Joined up thinking

Let's face it. Youth work is a fashion victim.

I'm not talking about the clothing fads that teenagers go through. (Hey, I went through that myself, and if enough people like this on facebook, I promise I will publish some of the more outrageously embarrassing teen photos of myself so you can see what a fashion victim I was at 16!).

No. I’m talking about the "latest way" that we should be doing youth and childrens' work that is presented as the answer to all our problems. Since being involved in youthwork for the last 30 years, I've noticed the pace quicken. We're now down to something new and revolutionary every 2 years.

I suspect those of us who are passionate about reaching, teaching and winning young people for Christ are especially susceptible to this, because often we are on the cutting edge of Church outreach. The work we do with under 18s remains the biggest opportunity we have to reach people. Some surveys suggest that It's even the biggest opportunity to reach adults as well, as parents and carers make a connection with the Christians, the church and the gospel through the work with young people.

One of the biggest overall trends of the last 30 years has been about creating a "distinctive space" for teenagers. A youth group that they can call their own, where only the trendiest of young adults can be in leadership. This overall trend has had many faces - youth church, cell groups, peer-to-peer discipleship etc. But whatever the strengths and successes of each approach, the big picture has been the same. Escaping the outmoded and irrelevant larger church to create a distinctive environment that appeals to what are perceived to be teen values. [I say perceived because, often, the values that are assumed are those that are promoted by secular commercial culture, and are actually only "owned" by a small percentage of the trendiest, and therefore more noticeable, teenagers.]

But despite the massive resource that has been thrown at Youth Work in general over the last three decades - not least the huge rise in full-time youth ministry specialists - the overall figures of children in church continue to decline dramatically. Perhaps it would have been much worse if we hadn't put such an effort in. But it certainly indicates that we should be cautious in our optimism about any strategy that claims it is "the answer."

I am, however, convinced by some findings from a research project in the US called Sticky Faith. Interviewing a significant number of Christian young adults to determine the factors that influenced the strength or weakness of their adult faith, Kara Powell came up with very interesting results. One of the key predictors of strong adult faith is the number and breadth of relationships a child or teenager makes with other Christians at their church.

What is interesting is that this is exactly the opposite of the general trend in "fashion" youthwork. Rather than closet teenagers away from the dull adults, their faith is more likely to mature and develop if they have strong relationships with a whole range of other people in the congregation - grannies, paunchy middle-aged businessmen, stressed-out young mums, and even with younger children and babies.

I find it compelling because it more closely chimes with how the Bible describes the church. Not as a tightly-segregated sociological demographic. But as a family, a building, a body, where all the parts are joined together and work together. Of course it is the message of the Gospel working in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit that brings people to Christ and helps them persevere as the scriptures are opened. But being Bible-centred is never just about the formal setting of the sermon, talk, sunday school lesson or Bible study. It is about children and young people seeing the Gospel adorned, embodied and lived out in the ordinary lives of their teachers and other Christians they mix with at church that is compelling evidence that these stories are real.

And that evidence of lives changed by and lived for God spread across all the age ranges tells a strong story in itself. The Christian faith is not just something for the young or elderly. It is a faith for all ages and stages of life. This is the powerful silent testimony that these relationships can deliver.

The implications are very significant for how we think about youthwork in the church. Here are three to get you going, feel free to suggest more:

1. Recruit a wider range of people to leadership. Just having young trendies running the teen group, or middle-aged mums in the children's group, is a disaster in the making.
2. You must encourage interaction between age groups on a regular basis, not just on once-a-year special occasions.
3. Hospitality works for all ages. We tend to invite people around who are the same as us in age and stage. What would an instinct for hospitality look like if it ignored this instinct and showed an open door to anyone - even children and teenagers?

Krish Kandiah makes some very interesting points in articles here and here. Kara Powell's blog is also worth a look, although those of us on this side of the Atlantic will need to make some cultural adjustments.