A few weeks back my friend Nate wrote a series of blog articles about the relationship between Young Life and the church. At some point I started conceiving of a blog post that I felt needed to be written.
First some background. I didn’t grow up with Young Life. It didn’t exist in my town. A few friends in college were involved as leaders and a lot of people I knew were pretty impacted by the camp called Malibu in Canada. Although I’d never been, I applied and was offered a position on the “Beyond Malibu” team one summer. My journey didn’t lead there and I turned it down and went to work at Forest Home in Southern California.
Over the years in ministry I’ve had the chance to be around some pretty great Young Life staff that love kids. I’ve also met a ton of people who had their lives changed through the ministry of Young Life.
With all of that said I still have one issue with Young Life. That issue is when church kids are reached out to by young life staffers.
This statement will probably get me in trouble but I will say it anyways. If your ministry is aimed at seeking the lost then when you find someone who is connected to a church you don’t need to reach out to him or her.
I guess where I’m at with this is I’ve seen several Para church ministries (to be clear my statements here are aimed at everyone not just young life) begin to reach out to kids who are already connected to other places and encourage them to come to their ministry. Many of these kids don’t need outreach they need encouragement to stay connected to their churches.
Before you kill me in the comments I will say that I have a solution and it’s really simple. Last year a Young Life club was trying to get restarted in our town. We offered them to use our youth facility so that they would have a space to meet. We invited the Young Life staff to network events and made sure they knew that we really liked them and wanted to work with them. The solution is to partner. I want the Young Life staff person to know that I think they have an incredible role. I want them to know that the church desperately needs ministries who are reaching out and caring for lost teenagers. I want them to feel supported and empowered that we pray and care for them. In return I want them to support the long-term discipleship that we are doing with students. I want them to know when a student was baptized and confirmed at a church. I want them to do everything they can to encourage students to stay connected to their churches. We need to partner to love teenagers and to encourage them to not just jump around to the new great thing. Will it be easy to partner? No. But ministering to teenagers isn’t supposed to be easy. Commissions never are.
dude, lets talk about this – I am being approached to partner with the young life in our area… It is just at the beginning stages and I’d love to chat about it. I have had a full merging partnership in the past with YL and it really worked. I’m not quite sure though how it might work in a more casual supportive partnership like what you are trying. I agree with the idea of church kids involved in para-church organizations – and that seems to be the case in our area but… anyways, we should chat. I do believe the future is in collaborative work – how do we do it in a non-competitive, fully engaged, highly involved, respectful, and beautiful way? Can it be one ministry with different expressions – I think so and down the road this is what youth ministry might look like. The right people are key though. Big picture, humble, yet driven people…
We partner heavily with young life too. It is by far the best solution to some of the potential difficulties. I totally agree about the negatives with them reaching out to church kids.
Eric. I wonder if its a regional thing. Ive heard of some great California partnerships.
Typed with my thumbs. Typos guaranteed.
Maybe. One other problem was some YL staff going to the current hipster church of the area and getting our churched kids to go with them instead of their home. Happened in both south and north OC churches I have worked in.
Ive seen that too.
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I am a youth pastor who is also serving as a leader at a YL club in our area. It has been great to be there and help because we have some students who are not plugged into our youth group at church go there. Being a leader there has allowed me to show that it isn’t a threat to go to another ministry/youth group if you connect there and it has given me the opportunity to connect with them in a different setting than on Sunday morning when they come with their parents.
With that said, I do see that tendency for church kids to be targeted. I think there is a desire to have a certain core number in order to make it feel friendly for new people who come in.
I think my biggest complaint though is that there really isn’t a good plan for trying to get the YL kids into churches. It is their stated desire, but I haven’t really seen it happen yet.
Why do you type with your thumbs?
I agree with you nice blog.
David hit the problem I have with many of the para-church organizations on the head. I don’t get upset when students choose to go to para-church organizational meetings, I think its great that they do and are getting ministered to, whether its by both our group and theirs or one or the other.
But what does bother me is that most Young Life leaders dont have a real plan to get those kids involved in a church body, and in many cases end up leaving the kids without a church home.
Ben- Good point. This may be one of the reasons there is now College Young Life. How can the Church help YL solve this problem instead of just pointing it out as being one?
Yeah I am curious about the relationship between youth pastor and young life area director.
I would assume the youth pastor may have his/her guard up whenever their is a YL club in their community. In my experience YL area directors are amazing at incarnational relationship, know how to minister to campuses, and are super edgy-non-traditional, which can be a threat to a youth pastor who is really big on discipleship and not so big on evangelism.
I think young life is amazing at evangelism… way better than many youth ministries. But like Lars was alluding to….. there is no filtering system to get the students into church.
I actually liked when young life staffers reached out to church kids. I would encourage my students to at least check it out…. I was surprised with their reactions…. Young Life is too surfacey and 2-D…. and not deep enough for my spiritual liking. However in some cases some students just need to a spiritual environment that was not church so YL worked perfectly.
My issue is when youth pastors view their students as possessions and they are not allowed to attend anything else other than the church they attend. If student X, choses to attend YL, then I would conclude my youth ministry may need to learn somethings for the parachurch peeps.
Then again…. in my previous context, I recruited all the young life staff to come help at church youth group and they stayed and shut down YL.
After writing about this for the past month and thinking about it for 10 years, I have simmered it down to one question. What is best for each student as far as long term spiritual formation is concerned and how can the church and YL play formative roles in that process?
Long question, but gets at the partnership and long-term view of faith that so many have mentioned.
you can darn well count me in to be blogging about this topic in a few weeks. dont worry Lars I will hyperlink your blog.
I like that even in Hotlanta you are still relevant.
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Lars, go check out what Sam Kennedy (YL guy) responded to your post on my blog. Should I have him post it on yours to keep your convo going?