Many churches of Christ, liberal and conservative, are very concerned about their young people, and they make concerted efforts to teach this segment of the body and keep them involved. This, in itself, is good.
But among institutional brethren, one common approach has been to follow the denominational model and create "youth ministries." This often involves, not only hiring a special "minister," but also creating a whole program of worship, study, and activity that is purposely separate from the remainder of the local church. What's wrong with this?
Many who have opposed youth ministries for years would find it difficult to answer that question. But, interestingly enough, one of the better-known writers among our institutional brethren has given us some insight into what is fundamentally wrong with this approach to shepherding our young.
F. LaGard Smith, who is now "Scholar in Residence for Christian Studies" at David Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN, was recently interviewed for the ultraliberal paper The Christian Chronicle. The interviewer asked Smith what he would say if, for ten minutes, he had the undivided attention of every member of every church of Christ.
In his answer, he included this: "...I would call on the church to abandon youth ministries, which have toppled the spiritual hierarchy. Throughout Scripture, spiritual leadership is not only male, but it's elder. It's the wisdom of the years that leads and nurtures younger generations."
In an article about LaGard Smith's comments, J.T. Smith wrote, "This is not the cry of some old ultraconservative who resists change at every turn. It is the counsel of one who is seeing among his peers the ripe fruit of an ill-advised tree."
Just think about how youth programs operate.
1. Usually, a very young minister is hired to lead the youth ministry. In larger churches, this is often an entry-level preaching job. This young man often has no experience and little Bible knowledge. He is employed for his greatest asset--his similarity to those he is to teach.
2. The programs usually are heavy on recreation and shallow on teaching. What teaching there is concentrates on topics that are "hot button" issues with young people. At a time in their lives when young people are primed for learning a wide range, large volume of truth from God's word, they receive a "dumbed-down" curriculum that meets their greatest desire--fun!
3. Young people are treated as if they are a distinct and separate communion or fellowship within the church. They are not particularly encouraged to interact or integrate with the church as a whole.
Being a disciple of Jesus Christ involves, to a large degree, renouncing selfishness and self-centeredness to "serve" or "minister" to others.
Contrariwise, youth programs usually are designed to serve the whims and fancies of the young, to keep them coming to services. But what happens when these young people and teenagers become adults? What happens when they must face life's more serious issues outside the context of games and entertainment? How will these folks react when they must leave the youth group and listen to meatier teaching in "adult" classes and sermons?
The experience among our institutional brethren should answer the question for us. Many of these young people leave when they become adults because they haven't been grounded in the truth. They are impatient with the weightier matters of God's word. If congregations hope to retain them as part of their membership, sermons will again have to be dumbed down, laced with entertaining stories, and kept very brief to meet the whims of these still-immature spiritual babes.
A little more than 2,000 years ago, the Apostle Paul warned about this. He wrote, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables." (2 Timothy 4:3-4)
What young people need is interaction with older, more mature Christians. Teaching the young is a process of bringing them along to maturity, not perpetuating their immaturity. The training of young men shouldn't be entrusted to other young men. Rather, older men are to be treated as "fathers" within the church (1 Timothy 5:1). And, of course, fathers are the ones who are responsible for raising the young in the "training and admonition of the Lord." (Ephesians 6:4)
Older women are instructed to teach the younger women to be reverent and self-controlled, to love their husbands and children. They are to teach them how to be discreet and chaste, how to be "homemakers" and obedient to their husbands (Titus 2:3-5). When did you last hear of a youth ministry that operated with that agenda?
Elders in the Lord's church should exemplify mature Christian discipleship to the entire church, but especially to those who are immature. That certainly applies, to those who are young both physically and spiritually.
Does this question pertain only to our liberal/institutional brethren? Several brethren among us have been sending up red flags about our own dabbling in special youth services. They point out that more and more, conservative churches are offering special youth-oriented weekend meetings (short, of course) where the presentations are more entertaining than those typically heard in traditional-style meetings.
These meetings often have less Bible reading and study and more illustrative stories. Virtually without fail, a food-and-entertainment package accompanies the effort. We conservatives tend to place the food and frolic at a different location, but it is there, nevertheless, as the "draw" for the event.
The criticism here is not to targeting lessons to different groups within the church. The warning is against segmenting the congregation into counter-productive factions, dumbing down teaching, believing we must feed and entertain to draw the young to the gospel, and relegating the "mature" members of the congregation to the sidelines away from the young.