What are the BIG issues in Youth Work?

[Stewart Cutler]

What are the issues you are coming across in your work? What are the challenges facing youth ministry in Scotland?

[samantha thomson]

I find that there are many issues that face youths never mind youth workers!! Peoples perceptions of church organisations sometimes through their own negative experiences colour the experience and influence on the children.

[Allan Clyne]

I would like to suggest that the biggest issue facing Youth Ministry is that no one is analysing whether or not it works.

For example are we aware of how many young people have come to faith through Youth Ministers leading school assemblies or RME classes. Are our youth clubs / groups or activities places where young people come to faith? Is that faith being sustained and remaining meaningful on through into adulthood?

With previous evidence suggesting that seventy percent of young people who were once involved in Christian Youth Ministry / Youth Work no longer being associated with that faith by the time they are thirty, It may be time for a long hard think as to what we’re about and the practices we adopt.

[Stewart Cutler]

I couldn't agree more about the need to evaluate our practice however I think one of the issues with measuring success is that we might disagree what success looks like. It would be great if everyone we worked with came to faith and hung about the church (not so sure about this bit) but I'm not altogether sure that is the only measure of success. For many youth work contexts a young peson not getting drunk one weekend would be success. Or someone not getting arrested, or not having unprotected sex.

I'd also like to explore what 'being associated with that faith' would mean as their would also be a growing body of evidence that people may not want to belong to a church but that they still believe in God. That may say more about the church than about the people who leave.

Any thoughts?

[Allan Clyne]

Hi Stewart.
For sure there are many different categories of “success” in youth work and they should not be minimised. However if we have we are calling ourselves Youth Minister or Youth Pastor there must also be an assessment of the more spiritual aspects of our work. What I’m really suggesting is that it would be no bad thing for us to assess what appears to work in supporting young people in faith development as well as all these other markers of success.

I’m not sure that I am terribly comfortable with claiming that a young person not getting drunk etc is a success for my youth work. It is a success for the young person. I’m more comfortable judging the success of a youth work project on whether it is a conduit where change can happen. Likewise in the area of faith, it is not “my youth work that makes people come to faith it is God who is central to the redemptive process.

What I’m suggesting some of things that we do are better conduits than others and we need to be seriously reviewing our practice to locate these and focus on them.
If we were to take a straw pole of the members of this site and asked how many people do we know who have come to faith through School Assemblies or RME Classes (or stopped drinking or whatever) what would we find. Compared to those who are influenced through other youth work initiatives what would we find? And how many of us would have the bottle or the ability to adapt our practices accordingly?

I used the term “Associated with that faith” primarily because I didn’t want to make judgements about people relationship with God and I couldn’t come up with a better one. I also think that it is worthy of discussion that if it is the Church that is the bride of Christ then in what sense can someone who has Chosen not to have a commitment to the community of God, the Church, be said to be part of that. That, however is a can of worms for another time!