Adoptive Church (Youth, Family, and Culture)

Creating an Environment Where Emerging Generations Belong

Clark, Chap

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781493415625
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Ministerio cristiano

Outreach 2019 Recommended Resource of the Year (Youth and Children) Teens and emerging adults don't feel at home in the church because they are not fully included in the church body. How can congregations nurture young adults, welcome them as siblings into God's household, and empower them to become fully embedded contributors within and to their faith community? Integrating the latest research on adolescent faith and young adult ministry for the local church, this book presents a new way of thinking about youth ministry. Chap Clark offers today's youth leaders highly practical principles based on his extensive experience, showing how they can implement a sustainable youth ministry program in their local church. He presents the adoptive youth ministry model as a way to help congregations see youth ministry as a bridge to inclusion, participation, and contribution in the body of Christ. Clark's comprehensive plan for designing and implementing youth ministry shows churches how to intentionally welcome young people and create an environment where they belong.

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Creating an Adoptive Youth Ministry

It is not enough to connect [teenagers] to a task, but to empower the church to help students to live into their mutual adoption as members of the family of God. As I reflect on this, I continue to dream of ways to make this more of a reality at our church.

—Parent newsletter from a youth pastor, April 2, 2017

Youth pastors were gathered for a morning seminar when I gave them the following scenario. You are applying for a job at a midsized church where you would follow a series of part-time youth directors who weren’t ever able to get much going. Now the church wants to start over from scratch with a new youth leader. During your interview, one of the church’s leaders says to you, “Blank slate here. If you were to come to our church, what questions would you ask yourself, and why?”

“OK,” I told the youth workers, “you’ve got five minutes to write down your answers.”

They furrowed their brows, wrote their questions, shared in small groups, and then voiced their opinions in a large group discussion. The discussion was lively, animated, and occasionally contentious, and everyone seemed deeply engaged. For the first few minutes, the youth workers focused their questions on the church’s students:

• How do we get them to come (to events, church, camps, etc.)?
• How do we get kids to care (about the program, God, each other, us)?
• How do we get students to want to grow in their faith?
• How do we get nonchurched students in the door?

Soon, however, the group shifted to talking almost entirely about the church, asking questions like these:

• How involved are adults in the lives of kids? How involved do adults want to be in the lives of students?
• How do the older folks feel about the students in the church?
• Do students like going to church services? Do they feel welcomed and appreciated?
• Do adults—staff and laity—believe that teenagers have something to offer the church?

As I moderated the discussion, I was struck by how questions about these two areas—the students and the church—gradually converged into one. Most seemed to agree that to get students to care about the youth ministry, or about the church, or even about Jesus Christ, adults had to care about the students.

One of the elder leaders (he was all of forty years old!) stood up and said, “So, for us to lead kids to Christ, we also have to find a way to lead them into a church community that wants and values them.”

Heads nodded. We went to prayer. I thanked God for the discussion.

Youth ministry at its best is a reflection of the church—what I call the adoptive church—reaching out to a generation of young people who wonder where they fit. Our fundamental desire is to help each of our students come into a vibrant, genuine relationship with Jesus that will last a lifetime.

For that to happen, they need to somehow locate themselves within a community that not only reflects their faith but also enhances and deepens it. To be committed to loving kids in Christ’s name means somehow helping them to find their home among God’s people, the local church.

This is our biblical and theological calling. I call this adoptive youth ministry. And discussions like the one I had with those youth workers show why more leaders are embracing the adoptive ministry model.

Adoptive Youth Ministry: Bringing Together the Church and Kids

The concept of adoption isn’t new or radical. We’ve all known people who have adopted a child, or have been adopted themselves, or both. It’s easy for us to envision youth ministry as “adoption” because of what goes into the process of adoption: a child who, for whatever reason, didn’t have a family finds a new, welcoming family that wants and loves this child.

I’ve found that people can quickly and easily embrace adoptive ministry concepts, such as having students “adopt” elderly adults in the church, or having church families “adopt” young people who lack supportive families.

“Adoptive” offers a good way to think about, describe, and strategize youth ministry. As John tells us, “To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). Paul picks up this lingo five times in his letters, reminding us that we who follow Christ have been “adopted to sonship” (or daughtership)1 and are now able to call God not only our Father but “Abba,” a term used by Paul twice that “conveyed both a sense of warm intimacy and also filial respect.”2

In the adoptive church we don’t actually “adopt” each other; rather, we recognize that each of us, in Christ, has been adopted by God. This changes everything about what it means for us to be together as a body. We are, as followers of Jesus, officially related to each other. We are spiritual siblings. Christian kin.

The lively discussion I had with those youth workers that morning focused on relationships, particularly relationships between adults and students. Adoptive youth ministry is an intentional and strategic process for creating the kind of environment where young people can feel valued and included and where adults can receive and empower the young. It is based on the theological truth that whoever is “in Christ”3 is an adopted sibling of everyone else “in Christ,” regardless of gender, ethnicity, location in the world, denomination, or even, yes, age. Old Christians are big brothers and sisters of young Christians.

This is the foundation on which adoptive youth ministry thrives. The goal of adoptive ministry is that everything we think, do, and plan should enhance those familial relationships. Let’s see how that can play out in real life.

Essentials of Adoptive Youth Ministry

In the first book that talked about adoptive ministry, Youth Ministry in the 21st Century: Five Views, as editor and contributor I made the case for adoptive youth ministry. A few months later I contributed to and edited the first full book on this idea, Adoptive Youth Ministry: Integrating Emerging Generations into the Family of Faith. There I laid out the basic premise of what it means to see the ultimate end of youth ministry being young people deeply integrated in God’s household on earth known as the local church. In the first two chapters of that book I explain the concept of adoptive ministry, and then twenty-three other authors—all respected and experienced youth ministry leaders—write about how they envision this happening in a given aspect of youth ministry. Although the contributors had various levels of familiarity with the specifics of adoptive ministry, the book’s value is that everyone had the same outcome in mind.

This book, in contrast to the first two, is designed to help you explore how adoptive youth ministry can strengthen and enhance your current ministry to both young people and the broader church body. First, I set the stage by explaining the rationale and goal behind adoptive youth ministry as a framework for doing youth ministry. Next, I will help you take steps to implement the kind of contextual ministry strategy that you and your community need in order to connect young people with the local body. Then, I will help you integrate best practices that enhance adoptive ministry for the long haul. Finally, we will explore ways to bring about change in faith communities that may be resistant to change.

These approaches can help you create the kind of environments where young people’s faith and life can flourish as they become more integrated, loved, and empowered as members of God’s household on earth.

First, let’s examine the four essentials of an adoptive youth ministry and an adoptive church.

Living according to Our Mutual Adoption in Christ

In John 6, when Jesus was asked what “work” God required of people, he simply said, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:29). As mentioned, in John 1:12 we read that whoever has believed in Jesus is given “the right [i.e., privilege, reality] to become children of God” by God’s adoption. This means, of course, that every person who sincerely desires to belong to Christ has been adopted by God and is therefore a member of God’s household (Eph. 2:19).

Adoptive ministry nicely summarizes what it means to be adopted into the family of God as children of God. Once we’re adopted, we live according to our adoption by learning how all of us can live together. Since it takes a lifetime to shed the residue of the past and embrace what God has declared is true about us, we need not only each other but also the Holy Spirit in our midst to prompt and empower our calling.

The Strong Must Seek Out and Help the Weak

What do most siblings do when one of their brothers or sisters is struggling or hurting? They gather around and help the afflicted sibling. That kind of care should be the model in God’s family.

It is not up to the weak, vulnerable, or disempowered to initiate a connection with the powerful and dominant. Those who feel excluded to the fringes of a congregation or Christian community assume they don’t have the social capital to approach those who are reigning in the center. We can’t expect the vulnerable to engage the strong, so it’s up to the more mature and interconnected family members to engage those who are weak or disempowered.

Jesus modeled this approach in John 13 when he washed the disciples’ feet, even those of his betrayer, Judas! The strong must help the weak, particularly in adoptive youth ministry. Adolescents and emerging adults who are in transition can feel weak and vulnerable when confronted with a family they’re not a part of. Those who are older, more established, and more secure in church congregations must build bridges of trust and inclusion with those who are young, less established, or less secure.

Ministry to the Vulnerable Is a Bridge

In the introduction I described adoptive youth ministry as a bridge ministry. A bridge ministry is one that exists not for its own sake or the pleasure of its own constituents but rather for the sake of those served. People involved in bridge ministries see themselves as the connecting point between young people seeking a place in the world and members of the family of God.

In a sense, any ministry can be a bridge ministry. Ministry to singles is a bridge to people who don’t feel like they fit into a family-values environment. Ministry to the elderly provides a bridge to people who often feel cut off from the world and other people. Divorce recovery ministry is a bridge to people who’ve suffered tremendous sorrow and pain in their most intimate relationships.

At any time, there are needy populations observing our congregation to see if there’s a place for them. Targeted ministry to specific, neglected (or underreached) populations is helpful and necessary, especially if trust with those who are in that population needs to be developed. Because a bridge ministry takes people from one world into another, a solid strategy and targeted programming are invaluable.

The Role of Leaders Is to Include and Empower Everyone

When all members of a community begin to see themselves as siblings, there may be a sense that some leadership roles will fade away. But let’s not confuse roles with status. A leader may have an important role in a community that may entail using authority and power in the fulfillment of their calling. But this doesn’t mean the leader is more valuable, worthy, gifted, or talented than any other member.

We have roles because in our fallen world we need people to use their particular gifts and resources to provide structure so our family can function harmoniously. Hierarchy and the appropriate use of organizational power are necessary in any group or system. Yet in a group of siblings, no leader matters more than the lowliest, newest member. Adoptive ministry needs strong, humble leaders with accountability in place to prevent the leaders from becoming self-important to the point where they fail to recognize who is being left behind. These leaders must make sure that the vulnerable are nurtured, empowered, and included in the church body.

What Adoptive Ministry Is and Is Not

Having outlined the four essentials, let me clarify three things that adoptive youth ministry is and is not.

Adoptive Ministry Is a Family, Not an Adoption Agency

Don’t get me wrong, folks. I am employing an analogy, not declaring that your youth ministry must transform itself into a legal adoption agency.

Adoptive ministry doesn’t mean I adopt another person into my biological family. Rather, it means that followers of Jesus determine to live out our adoption in God’s family together as a community. I’m describing a way of thinking and living. Because we have all been adopted by a loving God as his children, we need to grow into and help each other discover what that means.

Adoptive Ministry Is a Unified Family, Not a Collection of Disconnected Subgroups

Many ministry leaders love the fact that churches often function as a set of separate entities (men’s ministry, women’s ministry, worship, children, youth, college, singles, seniors, etc.). But adoptive ministry leaders revel in working with the whole family of God.

The separation and disconnection caused by putting people into distinct groups have taken a severe toll on the unity Christ said should characterize his body (“This i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Welcome to the Adoptive Church
• 1. Creating an Adoptive Youth Ministry
• Part One: The Goal of an Adoptive Church
• Part Two: The Structure of an Adoptive Church
• Part Three: The Fundamental Practices of Adoptive Churches
• Appendix Adoptive Church 101
• Notes
• Index
• Back Ads
• Back Cover