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PODCAST EPISODE #18 Why We Need Change In Youth Ministry A Conversation with Marko Jonathan: It's amazing how many people, I've been in session after session, where I'm talking with someone afterwards and someone will come up and they'll start talking with me about you know I'm doing this with programming cause I'm teach these programming seminars. And people will come up to me and say, `I'm doing this and I'm doing this,” and all of a sudden I'll stop them and I'll say, `Wait a sec, wait a sec. Are you and your other adult leaders, are you hanging out with kids?' And they look at me like, huh? `What are you talking about – hanging out with kids?' And I look at them all of a sudden I realize, early in my teaching about the subject, `Wait a sec, this programming is just a tool, a means to an end.' The programming is not the end in itself at all. Matter of fact, programming for me is sometimes is an excuse to be able to create an open door to talk with kids. Cause very often at programs, sometimes I was able to meet kids because friends brought him out for stuff. Or sometimes it was the opposite, it was meeting with a bunch of kids and then them looking for a place of belonging and sometimes a small group or something like that – dare we call it a program – that ended up being one of those places. Marko: I totally agree with you, but I will push back just a little bit and say that even that I think is reflective of... Jonathan: 2.0 Marko: A good 2.0 thinking. Cause it's not that good 2.0 thinking was, `Programs are ultimately what we hope for!' Good youth workers, and I hope I was one, in 1990, you know, but our hope was, `Yes, we want to use programs so that we have an opportunity to really connect with kids.' I just don't think that's what's needed, desired, effective anymore. We don't need the covering of a slick program in order to grant us the opportunity to hopefully have a meaningful conversation. It used to be that we needed that program for attractional purposes – it was like a magnet, you put together a cool program. A lot of ways I still see this really being lived out is, how many churches are really enamored of the idea of having a really slick youth center these days. Right? Jonathan: Yeah. Marko: So, there's lots of them continuing to be built, millions and millions of dollars being spent on that, and I'm not saying I'm ripping on those people, I'm just saying that I think it's a questionable, it's a question of value. Jonathan: Sure. Marko: I think the return on that is questionable because what kids are really looking for is belonging, not a really awesome basketball court, or the state of the art sound system. And we have, for too long, used those things almost as an excuse for saying, `What we really want to do is have the opportunity to have connections with kids and so we're gonna use those in order to build connections with kids.' How about if we just go build connections with kids, rather than using those tools? Now, some people would say that I am being naïve, or that I'm pie in the sky, that that's not realistic, especially if you have a larger youth ministry. And I don't pretend to have all the answers on how this works out. All I'm saying is that I have become more and more convinced that our ministries are not built on assumptions that are geared for helping kids find belonging. They're geared for helping kids find autonomy in a unique youth group that's a club. Right? It's a youth group that's separate from the church, it's often across the parking lot in a separate building, and that was a great response to the needs of teenagers in 1985 and 1990. And I don't think it is anymore. |
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