Giving Up Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry from an Entertainment Culture by Cosby Brian

Author:Cosby, Brian [Cosby, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781596384835
Publisher: P&R Publishing
Published: 2012-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

7

TRANSFORMED THROUGH COMMUNITY

THE IDEA OF A “YOUTH GROUP” is a relatively new concept. Over the last fifty years or so, the growth of youth groups in America can be traced proportionally to the decline and breakdown of the family. In many respects, the youth pastor is a result of the failure in the home to bring children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Since our nation has become more and more secularized, there is an ever-increasing need for youth ministry in the local church.

For many teenagers today, the church is not just another place to receive biblical guidance and instruction; it is the only place. I remember the first time a fifteen-year-old girl named Megan came to our youth group. One of our youth had invited her the previous week and asked her simply to “check it out.” The whole evening, she acted shy and seemed as though she didn’t want to be there. I later found out that her parents were not believers and had often ridiculed Christianity as a sham and a manipulative organized religion. But she kept coming back, and always had more questions after each lesson. After one lesson, she came up to me and asked, “Who’s Adam and Eve?” I knew we needed to start from square one.

As the weeks went by, however, Megan found a community of imperfect believers who exhibited gospel love, selfless service, and radical grace. Within six months, she received Jesus as her Lord and Savior, and immediately began witnessing to her parents. Megan’s school and home didn’t provide what would have been provided within the family a century ago.

The need for a youth ministry in a local church has also grown in relation to the growth of parachurch youth ministries springing up in schools, at parks, and even over the Internet. Para-church youth ministries have been around (in force) since 1941, when Jim Rayburn launched Young Life. Although many of these parachurch ministries see the assimilation of youth into the local church as their goal, more and more are becoming content to let their ministries simply be the “church.”

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Young Life, and similar Christian fellowships are helpful within a limited area of ministry. But they cannot provide youth with the necessary means of grace that God has given his church. The foundation of these ministries cannot support weekly Bible teaching and preaching, the call and blessing of the sacraments, regular opportunity for prayer, equipping the saints for the work of ministry and service, and the privileges and responsibilities associated with church membership.

Parachurch ministries cannot conduct church discipline, nor can they provide spiritual and physical oversight by the God-given offices of elder and deacon. In addition, they often confuse youth over the importance of Lord’s Day worship. If a teenager’s “church” is on Tuesday morning before school, the fourth commandment soon dissolves in the petri dish of first-period chemistry. But God has graciously provided his people with a community through which he transforms our minds and hearts, and redirects our worship toward himself.

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