Voddie Baucham on Youth Ministry

basically we've come to a place where we've seen the institutionalization of youth and of the church where people cannot comprehend a church without these age graded ministries we understand it as the norm we can think of no other way of doing Church unfortunately we've also done that in the midst of a model that has proven over the years to be unsuccessful so we note that the more money we spend on youth ministers the more people we train and employ in these ministries the worse off we are at evangelizing and retaining teenagers and these are not my words Alvin read my mentor notes this in his book raising the bar and he is by no means against youth ministry he's arguing that it needs to be done better but even he recognizes that's that this institution that's been created has been grossly unsuccessful we don't abandon things in in this culture institutions suffer from what a friend of mine calls institutional inertia once you get something going and once it becomes institutionalized it almost never changes it exists almost by divine right in people's minds and it becomes what we often refer to as a sacred cow and youth ministry is incredibly sentimental don't you love young people don't you want to see them come to the Lord we have all these stories of people who walk forward during youth camp or who's you know favorite person in the world was their Sunday school teacher there are people who who came to the Lord because they walked down to the church that had the youth ministry so as long as you have people who can connect their spiritual lives to this institution it's not going to change a lot of people don't realize the cottage industries that have sort of arisen around youth ministry for example you have the use the youth minister himself this is a position that is a lucrative position you can make a good living being a youth pastor and there are churches with you know 200 members who have full-time youth pastors so that's one cottage industry connected to the youth ministry position is the youth ministry degree for example if you and I were to start a seminary and we wanted to train pastors well we had a hundred students now we can train this hundred students and we can give them the traditional Master of Divinity degree it's about a hundred our degree well you don't really need that for these youth ministry positions that are quite lucrative so you got young kids who are going into these youth ministry positions who don't have any training well what have you and I developed a youth ministry degree and instead of a hundred hours it was only 60 hours now we get these individuals into our schools they're paying a lower amount but instead of a hundred guys paying us the full amount now we have 150 or 200 guys in our seminary so what has happened in the seminaries is the youth ministers degree has become another revenue stream as they train people in that particular field well beyond the youth ministry position in the youth ministry degree you also have youth ministry professors and in addition to that summer camps these have popped up all over the place so now there are people in camp ministry camp pastors worship leaders for camp ministry there's events with in youth ministry the disciple now we can and all these other things there's t-shirt companies there's millions to be made selling t-shirts for youth events now churches are building youth facilities so now you've got you know million-dollar buildings going up for young people to have their meeting in each week so now not only are you an architect who can build a church but just building youth facilities has become another industry that's attached itself to this whole concept not to mention the numerous pieces of material for example let's go back to the seminary piece not only are we going to get these individuals to come to our seminaries to be trained for the youth ministry degree but we're going to have let's say within our denomination one of our arms so to speak will be creating Sunday school material so now I have the youth minister and the Christian education Reed you know Sunday School person coming to do my youth or children's degree they're going to learn how to use the materials that I sell through my denomination so that when they go to work in these churches every quarter they're coming back buying those materials that they've learned how to use in the church for their youth ministry and children's ministry through my seminary you just follow the money and you realize this is not going anywhere well the Sunday school movement came to us from across the waters in England and interestingly enough originally the Sunday school movement was designed for children again remember you don't have the child labor laws at that time this is the 1700s you got kids who are working in factories because they got little hands and can do things that big hands can't do you have kids who are not being educated the Sunday School movement was originally targeted toward those children in order to teach them generally it was never designed in order to be the disciple of the church but it was an outreach from the church for kids who weren't able to have an education and there were two major arguments against the youth ministry movement as it began to grow and the two major arguments were if we keep this up two things are going to happen number one we're going to begin to apply this model to Christian children or to the children of Christians and number two if we apply this model in the church parents are going to stop catechizing their own children and both of those things have occurred by the way the Sunday School movement in the United States doesn't really catch on until the middle to the latter part of the 1800s so it literally has not been around that long it is very new and very recent even though people treat it like it's something that Jesus did you know what what happens is it becomes institutionalized and once it becomes institutionalized we go right back to that idea of institutional inertia it gets started it's a good idea why don't we grow it why don't we expand it then you come to the United States and you have you know what's called flakes formula which was a big Baptist push for Sunday School and there were five major tenets of flakes formula basically designed to perpetuate the institution and to use it as a method of growth so it's always been seen or was originally seen as this outreach arm as this growth arm it's not seen as that as much anymore it's become viewed as the discipleship arm of the church and it has completely transformed the idea that youth ministry is our outreach arm is an absolute farce here's the way the argument goes youth ministry is the way that we reach out to people who either don't have parents don't have Christian parents or whose Christian parents are not doing what they're supposed to do if that were true then what you would not see is this phenomenon the kid whose parents are doing what they're supposed to do let's take the person who's on Church stat you get a church staffer who's not sending in their kid to the youth group well what happens to that church staffer well they're brought before the powers-that-be and they're asked why aren't you sending your kid to the youth group why aren't you participating in our youth ministry well our youth ministry is for kids you don't have Christian parents my child does have a Christian parent I'm deciding my child I really don't need that ministry well what's that person told are they given a pat on the back and say great job by the way would you help all the rest of the parents who are doing what they're supposed to do to get their kids out of youth ministry - no they're not because that is a lie the youth ministry is for every kid it is the program that we use not just as the evangelism arm but the discipleship arm as well and non-compliance is not accepted you must be assimilated where do you go in the scriptures to justify this ministry the answer is you don't what's interesting as a doctoral student at southeastern Seminary a lot of his research was coming out about retention rates and how kids are no longer staying in the church and so on and so forth and doctoral students said crazy things all the time and there were several guys there at the time who were looking at this research dr. Reid was working on his book raising the bar at the time and it was then that I sort of floated that this trial balloon just thinking hey I'm a doctoral student you can say crazy crazy stuff you know and the trouble and I floated was this we're talking about reforming youth ministry right well to reform something as a Christian means to take it back to its original biblically intended purpose well youth ministry doesn't have one therefore we don't need to reform it we need to abolish it now I said that and talking to people again these are doctoral students these are professors you would think that you just sort of you know interact over thought like this it was considered completely crazy but here's what I discovered from then until now what I discovered was every time I had a conversation with someone about this idea of abolishing youth ministry I got responses that ranged from the practical to the philosophical but never the theological or the biblical in other words you get things like well what about kids who or you get questions like well what would we do with or you get questions like well why would we throw out the baby with the bath what you get those kind of questions what you never get is well what about this text well what about this theological principle what about you never ever ever when you talk about abolishing youth ministry does someone come back to you with forget book chapter and verse just theological principle that says that this is something that we ought to be doing as a church at best you get well there's nothing that says we can't that's the strongest argument there's nothing that says we can't that's unacceptable that's a great question you get rid of one how do you justify the rest my answer you don't there is no justification for the rest see here's what we have to recognize we've built this entire structure not from the Bible up but from the culture up we've built this entire structure not because you go to the Bible and you see young marrieds between 32 and 37 and a half you know as a group you don't see that in the Bible where do we get those categories from you know where most of those categories come from they come from space requirements so what happens is you look at the number of people that you have in a particular age group young marrieds for example if we have enough young marrieds to fill up two rooms then we take the young marriage between age a and age B and we break that in half so that we put them in two separate rooms it's completely arbitrary it has no more biblical merit than just saying you're a couple 1 you're a couple - you're a couple 1 you're a couple to all the ones go over here all the tools go over there but why don't we do that because we've bought into this age graded mentality that's why so philosophically there's no argument Feli theologically biblically there's no argument for any of it but we do it religiously because we're absolutely convinced of it and committed to it simply because it's what we know not because it's what the Scriptures teach I used that I used that that terminology actually with back in those days I said you know I'm not for amelioration I'm for emancipation um you know in other words it's it's not just about making things better for these individuals who are in the youth ministry it is about abolishing this ministry that number one had no scriptural basis whatsoever when we started it and number two has had a detrimental impact on these young people on their families and on the church as a whole as we've completely lost our way as it relates to bringing up evangelizing and disciple the next generation yeah that is an argument that people make and it's a dangerous argument the argument that basically says I got saved through this ministry or in this circumstance therefore that circumstance is normative or should be normative for other people think about that from a principled perspective I got saved in a youth ministry therefore we shouldn't get rid of youth ministry how about the person who says I got saved in a crack house therefore we shouldn't get rid of crack houses and people get saved in all sorts of environments that has to do with the sovereignty of God so there's two problems with that number one if you follow it to its logical conclusion it doesn't work but here's the second problem we are not arguing for the sovereignty of God in saving people regardless of where he finds them we find ourselves arguing for the sovereignty of systems because we're arguing that it was the system that saved me not God no God saved you in spite of the system not because of the system so argue for the sovereignty of God and if we believe in the sovereignty of God then let's do Church the way God tells us to do it and trust him not the cultural norms you know essentially what we've done is we've created a church within a church we no longer have one body but we have multiple bodies as a result of that we don't belong to one another for example how are we going to engage in Titus to ministry if the younger and the older don't go to the same service how are we going to engage in sharing life together if we're not part of the same congregation and essentially that's what's happening listen I went a different event out on the west coast I won't say where but I did an event on a college campus and the campus minister picked me up for the event we had lunch together we sat down at lunch and he said to me my daughter pray for my daughter because we just found out that she hadn't been going to church for a while this is really what's a while a couple of months Wow your daughter wasn't going to church for a couple of months how old your daughter I'm thinking he's gonna say you know my daughter's 20-something she's a way at college that's not what he said he said my daughter's 16 it's one of it how does your 16 year old daughter not come to church for months and you her father a minister a pastor who's a member of the same church not know it well we go to the early Sunday School and then the late service she goes to the opposite so they were getting in cars leaving assuming that their daughter was getting in another car and leaving going to a separate worship service in a separate building by the way and a separate separate Sunday School in a separate building and it was only when her Sunday school teacher asked how she was doing that this father realized that his daughter hadn't been in church now the church did that and that is considered completely acceptable because we are ministering to and catering to this group of people that we desperately need to reach that's a failure not a success you know we talk about these numbers between 70 and 88 percent of young people leaving the church by the end of that first post high school year and a lot of people were upset about those numbers and we see them again and again and again sometimes you see the numbers go as low as 60% but again there are large numbers of young people swathes of them who are no longer involved in the church I talked to youth pastors and and I talked to youth pastors who've been doing this 15 20 years and I asked them two questions question number one do these numbers ring true do these numbers ring true that that 65 75 but do those numbers ring true yes inevitably to a man they say yes those numbers are ringing true but there's a second question and I believe this is a more important question who's the thirty percent who are those kids who are remaining and generally here's the response that I get from them there's two types of kids again anecdotal information a little you know evidence all over the place but there's two basic types of kids who are remaining number one the kid that doesn't need me that's the kid who has a family that's disciple and youth ministries gravy they come sometime the most time they dealt whatever but you've ministries gravy kid number two is the kid whose family was so messed up that they basically live with me so in both instances these youth ministers are saying the answer is family discipleship either in their home or in our home through spiritual adoption the answer is family discipleship the youth ministry doesn't provide that the youth minister trying to think about what's wrong with youth ministry is a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse the fox is not going to say I need to not be here the Fox is going to try to figure out how he can devour fewer hens so that you'd be happy with him for a while Youth ministers are not going to say parents need to be doing what we're doing we need to not have this job they're going to try to preserve the institution now does that mean that they're they're evil and that they're scheming and conniving no but they wouldn't be there if they didn't believe fundamentally that it was their job to do what they're doing and that it was essential and that they were the answer they wouldn't be there if they didn't believe that so they're going to give you those answers but it's ironic that what the youth minister says is if we're going to reach these kids number one we need to know them better well guess what parents know them better number two when you have relational ministry were involved in their lives guess what God's designed a relational ministry to be involved in their lives it's called their parents number three we need to be more consistent in our teaching guess what God's giving them a place where they wake up every morning where they can have consistent teaching everything that youth ministers say is the answer already exists in the home but what they will not say is the home is where the answer lies they can't because the moment they say that they admit that they shouldn't be in their position same way we did before youth ministry think about its question begging logic okay and it's question begging on a number of levels first they're begging the question by arguing that we're going to stop reaching the loss well what question are there begging that they've actually reached the loss well we know statistically that's not the case these young people are leaving they went out from among us because they were not all of us as John says in first John 2:19 so they're not reaching your loss here's the second thing less than 10% of professing Christians in America have a biblical worldview less than 5% according to Barna research less than 5% of teenagers who profess christianity are theologically literate enough to be called Christians so they're begging the question we're not reaching the loss the the other question they're begging is this if we don't do you three we're not going to reach the loss it would have to follow then that we weren't reaching the loss before youth ministry but we know that that's simply not the case we had the first great awakening we had the second great awakening we had every awakening the church has ever experienced before the advent of youth ministry so it is sheer folly to argue that removing this very recent invention is somehow going to plunge the church into peril because the only way that could be true is if we weren't doing it right before they got here and that's simply not the case it's interesting and that's an argument that people raised frequently you know why can't we have both well number one why should we have both that's my argument make a biblical argument for age graded ministries okay here's my second argument one of the reasons parents aren't involved is because we have youth ministry for 30 years youth ministry has screamed to parents we're trained professionals don't try this at home having the trained professional communicates to the parents that it is the church's job so what you do is you create this division I call it the varsity versus JV parents so the varsity parent in the church is the one that's doing the work of the cycle ship in their home with their child the JV parent is the one who's relying on the church to do it that creates a sense of division that is completely and utterly unnecessary the other thing is well where does it end where do we stop having ministries designed for people who aren't doing things well do we have the lovemaking ministry for the couple that's not handling that as well as they ought to do we have the baby naming ministry for people who just give their children horrid names do we just say you know what you're not doing a good job at this we're going to put a minister on that to do that for you it's ridiculous when you think that the argument is parents aren't doing something that they're supposed to be doing therefore we're going to create a ministry to do it for them how about the tithing ministry most churches that I know they've got families that just aren't tithing the way they're supposed to should we then start an outside tithing ministry to raise the tithe for them because they don't do it why is it that in every other area we say if it's not happening call it sin and call people to obedience but when it comes to disciple in the next generation we say we'll take care of that for you that doesn't work anything else that's called being institutionalized you don't know anything else you think that it's right because it's all that you know and that's a problem and again people people mean well these people are passionate about the lost passionate about young people but here's the question that this is not about statistics this is not about well you know this many kids are coming back and this many kids are going away or so on and so forth that's merely a symptom this is about whether or not we trust God do we trust the sovereign Lord of the universe to communicate to us in his word what the most effective way is to disciple and evangelize the next generation or do we trust in something else are we looking to the culture or are we looking to the word that's the question well the Bible has a very clear pattern in the Old Testament and the new of young people being number one in the worship of the community of faith with their parents we see that in Ezra 10 and seeing Deuteronomy 32 we see it for example implicitly in Ephesians chapter 6 on Colossians chapter 3 places where children are dressed directly in a document that is to be read in the worship of the church as a whole we see it in the Ministry of Jesus he's teaching and he points to a child he doesn't say go over to the nursery and bring me a child there are children there as Jesus is teaching so throughout the Scriptures we see this example but there's the other example where we go to Deuteronomy 6 where we go to Psalm 78 where we go to the book of Proverbs where we go to Ephesians chapter 6 where explicitly we see the Scriptures teaching parents to communicate the truth to their children to do it on an ongoing basis when you rise up when you lie down when you sit in your house when you walk by the way one generation teaching another generation we see this over and over and over again children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right honor your father and your mother which is the first commandment with a promise that it may be well with you and you may live long in the land fathers do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord it is absolutely clear that parents have that responsibility here's the other thing parents are the only ones who have the proper tools for example children need nurture but they also need correction that kind of biblical correction falls within the purview and the responsibility of the parent the child that the church does not have that tool the Church does not wield the rod in the child's life only the parent does and the Bible says that that is a primary tool in the correction and shaping of children so if we're going to you know sort of turn over this discipleship without one of the primary tools that God gives for correcting children then we're only looking at a portion of the picture so the Bible makes it very clear that that is a parental responsibility now does that mean that the church has no role to play now remember what I said the children are in the worshipping community so as a pastor when I'm preaching and teaching there's children there I'm preaching and teaching to them just like I am to their parents so far from me saying that as a pastor I have no role I'm saying as a pastor I do have a role and because of that I believe the children are supposed to be there listening to the Word of God as it is preached and as it is taught and as it is read as we worship together as a community no geez to be trained Jesus went to the temple to announce his presence with authority that's what he did when he was 12 years old he didn't go to be trained he was not sent away to be trained here's the other thing Jesus had disciples they were grown men that was not a Sunday School class and the discipleship happened life on life they lived together for over three years that is not the model for a sunday-school class now this is a model of discipleship that we see for the church but it is not a model of children's ministry that we see for the church the other thing that we have to realize is that there's a hermeneutical principle here and that is that narrative is not normative what God in the flesh did with the individuals who would be his apostles was not normative for the way we do Church if it were then what we would have in the epistles again the Apostles didn't come back and they didn't write in first Corinthians and second Corinthians what you do is you get 12 people and you do what Jesus did with the twelve of us so that you can have apostles like Jesus had apostles no they give us explicitly what the church is supposed to do in making disciples and we do not have the Apostles going back to their own experience with Jesus for three years saying that that's normative in the life of believers thereafter so we got to be real careful in our exegesis there when I'm looking at how my children ought to be raised and discipled I'm going to go to the explicit teaching in for example Ephesians chapter 6 and not to the example of Jesus establishing apostles who would be the foundation upon which the church is built as the normative example for the way that we go about raising our children one they weren't children and two they did not in turn communicate to us in the epistles that that was the normative way that were to make disciples it here's what's wrong with that you take the youth ministry and you turn it into what the church is supposed to look like the question is why do you need the youth ministry you are communicating something about culture you're also communicating something about maturity you're basically saying that these are children and not adults see one of the overarching issues here is when do we begin to treat young people like they're adults we have 16 17 18 year-olds that we're still treating like children and they're not children we need to expect more from them and if we're going to expect more from them the question then comes why do we do it in an environment where they are not around peers other adults who happen to be older Titus 2 and put them in a situation where there are amongst themselves it's unnecessary so that's what sort of baffles me about this movement especially in reformed circles where they say we get it we understand what's wrong with youth ministry we're not going to do that we're going to be all about teaching all about doctrine all about so on and so well isn't that what the church is about why do you have them in another room to do the same thing that they would get if they were in there being part of the community which goes back to the issue of young people not being part of the community that's the problem the issue is we started with the wrong starting point the issue is we start with we have to get man to respond to God that's our goal therefore whatever makes man respond is appropriate that's the wrong starting point the starting point is we have to preach the gospel and we have to be clear we have to know what God has said and we have to communicate what God has said and God will build his church if that's our starting point then we do not fear man if that's our starting point we do not worship at the altar of man if that's our starting point we do not compromise because we know what man's greatest need is but because we've chosen another starting point which is man this man centeredness okay because we've chosen that starting point we are seeing fruit and that is one of those evidences out there of how far we've gone and how wrong we are but the real problem is that we don't believe that the gospel is sufficient it depends on what you mean by innovate the church not only has the freedom to innovate but it's commanded to innovate in certain things sing to the Lord a new song praise God that you know we've had songwriters over the years and that Isaac Newton had that freedom to innovate and to write some of those great hymns that we sing but we innovate in ways that scripture tells us to innovate when it comes to being innovative and trying to reach the culture and doing things that are not found in the scripture trying to worship God in ways that God has not told us to worship him then our innovation becomes dangerous for example the great example of this in the Bible is other you know the Philistines have captured the ark and they've taken it away and you know and of course things go badly for them they send the ark back now the Ark is coming back and it's being carried in and it's falling down as I sees the art falling down and he wants to do something good he loves the ark he loves Israel he wants to rescue the ark from falling onto the dirt and he reaches out and grabs the ark in a way that God has not expressly told Israel to touch the ark and God kills him and I love the way our seas bro puts a fine point on this he says aza somehow thought that his hands were somehow cleaner than the dirt and the fact of the matter is they weren't we are but decorated dust we worship God the way God tells us to worship Him that that's our limitations and trust me we have not exhausted everything that the Scriptures have taught us about how it is that we worship God and everything that he has given us is more than in the Gospels more than enough I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ because it is the power of God unto salvation to all those who believe that you first and also the Greek I believe that and it's when we stop believing that that we begin to innovate I do not believe that the gospel is enough we need the gospel and this new thing that we've innovated even when it comes to the innovation of singing to the Lord a new song which songs are the ones that remain with us the ones that are faithful to the revelation that God has given his people that's what stays with us when we try to find new ways to become more like the culture because we believe that's going to help God out that's when we're in trouble my message to fathers is a simple one and that is that God has given you an unbelievable gift the gift of investing into the life of your children and your children's children and somehow somebody has convinced us that the best thing that we can do with that gift is to pass it on to someone else my plea would be that fathers not abdicate here that they not miss this great blessing men come to the end of their life and regret a great many things but few men come to the end of their life and regret time invested and well spent with their children teaching them the Word of God teaching them how to love God how to know God and how to serve God don't miss that opportunity my plea to pastors is quite simple trust God's Word teach God's Word root and ground your ministry in the Word of God when you look throughout history there are certain men whose names are remembered those are men who were faithful stewards of the Word of God who handled it well there are a few who are remembered who didn't do so but they're remembered because of the folly that resulted from their ministry my plea to pastors is trust the word it is sufficient we will stand before God and when we stand before God we don't want to answer with do you see how well I helped you out by grabbing a hole to the things that fallen men had placed in the culture but instead you gave me the gospel and I gave it to your people the best way I knew how that that's our goal that's what we're called to let them lay us in the ground having stood firm and stood fast and proclaim the gospel until our dying breath we need no other you

Channel: Truth Endures

Views: 142,818

Rating: 4.8721161 out of 5

Keywords: Youth Ministry, Voddie Baucham

Id: ZddfeDuOLrU

Length: 38min 30sec (2310 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 11 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/emmanuelibus]

There's a lot of issues in Youth Ministry. One being - when I was a youth pastor in the early 2000's during what felt like the height of popularity of the "seeker sensitive" movement, all I did was entertain to try and keep the kids interested.

Church became all about production and entertainment - gotta have the cool lighting, stage sets, cool worship band, video presentations, movie illustrations, and "relevant" teaching all the while forgetting to open the Bible.

It developed a culture of, what we now call "moral deism". You folks know what I'm talking about. It was all about attendance and involvement in the programs.

The worst thing for me is not remembering if I ever preached the Gospel. I'm at the mercy of the Lord on this one. I feel like many of their blood is on my hands.

When I'm given a chance to preach to them again, I'll have a lot to say and repent for.

Another mistake is forgetting that these kids will one day become adults. "You mean these people won't be in my ministry forever?" "Yups." "Ooops..."

[u/BrainerdPunk]

Been thinking through a lot of this recently. I grew up in a pastors home, had a great young group experience growing up. Was impacted by my youth pastor. I even studied youth ministry in college and was a youth pastor for a handful of years. Since stepping away from it and not having any involvement in youth ministry for a couple of years I am reflecting back on my time and realizing/understanding a lot of the issues and possibly unbiblical approaches we as churches have towards youth ministries. This video was shared with me a while back when I brought of some of my concerns to a fellow pastor friend.

What are your thoughts? I know Voddie Baucham is a big proponent of home schooling and there are other things I definitely don't see eye to eye with him on. But I am having a hard time arguing against a lot of the points he is making here.

[u/systematicTheology]

I had not thought of this before. I'm kind of conflicted. I've been watching a lot of Voddie on Youtube the last few weeks. Thanks for posting this.