There are plenty of non-white young people where I live. There are huge working-class housing developments there too, full of teenagers. There are many young people who have physical or mental disabilities. Lots of the young people in my community wouldn’t define themselves as heterosexual and cisgender. But you might not learn that from spending time in the churches and Christian youth groups around here. And I think the crux of the problem comes down to this: we naturally aim our youth work at young people who look a bit like us.
I don’t just mean physically resemble. I mean that we naturally pitch our work towards teenagers with the same sort of culture, background and even intellectual capacity as us. To test that claim out on your own youth work:
First, look at the young people that you already work with. Is there a mix of ethnicities, physical abilities, cultures and social backgrounds? Do you work with young people at different ends of the economic spectrum? Have young people been able to find a home in your group even if they don’t happen to be straight?
Your job as a youth worker is to grow a group of young people who look like Jesus, not like you
Second, picture success for your group: real, outrageous success; teenagers spilling out on to the pavement because your venue can’t contain them all. Try to actually see it in your mind’s eye. What does it look like? And more tellingly, what do those young people ‘look’ like? Is there incredible diversity? Are any of them in a wheelchair? If I’m brutally honest, my imagined vision of successful youth work is a picture of lots of smiling middle-class white kids. And that’s not good enough.
This isn’t true everywhere; I know of lots of youth workers who don’t have a problem in this area. But I’ve been around enough youth groups to know that this is an issue that many need to engage with, particularly in the more middle-class churches (and these are often the growing ones). So if we’re going to be big enough to accept that we might have some work to do in this area – perhaps more because of our social conditioning than any actual bigotry – then here are a few practical steps we can take to address it:
- Be honest about your own prejudices: The starting point is to pray, and to ask God to show you where you may naturally oppose real inclusion. Quite often these prejudices are buried deep in our sub-conscious: fear of certain cultures, nervousness about certain lifestyles. We have to root out and deal with these first.
- Talk about diversity in your group: Many young people in your group will naturally operate in the same mono-cultural way without even realising it. Make sure you challenge that in your youth programme, not only talking about issues of injustice and prejudice, but also talking positively about diversity and inclusion.
- Try to have a diverse volunteer team: If the leaders are all one colour, one culture, then what are we communicating about diversity to those who are or could be part of the group?
- Build a connection with a group that ‘looks’ different to yours: Find a youth group near you which has a very different demographic, and build a meaningful relationship with them - running shared events and so on.
- Find and break down the barriers: Think about why ‘different’ young people don’t access your youth work. It could be because they don’t know about it, because the venue or activities don’t appear to welcome them or it may be a practical issue: the need for transport, or suspicious parents who need reassuring. This is particularly pertinent with regard to physical disabilities: is your group and venue accessible? Find those barriers, and address them.
- Ask God to help you to see and engage with ‘others’: This is a hard area, but God is gracious! So pray as a team that God would help you to meet and serve young people who don’t fit your normal member profile.
Very few of us are intentionally prejudiced in our approach to life and youth work. So let’s make sure that we’re not stumbling into youth work which alienates and divides. Your job as a youth worker is to grow a group of young people who look like Jesus, not like you.
