A New Kind of Youth Ministry

A quick Google search indicates that youth workers are, at the very least, giving fragments of their attention to missional thought and practice. I googled missional youth ministry and was quickly introduced to some people and websites offering thoughtful insights about what it means to cultivate missional environments for young people to learn and grow.

However, I’m not having a lot of explicit, everyday missional conversation with youth workers. I would say that almost every day I talk (via blog, email, phone, Twitter, whatever) with a different youth worker in my city or around the world who has a question or two about some facet of youth ministry. Most of the time, however, it isn’t about the missional nature of youth ministry, which in my mind is the core of all ministry—the mission of God to restore the world to its intended wholeness. Typically, the questions I get are about a game, a particular resource, a training concept, a relevant SS curriculum they can use, a small group book to use, etc. Many if not most of the conversations I have about youth ministry are not about the core but about peripherals.  The peripherals are important but not primary.

This raises, for me, questions. Questions like:

• Why aren’t youth workers talking about missional youth ministry?
• Are youth workers so entrenched in doing missional youth ministry that they don’t need to talk about it?
• Do we think that missional thought and practice are for big church?
• Do youth workers not want to talk missional because that means change and hard work and a lack of clarity as to what a successful youth ministry might look like?
• Is it that each of our ministry contexts are so different that we don’t have anything in common to discuss?
• Do youth workers not have a grasp on what missional youth ministry is and therefore don’t explicitly talk about it?
• Is it that the word missional has become tied to the emergent/emerging church movement so youth workers are fearful and skeptical?
• Are youth workers ignorant about missional and, because they can’t articulate it, choose to stay away from it, as if it is a dirty word? That must be it.  Missional is a dirty word. Well, if that is the case, talk missional to me, baby!
  

Seriously, can we have a meaningful conversation about what it means to engage God’s story and mission and what it means to let it form us as we form others? Can we talk openly, honestly, and inquisitively about what missional might mean in our divergent contexts? Can we at the very least admit that missional is a life without center or circumference? A life of living like Jesus that isn’t tied to a geographic location or held in by boundaries? Can we talk about what this means for youth ministry and specifically for the faith formation of our teens?

Youth ministry needs more missional people thinking more deeply and more practically about what it means for youth ministry to shift toward a more missional (or sometimes called narrative) approach. Youth ministry needs non-missional thinkers and doers to be brought into what should be explicit, everyday conversations about life and ministry.

What do you think missional youth ministry is? In what ways would you define it? How would you articulate it to others?