Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

I’m a few days late submitting this blog post because I spent the day I was supposed to be writing, fearing for my life while riding roller coasters with names like “Intimidator” and “Dominator” – names which are merely metaphorical to the thrill-seeking youth group kids I was chaperoning and entirely literal to me! Ever since returning to solid, unmoving ground, I’ve been remembering the fears I was, only temporarily, able to overcome a few days ago, and, above all, celebrating that our summer-end youth group outing to Kings Dominion was a great success. I might even say that I’d do it again next year, but I’ll need at least eleven more months to forget about this past Tuesday!

While eating boardwalk fries with some of our youth, I remembered what a wise, senior priest once said to me about youth ministry. In the late 1960s and 70s, he said, when he was a young curate and first-time rector, the post-Baby Boom society still had enough staying power that a successful youth ministry was defined, pretty much, as a weekly gathering of a youth group. Sunday evenings in the parish house, some games and food and an occasional bible study was enough to “keep the kids in church.” But something began to change in the 1980s, he told me, and the shift was most certainly made by the late 90s: a successful youth ministry was dependent no longer on regular weekly meetings but, rather, on regular, fun outings. Over the course of a generation, youth ministry shifted from meetings to events. And if you wanted the kids present at the meetings, weekly or otherwise, you needed to develop big events regularly and systematically.

At St. George’s, Valley Lee, the congregation I have the pleasure of serving, this has also been the story of our recently re-built and now successful youth ministry. Over the course of this summer, for instance, we’ve had a campout in late May, a tubing trip on the river in June, our diocesan summer camp in July, the trip to Kings Dominion this past week, and a pool party on the books at the end of August. There’ve been regular (bi-weekly) youth group meetings, too, with formation and bible study and games. At one meeting, they even helped pull weeds in the churchyard’s brick walkway – made more fun by a contest with prizes! Fortunately, for us, we’re blessed with an engaged group of kids and families and two great young adult youth group leaders. The kids are bringing their friends, and word is getting out that there’s a new, exciting ministry for junior high and high school kids. There’s desire in the group for more events and more gatherings, and that’s precisely what will lead to sustained growth. Figuring out ways to most effectively advertise and connect with the kids as well as their parents has been a growing edge for us; we’ve realized that parents of teens and pre-teens aren’t always in sync with their own child’s schedule and that direct access to technology on the part of most of the youth, themselves, means that we need to find ways to connect more directly with them, on their terms, too. In short, email works for parents, but not for kids. Texting, however, works for kids (and many parents, too), as does Facebook messaging and Twitter.

But all of this is to say that a growth-oriented youth ministry challenges some fundamental precepts of our church’s basic and most comfortable operating system. In my experience, many congregations and communities in The Episcopal Church are designed for regular, sustained commitment; i.e., weekly youth group meetings, weekly attendance at corporate worship. We are best at communicating in the language of commitment and regular presence and challenge. We’re not so good at event-driven ministries.

The temptation is, then, that some good-intentioned church leader might take the words of this blog post and say, “See, this is what we need: a great youth group! Let’s get some young adult leaders and let’s grab our kids and get them organized and meeting.” But are you really prepared that you might not ever see the kids meeting, at least not in your parish house? Are you and your congregation ready for the fact that their meetings may be off campus and elsewhere, perhaps at an amusement park, perhaps on the river? Are you prepared to allow them to generate their own events, and to leave the church (buildings)? Is the motivation behind forming a youth group so that there’s something for them to do (in the church building) and so that they won’t leave (the church buildings)?

The good news is that they, our teens and pre-teens, are ready. The other good news is that if you, too, are also ready to hop on roller coasters with them, or at least stand on the ground while they ride, you have a pretty good shot that they won’t really leave the church. By which I mean the Body of Christ; because you’ve helped them become it.

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