103 - Models of Youth Ministry

Models of Youth Ministry

By William R. Myers

DURING the summer, I spend ten hours each week coaching adolescent boys, including my son, in an organized baseball league. Last year, my team of thirteen boys ended up in second place. Standing in a third base coaching box is, for me, a lot like being an advisor for a local church's youth ministry program.

During adolescence, youth begin to commit themselves, in ways that shape their personal identities, to certain ideas, institutions, and persons. This makes adolescence an appropriate time for the church to proclaim to and with youth, in as full-orbed a way as possible, its kerygmatic claim that "Jesus is the Christ." Kerygma is ministry articulated. It is the proclamation of the good news of salvation in all possible ways. There are many "kerygmas," however, and kerygmatic claims are often grounded in sources other than Jesus Christ. Our culture offers to youth (and to the rest of us) many "ways to salvation." The church needs to pay close attention to these alternative messages of salvation. It needs, in fact, to uncover and unwrap such "cultural kerygmas" of salvation as are beamed toward youth during identity-shaping adolescence-especially when the wrappings they come in are church youth ministry programs themselves.

As I say, I devote a sizeable block of my summer to organized youth-oriented baseball. As a coach I have become, in a sense, a ritual elder of my culture, one who evidences by my actions that "competition," "knowing how to play the game," and "functioning as a team" are some of the pillars of fire and smoke needed to guide my son and his friends through their adolescent wilderness. As a theologian, I wonder about how the rites of baseball systematically present the assumptions, forms, and values of a cultural kerygma. As a father, I worry about how toxic or helpful such cultural kerygmas ultimately will be for my son.

Faith communities are composed, in part, of people like me, caring adults who have traversed adolescence (more or less successfully) and have arrived on the other side, there to stand, internally holding a collection of conflicting faith claims. Sometimes we have thought carefully about these "kerygmas" and have sorted out what we ourselves have come to believe. More frequently, we act unreflectively out of what we have experienced. Demonstrating our fidelity to a whole mixed bag, my friends and 1, baseball coaches and youth advisors alike, play out the

William R. Myers is Assistant Professor of Christian Education at Chicago Theological Seminary. Youth ministry has been a focus of his practice and writing for many years. He is currently engaged in a research project involving ethnographic studies of youth ministry in a variety of congregations.

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kerygmas to which we have, wittingly or unwittingly, "pledged our troth," as ritual elders we conduct rites of passage for children and adolescents in our care.

To be a coach in a youth-oriented baseball league is to enter a metaphoric framework which plays out in space and time certain kerygmatic claims. Here, on a diamond with nine players, gloves, bats, and balls, kerygmatic claims are tested. Much the same can be said for currently popular models of youth ministry. Such models are not value free. When a set of normative assumptions hang together in a coherent form which can be played out and tested, that constellation can be said to be a model. Hidden frameworks, philosophical, theological, and cultural assumptions, are implied. Models intentionally actualize kerygmatic claims. Let us consider four such actualizations: the "Lone Ranger,"¹ the "team,"² the "congregational,"³ and the "peer minister"⁴ models of youth ministry.

I

As a young, newly ordained minister, I was asked to be the youth worker for a fairly large congregation. Together with two friends as helpful co-leaders, I was able to attract large numbers of youth into junior and senior high programs. With youth programs keeping me at the church an average of five evenings each week, I could back up the claim that this was a popular, active youth group. Rarely did a month go by without a major activity or a weekend retreat. Burned out at the end of three years, I moved into a graduate degree program in counseling. Left behind, my associates tried to run my programs, but quietly retired after one hard year.

This is youth ministry practiced within a "Lone Ranger" model. This model takes the form of a pyramid. The pyramid emphasizes the imperialistic perspective of the youth worker (usually male, but not always), who resides at the top. From this vantage point, youth, and perhaps a few faithful adults (the Lone Ranger's faithful companions), are busy arranging themselves on the hierarchical, descending and broadening, levels of the pyramid. Power rests with the one who has the silver bullets, and program participants are ministered to. They have no silver bullets of their own.

Such a model has the advantage of administrative smoothness, as long as youth are willing to be led. Much depends upon the caring charisma, as well as the practical competence, of the youth leader. Steve Clapp, commenting on his co-author, Jerry Cook, summarizes the qualities of a

¹See especially Steve Clapp and Jerry Cook, Youth Worker's Handbook (Sidell, Ill: C-4 Resources, 1981).

²Ginny Ward Holderness, Youth Ministry: The New Team Ministry (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981).

³Stephen S. Jones, Faith Shaping: Nurturing the Faith Journey of Youth (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1980).

⁴Brian Reynolds, A Chance To Serve: A Leader's Manual For Peer Ministry (Winona, Minn.: Saint Mary's Press, 1984).

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good youth leader: "Young people love Jerry. He has an almost magical ability to make groups come to life, to help others feel at ease around him, and to give others confidence in themselves.⁵ A charismatic youth leader, utilizing the positive hook of such charisma, will draw crowds of youth to church programs.

Two dangers emerge from such a model. The first danger has to do with "whose" we are. If fidelity is, as Erik Erikson argues, the critical adolescent virtue, it is not hard to see how a competent and charismatic youth worker can become a kind of "god-figure" toward whom an adolescent might "pledge troth."⁶ The danger of such a scenario is that fidelity on the part of an adolescent to only one leader can be exceedingly dangerous for both youth and adult. Young people need to be in contact with a variety of "guarantors," adults who affirm and challenge adolescents by incarnating the "good news" through a variety of authentic adult stances.⁷ Youth do not need someone who accepts the role of youth leader as a validation of the only "true" model of authentic adulthood. Such charismatic but inappropriate adults can be, and often are, dangerously sacralized into near cult figures.

A second danger of the Lone Ranger model has to do with how a church understands the role it takes within culture. If a church believes the dominant culture to be positive and worthy of the church's embrace, then dominant cultural forms can be adopted by the church in its youth programs to ensure the unreflective transmission of that culture. The hidden messages of the pyramid (hierarchical, individualistic, competitive, imperialistic, usually male) conform to a basic American cultural agenda. If the pyramid is the primary metaphor, if not the underlying form of American culture, it is not terribly surprising that many American churches strive to model their youth groups around the pyramid. But an unreflective adoption of these hidden assumptions, may be counter-productive and ultimately dangerous for the church.

II

While I was in graduate school, my youth ministry position rotated around a junior high program which met after school every Tuesday and utilized fifteen to twenty-four adults in a "team" model of youth ministry. Roughly half of these adults were college and graduate students; the remainder were church members from three sponsoring churches. This team met each fall in a planning retreat with ten to fifteen invited junior highs. A tentative schedule for the year, built around five to eight areas of ministry with appropriate activities and themes, was discussed on this retreat. Sub-groupings of adults and junior highs assumed program responsibilities. The result was a yearlong calendar, with programs, projects, and events all determined, and

⁵Clapp and Cook, op. cit., p. vi.

⁶See Erik Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: Norton, 1968), p. 233.

⁷ David Ng, Youth in the Community of Disciples (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1984), p. 84.

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responsibilities for leadership clearly assigned. Once this planning was done, my responsibilities 'were more administrative than charismatic and more managerial than religious. No one ever burned out, and enthusiasm for the program allowed our team to celebrate occasional "pizza Fridays" as fun get-togethers. After two years, I left and a lay person assumed my role as "Director of Tuesday School." As far as I know, Tuesday School continues under lay leadership to this day. The "team" model of youth ministry "worked."

Visualized as an overlapping figure-eight, this youth ministry model emphasizes the difference between the adult team (top circle) and the youth participants (bottom circle). There is, however, a significant space where the top and bottom circles intersect. This overlapping "mixture" area contains the ever-changing youth/adult working groups that have emerged from the carefully administered process of the planning retreat. Within the figure-eight, youth meet and work with a variety of adults through a range of options during the year. Working groups not only showcase the particular talents of adults, but also empower youth leadership.

Two dangers emerge in this model. The first I have come to call the "pie-slice" theory of youth ministry: pie-slice "A" is worship; pie-slice "B" is study; pie-slice "C" is ministry within the congregation; pie-slice "D" is service; and, pie-slice "E" is fellowship.⁸ The bidden assumption is that whenever three or four activities occur around each pie-slice, the end result can be named as "ministry." But ministry is not so easily definable. Worship, under this model, can become a series of educational object lessons, "activities" which neither invoke sacred space nor rely upon ritual elders for leadership. When worship becomes an object lesson, the ideal description of a good youth leader has little to do with faith and much to do with program management.

The deeper assumption underlying this model is that present cultural existence will continue as a "steady state" into the future and can be managed by those who have God "on their side." Such an assumption tends to reside with those who have been blessed by their culture. Charles R. Foster argues persuasively that people who experience stability and prosperity are the ones most likely to celebrate God's graciousness and "the importance of responsibly managing the bounty of God's goodness" out of a tradition deeply anchored in a certain Old Testament experience.⁹ Foster puts it like this:

In an era of social, political, and economic stability, when the blessings of life seemed abundant, Hebrew expectations of educators were [to] celebrate the "gifts already given," and to seek for ways to preserve them for the future. From this perspective, educators were not concerned with the urgency of rehearsing and interpreting the national heritage for a new situation. Instead

⁸Ginny Ward Holderness, "Sharing the Load-Team Ministry," Group Leader's Section (November, 1981), p. 11.

⁹Charles R. Foster, "Abundance of Managers, Scarcity of Teachers," Religious Education 80 (1985) 3, pp. 437-438.

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they emphasized the management of environments for learning that people might discover ways to maintain and extend the blessing of life.¹⁰

It is but a short step from managing environments and controlling worship to assuming that God can also be managed and controlled. Indeed, there is more than a hint of arrogance in assuming the appropriateness of God's blessing for those of us who manage well, who enjoy the blessings of life and who "have" God on our side. Critical religious questions about the mystery of life are not at issue here. What is needful are leaders who can competently manage a program.

In summary, the team model of youth ministry may unreflectively transmit cultural kerygmas without concern for religious transformation. As such, it is often adopted by churches that are "blessed" bv the dominant culture. Its hidden assumptions suggest that religious "ministry" becomes "program," while worship becomes a ceremonial object lesson reinforcing the dominant culture. Nevertheless, this model goes a long way toward preventing burn-out, and, pragmatically, it "works."

III

When I joined a small congregation while in graduate school, I observed what I have come to call a "congregational" model of youth ministry. As he spoke about appropriate forms of youth ministry, the pastor of the church noted that everyone in the church had to be involved in what he called the church's "faith bias." He claimed that a congregation worth its salt didn't hire some outsider to "do" youth ministry; instead, the church as a body was involved in youth ministry whenever it stood up to the challenges of its faith. That minister challenged youth to become a part of that "faith bias" themselves. In addition, congregational adults paid attention to youth; they nurtured youth. Youth served on boards, took turns at leading worship, taught in the church's confirmation program, actively formulated church policy with adults, and stood with those members who confronted public authorities regarding questions of conscience. As I sat in that congregation, I knew I had been asked, as a member, to play an important role in youth ministry.

Stephen Jones suggests that such a congregation is concerned with both nurture and conversion.¹¹ The faith, by nurture, is brought near to youth "when youth can see how much faith is prized by the important adults around them."¹² But nearness is only part of what a congregational youth ministry model expects of the congregation. A congregational ministry with youth will be about conversion; it will be direct with youth:

Directness occurs when we intentionally aid young persons in writing a new chapter in their faith story. Directness means frank questions and discussions

¹⁰Ibid., p. 439 (italics mine).

¹¹Stephen Jones, op. cit., pp. 24-30.

¹²Ibid., p. 30.

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with youth about the meaning of personal faith. Directness includes occasions when worship is intimate, when prayer touches, when service is eye-opening. Directness happens when we intentionally (though it may be spontaneous) help youth address their own questions of faith. Directness occurs when we share our own faith story and faith bias.¹³

Because every adult in the congregation is seen as a critical part of youth ministry in this model, and because the faithful congregation remains at the center of it, this form of congregational youth ministry could be visualized as a web. Highly relational and affiliative in leadership style, such a web confronts every adult believer with the congregational responsibility for sharing a "faith bias" with youth in appropriately near and direct ways. The congregation functions as a collective "minister to youth." No single minister or team of adults do youth ministry. This important responsibility belongs to the entire church. Everyone is a youth minister.

This model is theologically attractive but pragmatically messy. Who picks up the pieces when families and specific youth fall through the congregational cracks? Certain cultural indexes of success (like large youth groups and well-planned youth programs) will not necessarily find support in this model. In many respects, it is a small church model and, as such, assumes that it can care, in faith-shaping ways, for its young. This assumption may be the model's weakness. Few congregations actually embody such a vision and those that do usually are led by very powerful ministers.

Powerful ministers and so-called "faithful" congregations with a "faith bias" often assume counter-cultural positions. Such positions often provide important reasons for bringing faith near and direct to youth. The specific content of such models might fit within H. Richard Niebuhr's concepts of Christ against, in paradox, or in transformation of culture.¹⁴ This form of youth ministry sometimes avoids the cultural entrapment of other models, but leads, via faith bias and powerful ministers, toward a different set of issues. Without noting specific content, the hidden assumptions of the congregational model of youth ministry encourage what Charles Foster has called the transformative process of "altering the current situation and experience of people."¹⁵ it, therefore, might result in highly idiosyncratic, counter-cultural cultic expressions which can be considered healthy or dangerous, depending on one's point of view.

IV

Peer ministry takes as its basic presupposition the idea that youth are at their best when involved in ministry with their peers. The roots of such

¹³Ibid.

¹⁴H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951).

¹⁵Charles Foster, op. cit., p. 439.

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a model are found in elementary school peer tutoring and secondary school peer counseling movements.¹⁶ In 1981, I completed a doctoral dissertation on youth peer ministry in which I affirmed that if all Christians are called to minister, then effective youth ministry can only begin when a call for ministry is issued to youth.¹⁷ From such a call, high school juniors and seniors are surfaced, trained in small formation groups of no more than seven youth and two adults, put to work in ministry frameworks (such as confirmation classes, after-school programs, or intergenerational celebrations). They are supported by ministerial direction, congregational resources, and appropriate publicity, and commissioned to proclaim the Christian kerygma within peer settings through service, fellowship, and celebration. Most of the peer youth ministry programs I examined focused on peer teaching of the biblical tradition through a coherent pattern of interpretation. Materials that emerged from such programs were powerful. The programs were team-led and made considerable use of many humanistic training devices or exercises.

This youth ministry model can be visualized as an open circle. It emphasizes shared leadership and the affirmation of ministry with youth. In such ministries, youth struggle to make an impact on their peers within a competitive cultural environment. The co-ministry of the open circle suggests that every person's ideas will be explored by a cluster of peers whose ministry concerns are more communal than competitive. Theologically, this model strives to implement the priesthood of all believers. This may be hazardous for some polities. As a Presbyterian, communion consecrated by me requires the permission of a session and the presence of ruling elders, while the thrust of this model would allow youth celebrants to consecrate and break the bread, serving their peers.

There is in this model an almost universal reliance upon the strategies and techniques employed by the humanistic or "third force" psychologies. While such tools are often positive additions to youth programs, peer ministry can be cannibalized by such disciplines if a church is not careful. Another way to characterize this issue is to note that a youth peer ministry model's strength is in personal and small group formation, while its weakness is often a lack of the effective transmission of religious tradition. In this model, a group of individuals may be "formed" into a community and have a certain sense of mission without ever understanding how such efforts are connected within a religious tradition's larger story. Indeed, the use of this model without a critical

¹⁶See, for example, Robert Myrick and Tom Erney, Caring and Sharing: Becoming a Peer Facilitator (Minneapolis: Educational Media Corp., 1984); Judith Tindall and Dean H. Gray, Peer Counseling (Accelerated Development, 1985); and Mimi Samuels and Don Samuels, The Complete Handbook of Peer Counseling (Miami: Fiesta Publishing Corp., 1985).

¹⁷Myers, William R. Youth Peer Ministry: An Overview With Implications for the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Chicago: Loyola University of Chicago, 1981).

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reflection upon its language as well as its pragmatic philosophical assumptions might present an ideal youth minister as one who is a group process facilitator, best trained as a counseling psychologist or M.S.W. with a minimal need of things "religious."

V

Models of youth ministry carry within them hidden assumptions. The "Lone Ranger" model is shaped like a pyramid, is hierarchical in style, mirrors the dominant culture and runs the risk of sacralizing the leader. The "team" model is shaped like an overlapping figure-eight, leads by managing, assumes a cultural "steady state," and runs the risk of turning worship into an object lesson while controlling God. The "congregational" model is shaped like a web, has affiliative leadership implications, promotes a "faith bias," and challenges culture, sometimes in bizarre ways. A "peer" model is shaped like an open circle, affirms horizontal leadership, is good at effecting personal and small group formation but may allow a religious tradition to be cannibalized by a cultural discipline.

Models contain deep assumptions about how one leads, about culture and its interplay with religion as well as the language of faith and how it is or is not employed. Blind or uncritical adoption of certain models because they look good, work pragmatically, or come highly recommended misses the depth issue of what such hidden assumptions imply for the churches accepting them.