Youth Ministry in 50 Years.Marko's looking for thoughts on what Youth Ministry will look like in 50 years. Here are my initial thoughts.
My first thought is that Marko will be 95 years old, I will be 84. If he's alive then, he'll still be doing jr high ministry. The kids will think he's cool because 80% of his body will be covered in tattoos and the small amounts of thin hair that survived 95 years of abuse will be fire engine red. He'll go by Grandpa MO and cruise around in a wheel chair wearing a kilt and DC shoes.
All that to say, it's crazy to predict what ministry to adolescents will be like in 50 years. If you are generous, Youth ministry as we know it, has been around for about 45 years. Adolescence is about less than 100 years old. This is good for us all to remember. Youth Ministry is roughly the same age as the microwave oven. In a few years, Youth Ministry might be gone... but I doubt it. One thing is certain. It will look different than it does now. Youth Ministry will be different because the church will be different. Since no one really knows, I'll put on the hat of the futurist and have a little fun with my answer.
In the future, the perceived gap between adults and children will continue to grow. This perception will continue to be born in the advertising world, where kids will be systematically "niched", then told they have unique needs and desires, and then are marketed too. There will be churches that will believe the American Marketing Machine and will thus make changes in their youth ministry. These churches will start youth ministry in Third Grade. With club 34 or some other catching new name. Rotational Sunday school will be long forgotten. Those who remember it will use words like "boring" or they will say things like, "It wouldn't keep there attention." Education will continue to be the key thrust of these ministries, with the flawed assumption that the right education, changes lives. For those who abandon the school based model for spiritual formation will live within small robust communities, but not exclusively within the church. These robust communities will be shaped by the intentionality of adults/parents being proactive with adults they come across in their family’s day to day lives. Spiritual formation will be born from these initially impromptu communities. In other words, parents and guardians will take the role of youth pastor upon themselves. They will hand pick "youth workers" who run across their path at scout meetings, football games, practices, and even church events. These parents will not be the majority. They will own their own kids spiritual formation, and those of kids their own children encounter. These parents will intuitively spiritually form their kids. The climate of the day will necessitate parents doing this, or they will not be involved much at all. Church programs for these communities will be less and less important. They will serve very specific needs and purposes. The youth pastor's role within this congregation is radically different as well. More on this later.
In the future, technology's impact will be felt within our ministry to families with teens. The schools will no longer teach spelling, keyboarding, or history. Spell check, voice recognition software and the internet will become tools kids will use to get the information they want. Learning will have changed dramatically. Discernment will become a key component for education, but the schools will likely fail us and the physiology of the teenage brain might actually take longer to develop. Other physical changes will occur in teens as well, including a disruption with the timing of Puberty and all of this will affect the mental health of teens and their families. The life expectancy will likely decrease, which isn't a good sign for Marko and I at that point. The technological and physical changes will impact how we do youth ministry. Teens who have all the information in the world at their fingertips, but have not connection to history, no benchmark by which to determine their place in the world and who's education is based heavily upon their own interpretation or self education will feel more abandoned and separated by adults than today's teens. (If that's possible) Not only will youth ministry include ages 8 and 9 years of age, but it will also include people in their late 20's.
College ministry will no longer exist as an entity in itself, because a growing number of high schoolers will find college a fiscal impossibility and youth ministry will include boys and girls in their late 20's.
The Youth Pastor's role. In the next 10 years we will see a dramatic change in the role of the youth pastor. There will be a significant increase in the number of churches who will take responsibility for the spiritual nurture of their teens and will look to a youth pastor to train them in their role. Expectations will be more clear and will often focus around a renewed or (dare I say, reimagined) theology of the role of a pastor. There will still be churches who hire a youth pastor to take the responsibility of the spiritual nurture of kids from the parents and adults. These will be staffed by young youth pastors and most of them will not last 6 years in youth ministry. In 10 years, the churches that have done the hard work of thinking theologically about the role of pastor /youth pastor will have healthier expectations and a higher percentage of the staff will be older. There will be some who will leave youth ministry because it's not fun and games. But most youth pastors who are fortunate enough to find themselves in these renewed churches will stay longer in vocational ministry. This change, among others, will bring about teens that become adults and continue to follow Christ.
So there ya go. A total shot in the dark. Much of that is a stretch, but not all of it. You tell me what you think will happen and what won't.
