Prediction
There are a lot of churches (I'll call them church 3.0) who developed a significant portion of their understanding for ministry based on youth ministry 18-15 years ago. These leaders may not have personally been involved in youth ministry, but they are smart folks, who planted church (mostly in the last 10 years). They are the people on the stages of most church conferences we see today. They are great leaders. My impression is that they are incredibly intuitive and adaptive. (a characteristic youth ministry of the 80-90's taught us) and are top down leaders. Like youth ministry of ol' was (see youth ministry 2.0).
Did you ever walk into one of these Church 3.0 churches and think, wow, this is like a big youth ministry, only done better with more money invested.
But my prediction is, that these churches built on old youth ministry models wills struggle with modern youth ministry almost exclusively because of the leadership style of the church.
Churches who have a high "command and control" systems will struggle the next 10 years because their command and control system will only have limited results. It will be interesting to see if they notice, because it may be that numbers are the last thing to go for them.
Of course these churches will say, that they are young and need to grow into youth ministry. This is why I imagine there's not a lot of talk about youth ministry at conferences like catalyst etc. (tell me if I'm wrong).
These churches over the next 3 years will have a come to jesus experience because they are smart folks. They plan ahead. Their children's ministries are the talk of the country. They sell their children's stuff. They have children's conferences. or new children's buildings "theme" by professionals.
But this will not work for youth ministry. You can't do youth ministry for the future in this way.
What do you think?
I'm totally shooting from the hip.
I'm open to being wrong.
Did you ever walk into one of these Church 3.0 churches and think, wow, this is like a big youth ministry, only done better with more money invested.
But my prediction is, that these churches built on old youth ministry models wills struggle with modern youth ministry almost exclusively because of the leadership style of the church.
Churches who have a high "command and control" systems will struggle the next 10 years because their command and control system will only have limited results. It will be interesting to see if they notice, because it may be that numbers are the last thing to go for them.
Of course these churches will say, that they are young and need to grow into youth ministry. This is why I imagine there's not a lot of talk about youth ministry at conferences like catalyst etc. (tell me if I'm wrong).
These churches over the next 3 years will have a come to jesus experience because they are smart folks. They plan ahead. Their children's ministries are the talk of the country. They sell their children's stuff. They have children's conferences. or new children's buildings "theme" by professionals.
But this will not work for youth ministry. You can't do youth ministry for the future in this way.
What do you think?
I'm totally shooting from the hip.
I'm open to being wrong.
Labels: youth ministry
posted by mark at
11:27 AM
3 Comments:
I keep thinking about this since you posted on twitter last night. I think it will be true because youth ministry in the past was built around very talented individuals, much like the big churches of today. You came to watch, be entertained. But youth today do not want that. They want to be involved. But more than that I think they want to be challenged, too. No matter how well church is done with the band, lights, message, etc, they want to be challenged. And that requires a completley different way of doing things.
i agree with so much of what you wrote here, mark. but i have a real problem with calling it "church 3.0" for a variety of reasons. some of the are personal, since these churches have NO resemblance to what i talk about in youth ministry 3.0.
but in a broader, less personal sense, i don't think they're 3.0 at all. i think they are logical extensions of youth ministry 2.0. they're programmatic, attractional, and are the "perfected horse buggy at the beginning of the automobile age" that brian mclaren writes about in (in think) ANKOC.
marko,
agreed. I'm sorta at a loss of what to call those churches so i mixed my metaphors. In my mind I was thinking of church the last 500 years (1.0), the seeker'purpose movement (2.0), and the next expression which I have no label for so i called it 3.0.. but it is radically different than your 3.0 for sure.
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