Taking Youth Back to Jesus, Not Pizza-And-Pop Ministry
A network of urban youth workers is hitting cities across the United States for intense one-day trainings and wake-up calls to youth ministry.
Reload, an event presented by the California-based Urban Youth Workers Institute, has drawn hundreds of youth workers in a nationwide tour to help build transformational ministries rather than pizza-and-pop ones.
"Young people are looking for youth ministries that are not centered on a bunch of programs, that are centered on entertainment," Harvey Carey, senior pastor of the multicultural Citadel of Faith Covenant Church, told a Los Angeles crowd during one of Reload's four stops last month. "They're looking for integrity; they're looking to be able to make a difference!"
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Carey warned youth workers who build their ministries on pizza, pop, videos and Disneyland outings.
"You are building it (ministry) on the wrong thing," he said bluntly.
His exhortation alludes to a trend of youth groups that sugarcoat messages and adopt MTV-style worship and outreach. The approach initially attracts large young crowds, but research has shown an alarmingly significant dropout of young adults from church. A Barna Group survey revealed 61 percent of people in the 20-29 age group had participated in church activities as teens but are now disengaged. Many youth workers attribute the exodus to little grounding on the Bible.
All young people want is Jesus. They want truth, said Carey at Reload on March 10.
When Dan Kimball, author of They Like Jesus but Not the Church, conducted some man-on-the-street video interviews on college campuses, he found an overwhelmingly positive response from students, who were supposedly pagan, on their attitude toward Jesus, according to Outreach magazine. "Church" on the other hand was not well received with many saying it "messed things up."
Many churches today are creating "irrelevant" ministries that are changing nothing, noted Carey.
"I don't even understand why youth workers don't think that [they] can change the world anymore," he said. "When artists and recording people are changing the culture and the morals of people ... the rest of us [are] so busy watching stuff and copying curriculum that we're not being busy about kingdom building!"
Telling them to "reload" their thinking, Carey reminded youth workers why they got into the youth business in the first place.
It wasn't for the money, and it definitely wasn't for the respect, he said. "It's because you love young people. It's because you've been called to a generation that other people have thrown to the curb.
"Will you take kids back to Jesus? Will you give them something to do? Will you give them real challenges?"
Young people want truth, said Carey, and if churches don't provide that for them, they'll go where they can find it.
The Urban Youth Workers Institute launched its national Reload tour in September and will conclude in May in Atlanta. Over the weekend, the group hit Detroit, Mich. It's next stop is Albuquerque, N.M., on April 14.
