Youth Ministry Leaders

Forgetting Students
Steve Argue

If you didn't have any students in your student ministry, would you have a relationship with your volunteers?

In ministry, we often focus on issues such as the youth in need, or the project we're working on. Those things become our purpose. Focusing our efforts on students and projects is an important part of our ministry of course, but it should not be our central focus. Putting our focus on a constituency or programs puts us at risk of connecting volunteers solely for the event, project, or initiative. When the event is over, many volunteers often wonder, "What's left?" as we rush off to the next program.

Our primary purpose is not about delivering a detached message or program, but welcoming others into our relational space. So maybe we need to come back to our initial question, rephrasing it just a bit: If there were no students in your student ministry, would you and your volunteers be friends, hang out, pursue Jesus together?

Remembering mission
Often, a youth leader is bombarded with expectations to produce. We feel the pressure to equate success with programs, numbers, and events. While programs and events are essential parts of ministry, we need to reject them as the core of ministry. This is where a shift toward relationships needs to occur.

If you and your volunteers are simply together to accomplish a task, you might be missing a huge part of what it means to communicate the gospel. Ultimately, the gospel is embodied in and through Jesus' followers. This message is bigger than building something or gathering the masses. It is ultimately an expression of a community willing to express their love for God and for each other. You can't express what you don't have.

We miss the point when we begin to depend on crises, issues, and even teenagers to define our existence for being and for relating. It's not that ministering to people is wrong, it's just that this posture is unsustainable. Worse, it may be self-deceiving.

Might we be hiding behind programs, activities, and mission statements? Might our attention on students be a way of avoiding each other? Might our focus on teenagers be a way to keep the focus off us? Could we have convinced ourselves that we can deliver a message that's separated from the real us?

The gospel is a relational message. Students can read, hear, see, and smell the authentic and inauthentic. They know what's real. We only fool ourselves, hurt each other, and confuse the ones we think we're serving if we believe otherwise.

Remembering community
Living missionally, then, emerges out of living in community. You might consider having a conversation with volunteers that includes some brave questions like these:

• Forgetting students for a minute, how are we doing, relationally?
  • Do we love each other?
  • Do we like each other?
  • Do we trust each other?
  • Are we honest with each other?
  • Do we believe in each other?
  • Is there anything between us that needs to be worked out?
• Forgetting student ministry for a minute, what do we talk about together?
  • Family and friends?
  • Dreams?
  • Laughter?
  • Spirituality?
  • Is there anything deeper in us that we're willing to share?
• Forgetting student events for a minute, what do we do together?
  • Double date?
  • Concerts?
  • Game Night?
  • Birthdays?
  • Help each other?
  • Is there any desire for us to connect and relate beyond the next youth activity?

Remembering to dream
I don't offer these things to freak you out, but to encourage you to paint a picture of what your volunteer community might become. If the medium is the message, then these questions are essential. If we refuse to go there, we will rely on crises and programs to sustain our ministry, relationships, and spirituality and move away from a Christianity that is relational, incarnational, interdependent, and communal.

Celebrate the connections you do have with your volunteers, and attempt to go deeper relationally. You may want to ask: "What are we inviting our students into?" "What kind of community are we?" "What do they see?" "Are we an inclusive community?" "Are we a forgiving community?" "Are we a community that pursues Jesus authentically?" "Are we a diverse community?" Who you are frames the gospel you are portraying. Chances are there will be things about your community that will encourage you and other things that will challenge you to change.

These are the tough and daring questions of youth ministry. Sometimes the greatest problems don't exist with our students, but within our own relationships. We will honor Jesus and serve our students best as we pursue God and each other with the utmost priority. This, after all, is the greatest commandment.

When we forget students for just a minute and remember our volunteers, I believe greater, wider, and deeper love is made available for everyone. I think that's the point of our ministry.

Steve Argue (steve@intersectcommunity.com) is co-founder of Intersect, an organization designed to connect and coach emerging leaders. He is also a regular contributor to Group magazine.

Copyright ©2007, Group Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.