Mission Impossible? Why “Community” Doesn’t
Work in Youth Ministry
Murray Brown
Community. It is quite possibly the most misused and misunderstood
word in youth ministry today, and yet it has become a buzzword
for a whole approach to youth ministry that has shaped so
much of what we do. The thesis offered is that young people
are lacking meaningful relationships. Provide them with these,
we are told, and we will see them grow not only closer to
each other, but also closer to Christ.
Really?
Let’s cut right to the chase. Despite what the sociologists
may tell us, “community” is not real high on the
list of needs drawn up by our average student – at least,
not community as youth ministry commonly understands it and
approaches it.
But let’s be equally clear – community can work,
and in fact must work if we are to do effective ministry.
So before we go any further let’s explode the myth:
Despite the hunger for relationships, few young people really
want, or are even looking for, true “community”
– an outward focussed relationship with a diverse group
of people with whom they may have little in common. Some may
tell you it is what they want, out of some sort of idealism
or Christian obligation, yet most are not willing or unable
to really make it happen.
Why? There are a number of reasons.
Why young people don’t want “community”
Firstly, most already have their own “community”
– a homogeneous group of culturally similar people approximately
their own age. They may call this “community”
but perhaps a better term is “tribe”. Significantly
this tribal phenomenon has been created in no small part by
the absence of adults willing to involve themselves in the
adolescent world. Comments by Patricia Hersch:
“In the vacuum where traditional behavioral expectations
for young people used to exist, in the silence of empty homes
and neighborhoods, young people have built their own community.
The adolescent community is a creation by default, an amorphous
grouping of young people that constitutes the world in which
adolescents spend their time. Their dependence on each other
fulfills the universal human longing for community, and inadvertently
cements the notion of a tribe apart. More than a group of
peers, it becomes in isolation a society with its own values,
ethics, rules, worldview, rites of passage, worries, joys,
and momentum.” 1
Within these well defined tribes diversity is acceptable
so long as it doesn’t cause discomfort in others, and
so the pressure is on to conform to a set of norms, with failure
to do so resulting in ostracism.
Secondly, they lack the motivation to develop relationships
beyond their own “tribe”. Stepping outside of
one’s own world of values and rules and seeking to connect
with the world of another person takes effort. Like most adults
who already have significant relationships in their life,
they simply will not bother to invest time and energy into
community building with those outside their tribe unless struck
with a compelling reason to do so. In the minds of ego-centric
young people is the question, “Why invest in something
that may not offer anything needed in return?”
This is in part a reflection of a third point, namely the
busy lifestyle they lead. Amidst the growing pressures that
come through expectations of academic achievement, young people
have to fit in part time jobs and activities of choice such
as sport, church and cultural clubs. Maintaining tribal friendships,
either in person or remotely through their cell phones and
the internet, squeeze out time which could be spent in developing
a new community.
Fourthly, they lack the skills to communicate adequately
to those beyond their normal sphere of life. Many have grown
up in families where real communication has been lacking and
have not yet learnt the skills of conversation necessary to
initiate and develop relationships with people outside of
their own immediate world. Search Institute research indicates
only 30% of 6th-12th graders experience “positive family
communication” are “willing to seek advice and
counsel from parents”.2 The reasons
for this lack of communication is further illustrated in a
quite specific way by a survey conducted by the Global Strategy
Group that shows that nearly one in four parents (24%) report
eating no more than four meals a week together as a family,
while one in 10 say they either only eat one meal a week with
their teens or never eat with them.3
Finally, they lack the trust necessary to really invest in
relationships that require vulnerability. When you have been
let down by those closest to you, including parents, why begin
to trust those whom you find it difficult to relate to? How
can you trust others when hurts inflicted by those closest
too you are still raw? These are real questions that simply
make it easier for young people to gravitate away from diverse
community and back into like minded tribes.
Challenging, but not Impossible
Yet despite these obstacles, the situation is not hopeless.
As has been mentioned, community can and must work as a means
to growing young people toward maturity in Christ. It is within
true community that faith grows best.
Notes Chap Clark
“The message of reconciliation with God is an invitation
to join with others, who recognize their individual and collective
need to love God, and to live in love with one another. Thus,
the goal of youth ministry should be to make disciples of
Jesus Christ who are authentically walking with God within
the context of intimate Christian community.” 4
The key to success is this: stop making community-building
the aim, and make growth together toward Christ the overriding
goal.
We are doomed to fail if we say to young people, “Because
we are Christians we should be a close and loving community.
Therefore let’s work hard at getting to know each other
and really caring for each other.” Essentially what
we are doing is applying extrinsic motivation (“because
you are a Christian you should”…) to something
which must be intrinsic if it is to be lasting and effective.
Instead, what we say to them is, “Because Christ died
for us all and we are His children let’s learn to collectively
love Him and serve Him.” In other words, instead of
relying on a strategy of based on the expectation to be a
community because we ought to, let’s adopt a different
strategy that is built upon the theological fact that Christ
is the Head of the church and we collectively are His body,
already in community with Him. 5
Such a strategy recognises that He is the Vine, the source
of Life, and our young people are linked together only through
Him.6 Two branches of the same vine
are closest together at the point at which they grow out of
the main vine. Rather than try to gather a cluster of branches
together and hope that they will stick, draw their focus back
toward the main vine they share in common, and closeness or
community will develop.
Does this mean that we don’t encourage community-building
in our youth ministries? Not at all. But we encourage with
the understanding that words of exhortation have little effect
if the young people are not acknowledging Christ as their
collective Head and are not together pursuing the goal of
becoming more like Him. So let’s look at some quite
practical keys to how we go about this.
1. Create an awareness of Christ within
As believers are called to be One, not because we should
be but because we are! It is Christ who unites us together
as one body and as branches of the one vine. Therefore the
only effective starting point is for young people to realise
that the strange and diverse group of individuals gathered
within them in the youth room were each made in the image
of Christ and (for those who are Christians) are indwelt by
Christ through the Holy Spirit – the very same Christ
who indwells them.
We need to recapture the understanding that the key to discipleship
lies not in more Bible study, mentoring, and mission activities
(as important as these elements are). It lies in connecting
young people with Jesus, the Discipler, and helping them to
develop their own relationship with Him.
The first step in this “indwelling” approach
to discipleship is the continual reminder that the same Jesus
whom they meet in the pages of the Bible now lives inside
of them and desires to enjoy “community” with
them. Only an experience of this sense of divine community
will engender in a young convert an inner desire to connect
with others who share that same sense of community.
2. Focus Frequently on Christ
Curriculum that fails to focus on Christ and instead majors
on the “do’s and don’ts” of daily
living, divests our ministries of much of their power. When
Christ and His sacrifice on our behalf is “lifted up”
and becomes the very core of what we communicate, young people
will be drawn to Him. To do this we must share the “Jesus
story” often –both verbally and visually.
Only two weeks ago I was leading a programme for twenty or
so junior highers and played them a DVD clip of Jesus as a
boy in the temple and of His subsequent baptism. This was
hardly riveting content compared to other events from His
life, yet they sat silently throughout and when I stopped
the DVD a number let out an audible groan asking, “Can
we watch some more?!”. Truly this is a visual generation
and while we must never doubt or downplay the power of the
written word, we mustn’t overlook the power that “seeing”
Jesus has on these young ones.
Whatever the theme of our youth program for the day and whatever
the issue we are discussing, I make a point of summing up
the whole event with a message about Jesus’ life and
His loving sacrifice on our behalf. It is the story of His
Passion that ignites in young people a passion to grow closer
to Him. That way, whatever discussion and opinions have preceded
it, the young people consistently go away with a clear message
that youth group is “all about Jesus”.
As Kenda Creasy Dean puts it,
“The biblical account of the life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ functions as an overarching narrative in which
the passions of adolescence are subsumed in a larger, more
encompassing story. Yet the Passion of Christ is more than
a guiding narrative; it creates a community where the ongoing
practices of passion invite young people to participate in
this story as well as receive it. As adolescents imitate Christ,
they identify with a Passion that transforms their own.”
7
Focussing on Christ also means developing a real and practical
awareness of Christ’s presence in the group each week.
He has freedom to shape our agendas, to touch our hearts and
to whisper words of comfort, encouragement and correction.
Young people come with expectancy – a faith that the
Jesus who indwells them also indwells the community as they
gather. Youth programs become a time where we not only talk
about Jesus, but encounter Him.
3. Focus on helping others draw closer to Christ
To do this we not only tell the Jesus story often –
we tell our own stories. Through testimonies of God’s
goodness in our lives, both past and present, we are drawn
closer to Him, building one another up with stories of His
faithfulness. The people of Israel understood the power of
the collective story. Central to their life together was the
recounting of what God had done for them as a people.8
Yet as I look at my junior highers I ask myself, “How
will I ever get them to share anything deeper than what happened
at last week’s game, what was on TV last night and who
likes who at school?” “How do I get them to share
their stories when they are either not sure if they have one,
or they have completely lost the plot?!”
The answer starts with me. So I have begun by sharing my
story and will continue to do so. Furthermore, I'm inviting
adults in the church to come and share theirs. All I ask is
that they speak for five minutes on how they came to love
Jesus and what He means to them today. Gradually, through
the sometimes quiet passion of these adults, it’s beginning
to sink in and the young people are becoming a little braver
and more forthcoming about their own stories. We all have
a story and in sharing these stories we are reminded that
we are all in this together. Our lives might look very different
but because of Jesus we are One.
As our stories draw us closer together we are inspired to
want to minister to one another in prayer, offering words
of comfort and hope, and inspiring each other to pursue Jesus
with greater desire and intent. In prayer, both the pray-er
and the one being prayed for draw closer to Jesus and in the
process find themselves being driven inexplicably closer to
each other. I have such fond and precious memories of times
where I’ve been in groups with teenagers who have experienced
together the power of focussed heartfelt prayer for a peer.
In those moments we have had such an overwhelming sense of
His closeness that those things that seemed to keep us as
arms length now no longer seem important, as our arms intertwine
and we embrace one another.
4. Focus on serving Christ together
Finally, having told the Jesus story often and shared in
one another’s stories, we must forge our own combined
story as a community. In a youth ministry I led for ten years
we had many traditions – events held annually, which
the young people looked forward to eagerly each year. Photos
and videos were taken and viewed in days that followed while
memories of the hilarious and the meaningful were sometimes
shared for weeks.
This is true I'm sure for many youth groups. However, the
sense of closeness felt through shared events and traditions
is simply an accepted sociological dynamic that again works
equally well in a sports team or secular youth club. For that
reason it will bring only a temporary sense of closeness and
should not be relied on as the answer in creating lasting
Christian community. As was mentioned earlier, we need a different
dynamic – one that transcends sociology.
Interestingly enough, those events and activities that brought
the greatest sense of community to our group were those in
which Christ was central to what we were doing. Whether it
was at Easter symbolically nailing our sins to the cross,
or a service project that saw us go in Jesus’ name to
meet the needs of the elderly within our church and community,
these events created a closeness far beyond what social and
behavioural theorists would predict. It was in these activities
that we collectively exercised faith in Christ and witnessed
firsthand His presence in the lives and situations of those
whom we met. At these times young people forgot their differences,
and lived as community.
Pursuing Community
Despite the subheading, community does work in youth ministry.
One of the great joys I have in youth ministry is to meet
young people from years past who are not only still following
Jesus but continue to have close friendships with those whom
they met in the youth group. Yes, community works, but not
as a sociological dynamic and not because we tell young people
that it should, and insist that they try to make it so.
But for many of us community seems too often to be elusive
as young people eye each other from the four corners of the
room with a mixture of fear, dislike and indifference. A sense
of guilt, or a carefully planned series of community building
activities may draw them to the centre but neither are sufficient
powerful to hold them there.
What they need is to be captured.
Captured, not by something bigger than themselves, but Someone.
That Someone is the Creator of the Universe; He is Someone
who died for them; He is Someone who lives in them and through
them.
That Someone is Jesus, and still His prayer for us today
is to be One even as He and the Father are One.
And that prayer is not in vain.
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1 Hersch, P., A Tribe Apart,
Ballantine Books (1998)
2 Search Institute, Search Institute
Profiles of Student Life: Attitudes and Behaviors Survey (from
interviews too over 217,000 6th- to 12th-grade youth in 318
communities and 33 states during the 1999-2000 school year)
http://www.search-institute.org/research/assets/assetfreqs.html
3 Global Strategy Group, based on telephone
interviews with a national sample of 500 teens, 14 to 17 years
of age, conducted in January 2001 by Penn, Schoen & Berland
Associates of Washington, DC: http://www.ymca.net/presrm/research/teensurvey.htm
4 Clark, C., Hurt: Inside the World
of Today’s Teenager, Baker Academic (2004)
5 Colossians 1:18; 1 Corinthians 1:27;
Ephesians 1:22, Ephesians 5:23
6 John 15:5
5 Dean, K.C., Practicing Passion: Youth
and the Quest for a Passionate Church, Eerdmans (2004)
6 Psalm 136
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This article was originally published in the July/August
issue of YouthWorker Journal, copyright Youth Specialities.
reprinted/used with permission. For subscription information,
visit www.youthworker.com or call 800-769-7624. http://www.youthspecialties.com/articles/topics/community_building/mission.php
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