Youth Ministry and the Family

I was just reading a blog post from a youth pastor down in Windham. He quotes an article that associates the exodus of teens from the church as the near adulthood with the shift of spiritual development in teens from fathers to youth pastors. The complete post is here: http://unbound411.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/no-need-for-youth-ministries/ I agree with the blog's author Matt in that I don't think the youth pastors are directly to blame for the shift. I do think that it is true that fathers have played less and less of a role in being the "pastors" of their home. The traditional family has taken many hits and that role is often not taught or even modeled in churches. I have seen pastors who did not pastor their own homes individually. As a youth pastor, I have often found myself being defaulted to as a spiritual father. I don't believe I edged out or removed a father from that role, but I sometimes had to fill it when the dad did not. Perhaps where us youth pastors could do more is to broaden our own ministry to work with entire families and try to help dads learn to be family pastors. The problem with that is that the average youth pastor is a young man, often single, who is just starting out in ministry. Not exactly the place to be able to teach older men. That's not what the Bible pictures either. As I grow older, with a strong background in youth ministry, but with now the added position of senior pastor, and now being a dad as well who is trying to be a family spiritual leader as well, I think I am better suited to begin to teach and model this. Incidentally, it is this shift in my own philosophy that is one of the reasons that we are not looking for a "youth" pastor but rather an associate pastor. It is time to bring the generations together the way the Bible pictures it and allow the spiritually mature men we do have in the church do help our families. Oh what a challenge. In the meantime, I think there is plenty of ministry for pastors to youth to fill.