Youth Ministry NOW

Yale Div School is hosting a series of four lectures/forums about youth ministry over the first four months of 2012.  The first such one was this past Tuesday and the speaker was Dr. Andrew Root from Luther Seminary.

Now I have heard a lot about Andrew Root, and I have read some of the things that he has published, but I have not had the pleasure of hearing him talk until Tuesday.  And I'm so glad that I was able to go.

Dr. Root titled his talk "Relationships Unfiltered" and he mainly talked about the importance of relationships in youth ministry.  But in youth ministry more than any other type of ministry, we use those relationships for influence.  We hope that by having a relationship with a teenager it will make them want to go to church, or bible study, or even choose moral behavior.  That really there is a hopeful outcome to our relationship though it is hardly ever stated matter of fact-ly.  And instead we need to use those relationships to just be with the teenagers, to be with them for who they are and what they are going through in their lives.

One media clip Dr Root showed was from the bad reality tv show called "God or the Girl" in which a group of people we getting together a few weeks before move in day at a college to plan their "evangelism strategy" and the woman in charge of the meeting was saying things like "put your smiles on" "take them out for ice cream" "play frisbee with them" "become their friend" and then "out of loyalty to me, they will come to bible study."  Now this clip made me squirm because it reminded me too uncomfortable about my days in Campus Crusade for Christ and how they would plan returning students to live on each floor of each dorm in the hopes to get new freshmen and then they would have events each weekend.  I found out once I was more involved that this was because they wanted to basically make it that new students became so entrenched that their only friends were in the group and therefore they would keep showing up.  Granted I'm sure they would never put it this way.

Anyway my point of referring to this clip is that is one extreme of having a relationship for the sake of a specific outcome.  But it happens all the time, we hope to persuade friends one direction or the other, but to do it intentionally "for the sake of the gospel" often is more detrimental in the long run.  People find out that they have been set up and once the friendship seems phony, often the gospel comes off that way too.  

If you are in the area, check out the upcoming youth ministry forums at Yale Div, hopefully I'll see you there.