I just read a great article from Willow Creek Association about 5 shifts that need to take place in Student Ministry because of the greatly different culture that students are growing up in from when youth ministry began to be common. Like the term or not, I believe that these changes are necessary because of the postmodern ethos that surrounds us. Postmodernity is not simply a cool trendy term to throw around in philosophy or theology circles, it is transitioning to be the prevailing world view to and in which we must minister.
So Willow Creek is using the term “Youth Ministry 2.0″ signifying that the program needs an update. Here are their 5 areas in brief:
From PASSIVE to INTERACTIVE
The quintessence of Youth Ministry 2.0 is user-generated content. Thanks to YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and Wikipedia, students are no longer content to just consume … they now want to participate. We have moved from simply presenting the “answers†to students, to allowing them to co-create the content. We recently featured three short films in our youth service that were written, edited and produced by students. We also launched a brand new Web site to be the central information source of our community. Students can interact and create content with polls,blogs, photos, and videos…
From RESOLVED to UNRESOLVED
We recently taught a four-week series called “Hot Topics.†We covered homosexuality, war, MySpace and drugs and alcohol. Instead of offering simple, trite answers to these weighty subjects, we created environments to wrestle with these issues together. With leaders helping to guide them, students were encouraged to search the Scriptures to learn what the Bible says about these topics.
From IMITATION to IMAGINATION
We have been encouraging our students to imagine new ways of expressing their faith. Students have been living out their faith on their school campuses in extraordinary ways. Recently a group of students decided to raise awareness and money for children in Uganda. They held a huge event at their school and promoted it by wearing white ripped T-shirts with black writing across them. They had hundreds of students show up to this event. It was all planned, organized, and implemented by students.
From INFORMATIONAL to EXPERIENTIAL
We continue to try and think of new ways to engage the senses. We want to include visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. We recently cooked a steak on stage to teach about the aroma of Christ. We gave out 3-D glasses and taught about the power of vision coming to life. Because the overwhelming majority of teenagers now own a cell phone, we use mass text messaging as a primary means of communication for our ministry.
From CONFESSION to COMPASSION
We have discovered that students are no longer satisfied with just confessing what they believe — they want to live it out. With James 1:27 as our inspiration (Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you). Our student ministry has now partnered with a high school in Zambia, Africa, to serve HIV/AIDS orphans and has established a partnership with a local transitional housing ministry for homeless single moms.
It seems that in the DRINK AND FLOW ministry at Calvary Church we have made some of these shifts, but I see areas of growth still needed. Leave a comment on how you think we can successfully make these shifts to call more worshipers to know God through Jesus Christ and make an impact in this world!
Big thanks to Steve Kilgore for a heads up on the article!
