Youth Ministry — Voddie Baucham

The National Center for Family-Integrated Churches welcomes Vodie Baucom with the message Youth Ministry.

Can I get the Perspectives book from you for a moment? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I didn't know they were going to show you these resources. I didn't have my copy of the Perspectives book, but I want you to know that if you are wanting more information, and you're going to be wanting more information about the things that we talk about, because we can't exhaust all of this in the time that we have, because our end time is 10 .30, yeah.

So our end time is 10 .30. So you're going to want to get what I'm giving you. Much of it is coming from the penultimate chapter in family-driven faith. A lot of it is chapter nine of family-driven faith.

Deuteronomy Six and Family Discipleship

The first eight chapters of this book are really just kind of an exposition of Deuteronomy six and how we do Deuteronomy six discipleship in our home. The last two basically talk about the implications for that in the way that we do church.

And so I do deal with the youth ministry question head on in chapter nine and introduce family-integrated church model in chapter 10. So this would be a great place for you to go and get more information about exactly what I'm sharing here in this session.

But the Perspectives book is another one that you need to have. I can't tell you how excited we are about the Perspectives book for a number of reasons. First of all, this was edited by Timothy Paul Jones, who teaches in the Leadership School at Southern Seminary, which is one of the largest seminaries in the world.

Either the largest or one of the two or three largest seminaries in the whole world. And these guys had enough respect for family-integrated church model to even include it in this book because there are many out there who will not include anything that would exclude youth ministry as a possibility.

Youth Ministry as a Cottage Industry

And there are a lot of motives for that. And let me just share with you a couple of the motives for that. Here's why it's hard for us to get a hearing. First of all, youth ministry has become a cottage industry.

It is a multi-million dollar cottage industry. You have youth ministers, and we all recognize that. Where else can you go and be between 18 and 25 years old, know next to nothing, and make $30 ,000, $40 ,000, $50 ,000 a year playing with teenagers?

Where else can you go and get that kind of work? You can't. You can't. Here's the second thing. The church doesn't want to let go of youth ministry because it's basically a product of spiritual welfare.

We have taken away the responsibility that God has given to parents. We've let them off the hook so that now someone else is responsible for the spiritual development of their children. Once you take away a responsibility like that from someone and begin to take on that responsibility and fulfill their duties, it's almost impossible to ever give it back.

Here's the other thing. In most of our churches, somewhere around 85 of our baptisms come from the youth ministry. Somewhere around 85 of our baptisms, for those of us who are non-Pedo-Baptists, about 85 of the baptisms are coming from youth ministry.

So, it is a source of baptisms. Now that is often confused as a source of evangelism, but that's not at all the case. It's a source of baptisms, not a very good source of evangelism. So that's the second reason.

Seminaries, Youth Ministry, and Financial Incentives

Here's another reason. Colleges and seminaries don't want to let go of youth ministry because it is an income stream. Now think about this. If you're a seminary and you're providing seminary degrees for pastors, okay?

You're providing a Master of Divinity degree for pastors. A Master of Divinity degree is your basic graduate degree for ministers. It's about 96 hours. It's graduate hours. So it's a good three years minimum for someone to get a Master of Divinity degree.

Well, there's this pool of people who are going into youth ministry who didn't need a Master of Divinity degree because, you know, I'm not going to be a pastor. I'm just going to be a youth worker. I'm going to be a youth director or whatever.

You don't have to have a seminary degree. Certainly not a 96-hour Master of Divinity degree where I get all of this stuff that I'm not going to use because, after all, I'm not going to be a pastor. So what seminaries did was they created a different degree program, okay?

It's a Master of Arts in Religious Education with an emphasis in youth ministry. It's about 60 hours long. So now let's say if a seminary could have 100 pastors coming to school, 100 men who are trained to be pastors, now you offer the youth ministry degree and you can have 200 men and women who are coming there.

You've got your 100 who are coming to be pastors. You've got another 100 who are coming for a watered-down, chopped-up version of seminary education so that they can go be a youth minister. That is another income stream for the seminary.

It's another income stream for the college. Not to mention other entities and industries that filter off from youth ministry. For example, a great deal of income is derived through writing curriculum for youth Sunday school, okay?

The Perspectives Book and Competing Ministry Models

So part of the problem with all of this, and again, why we're so excited about the Perspectives book, is that there are many individuals who will just dismiss the family-integrated model out of hand or find excuses to dismiss the family-integrated model, but they have a vested interest.

It's the fox guarding the hen house, okay? But Timothy Paul Jones was brave enough to include the family-integrated model alongside the other models. That's one reason that we're excited. Here's a second reason that we're excited.

Anyone who reads this book, you do not have to have a seminary degree. You don't have to have much beyond a third or fourth grade education. If you have enough education where you learn how to read, it'll take you about 15 minutes to realize that there is one model in this book that is biblical and exegetical and two others that are trying to explain why you need not pay attention to it.

It is so obvious that it is at times embarrassing, okay? It is at times embarrassing. There is one biblical exegetical model in this book and only one, and that's the family-integrated model. The others are purely based on pragmatism and cultural norms, not the clear, concise, unadulterated exposition of scripture.

So we are incredibly pleased to have an opportunity to have a book like this so that people can get it, put it in their hands. And so these are both back there. This one is available at our table, and this one is available at the NCFIC table.

So please, please, please, please, go get these. All right. Now, let's dive into this. You notice the title of the presentation, Evaluating Youth Ministry, an Abolitionist's View. And I use that term.

The Case for Abolishing Youth Ministry

There's history to that term. When I was a doctoral student at Southeastern Seminary, and my supervisor was a man by the name of Alvin Reed. Alvin Reed is well-known in youth ministry circles. He did his dissertation on the Jesus movement and has studied revivals and young people and movements among young people for decades.

Well, back in the late 90s, there's a lot of research coming out about youth ministry and about young people, about them falling away from the church, about their lack of a biblical worldview. So Dr. Reed has a bunch of his young doctoral students studying this issue, reading on this issue, researching on this issue.

So we would often sit together. I wasn't working in the area of youth ministry. I was working in the area of apologetics. However, this was something that was discussed among a lot of the people that he supervised.

And as we sat and talked about this, I realized that everyone else's position could be boiled down to, we've got to do a better job in youth ministry. We're not doing a good enough job. Look at this. Look at what's being produced.

The numbers are there. The numbers don't lie. We've got to do a better job. We've got to teach the Bible more. We've got to stop all the fun and games. We've got to do this. We've got to do that. We've got to do the other.

Well, it just sort of dawned on me, and I wouldn't say anything about it for a while, but it just kind of dawned on me. I didn't grow up in church, didn't grow up in a youth group, don't have that background, but had preached at a lot of youth events over the years and things of that nature.

And so it just kind of dawned on me. So we're talking about reforming youth ministry. To reform something means to take it back to its original biblically intended purpose. Let me say that again. To reform something means to take it back to its original biblically intended purpose.

Youth ministry has no original biblically intended purpose. Therefore, it cannot be reformed. Let me say that again. I just want to be clear. Youth ministry has no original biblically intended purpose.

Therefore, it cannot be reformed. It needs to be abolished, not reformed. Okay? Kind of like the slavery debate. There are those who are for amelioration. We just need to make life better for the slaves.

Thanks, but no thanks. No amelioration. Emancipation, thank you very much. Emancipation or nothing. And it's interesting, because just like back then, there were people who were saying, oh man, emancipating the slaves, that's the economy of the South, and what are they going to do?

They're imbeciles, they're not fully human, they can't survive on their own. We can't just do that. You can't just end slavery. Same arguments are being made now about youth ministry. You can't just end it.

It's not like these families can do this without us. They're not going to do it. Look at them now, they're not doing it. All the while, not acknowledging the fact that for the last 30 years, we've been telling families, hey, we're trained professionals, please don't try this at home.

Now we're mad at people for taking our advice. So let me be clear right here at the outset. I am an abolitionist. I am a youth ministry abolitionist. It needs to be abolished. It needs to be over. It needs to be done.

I am not a youth ministry reformer. I do not believe that youth ministry can or should be reformed. I believe that it never should have been instituted in the first place, and it has no place whatsoever in a healthy, biblically functioning church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Critiques from Youth Ministry Leaders

I struggle sometimes with being clear, so I'm really trying here, okay? Listen to this. This is from Mark Iaconelli. The Iaconelli brothers are leaders in the youth ministry movement. The curtain must be pulled back.

If we're to keep young people involved in the church and if we are to renew our congregations, we first must acknowledge that many of our current forms of youth ministry are destructive. That's a youth ministry guru, youth ministry leader, saying many of our forms of youth ministry are destructive.

Not just ineffective. He says they're destructive. Not just that they're doing a poor job of accomplishing the evangelism and discipleship of young people, but that they are, in fact, destructive. Again, not my words.

And this is not a guy saying we need to get rid of youth ministry. This is a reformer, okay? Iaconelli is a youth ministry reformer. He's pro-youth ministry. Cannot conceive of a world without youth ministry.

And he says many of its forms are destructive. Listen to this. This is from Roger Dudley. Again, a researcher who's not talking about necessarily youth ministry, not a youth ministry abolitionist. In fact, you know, probably 90 of the youth ministry abolitionists in the country are here at this conference this weekend.

So, you know, a recurrent focus of social philosophy since Plato's Republic has been the threat posed by the possibility that the young might not adopt the essential wisdom and values of that society.

If a society is to continue its existence beyond one generation, the members must transmit what they consider to be necessary knowledge and values. The continuity of a social system, by definition, requires transmission between generations.

Applying this to institutional religion, churches and other religious communities must be vitally concerned with retaining the children from member families. In other words, preventing youth dropout is a major consideration for any religious group that desires a future.

And again, not saying that we don't evangelize the lost. Not saying that we don't go and grow the church by pressing forward and taking ground. Not at all what's being said here. But think about the folly of this.

Think about the folly, for example, of the United States of America saying the United States of America must grow and continue to prosper. Those of us who are here will have no more kids. We'll just continue to grow by finding other people to immigrate.

Ridiculous, is it not? It's absolutely ridiculous. How do you grow effectively? How do you grow in a healthy manner? Well, you grow in a healthy manner by those of us on the inside reproducing. And again, not just giving birth to children, but by training and teaching the next generation among us and by healthy growth from the outside.

Psalm 78 and Multigenerational Faithfulness

It's not an either or proposition. It's a both and proposition. Listen to this in Psalm 78. Give ear, O my people, to my teaching. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable.

I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and His might and the wonders that He has done.

He established testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, that children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments, and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

There's the picture of multigenerational faithfulness. There's the picture of passing on the truth from one generation to the next and the danger of not doing so. Deuteronomy 6, 6 and 7, part of the command to which the psalmist was referring, these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise. And again, that's just an Old Testament concept, right?

Not a New Testament concept, that's an Old Testament concept. That's what many of the opponents of youth ministry abolitionists argue. When you talk about families taking on their responsibilities, oh no, no, no, that's hyper-covenantalism.

That's the Old Testament concept of the covenant. That's not the New Testament concept. In the New Testament, you know, the church is comprised of believers. All this stuff about, you know, the generations and so on and so forth.

Absolutely not. Old Testament, Old Covenant stuff. Really? Ephesians 6, 1 through 4, Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may be well with you, and you may live long in the land.

By the way, where did that come from? It came from Deuteronomy chapter 6, thank you very much. And Deuteronomy chapter 5. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Enough already. This is a biblical concept. Not just a concept of the past. It is a concept of the church. And always has been. Always has been. We raise our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Does this mean that salvation now is all of a sudden understood as something that's passed on genetically? No, it doesn't mean that. Of course it doesn't mean that. Folks, if we believed that salvation and the knowledge of God was something that was passed on genetically, we wouldn't need this command.

Amen? Why do you need this command? If by virtue of just birth, if by virtue of merely being born in our homes, if we believed that, if we believed that that secured salvation, and that our children didn't need to hear the gospel again and again and again and again, why would we worry about it?

Just forget it. Of course we don't believe that. That's why we teach the gospel to our children. That's why we follow this command of the Lord to bring up our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Three Problems with Youth Ministry

Our children need to hear the gospel. Our children need to know Christ. And we have a responsibility in that regard. Folks, I believe there are three problems with youth ministry. Number one, there is no clear biblical mandate for the current approach.

There is no clear biblical mandate for the current approach. You cannot go to the Bible and come away from it with age-segregated youth ministry. You can't get there from here. Or as we say, if I was home down south, that dog won't hunt.

Amen? It's just not there. There is no clear biblical mandate for the current model of age-segregated ministry. It doesn't exist. So whatever we're doing in our current model, we're not doing it because it's biblical.

Whatever we're doing in our current model, we're not doing it because we went to the text and the text showed us clearly that that is how discipleship ought to be accomplished among the generations. And that's a problem.

By the way, that's enough. Amen? That's enough. But there's more. Number two, youth ministry usurps legitimate authority and responsibility. Youth ministry usurps legitimate authority and responsibility.

And it does this in two ways. Number one, it usurps legitimate authority and responsibility from parents. But here's the second way, and we often don't think about this, but it usurps legitimate authority from the church and responsibility from the church.

Youth Ministry and the Authority of the Church

Well, how does it do that? Here's how it does that. Let's just think about what we would call the healthy youth ministries, okay? Because this is one of the things that people are talking about now, the healthy youth ministry.

The first phase of that was, hey, the time for playing games is over. Okay? We're going to be serious. And so when we get our youth together on Wednesday nights, we're going to teach the Bible. We're going to sing songs that are thick in biblical theology.

We're going to preach expositional messages. We're going to give them doctrine and theology. We're going to give it to them. Well, when I hear people talking about that in their quote-unquote healthy youth ministries, here's my question.

Isn't that what the church as a whole is supposed to be doing? So why do they need to be over in the basement with you on Wednesday night if that's what the pastor is supposed to be doing with the whole church?

Why do you need a subculture in the church if you're doing the same thing that the church as a whole is supposed to be doing? Why are you duplicating the efforts if you're going to teach so strong? How come they can't listen to the pastor?

And if you're going to be teaching so strong, how come the rest of the church can't be listening to you? You follow? It makes no sense. And these are the strong, stout, healthy youth ministries. It's usurpation all the way around.

Youth Ministry's Failure to Achieve Its Goals

But wait. There's more. Number three. Youth ministry has not accomplished its own stated goals. It has not accomplished its own stated goals. That's why everybody, not everybody, everybody, that's beyond everybody, okay?

Everybody is talking about reforming youth ministry. There are very few people who over the last 10, 15, 20 years as all the research has been coming out, there are very few people who looked at that and said, no, we don't have a problem.

We just stay the course. Keep on doing what we're doing. It's working. It's effective. We're seeing the fruit of it. Nobody's saying that. Everybody's acknowledging that it's broken and that it has not accomplished its own stated goals.

So here are my three problems in a nutshell. These three. It's not based on anything you find in the Bible. It is a clear usurpation of authority and responsibility and it has not accomplished its own stated goals.

The Economic Ecosystem of Youth Ministry

So here's the question. If all this is true, why are we holding on to this ministry? I answered that question when we started. It is a multi-million, if not multi-billion dollar cottage industry. You know that there are t-shirt companies that have come into existence and they thrive on nothing more than providing t-shirts for youth ministry events?

Now as these youth ministry events get bigger and there's staging and lighting and all this other stuff that sort of happens, there's a whole other industry of people who just do staging and lighting and sound for youth ministry events.

Not to mention bands. Listen, folks. It's kind of cold so it may not work here, alright? But when it warms up, here's what you could do. Wherever you live, you just go throw a rock at the nearest tree and a youth band will fall out of that tree, okay?

They'll know five chords and ten songs and they know how to put them together in such a way to make teenage girls cry and that's all you need to make a good living doing music at youth events. There's an entire industry of bands that have risen up just to do youth events because they've multiplied so rapidly that there are not enough people to go around, okay?

And if you're wondering whether or not people can make a good living doing this let me share this with you, okay? I've never done a whole lot of youth events. About 10 of my schedule, maybe 15 of my schedule of my ministry schedule was youth events.

I would do two or three youth camps in a summer, this is several years ago, before I just stopped doing any of the youth events. In fact, when all of this was going on, while I was a doctoral student, I was doing these youth events with a view toward making some kind of change and then I realized that there was two things that was wrong with that.

Number one, there was hypocrisy because I didn't believe in what I was doing and secondly, people would never take me seriously if I continued to do youth events. And then there's a third reason and that was there's a lot of people who saw so many things wrong with youth ministry and youth events and here's what they'd do they'd come up to me and they'd say, we came to this camp right here because we heard that you were the one who was going to be preaching and we knew that it'd be a safe place to bring our kids.

I said, you know what? I gotta get out. By the way, my last year of doing youth ministry, my last year of doing youth events, my last year of doing youth camps, again, two or three camps in a summer, okay?

I'm done, I'm not doing any more of these. I get a phone call from one of the most prominent youth camp ministries in America today asking me to come back and do a youth camp for them. I said, no, I'm not doing any youth events ever again.

I'm a youth ministry abolitionist, that would be hypocrisy and it would give people an excuse to stay in youth ministry. To which the response from the other end came, listen, if you change your mind, just let us know and by the way, by the way, we have changed our structure and we'll be able to provide you a little more financially for doing our camps.

By the way, five days of youth camp, they're offered to me for five days of youth camp, $10 ,000 for the week. $2 ,000 a day to do a youth camp. Some of y 'all sitting there going, can they call me? So when I say that it is a lucrative cottage industry, I just want you to have some sense of perspective.

Okay? By the way, here's another thing that has arisen around youth ministry. Now, youth ministries, okay, you're taking your kids to these events and they've got staging and lighting and smoke machines and bands and all this sort of stuff.

So now what happens in church? Well, pastor, we need to build a youth building and in that youth building we need to have all the latest state-of-the-art high-tech equipment. So now there are churches that are spending millions of dollars on youth buildings so that they can have staging and lighting and high-tech equipment.

Why? Because you've created this appetite in the young people. They go away for a week of camp, you know, and God just changes their life forever. So school starts back and this is it. This is real and this is what it has to be.

So now if you want to continue to feed that, what do you have to do? You've got to do the same thing on a micro-scale at your church youth group meetings. So now you've got an entire industry of people who are building multi-million dollar youth buildings.

So do you see how many people are dipping into the trough here? It's not going anywhere. It's not going anywhere. There's too much money being made. It's not going anywhere. Not to mention the spiritual side of it where there are a lot of people who will say, I got saved when I was in a youth group.

Therefore, we've got to have youth group. Really? I've got a friend who was saved in a bar. According to your logic, therefore, are you smelling what I'm stepping in? So again, that's why it's still here.

Examining a Youth Ministry Mission Statement

That's why it's still here and it's not going anywhere. And so we have people who will just say, no, we just need to tweak it. We just need to do a better job of it. So, these three. Let's look at these three.

Number one, no biblical mandate. Here's what I want us to look at. We're going to look at a mission statement from a youth ministry. Now, there's mission statements all over from youth ministries all around the country.

And we don't have time to go through a bunch of these, but I chose this one because it is the mission statement from a prominent evangelical, reformed church. That's number one. The pastor of this church is a Bible teacher.

It's known internationally. It's a biblical, thoughtful ministry. Number two, because of that, there are thousands of youth ministries around the country that have basically just cut and pasted this mission statement as their mission statement.

So, if you go to a church that happens to have this as their, you know, sort of mission statement and everything, it doesn't necessarily mean that I went to your church to get this. It just may mean that your church went to the church that I got this from in order to get this statement.

But again, I want us to look at it and sort of interact with it here for a moment. Number one, our purpose, to see unbelieving students become committed followers of Jesus Christ. By the way, let me say a word about the terminology here.

From Youth Ministry to Student Ministry

It used to be youth ministry. Now the term is student ministry. And there's a reason for that. What began to happen is, you have your youth ministry, and people, you know, are in the youth ministry from the time that they're 12 or 13 to the time that they're 18, and then they're out of the youth ministry.

Well, they've been part of this subculture and not part of the church. So they graduate from the youth ministry, and generally they graduate from church. They have a different ecclesiology, a different philosophy, a different theology, okay?

So now, all of a sudden, I graduate from high school, and I gotta graduate from the youth group, I gotta go over to Big Church. I don't want to go over to Big Church. They don't sing the same songs, they don't have the same kind of sermons, they don't play the same kind of games, and I don't know these people.

These people are not my people. Those are my people over there in the youth group, okay? That's my community of faith. The Big Church is not my community of faith, and I hate it. And so they would drop out.

So what do you do? Well, here's what you do. You establish the college ministry to have a continuation of youth ministry so that these people will continue in a subculture a little bit longer. Well, then the term youth ministry no longer applies, so we go from youth ministry to student ministry.

So if you're a student in middle school, student in high school, student in college, you're a part of the student ministry, okay? Therefore, the change in terminology. When we were no longer dealing with youth, but grown men and grown women who refused to grow up and go to church, we had to change the name, okay?

Because that's what we're dealing with. Grown men and grown women who refuse to go to church. Why? Because they've been taught for the majority of their maturing life that the church is irrelevant, irrelevant, its ministers don't understand you, its people don't understand you, and the life of God is not there.

The life of God is here. We don't sing their songs. We reject their songs. Why? Because the life of God is not in their songs. The life of God is in our songs. We don't worship like they do. We have the stage and the lights.

It's a concert every week. You go over there, you're not going to get a concert every week. We don't preach the stuff that they preach. Okay? So basically now you've got grown folks, full grown folks who are saying the youth group is my church.

So now we've got to do something. Okay, fine. Now we've got student ministry, we go all the way up through college, and then you've got college and careers. Why do you have college and careers? Well, because when you graduate from college, you've still never been part of big church.

You don't want to go over there. You're in your career now. You're no longer a student. You can't be part of the student ministry, so we've got to find another name. What's the name? College and careers.

Evangelizing, Equipping, and Engaging Students

If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch. So that's their purpose. To see unbelieving students become committed followers of Jesus Christ. Our plan. How do we do that? We desire to achieve our purpose through evangelizing, equipping, and engaging the students of this church and of the surrounding community.

That's how we do it. We evangelize students, we equip students, and we engage students from this church and from the surrounding community. By the way, I want you to keep this in mind. Alright? I want you to keep this in mind, because one of the excuses for continuing youth ministry is this.

Well, we have to do youth ministry because youth ministry is an outreach ministry. We're not trying to take parents' place. We're just reaching out to students, and we're dealing with those students who don't have believing parents or who don't have parents who can disciple them.

According to the plan, the plan is to continue to perpetuate a culture of non-parental involvement. It's a house of cards, people. It's a lie. Why do you do this? Because parents are not doing what they're supposed to do.

Really? You do this because parents are not doing what they're supposed to do. And yet, your plan to accomplish your purpose is to go around parents, grab students apart from their parents, and then do the job that God has assigned to their parents, and send them out to go and help you do the same thing.

You're a liar. You're not doing this because parents aren't doing their job. You're actually creating the environment whereby you go around parents and don't allow or expect them to do their job. Evangelize.

We're committed to exposing the middle school and high school students to the message of Jesus Christ. It is also the role of every committed follower to reach out to those God has placed around them.

We challenge the students to take the gospel with them everywhere they go. Equip. We want to teach, mature, and train those who are seeking to become committed followers, equipping them to reach out to their peers.

Engage. We want to provide opportunities for our committed students to be actively involved in ministering to one another. Our goal is to bring glory to God and to multiply committed followers. Did you follow this?

Engage. We want to provide opportunities for our committed students to no longer be part of the youth ministry because we exist for the non-committed students. No. If they're committed, we want them to then engage in perpetuating youth ministry.

Our vision to evangelize, equip, and engage as many middle and high school students as possible for Jesus Christ. Now this all sounds great, but there's problems with it. Number one, the verses cited in this mission statement reflect the mission of the church as a whole.

Colossians Four and the Mission of the Whole Church

Now they've ripped them kicking and screaming out of context to apply them to student ministry, but they don't apply to student ministry. They apply to the church as a whole. Here are the verses. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak.

That's the verse that they chose. Here's the second verse that they chose. Colossians 4, 5 -6. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

Ephesians Four and Equipping the Saints

Third verse they chose. Ephesians 4. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attained the unity of faith and of knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

And again, since when did that become a youth ministry verse? The last one. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Those are all great verses. But the verses cited in the mission statement reflect the mission of the church as a whole. Here's the other problem. The author is assuming facts, not in evidence. He's assuming whoever authored this statement and the overwhelming majority of youth ministry statements, assumes that age segregated youth ministry is an appropriate ministry and that therefore you can do this.