Text messaging, playlists, MySpace, oxy and youth ministry.

Having been a youth pastor years ago and for almost 2 decades a strong and vocal supporter of church youth ministry and with a son in youth ministry, I think I know a little about what youth ministry needs to be about.

Two recent articles have caught my eye making me wonder if most churches including the ones I know something about, are serious about really ministering to kids.  The report recently out from the State of Washington on youth health risks and an article in the Salt Lake Tribune about the amount of time spent plugged in to various media makes me wonder if the traditional means of touching the lives of kids has any future.

One church felt they needed to have a seminary trained youth pastor, believing that some how if they can get some one who really knows his Bible and can preach well (after all that is what seminaries train their students to do), that their youth ministry will some how deal with the staggering complexities of being a teenager today.

20% of high school students have been drunk at school in the last year. More than 20% of 10th graders reported being “high” at school and 10% say they have gotten high on prescription pain killers (do seminaries know about Oxycontin?) and 28 million dollars was spent last year by the State of Washington to try and stop this abuse of drugs by students.  That approach isn’t working.

Then take the fact that students spend 22.7 hours a week watching TV, 8.3 hours playing video games, 13 hours listening to music, 4.6 hours text messaging (I stood in line at a Wendy’s yesterday watching a girl text messaging with fingers flying like the wind, the person she was messaging was standing just behind her in line!) 2.0 hours downloading music and 2.0 organizing playlists and 19.5 hours on the Internet.  That adds up to more than half the week being massaged in some way by electronic media. 

Is there anyone in church leadership today paying attention to these kinds of stats?  Is there a seminary anywhere training it’s students to serve in this kind of a drug and media saturated culture? A seminary education alone is not going to help you break through this collective fog and reach kids.

What will make a difference?  My opinion, and it is one formed over years of seeing who is successful in youth ministry, is that it takes at least 5 things to be an effective youth pastor, in this order:

1. continuity. that is staying in one place long enough to get to know kids and be trusted by kids so that they will turn off both the chemical and media and listen, not so much to the youth pastors words but to his heart. The average youth pastor stays less then 2 years in a church.   

2. skill in media communication.  Being able to preach is so far down the list it doesn’t even rate a mention, but skill in using media to catch kids hearts is near the top. Doesn’t change the content it simply re-forms it for kids spending 80+ hours looking at some kind of screen.

3. leadership that doesn’t meddle in the trivial. Trying to get a youth pastor to dress like the senior pastor or come to work at the same time the senior guy does or go to meetings is a stupid waste of time.  A successful youth pastor works when kids are free and really doesn’t need to be in meetings to decide how many burgers to buy for the church picnic.

4. youth pastors who know the youth culture, not because they are young but because they read and listen and ask questions and then formulate answers that are real and hopeful, not some 3 point message with a cool poem.  They know how to tell stories and to help their students tell their story.  They know the importance of saying what needs to be said in 10 minutes and not 45.  They know how to touch hearts more than touching heads.

5. pay them what you pay the top assistant in your church.  My experience tells me they are way, way more valuable than ANY other staff person.

There are some seminaries working hard to be relevant in youth ministry education.  Ron Marrs at Western Seminary is one, but any church that thinks that hiring a seminary trained youth pastor will some how get at the problems faced by our youth culture will just be trading one guy for another for another until they learn that a pastor with a seminary education without the 5 points I list above is just another pretty face.

If they can’t text message, and don’t have a playlist don’t hire her (or him).