Cultural changes and increasing push back against churches are impacting youth ministries. It is getting much harder for Christian Teenagers to be Christian among their secular peers.
Teenagers don’t just walk in the door of a church.
What are latest youth ministry trends and opportunities? How can we do youth ministry on the front foot?
Andy Stevenson is Director of the Sydney Anglican Youthworks’ youth & children’s ministry division and Special Religious Education (Scripture Ministry).
Ruth Lee is Youth worker at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Sydney.
http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/collaboration-in-youth-ministry
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Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.
Cultural changes and increasing push back against churches are impacting youth ministries. It is getting much harder for Christian Teenagers to be Christian among their secular peers.
Teenagers don’t just walk in the door of a church.
What are latest youth ministry trends and opportunities? How can we do youth ministry on the front foot?
Andy Stevenson is Director of the Sydney Anglican Youthworks’ youth & children’s ministry division and Special Religious Education (Scripture Ministry).
Ruth Lee is Youth worker at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Sydney.
http://www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/collaboration-in-youth-ministry
--
Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.
It is. The past is hard and Dominic Steal in a SWOT analysis of the changing youth ministry environment A special focus on better collaboration. Andy Stevenson and Ruth Lee are with us. The youth ministry environment is changing. It is much harder for Christian teenagers to be Christian amongst their peers, and teenagers just don't walk in the door of a church anymore. It's not even that parents decide that they want their kids to go to youth group. The cultural changes, the increasing pushback against churches, are taking their effect. But what is working, what are the opportunities and how do we do youth ministry on the front foot rather than on retreat? Andy Stevenson is director of the Sydney Anglican Youth and Children's Ministries and Special Religious Education, and Ruth Lee has served as the youth worker at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Sydney for 15 years. Ruth, andy, before we come to our topic, let's start with your. Past is hard, and just the other day there was a Gospel Coalition article about long-term youth ministers being unicorns. And you, at 42, are unicorns.
Speaker 2:How did it make?
Speaker 1:you feel being a unicorn, Ruth.
Speaker 2:Because you've been doing it a long time. Yes, and even that Andy and I are the same age.
Speaker 3:Yes, we are.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it is really rare to find particularly females as well to be in youth ministry for that long. But I guess for me I became a Christian when I was in high school, as a youth, and so I think that has driven a lot of my love for youth ministry and wanting to see youth just come to know Jesus and stay being a Christian.
Speaker 1:Andy, when are you going to get a proper job? Well, I mean, that's really the thesis that your heart is against, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right. I think all ministry is wonderful and ministry to teenagers, to children, is very special and very privileged, and I think it's where the action is a lot of the time. It's where statistics will say I just under 80% of people in churches became a Christian in the teenage or children years, which is brilliant, and so you get to see a lot. It can be difficult, but the rewards are beautiful and I think my heart really is that I've been involved in youth ministry all my life as a teenager. I became a Christian at youth group in the youth group years. Quite, personally, my mother passed away in the teenage years and the people that cared for me the most were the youth group leaders. Really, yeah, they bought meals around and they prayed with me and, yeah, it really showed me what youth ministry can be at its hardest times. Yeah, you've seen that play out too, ruth.
Speaker 2:I think definitely in my own life as well, having lots of youth leaders care for me over the years. My mum also passed away when I was in high school, so similar story in that a lot of my youth leaders were the ones who tried to follow me up. I probably wasn't that chatty back then, but knowing that they were always there and offering two drive-view places or, yeah, offering to chat and pointing me to Jesus, was really encouraging.
Speaker 1:I think now you've both been serving in youth ministry 15 years, but you were obviously in youth ministry before that. How has youth ministry, how is it different now and what are the new challenges that we're facing compared, the new context we're facing, compared to 15, 20 years ago?
Speaker 2:So, for me. I've been at Cornerstone for 10 years now with CY and back then when I started, nearly 99% I would say were private school kids and also our youth who were from our church. But over the years, slowly we're starting to see more public school kids coming along and also more non-church youth coming along, so friends of our youth coming along too. So it's created a great diversity.
Speaker 1:Although you were telling me, I mean, they've had more public school kids you're telling me across the board. That's not the case.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right, particularly in greater Sydney. But as I talked to different youth ministry friends around the country in the last 20 years the statistics say that we kind of went from 80% public school, 20% private or Christian school and that has flipped to 80% private and Christian school kids in the youth group versus 20% public school kids.
Speaker 1:That's a big change, that's very significant. I mean. I think, though, we've actually gone I mean in this time period we've gone up to many more private schools, kids just in general.
Speaker 3:That's right, there's way more schools, way more private schools in general, but that's a much bigger shift in terms of the youth group than yeah and it's a reflection on society as well, perhaps, and also a reflection on one of the other things that's changed is it's harder for a young person to be a Christian. The I talked to grandparents, I talked to people who've been Christians 50 years and they come up to me with almost a tear in their eye and they say you know, it's hard for a teenager to be a Christian today. Compared to that, how easy it was for them, where everybody went to church and youth group was normal and Sunday school was Just the done thing. That's not the case these days.
Speaker 2:I say that to you for the time. Yeah, they're just. They're up against so much more than we were about 10, 15 years.
Speaker 1:I mean you're doing a fair bit of if you're like the umbrella man stuff, andy, negotiating with secular schools and that kind of thing for scripture, how are those conversations more? I mean, I remember you and I talking about this kind of stuff 15 years. How is it different now to back then?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the perhaps society's view on religion is has changed that. That is a broad statement, if you will. I think you say yes, it has, it definitely has. But I would say that sre was far more acceptable and sorry is what we're an anti acronym ministry.
Speaker 1:That's right Is acronyms exclude people.
Speaker 3:Well and and very. Yeah, that's helpful comment. Sorry, especially diseducation, which is effectively being able to teach the Christian faith in public schools, which in New South Wales, is quite unique in some ways in terms of our legislation now Collaboration and and moving forward.
Speaker 1:You're seeing collaboration on several levels or several layers. There's a layer of cross city, your cross the place. Collaboration how does that work? Yeah?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so in In some ways there's like these large-scale kind of camps, like a kick that happens, which is another.
Speaker 1:I know I realize that as soon as I'm saying a youth conference.
Speaker 3:It's called Katoomba youth conference Because it's in Katoomba, but yeah, which is a part of New South Wales. But people come, youth groups come from all over the state, all different denominations, to be together, to be encouraged, to be in God's word and to be on one large-scale camp that happens over four camps really per year and there's other camps like leaders and what do you like about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good for our youth group. I love it because it helps our youth see above our own youth group. So also, we're not an Asian church per se, but a lot of our youth are Asian and so to help them be able to see that being a Christian is wider than our little circle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the more homogenous the ministry that you work against, that homogenous.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and to see there are lots of other youth out there who are Christians.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you're telling me. Collaboration, though here it's actually got to do with expository Bible, preaching that the exposition of the scriptures is at the center of it. Why is that important to you, ruth?
Speaker 2:It's one of our fundamental principles for our youth group, so going along to events like Keegan LIT, where we know that they'll be.
Speaker 3:Leaders in training was the one that he did say so, which is one of those another that high-level camp.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so we do go to those because we know they'll be faithful, great Bible teaching at them.
Speaker 1:Which is a warning to those organizations to stay Prioritizing the expository Bible teaching. Yeah, it builds trust.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think I was sharing with you earlier that Ruth and I have known each other for about 15 years, partly because we're unicorns Can be said that seems so strange but also because we've worked in different combined church, regional, state level Conferences. And we've done that because there's been a trust of one another, as we've talked about who we are as Christians, what we believe a reformed evangelical we believe in Expository page preaching of the Bible and that being core to what we do in our youth ministries. Talk to us about trust, ruth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's been a big key, I think, in doing collaborative ministries. I remember Andy calling me one time years ago To talk about kick and their program and what they were wanting to change and whether or not Would that be something that we'd be on board with if you did make those changes To help build that trust and kind of go yep, the program's changing slightly but it's actually for the better and it's still based on the Bible. So over these just having incidental conversations running into Andy at conferences, at camps, I think has helped because I don't know, youth ministry it's busy. Youth pastors all have lots of things on in their calendar. So then to be able to carve out time to be able to go to these camps Does it takes effort and you want to make sure that if you're carving out that time it's going to be worth it?
Speaker 1:Why is a big thing like a big convention? I mean, is it just bigger is better?
Speaker 3:It's a good question, isn't it? Often we go, we look at it, you know, kicks numbers very thankfully through the roof, bigger than they've ever been, things like leaders in training camp as well. Similar. Does it make it better? No, just because it's big, it doesn't mean it's better. It's what happens at those places. Together, that is the better thing. So the better thing is saying okay, ruth, myself and a whole bunch of other youth ministers, we bring our combined experience, our combined resources, our different skill sets and we put those together to be able to train young people In the gospel, to be able to teach them God's word, to be able to help them be Christians wherever they are. And collectively, we think we can do a lot more together. In one sense, give a a better kind of all-round ministry really to young people and for churches, for youth ministries, which you can do by yourself, but you're limited, because you're only limited by what you can do personally and your own strengths and weaknesses.
Speaker 2:And I think the key to those big events is that you are pushing people back into churches, yeah, and youth groups to do the week to week.
Speaker 3:So my, my big passion, my heart is Local church partnership is the key to all of these things. They're only big because of the local relational trust that we have.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm and I'm just thinking because I've heard this in little bits and pieces from around the world People wanting the big event but not actually doing the grassroots. No wait, how do we encourage that personal Bible reading, individual nurturing in Christ Of young people?
Speaker 3:themselves. Yeah, that's right. So I think, uh, one of the best things I've noticed that these big kind of conferences is when a young person gets up and shares how they're going in their own personal devotional life. Uh, so I was talking to a young person just the other day and they were saying at the leaders in training camp, they'd learned a framework of how to read the Bible and teach the Bible. And I said, oh, how's that going with the children's ministry? You do? And they said no, no, no. Well, that's been great, but it's helped me. Just to read the Bible every day, to be able to share that with everyone else, is unbelievably encouraging. So I think taking the, the, the Christian habits, if you like, the discipleship Life, and being able to put that as the focus of what we're doing at these big things is crucial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I think, ruth agree, I think when the we did an inner west youth combined event and part of that Was getting youth up there to share their testimony. But we also had another testimony of youth sharing about being in a youth group and what that looked like on the ground for them to be Christian Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:So tell us we'll move from big city to more local region than you're in the inner west, just up the road from us.
Speaker 2:And there was a night just a month ago that your church was involved in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I was out, it was great, I didn't go.
Speaker 2:But tell us about it. Your youth group was there.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it was a few years in the making to say so. It started last year with three Presbyterian youth groups who had done a trivia night together in the inner west, a smaller kind of youth group. So we're like, let's pull some resources together, do something together, did the trivia night. But we're like, well, let's take it to the next step, let's do an evangelistic where we can share the gospel of Jesus to youth in the inner west. And so they invited our church along. I knew some other churches who we'd done a few collaborative things together before. So we had eight youth groups come together last year and we went okay, I think all of us would say it was an okay event for a first go because we didn't quite all know each other too well. But then this year we ran it again with 16 youth groups. So we brought along the Anglican inner west youth network along to that and there were 600 kids or something, I think 600 all up, so I think about 470 or so youth.
Speaker 1:Right and the young leaders With 130 youth leaders Right.
Speaker 3:Which, interestingly, this is a reflection of the last couple of years. We didn't think we'd get that many, no, and the last couple of years there's been a big appetite towards these regional sort of you know, 20 odd youth groups together, working together. What's changed? Why is that? I think in the past, let's say 20 years ago, that occurred. It died off a little bit.
Speaker 3:I think people there was lack of resources, perhaps some churches feeling like the youth groups were shrinking, those sort of things, and maybe how do we do this? It looks daunting, covid. It happens, which brought lots of hard things, but then also some opportunities, right, and I think a lot of youth groups went. Our kids need to get together with one another. They crave relationship and friendship and connection. Let's try and do what we're doing locally in our own youth group, but do it with some other youth groups as well, and it's very much taken off. Also, covid, you know it's a crisis, right, and a crisis brings people together. I know across the youth ministry network of Greater Sydney and even beyond, a lot of churches said let's work together again, let's train leaders better together, let's combine our resources, let's do combined evangelistic events together, let's help get youth ministry out there, let's help get the gospel of Jesus back out into the community, and so that's a big change there wasn't a season, if you like, of almost suspicion.
Speaker 1:I think you that's gone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's one thing I've really noticed is that, well, you were going to say something there Well we were going.
Speaker 2:I was chatting to Andy before and we were saying the beauty of doing that in a West Youth Combined event was that I got to know some of the other youth pastors in the area. So we were chatting or planning our next thing and one of their youth had visited our youth group and I was just saying as a passing comment to say hey, if they weren't there on Friday, that's, they were at our youth group and he was like, well, no, she's actually hasn't come to our youth group for a while. So if she lands at your youth group because she's got a really good friend at our youth group, then that's great. So, thinking bigger picture, gospel generosity, our big picture is that we want youth growing and maturing Christ.
Speaker 3:That's right, because and that's all off the back of the relational trust you have with that other youth pastor means that there's an understanding of okay, sometimes youth will go to youth groups where their friends are. That's a changing thing as well. No longer do they just go to locally where their youth group is. Lots do, and we want to encourage that because we believe in local youth ministry, obviously. But transport has changed, dynamics have changed. Friendships are very, very, very important for young people and so if they go to the youth group down the road but perhaps still go to their church with their family or whatever the combination might be, the communication getting on the phone hey, this is what's going on. Great, there's somewhere is very important. And that that has really taken out the suspicion of what is happening in that youth group down the road. I don't know. So I don't want my youth to ever end up there, and if they do, then that's that's bad on. And so there's this competition. That's really just gone.
Speaker 2:But that build up of trust between youth pastors.
Speaker 3:I think, has is the key to that. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:So doing it on that leadership level and then bringing it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, because in the inner west the youth group there's. Churches are pretty close to each other, right and people leave.
Speaker 1:We're 1.4 kilometres to the church.
Speaker 3:That's right and people live in or wherever they can, and so they'll my drive past three youth groups to get to the youth group that they've always gone to. I think we need to be not fearful of that, but then work together and go. Okay, what are all the youth groups in this area? Okay, you know my city, ruth. My dream would be that imagine if there was this giant youth database that we all you know some amazingly powerful data. We all knew where every kid can track everyone.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, there's issues, but forget the issues.
Speaker 3:We all knew where every young person was, so we could follow them up collectively together that way beautiful Training of youth group leaders, because there's actually been.
Speaker 1:I mean, it used to be that everybody in Sydney outsourced it to the Katerima Convention and the Next Gen Leadership Conference and that spittin' the dust. And so how do we work together to collaborate to train youth leaders and kids leaders in this new era?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So for myself at YouthWorks, we've been really working in partnership. We've been doing this for a long time, on and off. But in the last couple of years, particularly coming out of COVID, there was this as we surveyed the youth ministers, there was this dramatic need for an upskilling of new leaders because some other leaders had finished after a period of time. And so as we identified that we in our youth ministry networks all over Greater Sydney, we said okay, what do we need to do to train leaders, to get them at least to you know kind of a basic bar of good youth leadership? And so we said let's try and make sure we work together.
Speaker 3:And in working together, the bigger churches had the resources to be able to train their leaders and they were still doing it, even through COVID. But a lot of the smaller churches are saying training we'd love to, but we just can't. And so how do we work together, use each other's resources to train the whole and even even see some of the bigger churches share youth group leaders with the smaller churches to help them out, because there's no good in just having one or two youth groups in the whole in a West that everyone goes to, even though there's 20 something churches. We want to see each church with a thriving youth ministry, but that's going to take work, sometimes partnerships, sometimes sacrifice. So part of that was let's train together so we can use all our resources again.
Speaker 3:Get all the youth pastors. If there's 10 youth pastors in a room, they can all run a different training workshop. How good is that? We can train each other, train all our leaders together, so those training days are really taken off. This year we've trained nearly 2000 youth group leaders across training days all over Greater Sydney, which has been brilliant. Next Gen still happens online and people sometimes download those resources.
Speaker 1:But that getting together really it's gone from 800 people doing a week to a handful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Online is nothing compared to what it was. Yeah, I mean it was formative. I remember for somebody like me taking on 1992, being given a youth group to lead and there's no idea what to do, and learning about how to do expository teaching in a youth context.
Speaker 3:Just how to actually teach the Bible in a small group. That was what I learnt when I went yeah, what do you do? Ruth what do, we do.
Speaker 1:How have you navigated this?
Speaker 2:Well, we found also over the years too. The Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students run their.
Speaker 1:National Training Event in Canberra.
Speaker 2:Previously a lot of our leaders would do all those and it's kind of ebbed and flowed. A lot of our leaders do go through those stages now to do that, but we do our own training, that's kind of collaboration with the students, yeah, with the universities.
Speaker 2:So we're a fairly large youth group for Sydney and in the Presbyterian world. So we do have the resources to run our own training. That we do do once a term but we also do. Last year we started going to leaders in training for the first time. Particularly, we saw that gap for our high schoolers in particular to be trained in reading the Bible, in teaching the Bible. So for us again, that outsources it out to Andy and his team to be able to do that for us and we send some leaders as well.
Speaker 1:What are the highlights of collaboration? As you look across the place, Andy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think at a real grassroots level, seeing teenagers become friends with one another across the youth groups. I've seen that and I've seen then those guys. They might be in different youth groups but at the same school and they're running a lunchtime group together but then later on I've seen over the years that they then might go to some university together or they're helping run some conference or those relational benefits for the young people to encourage them in their own Christian faith, to help them feel like they're part of something bigger, and then to do gospel ministry together now as teenagers, which is brilliant and then in the future as well, has been a real big benefit.
Speaker 1:As you say that I think of my youngest son, who I mean as we started out here we were a little church and my kids were the oldest kids in the youth group and so we worked really hard to send them to Christian camp, to other Christian camps where they would have those peers and people from other churches, and they did make Christian friends. And then Earlier this year, one of the kids from one of those camps, now grown up, living in Wollongong, asks my son to be a Grimsman. And I just thought, wow, here he is at 24, being asked to be a Grimsman by a guy he met at a Christian camp from collaborative it just helps them to feel connected and part of God's Big Kingdom, God's Big Family.
Speaker 2:I don't know, they're not the only Christian at their school.
Speaker 3:So I think at that grassroots level, that's a big benefit of strength, if you like, a highlight of collaboration. Another highlight is utilizing those resources across the churches. It can be hard for a bigger church sometimes to share their resources, but when I've seen bigger churches share their resources with smaller churches, the benefit is tremendous. Actually, I think they grow in their own leadership and ministry themselves and they grow as a church because they're not just thinking of themselves but they're thinking of others, which is a great principle really.
Speaker 1:What do you want to say to senior pastors who are watching, listening to?
Speaker 3:us now, I said. I think the main thing I want to say is don't be fearful of working together. The fears of losing kids to another youth group they might be real if there's no trust or understanding of the youth group next door. But get to know one another. I think the benefit's far outweigh the weaknesses, if you like.
Speaker 3:I think that sometimes I think it's difficult for senior ministers to. They've got so many things to think about and so sometimes churches working together on all manner of projects can be hard, whereas in youth ministry it's relatively simple. They're age-specific programs that are being run. There's lots of good options out there of things to do. If you're a senior minister, a bigger church, be generous and you'll be surprised at the benefit that you'll receive. I think back to the early 2000s. I know that Sennives did this. Sennives had a big youth ministry and they deliberately sent out teams of youth group leaders to smaller churches across the North Shore. Some of them have stayed in those churches and are now pillars of those churches. Those churches may not have survived if Sennives didn't do that. That is brilliant.
Speaker 1:What do you want to say to senior ministers?
Speaker 2:I'd say, yeah, talk, network, get to know the person down the road and just, yeah, not be fearful, and do it, even just for mutual encouragement, I think too, Because we're all in it together. We're all wanting to see youth come to know Christ. So if we're all in it together, we're praying together, we're supporting one another, and it's for the benefit of the Kingdom.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for coming in. Thank you my guests on the Pastors Heart Ruth Lee. She's a youth worker at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Sydney and Andy Stevenson, director of the Sydney Anglican Youth Children Ministries along with special religious education. My name's Dominic Steele. You've been with us on the Pastors Heart. See your company next Tuesday afternoon.