So, we're switching gears here for a little bit. We're taking a break from Family-Based Youth Ministry to take a peak at another one of our textbooks, Perspectives on Family Ministry edited by Timothy Paul Jones. The title of chapter 1 is "Confessions of a well-meaning youth minister". I have to say that I thought hearing part of his story in this chapter, proved to be beneficial for his development of the concept of family ministry. Jones served as a preaching minister before taking on a youth minister position. After spending some time in this new role, dealing with the stresses, and dealing with the frustrations, Jones arrived at a crucial thought. This thought was that the current model of youth ministry, segregation from the rest of the church, is hurting and hindering the potential of youth ministry in a church. I really thought his words on this were very insightful.
"The ministry models that many ministers have studied in seminaries and inherited in local churches are fundamentally flawed." (Pg 13)
If this is true, the church of today needs to be awakened to this. If the models that we as the church are attempting to use truly are fundamentally flawed, there needs to be a reevaluation of how we are going to minister to youth. The youth generation are crucially important if the church is going to be successful in raising up and producing mature Christians.
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