Today’s groups are becoming more integrated with the rest of the church.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, youth group culture relied on delivering fun and entertainment by any means possible: gross-out games, Christian rock concerts, hip hangout rooms, and pizza-party blowouts.
The activities were seen as vehicles to get kids in the door before sharing the gospel or offering Bible lessons.
Things have changed a lot since Jeremy Engbers grow up “playing games, getting dirty, and drinking blended Happy Meals” in church youth ministry.
Engbers, the 31-year-old director of worship, youth, and family at Olympia Christian Reformed Church, is trying to be the youth pastor he needed back then.
Like other pastors working in youth ministry today, Engbers focuses on relationship-building, intergenerational discipleship, and partnership with parents. His studies at Fuller Theological Seminary and access to resources at Fuller Youth Institute were helpful in building his current approach. Engbers also noted books like Sticky Faith and Growing Young as influential for him.
Prior to the past five or ten years, youth groups generally operated on their own schedule and programming within the church. In some churches, that even meant separate meetings during the church service on Sundays.
The siloed activities often isolated youth from the larger congregation, making it harder for them to integrate into grown-up ministry as a college student or adult. Engbers called it a kind of “spiritual daycare.”
Churches across denominations have seen young people stepping away from faith, and researchers at the Fuller Youth Institute say they don’t need a pastor in skinny jeans or a hip meeting space to make them stay. They need practices to root them in faith and community in a way that sticks.
Heather …
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