Youth Ministry

Wild Frontier is a mindset. It is a mindset that there is something more out there than what is normal. It is a mindset of following God's leading to more of what God has for you in ministry, particularly youth ministry.

This is the compilation from 30-years of youth ministry experience. These are the best practices we have found to shape the faith of teenagers so they can live a faith that moves them to something more than normal.

WF YM: Plan Ritualized Time Together

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This sounds like an awful idea. Ritual is a word many youth workers over the last 60 years have run from. Yet it is one of those special comforting things we can offer youth.

In a non-youth ministry book was this letter from a then 20 year old: “In the last six years I have come to feel strongly that parents need to spend one to one time with their teenagers. Ritualized time together, however long or short, allows trust to

WF YM: Using the Five Senses

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Creating memories and experiences for your teens is one of our favorite practices for youth ministry. Experiencing just so happens to use our senses so we believe the more the senses used in youth ministry the better. Purposely incorporate as many of the five senses you can into your youth ministry experiences.

The sense creative teachers most often use is sight. We lean on our Powerpoints and video clips because they are simply effective. However, using the other senses have the possibility to be even more effective.

Do you know which sense is the most effective for learning retention? Smell. Not an easy one to incorporate into teachings but the fruit can be big. Move outside of normal and purposely incorporate as many of the senses you can.

WF YM: Purposely Celebrate Rites of Passage

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Without purposely doing it, we have turned over rites of passages to the peer culture. Prom has turned into all kinds of other “adult” behaviors away from the presence of adults such as drinking, reckless use of vehicles and sex. While graduation still involves the family, right after the actual ceremony the new graduate takes off with his/her fellow new graduates to celebrate minus the adults again in the same reckless “adult” ways. Then they take off for beach week or whatever week is in your area to live like what they see on MTV’s Spring Break.

WF YM: Raise Youth in the Church Family

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Youth need community. That statement has been repeated often and used as a reason (or excuse) for the many things we do in youth ministry. The result is we have our youth programs, youth rooms, and most currently, some churches are even running their own youth worship services. Such youth ministry does provide community, but teens also know how two-faced teens are because they are. Teens need community larger than their peer group. You and your volunteer leaders (if you have any!) are not enough. The good news is there is a ready made community in the church family.

WF YM: Youth Strive For Challenge, So Challenge

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The increased popularity of extreme sports is one proof of this true desire for a challenge. Extreme sports is all about the challenge. Another proof is the increase enrollment in AP and IB education programs. Some youth want more challenging curriculum so they feel challenged in their education. Their education means more than seat warming for something that is easy for them. They will take a C in an AP or IB class over an easy A in a regular class.

Be sure in your youth ministry to set the challenge of what a life of faith is which is a challenge. You will be growing true disciples and teaching new converts the true way of faith. The challenge will be respected no matter what their personal decisions are. And remember, youth ministry is part of a lifelong journey. The challenge you set will go with them throughout their lives even if they don’t decide to follow those few short years you have with them.

WF YM: Youth Services Are Designed as Outreach Opportunities for the Unchurched

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Youth services are designed as outreach opportunities for the unchurched. This title was originally “borrowed” from another youth ministry article like this was some new youth ministry idea that needed to be mentioned in an article. Isn’t this why we do youth ministry?

Teens are more open to God and church than at any other time in their lives. However, too many of the unchurched youth are completely lost by our customs and codes. You know those customs and codes like how we worship, hand motions to certain songs, etc. The unchurched have no idea why we do those things nor are they comfortable sitting through those things. Your worship band may be powerful but to be a visitor and sit through 30 minutes of singing to lyrics you don’t know, music that is too loud (a frequent mistake in youth worship bands), and body movements that are supernatural or just weird is very uncomfortable. Often visitors are invited to hear a guest speaker or the cool youth worker or to talk about a certain topic in a small group. They weren’t warned about the weird singing which is usually the first thing up at a youth service.

WF YM: Teach A Correct Biblical Worldview

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Dr. Christian Smith, backed up by the research from the National Study of Youth and Religion, defines the worldview of today’s youth as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism defined is: there’s a God who created the world, but that God is not particularly involved in my way of life. I live my own life apart from God except when I have problems. Then I can call upon God to come solve those problems for me. Moral Therapeutic Deism asserts that people should be good which basically means not being a jerk.

WF YM: Youth Leaders Are Authority Figures

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You are not big buddies. There are too many stories like this one about a family who is no longer a part of their church who is still angry at a former youth pastor who let the daughter ride on the hood of his car around the church parking lot.

You have been entrusted by the parents with the welfare of minors. That means you have to be concerned with safety and safety means rules. Rules need to be enforced by the authority and that is you. You are an authority figure.

Don’t worry. As an authority figure your youth will still like you because in safety and authority there is comfort and security. In comfort and security anyone can learn and that is what you want to see happen which is why you work with youth.

WF YM: Spend Purposed Time At School

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If you have time in your schedule to visit the schools of your teens, do it. But don’t just do it by visiting at lunch. While the youth you are visiting at lunch go crazy with appreciation for your visit, you have just used the school’s generosity to further push your agenda and not help the school. We love teenagers and want as many to be saved as possible. You have righteous and pure motives. But that is not the agenda of the school. Their agenda is to educate students and they need all the help possible to help achieve that. We see the “tribe” gathered in one location which gives us easier opportunities. The school sees the “tribe” gathered as their responsibility and they are already fighting losing battles with attitudes, violence, and apathy.

WF YM: Initiate Involvement with the School

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As Steven McFarland, former executive director of the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom said, “I’ve had a lot of calls about how to get by the schoolhouse gate in order to share their faith, or get kids to come to a Friday night concert, or have an assembly where we sneak the gospel in at the end. But in nine years I have never had a single call from a pastor, a youth minister or a parachurch ministry asking me what the First Amendment will allow them to do to help their local public school.” (Joseph Loonte, “Bullet Proofing Our Schools…With Faith,” Citizen, April 2000). Ponder that one in your prayer time for a while.

WF YM: Purposely Provide Spiritual Markers and Memories

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You will know this is a good youth ministry idea by taking a quick analysis of your own life. Imagine drawing out or telling your own spiritual journey story. No matter how you got to God it is guaranteed that it is a path made up of strong and emotional memories. It wasn’t the powerful sermons you heard and it wasn’t your attendance to a certain youth group–unless you were personally and emotionally connected to the group experience.

A good use of your time would be to plan such spiritual markers and memories. Whether they are rites of passages, out-of-the-ordinary-God-experience events, and/or relationship builders with the church family. Your time investment will have the best returns. Your youth will remember this more than any of the messages you will have preached.