The future of Youth Ministry

Marko was asking about the future of youth ministry of on his blog.
Here's my response related to the talk he'll be giving. This is not a comprehensive explanation by the way, only extrememly brief thoughts.

1. I don’t like the word “driven” either.

2. The future of youth ministry will need to
embrace the particular and contextual. The days of the cookie cutter youth ministry are over.

2b. If this is true, then youth ministry will focus more on theological conversation then education for teens. (esp. mid and late adolescents)

2c. The pressure to compete with the youth ministry down the street and all their razzle dazzle with communities embracing, knowing, loving, and walking beside students in tanglible, often less flashy, often non-programatic ways.

3. The extended family of the church will take it’s responsibility to help parents raise teens more seriously and youth pastors will be leading them in ways to do this.

4. Over the past 10 years a shift has happened. A majority of parents now actually consider themselves to be the primary spiritual nurtures of their kids. (this might not be the shift) The shift is that youth pastors have caught up and more than ever before believe that to be true as well. However Functionally most youth ministries don’t do squat to actually support parents in these rolls. Often they contribute to the opposite.

The Future will hold youth pastors who stop brow beating parents with the “you are the primary spiritual nurtures of your kids” which most already know, and begin actually helping parent’s do it. This may happen in ways we have not discovered yet, additionally, via tools that lead parent/kid conversations, encouragment, parental mentors as well as well as youth mentors, a church support system.

5. Church leaders will continue to talk and learn about systems thinking and how youth ministry is effected/affected by the unique system in each church.

6. I think that hospitality will be an ever increasing gift for the church and youth ministry in the future. Genuine Hospitality might even approach our love for the gift of leadership in the US. Hospitality after all is relational, it’s missional (that is looking to the needs of others), it’s organic, it’s communal, it’s particular and contextual.

7. The Youth pastor’s role will change when youth pastors remember why they got into ministry in the first place. Not for programs to lead, but to pastor kids. These pastors will rediscover what a pastor is and does and this is how they will spend their time.