When I was a kid, I thought my Dad had magical superpowers. Every time my brother and I sat in the back seat of the car as he drove us towards a set of traffic lights near our house, the same thing would happen: the lights would be red. We’d wait. Then, my Dad would bellow ‘CHANGE, I COMMAND IT’ in his deepest, loudest voice. The lights would go green, at my Dad’s command. He did it every time and got it right, every single time.
As I grew a bit older I became suspicious. Dads don’t have superpowers do they? How is he changing the lights? Why is he always able to get them to change when he wants them to? Why doesn’t it work when I say the same sentence? Of course it didn’t take me long to figure out that he was just able to see the lights across the road changing, and so always knew the exact moment our lights would change. No superpowers, just eyes and some driving experience.
We all know things now that we didn’t know as kids. We all think things we didn’t think a few years ago, even a few months ago. We are constantly learning, growing, changing, improving, evolving; or at least, we should be, let me explain…
As an adult, if I still thought my Dad changed traffic lights with his magical superpowers, you would think I was a bit weird, or at the very least, immature. I grew up, and I believe youth ministry needs to do the same. Perhaps shouting, ‘Oh, grow up youth ministry,’ is too harsh or unnecessary, but I do think we need to mature, to grow past where we’ve been into new territory, in our thinking and our practice. I could fill pages with ideas and questions about how that might look, but here are three ideas to start with.
We need to expect God to do things we disagree with
‘The Spirit of God may not be where one would like to see it and it may be where one refuses to see it.’ Demetrios Constanteios.
God still surprises me. Every time I think I’ve got it figured out – how he works, what he’s up to, what the rules are - God does something completely random. When I got a job as a ‘secular’ youth worker, I had no idea that I’d have more opportunities to talk about and show my faith than I ever had when I worked for a church. God uses all the people you think he shouldn’t, in all the places you think he wouldn’t, doing strange things you think he couldn’t.
We need to be open to a wild, unpredictable, holy, awesome God who won’t follow any of our rules, who will break out of all our boxes and systems and flow charts, until, like lots of people I know who’ve been doing this Christian thing for a lot longer than I have, we can sit a little more comfortably with mystery, hold the reigns of control a little looser, and widen our definitions of, well, pretty much everything.
Let’s focus more on the fruit of our theology, rather than the ‘correctness’ of it.
As a kid, you are told there are right answers and wrong answers. Ticks, crosses, rewards and punishments point the way, only for all of this to be broken as a teenager when you realise that life is actually a whole lot more complicated than that.
We talk a lot about the right things to do and the right things to think. We have loads of different theologies and doctrines, and endless debates about all of them. The questions we ask ourselves are good questions, but, let’s not get lost in pointless games of Bible verse boxing. Instead we should explore the fruit of our thinking and practice, alongside our desire to find a truthful answer: What’s happening in your own life as a result of what you think and do? What’s happening in the lives of the young people you work with as a result of what you think and do? What’s happening in the lives of your family and friends as a result of what you think and do?
Fruit, is not salvations or ‘decisions’. Fruit, is that big long list in Galatians: the fruit of the spirit. And if what we’re doing and thinking isn’t helping us to see more of those things, then perhaps we need to do and think some different things.
We need to understand building relationships as mission, not for mission.
It would be amazing if every young person we worked with became a Christian. It’s what we all dream of, probably why lots of us got into youth work and when it does happen it gives us a surge of rocket-fuel-like energy that keeps us going through all the tough times. But sometimes, despite our best efforts, it doesn’t happen. We need to know that this is ok. It’s part of our job but it’s not all of it.
One of my favourite Bonhoeffer quotes always reminds me of the importance of just being in relationship with young people, not as a means to an end, but as the end. I quote him here and replace where he uses the word neighbour, with young person/people: ‘One does not love God in the young person, nor are young people loved to make them Christian – young people are loved for their own sake, and in this love of young people, one serves the will of God.’
We serve the will of God when we love young people, when we care for them holistically: emotionally, socially and physically, as well as spiritually. When you sip hot chocolate with young people on a Friday night as they talk about how their weeks have gone, you are serving the will of God. When you notice that kid on the fringe and make them feel included during a football game, you are serving the will of God. When, because of the brilliance of informal education, young people in your care learn they are special, talented, valued, capable, beautiful and not alone, you are serving the will of God.
There are some things we are doing in youth ministry that are great. But maybe there are some ways we can mature a bit, let go of where and who we’ve been, accept those magical powers of the past didn’t work out quite as we’d expected, and move on to become the youth workers and people that God is calling us to be.
Jo Dolby is a youth and community work lecturer for the Institute for Children, Youth and Mission (CYM) in Bristol, and a youth worker for Youth Connect in Bath.
