A Biblical Theology of Youth Ministry

Teenagers in The Life of The Church

Michael McGarry

• Publisher: Randall House
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781614841005
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Youth ministry today has fallen on hard times. Many churches continue to employ the same methods that have become entrenched over the last few decades, while others are questioning the need for it at all. Michael McGarry explores the foundation of youth ministry in the Old and New Testaments and brings that together with Church history in a compelling way. This contemplative and well-researched book provides a careful critique of youth ministry along with practical guidance for those serving in ministry. The author directs the reader toward a new era of youth ministry where parents and intergenerational ministry play a more significant role. McGarry shares five pillars of gospel-centered youth ministry and reminds readers of the spiritual priority of parents. The author also provides an excellent list of essential building blocks for youth ministry, and practical advice for creating a bridge-building youth ministry connecting church and home.

Chapter 1

The Landscape of
Modern Youth Ministry

There comes a point in every youth pastor’s ministry when he or she fearfully sits back and asks, “Am I doing this right?” This may happen after his or her first year when well-crafted plans get disrupted by uncooperative youth leaders. Perhaps students are simply not responding to ministry initiatives in expected ways. Often, this question plagues youth workers after their first decade of ministry and they reflect on faithful students who have walked away from the faith while other students have surprisingly continued in faithfulness. Many youth workers are beginning to conclude, “I don’t think I’d be doing things this way if I was starting over from scratch, with just the Bible and Church History to guide me.” This book is for aspiring youth workers as well as for veterans who are reconsidering the biblical, historical, and theological foundations for youth ministry. There are surprisingly few books that build a foundation for youth ministry through exegetical and theological study.

Before exploring the biblical, historical, and theological foundations of youth ministry, it is important to get an accurate picture of the landscape of modern youth ministry.

Three Foundational Problems Facing Modern Youth Ministry

There are three foundational problems facing youth ministry that youth workers have long discussed but must also be addressed with church leaders and parents. First, one must understand the “dropout rate,” which is often cited as a description of how many students stop attending church after graduating high school. Second, it is important to recognize that youth culture reflects a broader problem—it is not exclusively youth who are dropping out of church-involvement. American culture as a whole is becoming increasingly non-Christian, and the problem of youth abandoning their faith reflects the same trend among adults. Third, in many churches there is a fragmentation between the church, the youth ministry, and the family. These problems converge to create a recipe whereby the second and third problems continue to fuel the first.

The Dropout Rate

It is no secret that the American Church is in a time of crisis regarding the emerging generation.⁴ It is well known that the majority of church-attending teenagers abandon their faith after high school. Many studies have been done to determine what the actual dropout rate is, but it seems they have only proven that a reliable and clear-cut statistic is likely impossible to determine. Most recently, Lifeway Research has reported, “66 percent of students who were active in their church during high school no longer remained active in the church between ages 18-22.”⁵ This finding is 4% better than the 70% dropout rate Lifeway identified when they conducted the same research in 2007. Despite that improvement, it is doubtful any parent or pastor would be willing to knowingly sacrifice two-thirds of the students in his or her youth ministry without great anguish and many tears. The bestcase scenario remains eternally tragic.

While many churches are tempted to remedy this tragedy with more attractive programs and an endless search for “relevance.” Considering the undeniable influence parents have on a teenager’s spirituality, perhaps a wiser approach would be to empower parents and strengthen the homes in which today’s teenagers are being raised. On the surface, this may not be as impressive as a large youth ministry with all the bells and whistles, but it will surely make a greater long-term impact. As both local churches and families both continue to crumble into disarray and are in a period of genuine crisis, more programs are not the solution. The Church must recommit herself to the gospel and to discipleship to strengthen an inner core whereby families may then be strengthened.

The Barna Group has done extensive research on how parents view their spiritual responsibility to their children, concluding, “Close to nine out of ten parents of children under age 13 believe they have the primary responsibility for teaching their children about religious beliefs and spiritual matters. … Related research, however, revealed that a majority of parents do not spend any time during a typical week discussing religious matters or studying religious materials with their children.”⁶ If parents truly are the greatest spiritual influence on their children as many recent studies have found,⁷ the spiritual negligence of parents has surely caused much harm to both the emerging generations and the future of the American Church.

There are many reasons for the spiritual void that is so common at home. Ministry to parents is often complicated by the following challenges: the many stresses faced by single-parent homes, increasingly long work-weeks for parents, which lead to even less family-time, families where one parent is a Christian while the other is not, and the demand upon students’ time by school and a host of other extra-curricular activities. Barna’s study also found, “Only one out of every five parents of children under 13 has ever been personally contacted or spoken to by a church leader to discuss the parents’ involvement in the spiritual life and development of their youngsters.”⁸ Parents have often been told to do with their children what they are not equipped to do because they have never been discipled themselves. The above-mentioned challenges alongside the absence of a model to follow have conspired against family discipleship in most Christian households.

Youth Culture Reflects a Broader Problem

Youth culture is a direct and unfiltered reflection of the broader culture in which it is located. “Youth culture” arose in the post-industrial revolution where children were removed from factories and given an education in public schools before entering the workplace. Although the concept of “teenager” is relatively new, adolescence has always been recognized and was even mentioned by Aristotle and other ancient figures. It wasn’t until the generation following the Industrial Revolution when adolescence expanded into a socially constructed intermediary stage when the expectations of adulthood were delayed while the child was prepared for future adulthood.⁹ As the United States worked to recover from both the Great Depression and the First World War the music, movie, television, radio, and fashion industries began to target the new generation of teenagers. The early generations of adolescents in America found themselves increasingly able to forge their own culture, separate from that of their parents.¹⁰ This period of American history reflects a time where the cultural optimism and increasingly consumerist mindset combined to create youth culture. What was true then is still true today: the overwhelming majority of youth culture is not driven by the youth themselves, but by influential adults who market their products to teenagers. Because youth culture is largely shaped by adults, it should be no surprise that new ideas and trends first show up within youth culture before being introduced to the broader culture—youth have become the proverbial “guinea pigs” of American culture-shapers. Thomas Bergler describes this phenomenon in the American Church as “juvenilization” and defines it this way, “Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for Christians of all ages.”¹¹ While Bergler focuses on how youth culture eventually reshapes the culture-at-large within the church, it is not unreasonable to expect to find similar patterns outside the church.¹²

The tragedy of the dropout rate extends far beyond youth ministry, for teenagers provide an unfiltered view of what is happening in the broader religious landscape. In the midst of an increasing number of Americans who are “Religiously Unaffiliated,”¹³ it should be no surprise that among the many significant findings of The National Study on Youth and Religion, one conclusion was simply, “We’ll get what we are.”¹⁴ Christian Smith, the lead researcher for the study, wrote, “Any generation gap that exists between teens and adults today is superficial compared with and far outweighed by generational continuity.”¹⁵ Despite the years that have passed since Smith’s research began, these conclusions continue to be relevant today. Teenagers largely reflect the convictions that have been taught to them by their parents, teachers, and the broader culture.

Smith believes that studying youth culture is particularly helpful because it can serve as a barometer of where broader culture is heading.¹⁶ Youth culture has shown itself to be on the forefront of many sweeping cultural changes. This has been true in the development of music styles, clothing trends, technology, and other matters of faith and morality. Most recently, teenagers have led the way in what is now widespread acceptance of homosexuality. To the culture-watcher, it seems clear that major movements among the emerging generations often spread to the older generations in succeeding order.

In the context of the crisis facing the American Church, the trickle-down effect on youth must be considered. Many of the crises facing youth today originated among adults. At the same time, many proposed solutions for reaching a Postmodern culture of adults were pioneered in youth ministry. There is an intimate relationship between strategies of youth ministry and the way those strategies are implemented in the broader church when those youth pastors become senior pastors.¹⁷ Lifeway Research and Ligonier Ministries published The State of Theology in 2018, which paints a bleak picture of what Americans believe. The following are some of the key statistics, presented to help understand that the religious views of those who are raising teenagers today explains why teenagers are so theologically confused.¹⁸

• 70% somewhat agree or strongly agree: “There is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”¹⁹

• 53% somewhat agree or strongly agree: “The Bible has the authority to tell us what we must do.”²⁰

• 65% somewhat agree or strongly agree: “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.”²¹

• 57% somewhat agree or strongly agree: “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.”²²

• 59% somewhat agree or strongly agree: “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being.”²³

• 60% somewhat agree or strongly agree: “Religious belief is a matter of personal opinion; it is not about objective truth.”²⁴

• 51% somewhat agree or strongly agree: “It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.”²⁵

Such a glimpse into “adult culture” surely reflects what is increasingly evident among youth. It should serve as no surprise that adults who hold the worldview described above are raising a generation of teenagers who are rejecting Christ and walking away from the Church. This is a crisis facing the entire American Church, for while the first statistic is surprisingly encouraging, some the other statements have been labeled as heretical and distinctly anti-Christian views throughout Christian History.

The younger generations undeniably hold to less biblical views on doctrinal and lifestyle issues than their elders. But they have not come up with these ideas in a vacuum. Recognizing the rel...