I have been trying to figure out the best terminology for a situation that exists all over North America. It is seen in the small churches where one or two or three teens exist in the congregation and no real ministry is being done for or with them. Why? Because the leadership of the church (clergy and lay) have decided that there are not enough youth for a proper youth program, so we do nothing. The only descriptor I can come up with is this: “Spiritual Neglect”. Rather than ministering to the few, we ignore their needs because we don’t feel capable of providing a program that we think will meet their needs. And the actual reality is that we cannot provide a “program” for them. However, we can meet their spiritual needs. Some however have gone the route of the spiritual handoff. In these cases, the leadership of the church decides that because we don’t have enough teens to have a program, we send them off to a nearby church that has a good (really the measure here is sizable) youth program. One of two things is going to happen with these students. Either they love it and we lose them to another denomination, or they hate it and are left feeling neglected. Either way, we are not ministering to them and they are not moving toward meaningful participation in the church.
What teens really need are two things. First that they are known and cared for by people across the congregation. This is an intergenerational need that is often more met in the small church than the large church. Yet it has to be intentional. Someone has to go out of their way to connect with the teens in the church (and age does not matter). Second, teens need someone who will invest in them. Again, age really does not matter – though being young at heart is immensely helpful.This is where someone in the congregation invites the teens to meet with them on a regular basis to study scripture and pray together. The person who does this must love Jesus, love younger people, and love the Bible to the extent that they want to see it transform other lives as it has their own.
Why are smaller congregations missing the opportunity to minister to their teens? I think the answer lies in paradigms. We think we need to provide something that was provided to us or that we see the larger church providing. What we don’t realize is that as a small congregation with just a few teens, we can minister to them in a more profound way than any youth group in a larger church can do. A few months back I was in a conversation with the wife of a church planter. She complained about how they did not have a youth ministry. I interrupted her with the following comment. “Yes, you do have a ministry to teens. You just don’t have a traditional youth group” The reality was that she was leading a regular Bible study with her daughters and their friends, who were the only teens in the church. Her work was hugely significant and in my mind eclipses what they would have experienced by attending a youth group at a large church. She wrote a great article as a result of our conversation which you can find here https://www.rootedministry.com/blog/it-doesnt-take-a-youth-group-to-have-a-vibrant-youth-ministry/
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