Youth Work in Crisis:
Why Middle Class Christianity is Failing Young People

Something’s stirring. Several prominent Church members have called a meeting with the Pastor. The congregation is not happy. Some are just privately concerned, others openly hostile - spreading ill-feeling to anyone who will listen. Their teenagers are in danger. Their children “exposed”.

It started with one or two troubled youth coming in, but now it seems to be growing out of control. They were happy with the first few - The church was “active, doing its bit”. But now the church, and more specifically their own children, are under threat.

“Too many cigarettes and pierced body parts - too noisy, ill-mannered and unkempt…! We have standards. God has standards. It just doesn’t look good at all. The Pastor needs to do something. People have started leaving - good people.”

While rather “dramatic”, sadly versions of this scenario are too often played out in reality in too many churches - with many fledgling, genuinely outreaching youth ministries being crushed as a result, and their youth workers falling by the wayside having been killed off by discouragement.

It is time, as a Church, to take account. It is time to genuinely evaluate the premise on which the majority of youth ministries are founded and fostered. Whom are we serving? Ourselves or our Lord?

Let me challenge you to consider that while 100% of Christian churches would claim, of course, to serve God, many are in fact, with respect to youth ministry, serving themselves first. The evidence - middle-class youth groups full of middle-class youth. Where are the poor, the disadvantaged, the truly broken of this young generation? Not in the church.

While we say we want to reach the lost youth, and we do, in our hearts - the reality is more one of “but don’t bring them near my children!”

This is middle class Christianity in crisis.

We are more concerned with protecting our safe environment than we are in genuinely fulfilling His Great Commission - and trusting Him to protect our children.

The question that every church pastor, youth-worker and every Christian parent needs to ask deeply is this: ‘are we meant to be protecting our young from the world (which by nature excludes the world’s broken lost youth from the Church)? At what point are we meant to let go and trust instead for God to do the work?’

The story of Abraham hints at God’s heart on this matter (Gen: 11-25). God had big, big, plans for Abraham. He called him and challenged him/tested him constantly. We all know of the ultimate test he faced - to sacrifice his precious son, his son of promise Isaac, in simple obedience. He understood not why God would deem this the right thing to do - he simply trusted and obeyed.

Whilst this story has become almost the ultimate example of true faith in the Lord and we can be reminded that our children are not ours but the Lord’s (a significant truth to remember), it is actually an earlier occasion that, to me, speaks more specifically of God’s challenge to us at this time.

When God first called Abraham to leave his homeland and his people behind to go to the land of promise, to where was it that he was led? Was it to a land of beauty where he and his people could commune safely with the Lord and with each other - building up for themselves a sanctuary of righteousness? Ah - not exactly! It was of course, to Canaan that Abraham was led to settle: a land of the ungodly, of harsh environments, of famine and wars, and of a multitude of temptations and sinful influences. Abraham had to choose righteousness, overcome temptation.

We are not called to shelter our young people and our children from the world, we are to instruct them in godliness and and build them up with strength of character so that they will choose the path of righteousness - so that they can face temptation and overcome it.

Fundamentally I believe that if we protect and isolate our young people from the world we are actually preventing them from realising the very truth that we are so desperate for them to know: that what they have in God is so incredibly precious, and that the world has no answers (to ultimate happiness) only pain.

To the average sheltered Christian young person, the world looks awfully good. They take for granted the blessings of God while secretly lusting after the pleasures of the world. How are they to know with conviction how good God is if they have no point of reference by which to base their conviction. Instead of conviction they will simply have ‘lifestyle’. Lifestyle itself is not what we want for our young people.

There is also a very dangerous message we send our young people when they see us rejecting the ‘unlovely’. They learn very early on that appearance and form wins approval - they learn how to ‘perform’ externally while inwardly and in secret they struggle, search and sadly often rebel. Genuine change is thus often thwarted because the parents and youth workers never even know the true nature of their hearts. That is until shock sets in shortly after the 18^th birthday when freedom to make their own choices arrives - and by then, its often too late to bring them back.

The journey to find true faith for the average churched teenager is often a long one. Don’t demand from them what they’re not ready to completely ‘own’ for themselves - or you will help generate a new generation of ‘plastic christians’ – or as the world sees them, hypocrites (Satan's trump card for turning the unchurched away from the Church).

My assertion is this, it is not dangerous to expose our children and young people to those from disadvantaged backgrounds who act and look ‘unchristian’ at times - it is dangerous not to. Trust the Lord with your teenager and allow your teenager the freedom to choose the truth for themselves. Pray that your young person learns the truth by observation, although most unfortunately need to experience some pain before they find their faith for themselves.

If as parents, churches and youth ministries we help them go through this process in the security of our love and guidance and not the suffocation of a cocoon, we will deflate the need for rebellion and instead encourage openness, honesty and ultimately hopefully a genuine passionate faith in the Lord.

So can we move forward as a Church to genuinely “seek and save the lost”, knowing, trusting that God will look after our own in the process. We can’t continue to compromise our mission.