Is youth ministry really beneficial?

[Taahanni]

Is youth ministry causing more harm than benefit in the church? This question is based off what Voddie Baucham has to say in the following video:

Does youth ministry discourage parents from taking primary responsibility for catechizing and shepherding their children because they are handing off that responsibility to the youth pastor?

 

[Polanus1561]

Youth ministry =\= youth pastor

 

[Ryan&Amber2013]

It depends on the church. We are at a large church and have a very active youth ministry. But it's a conservative reformed church, so the families are held tightly together and involved very much in the children's lives. Most of the parents who have youth actually serve in one way or another. So for our church it's more of a place for the kids to connect, make friendships, serve, and live life together in a holy society.

But the youth group I used to serve at before I was reformed... Man that was a mess. Kids showing up stoned, no parents around, carnal. It was crazy. I don't think most of them are following Christ anymore.

 

[Taahanni]

It depends on the church. We are at a large church and have a very active youth ministry. But it's a conservative reformed church, so the families are held tightly together and involved very much in the children's lives. Most of the parents who have youth actually serve in one way or another. So for our church it's more of a place for the kids to connect, make friendships, serve, and live life together in a holy society.

But the youth group I used to serve at before I was reformed... Man that was a mess. Kids showing up stoned, no parents around, carnal. It was crazy. I don't think most of them are following Christ anymore.

I tend to agree. However, I will say I have heard in recent years an increasing number of stories that cast a negative light on youth ministry/youth group even in very conservative, reformed churches. I often wonder what the problem is for these negative experiences other adults share with me, whether it is in relation to their children or in regard to themselves when they were youth.

My church also has a youth ministry, and when I was in it as a teenager, I was impressed with the way our youth pastor taught us because nothing was ever dumbed down. He very much spoke to us like adults. When I was in it, our youth group was interesting though because there were children who came from families that were not Christian and/or supervised their children minimally. I will say that did add an interesting dynamic.

 

[SolaScriptura]

Prolly true that Big Eva "youth group culture" isn't particularly helpful. All I know is that in my experience... my youth group kept me out of trouble, put a bug in my ear for future ministry, and introduced me to my wife.

 

[Edward]

As I see it there are three paths that can be taken as to youths from unchurched families.

1) Have a youth ministry that their Christian classmates can use to bring them in and expose them to the church.

2) Abdicate to parachurch ministries.

3) Ignore them and write them off.

If you have a significant number of youths in your church from Christian households and don't think any of them are into sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, they my advice would be to get your head of of the sand and notice what is going on in your congregation.

 

[Ploutos]

@Taahanni - thanks for posting this video and raising those questions! I would be interested to hear your own thoughts on what Voddie says. My own take on the video is a fairly critical one for a couple of reasons:

1) He absolutizes the negative aspects of youth ministry - that is, he takes the bad aspects of youth ministry and applies them across the board as inescapable and even intentional facets of the phenomenon. It is the logical fallacy of jumping from "this often/usually happens" to "this always happens". He highlights specific horror stories and makes them out to be normative.

2) He uses a lot of anecdotal and emotionally-generated reasoning based on a presupposed hermeneutic of suspicion toward youth ministry.

3) He places an unnecessary burden of Biblical proof on an area where Scripture doesn't provide exhaustively detailed advice. The Bible doesn't lay out a cradle-to-grave curriculum for Christian education, so to say youth ministries are not found in the Bible isn't really a valid argument.

I think he does raise a lot of valid concerns about youth ministry - the lack of parental oversight, the creation and idolization of possibly-unnecessary institutions and roles that we then come to expect, etc. Lots of strange and immoral things have happened in youth groups between students and students and between leaders and students. It is all too often a breeding ground for shallow or outright terrible teaching. See this short Tim Challies post as an illustration of that. That said, unless I missed something, he seems to have completely overlooked one big way in which youth ministry is just another manifestation of a culture-wide phenomenon of generational separation and sorting, from daycare to 55+ housing communities, none of which can be absolutized as inherently wrong but which do collectively point to deep societal dysfunction. It's therefore not quite correct to treat youth ministry as its own problem rather than part of a larger issue.

Because Voddie absolutizes youth ministry as innately bad in and of itself, and because of his swift dismissal of any good aspects of it, I am left with the suspicion that he is an advocate of some type of family-integrated church view. I haven't seen this explicitly stated, but it would fit well with what I've seen of his rather extreme views on dating, marriage, and parenting. His manner of reasoning seems to point in that direction. Needless to say, I am not at all in agreement with the family-integrated movement as it absolutizes a specific idea beyond what Scripture supports - this as someone who abhors the idea of children's church and has an expectation that from age 2 or 3 on, my own children will be with my wife and me for the entire service (though not at all to the total exclusion of any outside involvement in our church's youth programs).

You did ask whether youth ministry discourages catechesis. I don't think it actively discourages it, though it can very easily enable neglect here. Youth group or no, parents need to be involved in their children's lives and in their spiritual formation. When a parent sends their kid to youth group so they can tick a box and move on, youth ministry isn't the problem - the parent is.

One last thought - I appreciate what has been said by other posters about the value of the community provided by youth ministry. While it could be done better and while I appreciate the warnings from Voddie and others about the pitfalls of youth ministry - when one has a good church home, it can be a good outlet, much better than many of the alternatives. Just approach it with prudence and what should by now be a universal awareness (at least among serious believers) of the dangers of sleepovers, summer camps, and smart phones. Abolitionism isn't the answer - parental responsibility and involvement is.

 

[Afterthought]

The youth do need the ministry to be to them as much as to anyone else in the congregation. The classic youth group model is not good, but there are other ways. The more we can get the older teaching the younger, and the more it is ensured that the ministry does not neglect the youth in its instruction and preaching, the more we will have approached the biblical ideal for youth ministry.

It also isn't a bad idea for people in the church to have social gatherings for the young people now and then. It is the easiest and most natural way to find a spouse, and we do want them to get married ideally younger than what is happening today.

 

[Taahanni]

If you have a significant number of youths in your church from Christian households and don't think any of them are into sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, they my advice would be to get your head of of the sand and notice what is going on in your congregation.

I wonder if some parents are just looking for something to complain about? Or perhaps they are bringing with them their own negative experiences with a youth group?

The youth do need the ministry to be to them as much as to anyone else in the congregation. The classic youth group model is not good, but there are other ways. The more we can get the older teaching the younger, and the more it is ensured that the ministry does not neglect the youth in its instruction and preaching, the more we will have approached the biblical ideal for youth ministry.

This is one thing I appreciated about my youth group growing up. The youth pastor who taught us was not your typical 20-something-year-old who has not even been to seminary that one sees in a lot of other churches. Our youth pastor also did preach on Sundays fairly often, and his preaching was very similar to the way he educated the youth. He is now the associate pastor of our church, and I continue to enjoy his preaching very much.

 

[Taahanni]

1) He absolutizes the negative aspects of youth ministry - that is, he takes the bad aspects of youth ministry and applies them across the board as inescapable and even intentional facets of the phenomenon. It is the logical fallacy of jumping from "this often/usually happens" to "this always happens". He highlights specific horror stories and makes them out to be normative.

2) He uses a lot of anecdotal and emotionally-generated reasoning based on a presupposed hermeneutic of suspicion toward youth ministry.

3) He places an unnecessary burden of Biblical proof on an area where Scripture doesn't provide exhaustively detailed advice. The Bible doesn't lay out a cradle-to-grave curriculum for Christian education, so to say youth ministries are not found in the Bible isn't really a valid argument.

I think he does raise a lot of valid concerns about youth ministry - the lack of parental oversight, the creation and idolization of possibly-unnecessary institutions and roles that we then come to expect, etc. Lots of strange and immoral things have happened in youth groups between students and students and between leaders and students. It is all too often a breeding ground for shallow or outright terrible teaching. See this short Tim Challies post as an illustration of that. That said, unless I missed something, he seems to have completely overlooked one big way in which youth ministry is just another manifestation of a culture-wide phenomenon of generational separation and sorting, from daycare to 55+ housing communities, none of which can be absolutized as inherently wrong but which do collectively point to deep societal dysfunction. It's therefore not quite correct to treat youth ministry as its own problem rather than part of a larger issue.

Because Voddie absolutizes youth ministry as innately bad in and of itself, and because of his swift dismissal of any good aspects of it, I am left with the suspicion that he is an advocate of some type of family-integrated church view. I haven't seen this explicitly stated, but it would fit well with what I've seen of his rather extreme views on dating, marriage, and parenting. His manner of reasoning seems to point in that direction. Needless to say, I am not at all in agreement with the family-integrated movement as it absolutizes a specific idea beyond what Scripture supports - this as someone who abhors the idea of children's church and has an expectation that from age 2 or 3 on, my own children will be with my wife and me for the entire service (though not at all to the total exclusion of any outside involvement in our church's youth programs).

You did ask whether youth ministry discourages catechesis. I don't think it actively discourages it, though it can very easily enable neglect here. Youth group or no, parents need to be involved in their children's lives and in their spiritual formation. When a parent sends their kid to youth group so they can tick a box and move on, youth ministry isn't the problem - the parent is.

One last thought - I appreciate what has been said by other posters about the value of the community provided by youth ministry. While it could be done better and while I appreciate the warnings from Voddie and others about the pitfalls of youth ministry - when one has a good church home, it can be a good outlet, much better than many of the alternatives. Just approach it with prudence and what should by now be a universal awareness (at least among serious believers) of the dangers of sleepovers, summer camps, and smart phones. Abolitionism isn't the answer - parental responsibility and involvement is.

I have not exhaustively read/listened to everything of Baucham's, but I have liked much of his material that I have heard/read. Additionally, a lot of reformed believers--at least at my church--appreciate his contributions in regards to critical race theory. His book Fault Lines is well-regarded. That is why I was curious to hear the thoughts others on here have about his perspective on youth ministry.

I personally found his take on this matter to be questionable because of the reason you stated: "he absolutizes the negative aspects of youth ministry". I think under a reformed framework, youth ministry/youth group can be very beneficial. If parents are neglecting their duty to shepherd their children within the home because they are placing the primary responsibility on the church, then that is a problem with the parents and not youth ministry. I can say I do know many such cases where even reformed parents failed their children in this regard, but again, that is not the fault of the youth ministry. The only area I see a problem within the church here is if it is noticeable the parents are neglecting their shepherding duties and they are not admonished for it. I do think that does happen sometimes, sadly, even in reformed churches, but perhaps that is a completely different topic.

There is almost an over-protective element in this reasoning that youth ministry in any form is harmful. Some day our children will leave our homes, and if they do not learn how to socialize with others in the church under the guidance of their parents, they are going to learn on their own from the world when they leave our homes. Parents who keep their children out of youth group are missing opportunities to shepherd their children through the situations that can arise from being around other young sinners. As far as I know, even reformed youth group attendees are sinners and still do things like gossip and make fun of other children!

All of this is also coming from someone who is very much against children's church and wary of summer camps and smart phones, so we are in the same boat there!

 

[ZackF]

Like many I have profited from Bauchum’s apologetics, thoughts on racial/ethnic issues, and other things. I’ve found him a notch or two to the right of, for lack of better designation, where I stand on issues such as family integrated church and so on. Some of the false reasoning has already been presented. See @Ploutos in post #7. Ultimately these fall short like the “purity culture” critiques from the left where a distorted, unbalanced encouragement to a chaste life should lead one to conclude no encouragement to a chaste life is appropriate. The fact this should only be done in atomized ways, family by family, does not make sense.

 

[Ploutos]

Like many I have profited from Bauchum’s apologetics, thoughts on racial/ethnic issues, and other things. I’ve found him a notch or two to the right of, for lack of better designation, where I stand on issues such as family integrated church and so on. Some of the false reasoning has already been presented. See @Ploutos in post #7. Ultimately these fall short like the “purity culture” critiques from the left where a distorted, unbalanced encouragement to a chaste life should lead one to conclude no encouragement to a chaste life is appropriate. The fact this should only be done in atomized ways, family by family, does not make sense.

Did you mean Voddie's reasoning fell short, or my critique of his reasoning fell short? Not that the latter offends me, but if that is the case then I welcome the opportunity for further insight.

 

[ZackF]

Did you mean Voddie's reasoning fell short, or my critique of his reasoning fell short? Not that the latter offends me, but if that is the case then I welcome the opportunity for further insight.

I was just importing your reasoning. It makes sense.

 

[Ploutos]

I was just importing your reasoning. It makes sense.

Ok got it - sorry for the confusion.

One other thought I've had re: the OP is that youth ministry is a form of community. Every society has the impulse for community. It might be a weird modern Western manifestation of the communal impulse - and a somewhat artificial one that readily lends itself to improvement. But it is community nonetheless, and if Voddie is indeed arguing for FIC then his solution is even more artificialized than what he is replacing.