The Church (and many other institutions) has inherited a hierarchy where so often children and young people are lowest in the pecking order. This means that they’re often the last to be consulted or asked to take on special responsibilities in our communities. For me, this was so prevalent in the Christian culture that I was working in, that it wasn’t until I looked more at secular models of youth work that promote working with young people in ways which empower and give meaningful participation that I started to really get a bee in my bonnet about this issue for us in Christian youth work.
This shouldn’t be new to us. So much of how Jesus modelled ministry to us was in spending time and investing in the outliers. His kingdom was upside down, where the least are cherished and power is subverted for the glory of God. Jesus even said that we were meant to approach him like children (Matthew 18:3). If we follow his example Christian community should be functioning on the margins of community. Instead we’ve cultivated a very ‘adult’ church that values ‘good behaviour’, long words and meeting together in ways that require a mature attention span. This is just our method not content; the voices of young people will do wonders for the faith of our church, if we just make space and listen to them. We need young people to question, reimagine, form identities out loud in our communities, and then we need to listen and learn with them.
This is a huge challenge for all those who work with young people in Christian contexts. I often liken my role to that of a translator - we speak with both the Church and young people and interpret what they are saying to each other. Or a mediator - we are the middle ground where these communities meet. As youth workers, we have to take young people and what they’ve got to say to the Church (including us!) seriously. Often the way churches (or even our youth work practices) work make it difficult for young people to be heard. This is a huge loss and, in my opinion, a huge contributing factor to why young people leave church. The Church is missing out on the regenerative and prophetic voices of young people when it fails to effectively dialogue with young people. Young people miss out on the life-giving role it is to be heard and valued and lose the formative processes of being included and working together within a church family.
The voices of young people will do wonders for the faith of our churches, if we just make space and listen to them
So we add another word to our role in youth work - advocacy. This is about using our position to make young people’s voices heard. If our churches are ignoring young people’s voices, we need to shout (albeit in polite and creative ways) to make it much harder to ignore them. The same is true of our parachurch youth movements, our youth festivals, local politics, or education systems.
This has the potential to make us quite unpopular. Adults don’t like being contradicted and institutions don’t like being interrupted. Plus young people make things messy: theologically as well as just untidy! Here advocacy looks like being a prophet and is about taking on some of the flack that might otherwise be aimed at young people.
How might we advocate well? Firstly, we ourselves need to be seriously consulting with young people: making sure our youth work is consultative and that there is space for young people to talk about what they’re thinking, and what their ideas or critiques are. In doing this you begin to create a culture where young people know that what they have to say is valued. Of course you may need to be patient and find creative ways which enable young people to voice what they want to say. There is always a danger in making things too wordy or discussion-based which will exclude some young people or at least make these conversations feel intimidating to participate in.
To take this forward you can set up practical structures such as having youth committees that play a meaningful part of decision - making processes. Another way could be to find ways to train and facilitate the church or organisation’s adults in listening to young people; helping develop the organisation’s management structure to always consider how young people might be heard or consulted better on each matter. Continuing to find ways across the organisation that promotes good communication will also be really helpful.
As for me, I’m having a go at putting my money where my mouth is and researching this for a PhD and seeing if we can learn together here in Premier Youthwork too. I’m putting us all on a learning project with a new column where we will hear from young people about their take on youth work issues. This magazine is a great place to learn from other youth workers, but how brilliant to have a space to learn from young people themselves here! Hopefully together we’ll grow our ability to listen and learn from young people and step aside to make space for them to be heard over ourselves.
So here, each month we’ll take some time to listen to young people, publish what they’ve got to say, and consider what we’ve got to learn from them. If you think you know a young person who you’d like to have a space to talk about a relevant issue, please do get in touch on Twitter @youthworkmag or via email: youthwork@premier.org.uk
