Who, Me? Part 2

So I had this problem:  How do I minister to youth when I really don’t like “youth ministry”?

The ministry opportunity I talked about in my last post (the one I feel very un-qualified for) happens to be ministering to youth at my church.  If you asked me a year ago if I would want to be a youth director I would have said “no”.  Well, I would have laughed at you first, but then I would have said “no”.  Why?  If I can be honest with you (and it’s my blog, so I can be), I can’t stand most youth ministry programs.  If I can be ridiculously honest with you (again, I can), I think most of them are bloated with meaningless programs and anemic when it comes to teaching, training and equipping youth to be ready to be a Christian in a very non-Christian world.

I’ve struggled over the past few weeks to look for either a model for ministry or for resources to use as curriculum if (it isn’t official yet) I were to be a part of starting a youth ministry at my church.  At this point I’m seriously asking God “WHY ME!?” because I am NOT a youth director.  I know of a lot of guys who do youth ministry and I don’t fit in — I cannot imagine myself at a youth worker’s convention…

But then God (three of my favorite words) rescued me from my despair.  He reminded me of the one moment in my life when I had a favorable view of youth ministry.  For about a year of my life, I wanted nothing more than to be a part of the high school youth group.

I’m an Army brat and spent 5th grade through 8th grade in Frankfurt and Mannheim, Germany.  In the 8th grade I was moderately involved in a middle school youth group run by Malachi Youth Ministries, which is the youth division of Cadence International.  My brother was actively involved in the high school youth group and I could not wait to be a part of it the following year.  Maybe it was because they went to Ibiza, Spain for a Europe-wide youth conference.  Looking back, the deeper reason was I wanted to be treated like they were treated — like a young adult.  Of course, we would move back to Texas before I had this opportunity, and I have yet to see a youth program run the same way since.

Thanks to a few conversations with my brother and the power of the Internet I finally feel like I can do this.  I can see that it’s just ministry.  It’s ministering to youth, and I can do that.  It doesn’t have to look like everybody else’s youth program — and it probably won’t.

On the other hand, I could be COMPLETELY wrong about all of this and crash and burn in my attempt at leading youth into a deeper relationship with Christ… Life is more exciting when failure highly likely!

Here’s a video from Malachi Youth Ministries that gives a little insight into their ministry.  Enjoy.

Malachi Military Youth Ministries has a heart for military students! from Cadence International on Vimeo.