Bob Carlton ask me to answer this question in in an email.


Given that so many faith communities are struggling with a great deal of issues, a number of folks find themselves grappling with the question
what will ministry with youth & young adults look like in 20 years ?
Please share your hunch of what the future holds - no hold barred, total truth, let 'er rip....


Here's my response for today:

Youth ministry will look mutli faceted. There will not be one way to do youth ministry, or even one dominate way.
Consumerism and our countries economy will be gaining velocity in such epic and dramatic steps that Americans will have the steadiness of a heavy meth-amphedimine user who just took a hit, and it already looking for another. The youth will be the epicenter for this wave. The youth and their parents will likely have the spiritual health equivilant to the physical health of a 17 year old anorexic girl because of the lack of nurishment culture will provide and the speed at which it changes it's definition of cool. Our country will be literally buying ourselves to death. The grip of this epidimic will be like a far reaching cancer, whose tenacles and cellular masses work themselves through out the body to the extent that that you can not identify them all. Nothing else (other than a world war or pandemic illness) will have the effect on youth people and young adults that our consumer culture does. The narcisistic culture will preen itself and spare no expense and like a gambler who must chase the money he's lost or the alcholic who chases another drink, the consumer will be chasing the next purchase to the point that it crushes their life and leaves them bankrupt in everyway. Yet still yearning for and desiring to land their parachuting life on the ever moving target of cool. Sorry if this seems depressing... but we are not even 20 years from this happening.
But there is a hope. There will be prophets and pioneers who will declare the kingdom of God in such times. They will be without fear. For they only fear God. They do not claim to be of this world, yet they thrive here. They are uncool people in a cool world. They do not measure success by any worldly standard. They have done years of difficult soul searching to identify characteristics of their character which are not kingdom values. They are zealots. They are dangerous. They not creating an alternative "kingdom cool" for the kingdom doesn't think in such terms. They are not out to be "radical youth for Jesus", there is nothing pretentious about them. They are about God and his Kingdom. their very character and worldview demand an alternative life. their reality is different. The church they build is not an earthly kingdom. There will be churches named after cities and the communities will never meet all of it's participants. The church will be organized enough to pastor those who need direction, but excess beaurocracy will be cut and quickly removed. Many of these prophets have yet to be born. A few are alive today.

The ministry these leaders create will be foreign to us. We will not understand it. It will feel and be offensive to us. But the Good News will be central. though we may fail to recognize it.

posted by riddle at 9:21 AM | |