Youth Ministry vs. Football
Submitted by michael on March 6, 2010 - 12:16am
In his book, Family Based Youth Ministry, Mark DeVries gives a compelling analogy of what it might look like for a football coach to have the expectations some have of a youth minister at times.
"I have often wondered what would happen if football coaches approached their work like most youth ministers are expected to. For example, I wonder what would happen if, when a player was too busy to show up for practice, the understanding coach simply said, "We'll miss you. I hope you'll be able to make it next week sometime." Imagine the players leaving practice and hearing the smiling coach say, "Thanks for coming. I hope you'll come back tomorrow.
If a football team operated like a typical youth ministry, we might expect concerned parents to call the coach, saying, 'Can you tell me what's been going on in practice? My son says it's boring, and he doesn't want to come anymore. I was wondering, could you make it a little more fun for them? And by the way, you might want to talk to the coach at the school across town. He seems to have the right idea.' The coach might send out quarterly questionnaires about what the players would like to change about the team. (I can just imagine the answers: "shorter practices," "more winning").
Responding like a typical youth minister, this coach might first feel guilty that the practices were not meeting the boy's needs, and he would try to adjust his program to suit this boy (and every other boy who complained). Between trying to keep everybody happy and giving every student a good experience, the coach would squeeze in a little football practice. And what kind of season would this coach have? It's a safe bet that the coach wouldn't be the only one who felt like a loser.
But this is the very way that most churches expect to run their youth ministries. To expect that youth will be committed to the church with the same level of commitment that would be expected of them on an athletic team would draw the charge of legalism and insensitivity. Our culture has been so carried away by the current of religious individualism that the expectation of commitment to the church has become implausible to most Christians in our culture. Because the god of individualism pressures us to program to the lowest common denominator, we seldom raise the expectations high enough for teenagers to experience real community."
"I have often wondered what would happen if football coaches approached their work like most youth ministers are expected to. For example, I wonder what would happen if, when a player was too busy to show up for practice, the understanding coach simply said, "We'll miss you. I hope you'll be able to make it next week sometime." Imagine the players leaving practice and hearing the smiling coach say, "Thanks for coming. I hope you'll come back tomorrow.
If a football team operated like a typical youth ministry, we might expect concerned parents to call the coach, saying, 'Can you tell me what's been going on in practice? My son says it's boring, and he doesn't want to come anymore. I was wondering, could you make it a little more fun for them? And by the way, you might want to talk to the coach at the school across town. He seems to have the right idea.' The coach might send out quarterly questionnaires about what the players would like to change about the team. (I can just imagine the answers: "shorter practices," "more winning").
Responding like a typical youth minister, this coach might first feel guilty that the practices were not meeting the boy's needs, and he would try to adjust his program to suit this boy (and every other boy who complained). Between trying to keep everybody happy and giving every student a good experience, the coach would squeeze in a little football practice. And what kind of season would this coach have? It's a safe bet that the coach wouldn't be the only one who felt like a loser.
But this is the very way that most churches expect to run their youth ministries. To expect that youth will be committed to the church with the same level of commitment that would be expected of them on an athletic team would draw the charge of legalism and insensitivity. Our culture has been so carried away by the current of religious individualism that the expectation of commitment to the church has become implausible to most Christians in our culture. Because the god of individualism pressures us to program to the lowest common denominator, we seldom raise the expectations high enough for teenagers to experience real community."
