In a few hours I’ll be on a plane to Manchester to attend the Youthwork Summit 2011. It’s kind of funny, because I’m not British, I don’t know any of the people that are coming and with the exception of one, I’ve never heard of any of the speakers. Yet I’m flying in from Munich to attend a youth ministry conference in Manchester. It makes you wonder why.
You see, I’ve been involved in youth ministry since 1999 but this last year I’ve not been actively participating in a church setting. The reason is that we moved from Holland to Germany last year and I’m still learning the language and getting to know the people and the culture. That’s why I started Youth Leaders Academy, to keep being productive, to use my experience and knowledge to help others and to stay involved in youth ministry in some way in the meantime. But I have every intention of returning to ‘active duty’ as soon as possible.
Which is why I have decided to use this involuntary ‘sabbatical’ to learn, to grow and to explore as much as I can in the area of youth ministry. Because we all know that once we’re on active duty, finding the time to do that can become nearly impossible. So I’ve been reading tons of books, visiting about every youth ministry blog and website known to man and basically been filling my head with new knowledge. And it has started to make me wonder about the future of youth ministry.
As youth workers we keep talking about postmodern culture and how the times, they are a-changing. Well, not to judge in any way, but I think the Americans among you have seen nothing yet. Europe is way ahead of America in terms of decline in church attendance, adherence to any form of Christian religion and in general a complete lack of church or religious influence on young people.
The current protests on Wall Street (the Occupy movement) are attracting interest from American college students. But in Europe we’ve seen this unrest for years among the young. The French, The British, they’ve had their protests and it got ugly. We’ve been dealing with integration issues of immigrants, with bad economic circumstances, with huge youth unemployment.
Churches here are losing members by the thousands, if not more. We Europeans live in countries where being a Christian is a rarity, where Christian youth finds themselves standing alone more and more often. Religion, church, it is not a part of our culture here anymore, except maybe for certain Catholic areas where it may still be a tradition to be religious, but in most cases it’s not more than that.
In my humble opinion, America may still be the dominant cultural influence in terms of movies, tv series and music, but Europe is leading the postmodern religious shift. In America, an issue in youth ministry is that students say they’re Christian, but their belief system is actually compromised to the point where they’re in reality not Christians at all (as Kenda Creasy Dean argued in Almost Christian). In Europe, very, very few are even claiming to be a Christian anymore. I think Americans should start paying attention to what is happening in Europe, because it may just be their future.
Sure, Europe isn’t one country and in the picture I’m painting I’m generalizing on a big scale. There are for instance huge differences between Great Britain where the Church of England still ‘rules’ and Holland where Calvinism is the main influence and the Church of England doesn’t even exist. But the trend is clearly visible.
What I’m seeing is that ‘traditional’ church-based youth ministry is getting more and more important to truly reach the young people that are still going to church. We need to step up our efforts to show them what a relationship with God means. We need to make them into disciples. But at the same time, other creative ways and means are needed to reach the majority of the young people that aren’t involved in a church in any way.
I’m certainly not an expert on youth ministry in Europe, but I know that in my home country Holland, we’ve let para-church organizations and ministries lead the way in outreach. Most churches in Holland have an evangelistic focus certainly, but one that’s mostly limited to reach the friends of the kids involved in church. And I’m not saying that’s not important, I still believe in friendship-evangelism. But the mission field is so much bigger than that and para-church organizations are struggling. Their funding is getting more and more limited as budgets are cut and people lose their jobs. The government is getting stricter in the ‘amount’ of evangelism they’re allowed to do with government funding, severely limiting their options. I’m not at all sure para-church organizations will be able to survive, let alone thrive.
I think the church should step up to the plate and get involved in youth ministry in the broadest sense. I think churches should run sex education programs, give school and career advice, offer homework guidance, set up sports programs, teach courses in practical skills, open youth cafes and hangouts. They should start skating ministries and start offering religious courses in schools. Churches should do whatever they can to reach every young person in their village, town or city. Together preferably. I think it’s the only way we can turn the tide and reach this postmodern generation for Christ.
And that’s why I am flying to England tonight. Because I don’t have the answers and I can’t do anything alone. We need each other as youth leaders worldwide, we need to exchange ideas en practices. We need to learn from each other, encourage each other and support each other. We are one church, one family and because we serve one God we should have one goal.
I can’t wait to meet all the wonderful British youth workers I met through Twitter in person (just follow the #ywchat hashtag and you’ll find them…and me) and hear their stories. I’m sure I’ll come home with a head full of ideas…and my heart even more on fire to reach a generation for Christ.
