wfn.org | Youth ministers take fresh look at leading people to Christ

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Feb. 11, 2000 News media contact: Linda Green·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.
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SAN DIEGO, Calif. (UMNS) - If John Wesley were alive today, he would tell
youth workers to let God set their hearts on fire, and to go out into the
community and connect young people with Christ, according to a United
Methodist layman in youth ministry.

"We share a heart-filled faith in Jesus that leads us to serve one another
and to sing with our hearts and our lives," said Michael Weaver, a lay
member at Dumfries (Va.) United Methodist Church. He was a workshop leader
at Forum 2000, a gathering of United Methodist adults in youth ministry,
Feb. 2-5. 

It is important for youth leaders to help the young people in United
Methodist churches claim their heritage by teaching it, living it out and
leading them to experience and accept for themselves the grace of God in
Christ, Weaver said. Leaders can help youth in accepting God's grace by
using music that connects with their hearts, by gathering them into groups
where they can hold themselves accountable for their faith journey, and by
assisting them in reaching out and sharing the love of Christ with their
school peers, he said.

Forum 2000 brought 475 adult youth workers from across the nation to San
Diego to be inspired, to connect with God and to enhance their ability to
lead young people toward a deeper Christian faith. Forum events, held since
1976, also provide youth workers with opportunities to network among
themselves and form relationships that can be helpful in their ministry.

Beginning in 2002, the Forum name will be changed to Connection, in response
to the need of youth workers to connect with God and each other, said Kevin
Witt, a director of youth ministry at the Nashville, Tenn.,-based United
Methodist Board of Discipleship, sponsor of Forum events.

The youth directors in the church provide the "only place in society where
youth have the opportunity to focus on God," Witt said. Unlike other groups
that focus on providing youth with recreation, "we are not in the activity
business," he said. "Our business is helping youth connect with God. ... Our
job is to give of ourselves, love youth and provide settings for youth to be
a part of a community based on fruits of the spirit, the love of God."

Witt has seen youth ministry undergo several transitions, and he said the
discipline is evolving toward family ministry. An examination is under way
for getting the family involved because "the family is the No. 1 influence
in the life of youth, and it is time to integrate the family into faith
formation," he said.

In two plenary sessions, Mike Yanconelli centered his presentation on new
ways of touching the lives of youth and connecting with family. He outlined
five "lies" about youth ministry.

The first myth is that youth ministry is all about being nice, said
Yanconelli, owner of Youth Specialties, an international training and youth
worker resource organization in Yreka, Calif. Parents think youth ministry
is about an enhancement of life, he said. But, he said, "youth ministers
ruin lives by introducing youth to Jesus Christ." Youth ministry is not
about being nice, but it is about planting a memory that would cause young
people to live on the shadow of what they experience, he said. As an
example, he told of a mission trip that affected a young man so much that he
never forgot the people or their poverty, and after he became successful, he
gave donations to mission work. 

Yanconelli told the ministers that people in the church "ought to be afraid
of your youth ministry ... because when you take young people seriously, you
never know what will happen. ... It will make people uncomfortable because
Jesus makes people uncomfortable."

Youth ministry is always going to be disruptive because it is the youth
leaders' job to get young people connected in whatever way possible to Jesus
Christ, he said.

Yanconelli also said youth ministry should move away from programming and
become individualized. The programming notion has fostered the second myth
that youth ministry is about sameness, he said.

"The gospel is a place where we don't try to make everybody the same, we
celebrate uniqueness and we try to find a way to encourage these kids to be
different," he said.

He encouraged the leaders not to be molded, not to be like anyone else and
to "live true to the voice God put in you." Often in youth ministry, one
person tries to do what another is doing, and misses "the joy and beauty of
our own gift. ... Jesus wants you to be you."

Speed is the third lie about youth ministry, he said. "One sign of a pagan
culture is that we are all too busy, and the culture has convinced us that
if we are busy, we are worthy of God," he said. 

He offered the leaders an explanation as to why young people are not
attending youth group sessions on a regular basis. "It is not that kids are
not coming. ... They have their organizers and they are too busy."

The Christian faith is about slowness, he said. "We believe in planting and
waiting." He said waiting is not about doing anything, it is about doing
something. "In youth ministry, we are frustrated because we do not see
results. The reality is that we have no clue about how it works."

Faith is a struggle, and the more you know about God, the more faith is a
mystery, he said.

A fourth myth is that youth ministry is about power, Yanconelli said. "Jesus
Christ is the power of powerlessness and we believe in small." 

The fifth myth is that youth ministry is about you. "We have the idea that
our job is to fix kids, or our job is to be the hero in their lives or to
bring God into the meeting." But, because God is with them daily, "our job
is to continue to point them, to cause them to pay attention, to listen and
to know that God is right there," Yanconelli said.
 
Another speaker, the Rev. Juan Carlos Ortiz, told the youth workers that
Jesus introduced teaching with authority, and the test is to make people do
what you say.  

Ortiz, pastor of Hispanic Ministry at the Crystal Cathedral, Garden Grove,
Calif., said the system of teaching in the church is weak. "It is a great
nothing," he said. "In the church, people are in eternal childhood, people
never grow."

Today, people in the church "are victims of a system that does nothing, and
no one is bold enough to change it," he said.

As the event concluded, many youth workers said Forum 2000 enhanced their
perception of youth ministry and validated many of the strategies they'd
developed to connect youth to Christ.

Dixie Edwards of Ann Arbor, Mich., a 35-year veteran of youth ministry, said
the gathering provided examples of what is new in youth ministry. "Sometimes
you get in a rut," she said, "but this event has renewed my faith and has
re-energized me. It has reminded me of what youth ministry is all about and
why I am doing it."

Others providing primary leadership were the Rev. Tyrone Gordon, pastor at
St. Mark United Methodist Church, Wichita, Kan.; the Rev. Janet Wolf, pastor
at Hobson United Methodist Church, Nashville; the Rev. Sylvia Farmer Drew,
co-pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Kansas City, Kan.,
and director of community relations for Big Brothers and Sisters of Sedwick
County; and Rodger Nishioka, director of youth and young adult ministries
for the Presbyterian Church USA.

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United Methodist News Service
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