is defined in the Bible and how society today looks at church. idk about some of you but i would much rather have a loving church family like in the Bible than the business church of today.
I have to say that you might not find a biblical scripture on youth ministry and that’s because, well there aren’t any. Youth minsitry is new to the world, it’s only been around a little while. Why? Because it’s a needed ministry. Youth are so different from adults today and constantly changing. Those going into youth ministry are like missionaries in a culture they can not fully understand. Thats where it comes from and since i think God calls us to proclaim the world to all cultures, youth is included. Hope that helps a bit. feel free to email me at Kierra.lambert@hiu.edu
Where is teenage in the Bible? In the eyes of God when you turn 13 you are a man or woman. Teenagers are a subculture created by the world system. When you consider teenagers they are inherently irresponsible, rebellious, poor decision makers. Why is that? Because they are rising to our expectations.
Youth groups facilitate all the above characteristics by keeping them in a room with their peers. Unfortunately many of the attendees at youth groups aren’t there to grow spiritually but in fact are there to play games or “hit on” the other youth.
You can play rock worship and entertain with humorous messages all you want and it wont’ change these adolescents to mature adults. You can have all the alter calls you want and watch them cry and repent but that still won’t result in change.
What does produce change is a young adult sitting in the main service and learning from the senior Pastor and interacting with the adults they try so hard to avoid.
Interesting how teenagers only want to be with their peers. It is because our culture teaches them to learn and be like their peers.
However a Biblical view of a young adult would be that they learn from the mature men and women they are suppose to become.
There is direct and definitive instructions in Titus for the young men and women to be submissive to and learn from the older.
Until we bite the bullet and get back to the Biblical model we will continue to have the Christian youth backslide and flounder through life.
We are doing them a great dis-service by letting our culture dictate how we should raise them.
So Jim what does this mean for youth ministry? Should we be having separate youth groups with their own worship, games, and teaching or should youth ministry just be something where we equip parents how to raise up their kids and for those that don’t have parents that go to church – do outreaches and bring them into the church underneath a spiritual mom and dad?
I definitely believe a change needs to shift out of the current youth ministry programming.
I must say, I hear Jim’s point and agree with Kierra, too. The biblical culture had no public schools or any of the other institutions that are prevalent in our culture. The primary institution for everything was the home. Church or synagoge only supplemented what children were taught at home. I agree that it’s possible that the first disciples were probably a youth group of sorts. But I disagree that God perceives a modern 13-year old as an adult. How can we expect adulthood from a 13-year old in a culture that recognizes 18 or 21 to be the magic age(s) that make you into an adult? I believe modern youth ministry was an answer to a paradigm shift as families started to change after World War II. You had more homes with both parents outside the home and more teens being raised by television. Schedules also began to get busier and churches needed something that would compete with other activities. Do i think our modern youth ministry model is what God would want ideally? Probably not. But given the state our culture is in and the mentality of most of our modern families, the modern youth ministry model is effective. Two factors that make it more effective, though, are strengthening the family through the youth ministry, and connecting students to the larger church, not just letting the youth ministry be a mini-church all by itself.
Jason, Thanks for your response!
I agree with what you are saying and I’m all for youth ministry – I love it – but we definitely got to do some evaluating to make it the most effective as possible and it looks like you can clearly articulate why we have youth ministry today.
There are still many though that make youth ministry a totally separate thing from the church, from helping parents, and in most cases there is this double thing we got going on for example:
Students in many churches have this:
-Sunday School or whatever people call it now
-Church – usually following that sunday school thing
-Youth Group – weekly meeting
-Small Groups
-Outreach events
Now the adults do that too except for a separate youth group or should I say adult group service mid week – they would just call it small groups or something.
But the point is that it’s like the youth have two services: church and youth service. At least this is how I see most churches and youth ministries operating.
I’m currently reading Simple Student Ministry and am liking what is being written.
i would like to learn some tools to reach some youth in india thanku
I feel like one thing that is important is connecting the youth to the whole church, or at least having the youth and the older people in the church get to know each other. I’ve just recently became the youth director at a church. They have always had the youth be in the main service with the adults and then they would all go to their separate Sunday School classes. There would also be a Sunday night “youth group” time, which was more like games/Bible study (traditional youth group things).
One thing I’ve been thinking about is not having a Sunday night thing, but having a separate Sunday morning worship service for the youth. True, it isolates them from the main church service, but do they really feel like a part of that service and a part of the church because they go to that service? There are so few youth and so many more adults that the youth get overlooked and aren’t asked to do many things (since I’ve been here that has increased – in some ways they’ve become the workhorse, which is just as bad in the opposite direction).
That’s why I feel like it would be more successful if there were multi-generational (or multi-aged) Sunday School classes. It would be a smaller group and they would actually get to know eachother’s names… and personalities. I could still see the adults taking over the class when it comes to discussion, but a good discussion leader wouldn’t and shouldn’t let that happen.
I don’t know exactly what needs to change, but I feel like we need to have a combination of something that relates to the youth in which they can be excited about and engaged in (not bored out of their minds and about to fall asleep), but they also need to be connected with the older people in the church.
I’ve thought about having “mentors” so that a youth and an adult can get to know each other, but a lot of the youth are too busy (and the adults) and it just ends up falling apart.
Honestly, I don’t know if there is a “general” solution to this “youth ministry” problem. Each church is going to have it’s own specific needs and will need it’s own specific solution to relate to the youth. Even then, after a few years, new youth will come in and will have different needs. It needs to be always changing.
I really think the key is to get the youth involved in the ministry itself. It’s really hard to do because you need those who are truly dedicated, know how to be critical, and are willing to speak up and have their ideas potentially shut down. It’s hard for teenagers to do that.
Just keep trying new things. If you really care about each youth and get to know each one (if that’s possible due to size of the group), then you will always be working hard to help them and you can’t fault yourself if things don’t go well.
youth ministry is necessary for a local church to grow. it is wherein the youths can express themselves to the fullest.the strategy is based on what really fits them.it is not necessary to copy one’s practice when not applicable to them
The only Scripture that I have found that addresses a group of young people and a spiritual leader is in 2 Kings 2:23-24.
2 Kings 2:23-24 23Then he (Elisha) went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and (AB)mocked him and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!” 24When he looked behind him and saw them, he (AC)cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number.
I think youth ministries are good as long as the students don’t make fun of the youth minister. Also it would probably be better if the student minister was not bald.
That’s about all I have found on youth ministry. I am obviously kidding. I am a student minister and am encouraged by what has been said. I have found Deut. 6:4-9 and Mt. 28:18-20 to be great foundations for ministering to students. Deut. 6 emphasizes the role of the family and Mt. 28 emphasizes the role of the Church. I wish I had time to discuss more but thought you might like the 2 Kings passage.
Blessings!
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