This article on the Growing Young Disciples website caught my interest. It’s worth saying up front that it did for two reasons, one was a couple of minor areas of disagreement. The other an area of major agreement.
So first of all, a note of caution. Regular readers will be aware that I attempted, about this time last year to check on claims that there was a shortage of people coming through into Gospel ministry. I was getting mixed signals, some people were saying there wasn’t a problem, or at least a new problem. Others were saying that there was a major problem. Then I knew what I was seeing from observation. I had, myself looked at a few possible ministry posts when we we were thinking about next steps. There were no shortage of good quality candidates for roles. I did pick up on some challenges in recruitment processes. Maybe I’ll come back to that one day.
So, I started to look at the data available, to try and add to it and talking to key people, church leaders and network leaders. My conclusion was that the data we did have didn’t give us evidence of a shortage. Further, the conversations I had pointed to a continuation of the mixed picture. I have now got a hypothesis about what is happening. I’ll talk about that in a future post.
My second difference with the GYD article was that it put a lot of emphasis on a perception that churches were under investing in children’s and youth work. The reality is that in most local church ministry, we are not sitting on lots of money, pastors are not getting high wages at the expense of youth workers. There are building costs of course and then other expenses. Nor are we sinking funds into heading off to conferences! I am not sure who gets invited to the kinds of conferences GYD describe but generally speaking, not the types of pastors and elders I know.
I write as someone who has experience if church leadership, being a parent and also someone who has been actively involved in children’s and youth work for over 30 years. Yes, there have been times when I’ve paid for my own resources during that time, including restocking a box of felt tips for craft but I’ve also put my hand in my own pocket for adult teaching resources. My experience though was that in the case of youth and children’s resources, every church I’ve been in has been willing to fund what was needed. It was a personal choice not to claim back expenses.
Now, a lot of churches don’t employ youth workers. That isn’t about neglecting that area. It is about a different approach to growing those young disciples. What I’ve observed is that in terms of time and people, churches often weight that kind of investment to children’s and youth work. Proportionately, more people are involved in that area of church life than anything else. And there is a lot of creativity going into it.
There is a perception in the article that children’s work is just seen as childminding. First of all, actually if there is an element of that at times, that might not be a bad thing. If we think that the best people, Biblically, to disciple their children are the parents then giving some time when parents can focus on teaching to better equip them for that responsibility is no bad thing
However, in my experience, it has never been about childminding. In our last church and current church that has been made overt by elders being significantly involved in youth and children’s work.
Now, here’s the important thing, where we agree. I agree 100 percent that we should stop worrying about pipelines and about what happens at 25. We need to be thinking more about how we disciple people in the church and that means starting right back when they are kids. That is not just about what our children hear formally in teaching, it’s about how we model life in our conversations outside the formal settings. It’s also not just on one or two paid or voluntary workers, it’s a whole church responsibility
I would also add that this is about the whole of life. Yes, amongst children in the church are potential future elders and leaders (and even those who aren’t have unique gifts to bring to the church as they are discipled) but also amongst your adults, are those who became Christians as adults and those who became Christians as kids but have never been through a ministry training programme. Amongst those may be plenty of people who will turn out to be called into leadership and gospel ministry.
Faithroots 