Monthly Archives: December 2008

This is a series of blog posts concerning youth participation. The articles will be published every Tuesdays in the coming 4 weeks. The last one was published on 23rd Dec 2008.

In your country, youth generally is a group being perceived as:

 A. a group that needs special attention to be taken care of

B. a group causing various social problems

C. a group which is heavily influenced by global culture

D. a group which the church normally finds it difficult to reach.

E. all of the above

   If your answer is E. Probably some of the churches in your country may adopt the ‘lost sheep approach’. With this view, young people are a target group to be preached by the gospel. Apart from that, churches may also see that keeping the youth too busy to create problems as one of their major objectives.

         In the late 19th century, it caught many churches’ attention that a newly emerged group – youth – started to leave the church. Both the church and the youth themselves find it hard to relate to each other. It thus gave rise to various youth Christian movements or organizations which were set up to tailor the specific needs of the youths.

         Even after many decades, many churches have been struggling how to attract and ‘manage’ the ‘lost sheeps’ who have stayed away from the church. In some places where Christian is still a minority in the population, proclamation among the youth has been a significant challenge and an important task to the churches.

         No matter what circumstances facing the churches, almost none of them would say we could leave the youth group to the Christian youth organizations. In order to evangelize or preach the gospel to the youth, many churches have set up their own arm of ‘youth organization’ which they would call youth department or ministry.

         With the ‘lost sheep approach’, the youth workers are practically the missionaries, caretakers, teachers and friends of the youth. Depending to the social context facing the youth ministry, the programs they offered can be very different even they are using the same approach.

         For examples, in countries where youth are the source of many social problems, the youth ministry may be focusing on organizing activities to keep them busy from causing problems. While in some cases the youth ministry try to attract more youth through various enrichment or outdoor activities.

        Nonetheless, whatever those activities are, they are the means to attract the youth so that they will stay in the church and be preached with the gospel. To use a metaphor, the youth programs are like the bell and good pasture. They are some incentives for the lost sheep to come back to where they are supposed to belong.

This is a series of blog posts concerning youth participation. The articles will be published every Tuesdays in the coming 6 weeks. The last one was published on 25th Nov 2008.

There are many youth participation models adopted by different churches. The most interesting thing is how the church leadership perceives their youth would have tremendous effect on what kinds of model they will use.

  The following models/views are not meant to serve as an example for churches to adopt. The major intention to illustrate them is to facilitate a comparison between different models that are commonly used. Those models may be oversimplified but it will help one to understand what kinds of youth participation model her church is using.

A list of views of youth and its resulted participation models:

1. Equal footing
2. General Secretary in Training
3. Lost Sheep
4. Seeds

Equal footing View

        In a morning service, you are invited to pray for the children and young people at the point they will be going to their children/youth groups. What would the most possible version of your prayer?

1. Pray that God will provide the teachers with wisdom; and the kids and youth will learn more about god.
2. Pray that the children will pay attention, behave themselves and understand the teachings.
3. Pray that the youth and kids will have a good time worshipping and learning about god.
4. Pray that God will guide both the teacher and the youth/kids and will learn together new things and build a closer relationship with god.

        ‘Youth have so much to learnt from the elders but also the elders have much to learn from them’. If your answer is D, you are very likely in line with this view.

        With the ‘equal footing’ view, youths are not seen as kids but the peers or partners of the elders in various ministries. The youths can enjoy equal terms and opportunities in most aspects, including the right to participate in the highest level of decision making process.

        Churches with this view are most likely to carry out what has been called on in the last LWF Assembly: to urge all member churches to encourage the participation of youth in the worship and decision making processes at all levels.

        It is interesting to note that some of the churches which embrace this view do not intend to build a prominent youth ministry. There is not even a youth worker especially for taking care of the youth groups.

        Those churches would rather call on all adult members to serve as a ‘youth workers’. To be more accurate, those ‘youth workers’ will be more like ‘youth mentors’ in the beginning and become ‘partners’ in the end.

        The rationale behind this is that youth should not be seen as a group of ‘kids’ which needs extra attention to be taken care of. Rather they believe the youths have all kinds of potential to serve God as good as the elders are able to. Perhaps they may need a period of guidance in the beginning, but they can pick up soon and becomes an ‘equal footing’ partners of the elders.

        As such, those church will deliberately engage everyone of the youth into different ministries, from a choir to an advocacy group, according to the gifts of the respective young person.

        In many cases youth would still have a regular fellowship but it will more like a place to worship and communicate than the ‘only place’ for youth participation.

        The above description should be seen as a kind of extreme case of churches holding this view. More often, the churches would still have a youth ministry which organizes a variety of program, from bible studies camps to leadership empowerment programs.

        Nonetheless, those aim of those training are meant to empower the youth to soon become the partner of the elders in the ministry. Youths are not expected or required to take a very long period of training before they could actually take up the responsibility. The equal footing approach emphasizes very much on intergenerational partnership in the ‘present tense’.