Recently in my day toÃ? day work with young people,Ã? I have been addressing myÃ? thinking about the approachÃ? thatÃ? we as youth workersÃ? take towards Christian events, specifically, ‘Youth’ events. I am starting toÃ? ask myself questions thatÃ? shake the very foundations of my guitar playing soul!
In some� situations, I� have� found that the attempted� answer to a lack of provision of true biblical teaching and� discipleship� for young people, is to launch an event, with lights and sound and funky tunes and games and such like, with a gospel message of some description being sneakily tied in� at the end.
Why do I feel� that sometimes� we are attempting to� trick young people into accepting Jesus?
As� followers of� Jesus,� can we� potentially� feel the need to impress young people with how hip we can be? By flashing some lights at them and hoping that they will be so delighted and emotionally convicted� with our use of a heart wrenching power point presentation that they will accept Jesus!?
Now don’t get me wrong, I met with Jesus for the first time at one of the youth events I have described, andÃ? He blew me away.Ã? I also see that in a culture where image and attitudeÃ? seem toÃ? beÃ? the only way of attracting people toÃ? follow the latest craze,Ã? is itÃ? becoming more andÃ? more common to think that JesusÃ? must want us toÃ? do the same?
I guess what itÃ? comes down to is that IÃ? am scared that to attempt toÃ? reverse the trend of declining ‘traditional’Ã? church attendancesÃ? we will look to ‘cool events’ to attract young people. I am scared that is all they’ll be, an ‘event’ in the young person’s life, with no support or true discipleship after the hype of theÃ? ’event’ has subsided.
Father, I pray that you remind us that you have the power to move� in anyway you choose to� reach your lost children.� Help us to trust in your� agenda and your� plans and not our own.
Amen.
One of my big hobby horses is the way that Christianity is portrayed in the news, on TV and in the minds of most people who don’t even know where their local church is. I do think that if the church is ever going to show people Jesus then it has to meet them where they are at – and if that means some flashing lights, then lets do it. After all, events like the ones you have described need to catch people’s attention quickly – there is not a lot of time for relationship building here. As such, if you are going to do something like that it has got to be good – otherwise your already apathetic audience will be off the second you turn around to don your rainbow coloured guitar strap…
However, an event that grabs peoples attention quickly and then does nothing to back them up and support them is worth absolutely nothing. I too have attended and been involved in events like these and to be honest and getting a little tired of the ones that seem to be all about the event it self. I believe God calls us to live a life, not have a momentus event. While it is true as in Felix’s case that an event can change your life, it is the life you live that does the real changing.
A great article on a related topic is on Ben Mizen’s blog site:
I guess that is the true challenge for supporting and discipling young people. You could spend 2 weeks planning a big event and get hold of the most anointed worship leaders, speakers, etc, etc. But if the follow up is not good enough, then a sense of apathy can creep in and suddenly there’s a situation where the young people aren’t the focus any more (and they do sense it).
I’ve been thinking a lot about an event we have coming up at Kings Church in a few weeks, and i am firmly fixed on the vision that this will be something which is ongoing and hopefully shows young people that they have a part to play as members of the body, and that they are church as much as anyone else. I have been challenged on the attitude that it will be ‘all whistle and no pea’, but i’m just praying Gods will to be done.
Good work, Flux
I think we often go for the big events with lights as a reaction to the state the Church is in. Often Church can be dull and boring and presented in a way that is not relevant to normal people.
In my opinion any attempt to present the Gospel in a more relevant way is a positive. The danger is when the presentation becomes more important than the content or heart.
The difficult trick is to balance an event/talk/meeting/church that is professional, well done has an excellence about it and is done in a way that appeals to the average Joe, whilst having a heart and content centred around Jesus, love and grace. Not an easy job.
I know it is possible, the bible is alive, radical and exciting. Guess our job is to communicate and live it out.
one of things things we do at reach is a session called taste – the only thing that is different is the talk is more focussed towards a non christian audience, we feel strongly that if people are to accept Jesus then they need to experience him 1st hand, and not to water down his presence and this has had great results, in the end though as long as the reasons behind it our godly and for his purpsose then he will work in that situation!
Hi – just tripped over your post while searching for something completely unrelated. Been married to a youth worker for 22 years, came to the UK from Canada to do incarnational work alongside a parish church. What we found was an established culture of Christian youth work that views events as “The work”, the way to get the message across, the stuff that one reports to some committee so that they can all be happy that a good number of young people are “hearing the Gospel”. We’d come out of parachurch work that worked on the following principles:
1. You’ve got to go where kids go and do what kids do (within reason and the law! )
2. You’ve got to earn the right to be heard, Your life is transparent and kids spend time in and out of your space and your time. If you’re going anywhere, take a young person with you. (though your grocery bill could go up dramatically if you take them to Asda) Sharing the Gospel comes out of real friendship.
3. It’s a sin to bore a kid with the message of Jesus. Never settle for mediocrity in anything you do, whether programme or realtionship. This is sacrificial stuff. It takes huge effort and commitment to make youth work seem effortless.
4. Events are tools for building relationships – nothing more. Bring people together, give them a glimpse of the person of Jesus from the bible, blow them away with the quality of whatever you’re offering – but don’t mistake putting on events for relational evangelism.
5. Friendship is real and forever if the kid wants it that way – whatever decision they make about following Jesus. So there’s no end to a programme, just lives lived out together.
I’m not sure why I feel compelled to write this – maybe I’m just avoiding the gardenig that’s waiting for me. My concern is for youth workers to stand way back and look at what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. Is your vision to “reach” 1000 kids through events? How many of those will be walking with God in 10 years? Maybe it’s time to commit to 5 kids for 5 years and see them into adulthood. You might put on a few events along the way. You might take kids away for a week in the summer. You might do all sorts of event-based stuff. You will create memories of a great friendship and, ideally, you’ll be chatting away with them on MSN messenger even when you’re old and grey and they’re 4000 miles away.
Sorry if this sounds sermonly – just so concerned about raising the stakes in youth work. Now I’m going to take a look around the rest of this site.
Cheers.
Agreed very much about investing in the individuals. When you know them and they know you are real about what you say when you are ‘up the front’.
I work for a youth project that is not Christian. It is based on cultivatingÃ? relationships, each worker has 6+ kids, we know their family situation, their history and we relate to them at school, at home, in the community. We see significant changes in their behaviour and in their attitude to life, more significantly so than I have seen in many ‘events’.
What would happen if we had organisations that discipled in following Jesus kids in the same way outside of a church context? Or could we somehow incorperate a team mentality to youth working rather than just leaving it to one person in our church?
Hi Felix. When we got here in 1994, we thought that we’d somehow start a (culturally sensitive) youth work revolution. Some pretty exciting stuff happened in our own little corner but we soon realised that churches aren’t generally ready to throw all their resources at the kids “out there”. Today, the biggest hindrance to this kind of work is the difficulty of seeing beyond youth work as either detached or project based with no room for another definition.
If you want to explore any of this further, email me and I’ll send you my husband’s phone number. He’s out of the youth work “trenches” now but finds himself mentoring several guys who are working with kids both in and out of church. He’d be happy to chat.