I've been reflecting this afternoon on the waves of change in youth ministry. I have been working in youth ministry now for about 20 years. Most of that time I have spent in rural and smaller settings. Camp Berea is a small camp, and I have served rural churches with small budgets. I have seen a lot of trends come and go and seen myself and then other young leaders enamored with the new and shiny ministry objects.
These days most of those objects concern internet tools. Now I am not going to complain or denegrate internet tools. (That would an ironic thing to do in a BLOG!) :) I use Facebook and Twitter. I am building a social networking site for Berea. I look at our branding decisions and always work to balance tradition with innovation.
The thing that I think often gets under-emphasized is the basic thrust of ministry. I am not trying to do more AS MUCH as I need to try to do better. And WHAT I am trying to do better is build Discipleship Relationships. Emphasis on relationships.
I recently looked into a conference for youth ministry that had speakers and workshops aimed at helping us learn the internet tools, at doing better worship, and better video production. I think all of those are great and if you have the time and money to pour into it, you can maybe catch the attention of some of our media soaked kids. ***BUT***
What I have observed and learned myself in the last 20 years, is that the biggest need and biggest draw for adults, teens, kids, saved and unsaved, is LOVE, expressed personally.
When it comes to ministry. More is not always better. They are not opposites as some naysayers like to claim, but they are not interchangeable either. For instance. Twitter and Facebook and the other iterations of online technology, allow for MORE communication. Better? well, that depends. I Twitter, Blog, and facebook in an effort to increase peoples ability to see my life in Christ and to connect with their life. I find that these tools are most effective when they SUPPLEMENT my offline contacts with people. This is a tricky balance. Too much time on them and they can begin to take away from face to face contact time.
A friend of mine who is a youth leader and active with these new tools recently twittered a visit to the dentist to have a tooth pulled. There were numerous updates describing each step of the way. While I love this guy, i would argue that this was an instance of MORE but not BETTER. However, I will admit that it had that crazy youth pastor flavor, so I'll let you decide. :)
Christ had the ability to do miracles that drew big crowds. He generated a lot of interest and people probably came to see miracles and ended up hearing the message. But I see Christ often declining to do miracles because people wanted a performance only. Do we sometimes over-emphasize our cultural connectedness trying to get people to listen when really the entrance is not through attracting their curiosity but awakening the hunger of their heart? Perhaps we should make sure that we are spending as much (or more) time sitting at the Samaritan well as we are trying to news-feed 5,000.
Let's by all means use new tools as they come, but let's routinely stop and make sure that we are not merely doing more, but doing better.
