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A focus on relational youth ministry…

(1)  … gives students access to a non-parental, committed adult who cares for and loves them. Moses realized (in Deut. 6) that God chose the family and the faith community as the two entities through which He would tell His story to the next generation.

(2)   …gives students a place to share but gives leaders a more realistic picture of the mindset of today’s students.   Relational youth ministry makes leaders aware of the day-to-day life of a teen; things like: suffering caused by deep emotional wounds, neglectful parenting, faith questions, broken friendships, and poor self-identity. Bottom line today’s student bear a lot of pain and brokeness.

When relational youth ministry is done right, students will begin to share their deep dark secrets they haven’t told anyone else.

The beauty about relational youth ministry is that it gives student a place to share.  The danger is not having a procedure-plan-policy in place when a student shares some dark stuff and needs professional help.  What do we do with the pain, abuse, sufferings and hurt that students share? It is problematic when a student shares hurt to a youth worker, and the youth worker neglects to get the help the student may need.  One of the aims of youth ministry is to help kids become healthy — Jesus following adults.

Are our youth ministries prepared when a student shares their deep dark secret?  When does a youth worker refer to a licensed counselor?  How does a youth worker not destroy the relationship with the student but get the student the help he/she needs?

I had to learn my “procedure” on the fly.  For some odd reason, the students I talked with always went deep real fast.  They told me about rape, stealing, assalt, sexual abuse, death, physical abuse, suicide, disease, doubt, drug addictions, drug selling, abortions and pregnancies.  It was almost like they were testing me by saying:  Okay…. if I tell you this heavy dark stuff, what will you do about it?  Will you be like every other adult and just say it is okay and to deal with it or will you actually get me help?

I am convinced that when we do relational youth ministry we have to be prepared to help the hurting student.  We just cannot get sloppy.

Based off of my experience, here are some things to think about when a student shares a hurt:

* Assessment:  In the assessment period, you have to discern the seriousness of the hurt.  There are two ways to discern the hurt:

(1)  Look for anger. If there is anger and a fairly serious situation refer the student/family to a licensed Christian therapist.  Referring them to a “licensed” profession is really important.  Be intentional to network with profession Christian counselor that you can trust so you can refer students and families to.  If the situation is more drama and no one is getting hurt, give them some tools and book to read aka the Bible  : )

(2)  Look for The 3 HURTS:  When a student shares their emotional stuff be on the look our for the 3 HURTS.  If any of these 3 hurts show up, refer to a counselor.

(a)  ”I am hurting myself” I.E.  Cutting, suicide attempts

(b)  ”I have been hurt.”  I.E. any type of abuse (emotional, sexual or physical)

(c)  ”I am hurting someone else.” I.E.  violent rages and anger manifestations

* Tell the parents:  If a student is hurting themselves or hurting others, encourage them to tell their parents. When mom and dad get involved, they can help support and love their student while getting them the help they need.  Typically this is where the student gets really mad at you.   They will cuss you out, call you a liar and they will say they will never telling you anything ever again.  Remember…. the goal is to get hurting students healthy.  I would always give the student the opportunity to tell their parents first—  with a clear deadline.  If they didn’t tell by the deadline, then I would tell.  This way you give an opportunity for the student to first confess to the parents so the parents wouldn’t have to hear the “news” from the youth pastor.

Now if a student is being hurt (i.e sexual abuse or physical abuse) you may need to report it to the authorities.  Statistically speaking, more than likely it is the parents that is doing the abusing.  If the parent(s) are the ones doing the hurting, then don’t encourage the student to tell their parents–  directly go to the authorities.  **  Please note:  It is important to make yourself aware of the mandatory reporting laws in your state.  You can read more about these laws  here and here

*  No confidentially policy:  The best fit for today’s students is clearly stating up front that if they tell you they are hurting themselves, others, or if someone is hurting them, then you have to tell someone aka their parents and refer them to a professional.  Try to say this message from the stage when you are speaking and when you are meeting with students.  They need to know your NO CONFIDENTIAL POLICY before they start telling you their dark secrets.

*  Youth workers are NOT trained to do professional counseling like Dr. Phil. Not only are youth pastors not qualified, but the role of the youth pastor is not to be the resident professional counselor.  My policy was never to see a family or student more than two times.  Leave that for the professionals.  Students are not looking for adults to have all the answers, rather they are looking for an adult with a caring ear as they navigate their adolescent journey.  I always sought out after great Christian counselors in the community who I respected and trusted, so when I referred I knew who exactly I was referring to.  Plus the church always paid for the first 2 counseling visits.  The key is to pay for the first few visit so the family or students doesn’t have any reason not to do to get the help they need.  Don’t waste your time do all the youth ministry counseling.  If you ever have any questions, contact your trusted licensed Christian counselor and ask them about procedures.

*  Prayer:  The Holy Spirit is the counselor not you.  When meeting with students always point them back to Jesus.  God is qualified to transform and clean hearts so give Him room to do what He does best.  It isn’t your job to do the deep investigation and find out what is really going on.

*  Books that can help:  Two of my favorite books that have greatly helped me in my youth ministry counseling are:

The Comprehensive Guide To Youth Ministry Counseling

The Youth Worker’s Guide To Helping Teens in Crisis

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Questions for youth pastors:

What is your youth ministry procedure when a student shares their deep dark secret?  How do you deal with the deep-hurting pain that students confess?

Do you have a list of trusted-licensed Christian counselors?

What else would you suggest to do or think about when a student shares a hurt?

See, there is a reason why I call this website an experiment lab for youth pastors.  I thoroughly enjoy looking at the laws of physics and intersecting them with youth ministry.  Granted God engineered these systems (Psalm 19.1)  so I think it is fair to say there is overlap between physics and youth ministry.

My hypothesis:  For the postmodern teen I believe putting them in unfamilar and uncomfortable environments “to do hands on” ministry will greatly test their spiritual maturity.

The Law of Inertia states:  Unless acted upon by an outside force, a body at rest stays at rest and a body in motion stays in motion.

How the Law of Inertia can create spiritual growth in our teens: a student’s faith will remain the same unless acted upon an external force.

Our students’ spiritual life tends to quickly move to “idleness” real fast.  They get saved, they get baptized, they go to church, they follow Jesus’ commandments, then what?  They hit the autopilot button until they graduate.

Many of our students leave our youth group without having a crisis of faith or even having to demonstrate their faith.  I almost think we should manufacture mini-crisis situations that force students to act.  I know this may seem dark and counter-productive, but students are leaving youth group with the same faith they had when they were in 7th grade.  Our students need to be put in environments that apply external force which forces them to test drive their faith.

I think Sir Isaac Newton law of inertia has many corollaries to the spiritual development of a teen.  If Newton was a youth pastor you could almost bet he would apply disruptions in order to produce spiritual growth.  In order to get something to move you have to apply pressure or the spiritual life of a teen will plateau— very quickly.

Applying external force on students’ spirituality requires them to:

- pray to God immediately

- ask God to reveal Himself to them right now

-  test God and see if He will use them

-  heavily rely on God asap

-  exit out of the “comfortable” zone and enter the uncomfortable zone

Applying force puts an urgency on the teen to make a decision of:  Do I really believe this so much that I will act for God?

In Luke 10.1-10, Jesus send out 72 of his followers and said go serve, bless and pray for others in the community.  It is going to be uncomfortable but this is what it means to be the Kingdom of God here and now.

So what are some ways youth pastors create mini external forces that challenge student to act for God?

-  Take your students to apologetic debates between a Christian and an Atheist.  Look at your local colleges or university philosophy departments and see if they have debates happening.  Sometimes they will sponsor religion departments.  Or visit the Stand To Reason website here.  The Stand To Reason guys and gals are from Biola who do the debate thing really well.

-  Take your students on a gnarly 3rd world international mission trip.  My top three picks:  Belize, Haiti and Nicaragua.

-  Invite your students to fast together as a group for more than 30 hours.  The go to event is the 30 hour famine.

-  Randomly start asking students to share their testimony in youth group.  Giving students to talk to other students why Jesus changed their life is so important.

-  Once a quarter randomly select a few nights where you invite your students to go out to the local community and pray for people.  

-  Start practicing hour long solitude times during youth group programming.  Awkward silence creates such an opportunity for the students to search their hearts and the scriptures while asking God what He is doing in and through their life.

-  Visit other churches that are completely opposite in style.  The goal is to find churches that are so different than yours that make you uncomfortable.

-  Invite students to pray out loud in multiple settings at multiple times.  And no I am not talking about asking a student to pray for the meal.  During pray request time, ask a student to immediately pray out load for any student’s request.

-  Find areas of need in your community and serve them.  After the serving encourage students to pray for them.

If you are wanting to apply the law of inertia in your youth ministry, here are some guidelines:

(1) Youth pastor must brief and debrief with the students.  It is important to always walk students through what to do and what just happend.  It is going to be uncomfortable for them to move in a new spiritual direction, so make sure to explain why and how and allow room for them to process out loud.

(2)  Document everything.  Record (both audio and visual), take pictures and write everything down on what happen and how it happened.

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Is it ludicrous to import the law of inertia into our youth group programmatic structure?  Why or why not.

What are other practical ways the law of inertia can help the spiritual life of teens?

Over on the Slant33.com blog Brian Berry, Michael Novelli and I all were asked to answer this question:  What Youth Ministry Cliche Needs To Go Away? 

I poured my passion into this post (to read this entire post click here) because the cliche I addressed was a mind shift I had to make early on in my youth ministry career.   In the post:  I argued the one thing that annoys me is when youth pastors think youth ministry is about only ministering to students.

So if youth pastors are not supposed to only hang out with students, then what do they do? Why should a church pay for a professional youth worker? I think there are two primary tasks that define the role of the youth pastor.

The first task of the youth pastor is to mobilize God’s people to do the work of the ministry to young people. The youth pastor has to figure out how to get the church and the family to work as partners in raising students. God’s people are called and compelled to serve. Therefore, youth workers have to persuade adults they need to serve the next generation.

If the youth pastor is not empowering and equipping more adults to care for students, then no one ever will. Youth workers must approach everyone with the opportunity to work with this incredible next generation. Every youth pastor has to be thinking, How can I get more adults to care for students?

The second task is assimilating students into the church body. The goal of youth ministry is to assimilate authentic disciples into full participation in the life of the community of faith and the church. As Jim Burns of Homeword and Mark DeVries of Family-Based Youth Ministry have said, “The degree to which students will stay in the church, get involved, and make significant life decisions for Christ is directly dependent on their sense of belonging to the church community.”

The aim of any youth ministry must be that students see and experience themselves as participants in God’s family of faith. One of the best and most practical ways for students to play an active role in the life of the church is by creating avenues for them to serve inside the church. Bottom line: The youth ministry programmatic strategy needs to move students from youth group participants to church body participants.

I must admit that during my first year in youth ministry, I thought youth ministry was awesome because I didn’t have to deal with adults. In fact, church adults annoyed me. I thought my job was to be the cool friend to all the youth. After my first year, I realized there had to be a more robust framework. After some seminary education, contemplation, praying, and reading I was convicted that youth workers are theologically responsible to train all generations to care, love, and serve the next generation. The more committed adults the church has to care for students, the more sustainable the students’ faith will be.

It is really tough to change the mentality I only work with students to I mobilize God’s people to care for students. But trust me; getting more committed adults in the lives of students is such a healthier and sustainable way to do youth ministry. So let us shatter this cliché.

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What other cliches need to go away?

Do you agree or disagree with me?  Why or why not?

I know this may seem weird but I am always worrying about what an unchurched student thinks when he/she attends a “church youth ministry program”.

For example, a few weeks ago, I observed two new middle school students attend and enter a church environment for the very 1st time in their life.  I just sat back and watch them process their 1st “church experience.”  They were really quiet and non-responsive.

I wondered:

-  What are they thinking?  Are they overwhelmed?  Do they think church youth group is stupid and irrelevant?

-  Do they think the Biblical message matters for how they live their life?  In fact do they even respect the Bible?

-  What do they think about the worship, especially the lyrics they are suppose to sing along with?

-  Do they feel included or judged?

-  What adults have greeted them and made them feel important? Did any other students meet and greet them?

I am learning more and more that it is okay to constantly be considering the unchurched student who shows up to our  church youth group environments.

As youth workers I think it is wise to be asking the question of:  How can our youth ministry create an environment that will be safe for a student who says No to church and No to God?

It doesn’t matter what youth outreach strategies you adopt: Inside/Out approach (go on to the unchurched students’ turf) or the Outside/In approach (unchurched students come to our turf (church)).  But what does matter is architecting places and spaces where unchurched students feel comfortable with Jesus following students and leaders.

When I was in Los Angeles, CA (circa 2004-2005) I was on mission to figure out how to architect warm, nonjudgemental, accepting and inclusive environments that communicated to unchurched students that they could BE in “church environments” and not feel weird or judged.  In my pursuit, I stumbled upon Mosaic Church (aka Erwin Mcmanus’ church) where I learned (by visiting Mosaic and taking a class with Erwin) how they were able to create spaces and places that highly encourage both believers and nonbelievers to fellowship together.  The major value that Erwin injected in Moasic’s culture was architecting places where unchurched people didn’t have to believe in order to belong. Erwin articulated that the church/youth group is often a 1st space where no outsiders are allowed.  The 2nd space is a generic set of relationships where not everyone is like you, yet there’s still relationships.  The 3rd space is where there’s no relationships, and there won’t be unless invited.

Third spaces are when nonbelievers feel included in “neutral” spaces.  Third spaces allow students to belong before they have to believe.

The problem is…..  we (myself included) immediately want unchurched student to behave before they “officially” belong.  I get it… it is so much easier not paying attention to the unchurched student because they don’t talk like us, believe like us, pray like us, behave like us, dress like us, and think like us.  Unchurched students make professional paid Christian church youth pastors feel real uneasy because unchurched students don’t know the church rules and their worldview and behaviors are way more risky.

But………

Could you imagine if students felt like they already belonged before they had to  behave? And these unchurched students were immediately  surrounded and greeted by adult who care?

Chap Clark writes in Hurt:

“Today’s adolescents are, as a lot, indescribably lonely.” (p. 69)

“Midadolescents believe that few if any adults genuinely care about them.” (p. 68)

“Adolescents have suffered the loss of safe relationships and intimate settings that served as the primary nurturing community for those traveling the path from child to adult… (50)

Today’s postmodern students long to belong!  They need places where trusted-committed adults genuinely care for them.

My point is:  create 3rd space(s) that communicate to an unchurched student they belong and that they will be cared for before they have to believe.  Create a place for others – where people different from us feel welcome.

How To Create 3rd Spaces in Youth Ministry:

-  make all service mission trips open to all students.

-  recruit and train leaders to be incarnational witnesses who unconditionally love and accept any type of student.  It is important to teach leaders how to think incarnationally.  Feel free to read my posts about the theological understanding of incarnational outreach and strategies in youth outreach.  I highly recommending reading Pete Ward’s book:  God at the Mall to better understand how to create environments that will engage any student.

-  look for neutral places and spaces in the community.  i.e. coffee shops, mall, school campuses, beach, bowling alley, restaurants

-  intentionally create time in youth ministry programs that acknowledges, affirms and invites unchurched students to belong.

-  create church environments that are relevant to any teen.  Think through your teaching style (especially your language) and environment athesetics.

-  visit a local young life club and observe how they program around the unchurch student.  Essentially their programming is centered around the non-believer.  Young life is brillant in how they create Third Spaces.  Their third spaces are highly relational.

-  do events outside of the church walls and invite every student in the community.  i.e. concerts, BBQs, bowling nights, dodgeball tournaments, sporting events, laser tag, arcades, etc. Remember the goal is building relationships with unchurched students not whacking them with Bible verses.  I love third spaces in youth ministry because it highly encourages FUN and CRAZINESS!!!!!!!!

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Questions I Want To Ask Youth Workers:

-  Do you also worry about what unchurched students think about your “youth ministry environments”?  What is the general feedback when an outsider attends your youth group?  How often are you thinking about the unchurched students in your youth ministry programming?

-  Do you also have a tendency to get students to believe before they officially belong?  Or do you allow unchurched students to fully participants in your youth ministry before they accept Jesus?

-  What other third places examples would you recommend that encourages the unchurched and churched students to intersect?  What are some neutral spaces in your church environment and in your community?

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1. The need to network with other youth workers.  It is a lonely journey out there and we need other like minded youth workers to come alongside us to help resource and pray with us.  Youth workers have to leave their egos at the door and connect and network with other youth pastor.  Successful and healthy youth pastors are the one who are plugged into a local network of youth pastors.  Youth pastors must understand, theologically, that God has called his local leaders to be in relationship (aka unity) with others in order to further the Kingdom of God at a faster rate.
2. The need to get more students committed to the mission of the church.  The next generation is the future of the church so we need to teach them how to already lead the church.  The mission of the church is to rescue the world of its plight.  This means getting our students not only loving God, but loving, serving, caring and befriending others.
3. The insane importance of discipleship.  Churches need more adults pouring into the lives of students.  The church needs more adults who are willing to disciple the teens of the church.  Discipleship is not just shoving “deep-theological” information down the throats of teens.  Discipleship is about getting students to serve and practice being a co-labor for the Kingdom here and now while getting more adults to come alongside teens to help them become healthy adults.
4. The need to recapture an incarnational approach to evangelism.  You cannot do discipleship well if your students are not doing evangelism well.  You cannot separate discipleship and evangelism.   Incarnational evangelism (Matthew 5.13-19, John 1.1-18, Philippians 2.4-8, and Colossian 1.15-19) argues that:
   Jesus went into the world  —–>  we (students and leaders) go into the world
   Jesus embodied the traits of God  —–>  We (students and leaders) embody the traits of God as we witness and evangelize
   Jesus engaged relationship with no expectations ——>  We (students and leaders) engaged relationship with no expectations.
   Incarnational evangelism invites the youth worker and students to be Jesus to other non-Christian students they have relationship with.  Incarnational Evangelism is relationally driven.  Evangelism happens when there is a invested and trusted relationship.  Youth ministry evangelism means we (adults and students) win students over by hanging out with them and befriending them as we model Jesus.  We win the right to share Jesus because of Christ like character and trust.