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A Third Kind of Youth Ministry

Just read a blog post – The Youth Ministry Gap.

The gist of it is that when the words “Youth Ministry” are uttered, it could actually mean 2 different things.

1. “Professional Vocational Youth Ministry” which he say is 20% of the workers.

This youth ministry is pretty sophisticated. Like any profession people fall into schools of thought. They have models for doing youth ministry. They have written personal and can defend philosophies of youth ministry. They run programs which implement their well thought out and defended philosophy of ministry. They train volunteers to be proteges for their school of thought. They have opinions about whether a certain models is getting stronger or dying.

2. “My Church Youth Ministry” which he says is 80% of the workers.

They just want to know how to minister to the kids in their church. When they e-mail me or call our customer service line they don’t want to talk philosophy or are even aware that there are different ways of doing youth ministry. They are calling because they have 15 seventh graders in their Sunday School class and they need a curriculum that will work for them.

For the 80% or so of youth workers in America who fit this category, youth ministry is pretty matter-of-fact. There are kids who show up on Sunday morning or Wednesday night and I do what I can to minister to them.

That characterization might be true, but I disagree with the percentages because there’s a missing group in there.  It’s the group of youth leaders who have little interest in youth ministry philosophy, programs, or models because they aren’t really focused on creating a “thing”.  But, they also aren’t overly concerned with what to do with kids who “show up”.

This third group of youth leaders are not holed up in a church building waiting for the kids to come to them.  They are spending their time going to the kids, living out life among them, bringing Jesus to them.  There is a percentage of Youth Ministry professionals & volunteers who don’t strive to draw kids to themselves, but are drawn to kids.  It might be a small percentage, but it is a group of people who are doing it the way Jesus did it.  There is a third kind of youth ministry.

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