“Doing youth ministry without parents
is like driving a car without the engine.” - Mark Devries[1]
It’s no secret anymore, youth ministry is in a state of
crisis. Polls of recent years report over
and over the dire percentages of youth who leave the church after high
school. Whatever the exact percentage
actually is, what seems clear enough is that more young people are choosing to
leave the church than choosing to stay.[2] The million dollar question is, of course, “Why
is this happening?” And while there are
certainly multiple factors involved in this mass exodus, I believe that a
primary contributing factor is the loss of emphasis on the central role of the
parent in the spiritual nurture of their children. Much of the youth ministry done in recent
decades seems to have forgotten that parents
are commanded to be, and by God’s design will necessarily be, the primary youth
pastors for their children - for better or for worse. And when the central role
of the parents is neglected, a major deviation from God’s design for youth
ministry has taken place that can only be harmful for youth in the long
term.
In order to start righting the ship, churches must first of
all re-embrace the responsibility given to parents by God to be the front line
“youth pastor” for their children. In the
Old Testament, the priests had the general responsibility to teach all of the
people the Word of God, but parents were given a special responsibility to teach
their children. Moses commanded the
people of Israel “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your
children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you
walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall write them
on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut 6:6-9). The same principal is in the New
Testament. Pastors have the general
responsibility to preach and teach God’s word to God’s people (including the
youth), but the only command regarding the training and discipling of children
is given directly to parents: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,
but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4). This does not necessarily mean that there is
no place for a church to have a “youth ministry” apart from parents, but it
does mean that youth ministry must be built on this central foundation. Proverbs 22:6 states “Train up a child in the
way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” This proverb
is not a universal promise that every child who is trained by his parents will
grow up to be a Christian, but it is a general principal that God has given for
us to live by. Generally speaking, God
uses the means of Godly parents who prayerfully and diligently seek to raise
their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” to convert
them. God has designed the home, not the youth
group, to be the spiritual nursery where the Christian faith is taught and
modeled to children from their earliest years.
Secondarily, parents and churches must embrace a more sober
estimation of what youth ministry actually accomplishes. Part of what has created the current crisis in
youth ministry is that churches have assumed that the youth pastor and youth
programs are more important than they really are. Again, this is not to say that there is no
place for a youth pastor, youth group, or youth programs. When these things are Biblically grounded
they can be a real blessing to youth. The reality is, however, that in most
cases the overall influence of a youth pastor and youth group on a child will
be insignificant when compared to that of the parents. “It’s time for a reality check,” says Mark
Devries, “Youth ministries, in and of themselves, have limited power to produce
lasting change in young people’s lives.”[3]
As case in point, let me use myself as
an example. One of my
priorities is to spend as much time as I can with the church youth each week. On a good week, a week that I am able to see
a specific youth in several different venues, I may be able to spend 6-8 hours
with him or her, although most of that time is in a group setting. On other weeks, the only personal interaction
I may have with them is at Church on Sunday morning and a text or facebook
message during the week. I pray that God
will bless the time that I have with them, but I know that it is not enough.
Parents, by contrast, spend every day with their
children. For 18 years they live life
with them: waking, eating, sleeping, praying,
playing, laughing, crying, arguing, and the list goes on. As a result, parents know their children
like no other adult will ever know them, and they will have more influence on
them for spiritual good or ill than any other adult ever can. Thomas Manton, writing in the 17th
century, called on the “Heads of Families” to recognize this special
influence:
How much the
serious endeavors of godly parents and masters might contribute to an early
seasoning the tender years of such as are under their inspection, is abundantly
evident, not only from their special influence upon them, in respect of their
authority over them, interest in them, continual presence with them, and
frequent opportunities of being helpful to them; but also from the sad effects
which, by woeful experience, we find to be the fruit of the omission of this
duty.”[4]
If a child
has a negligent youth pastor, Godly parents will easily counter his
influence. But if a child has negligent
parents, very rarely will a youth pastor be able to overturn the “sad effects” of
which Manton speaks. Jonathan Edwards
put it boldly: “…Family education and order are some of the chief means of
grace. If these fail, all other means
are likely to prove ineffectual. If
these are duly maintained, all other means of grace will be likely to prosper
and be successful.”[5]
Note: This blog was originally posted by the White Horse Inn. http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/28/the-parent-as-youth-pastor/
[1]
Mark Devries, Family Based Youth
Ministry, (Downers Grove, Intervarsity Press, 1994), 85.
[2] http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2009/summer/istheeraofagesegmentationover.html?start=1. This is not an isolated report, the Southern
Baptist convention in a 2002 Report on Family Life reported that 88% of
children in evangelical homes leave church at the age of eighteen.
[3] Devries,
Family Based Youth Ministry, 78.
[5] As
quoted in Devries, Family Based Youth
Ministry, 85.
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