What Happens When Young People Own Youth Ministry – A Story from Norwest Anglican
14/06/24
“We had always run a Bring-A-Friend night once a term with only a trickle of interest. The first time we gave the youth the opportunity and responsibility to run it, we had 30 visitors and our biggest night of youth ever! It suggested we had stumbled onto something – youth were excited about sharing their faith and bringing their friends along”
Tim Scoular – Youth Pastor, Norwest Anglican Church
When Tim told me this story, it was accompanied by the news that their numbers were showing that youth were more engaged as disciples and that more of them were making it all the way through high school with their faith not only intact, but thriving. This was a result of a shift they’d made, under God, in the structure of their youth ministry.
Recently, I spoke to Tim about the changes they made in their youth ministry to increase participation, ownership and service among young people.
Al: What changes did you make?
Tim: We made a structural shift to our youth ministry, to organise our Discipleship Communities (DC youth bible studies) around areas of service, rather than age group and gender. We already had 6 Value statements [1] (see bottom of page) which drive us as a ministry and so we chose that these would be the areas of the Christian life teenagers are discipled in AND seek to disciple their peers in. A typical DC would include:
looking at the scriptures to see what they had to say about the area of service, and
working together on projects to help shape the youth ministry to grow in this area.
So if you take mission (or what we call the “Shaped” team) as an example, youth would be in a group with other kids from Year 6-12, male and female, learning about the priority of mission from the Scriptures, and working on projects together to encourage and challenge the whole youth group to be actively on mission. The other values cover the areas of community at youth (United), a love for the Bible (Hungry), serving others (Secure), resilient faith (Anchored), and joy in the Christian life (Stunned).
Al: Why did you make the changes?
Tim: For three main reasons…
Firstly, the generalist model of discipleship wasn’t working for us. That isn’t to say it doesn’t work elsewhere, but for us, our leader to kid ratio wasn’t high enough to genuinely disciple all of our core teenagers, let alone the others whom God had brought. Our model of ministry said that the leader has the responsibility to get their youth serving, knowing the Bible, evangelising, etc, but we had discussion groups of the kind of size that it was a big ask for one leader to carry out that responsibility. We felt we were setting our leaders up for a fail!
Secondly, we were convinced that not only couldn’t one leader effectively lead so many kids but also that it was good for some of the discipleship responsibility to shift towards youth, to disciple one another and serve each other.
Thirdly, the numbers were telling us something had to change.
Before the change, our senior youth (Yr 9-12) had twenty teenagers in what we call the ‘core’ (kids who are engaged in church life through regular attendance on a Friday night and attend a Sunday Discipleship Community). Only one of these was from a non-Christian home. Both these numbers should have been much higher for the size of our youth group. Additionally, even our Christian kids were struggling to make it all the way through to year 12 as engaged disciples. What we were doing wasn’t producing fruit.
Al: What was the result of the changes you made?
Tim: The first thing we noticed was an increase in energy and enthusiasm from some of our Christian youth. All of a sudden, they were dreaming up ways to make youth better because they had a structure which enabled them to do it! After a few terms, the data started to tell the same story. Youth were more engaged. By the end of 2023, 7 terms after the shift, we had grown that senior core number from 20 to 35. 7 of those are from non-Christian homes, and two of those 7 are running the lunchtime groups in their local state high school. Senior kids were making it further as engaged disciples.
Al: Are there any particular stories that encouraged you?
Tim: Our Value Team that seeks to cultivate joy wanted to run a Talent Night which celebrated the gifts that God has given us. We had youth signing up, writing songs, doing artwork and performing skits. There was even a magic show! Our Team Leader for that value (in Year 11) preached on that night from Matthew 25 and the parable of the talents. Encouraging his peers that God has entrusted them with gifts that it is now their responsibility to steward wisely.
Al: What role do non-believers have in serving?
Tim: Part and parcel of youth ministry is that you've got all these groups attending (and probably a few other subgroups!):
Christians from Christian families;
Christians from non-Christian families;
non-Christians from Christian families; and
non-Christians from non-Christian families.
What this means is that it’s hard to draw a clear line between who is in the invisible church or not.
Some serving roles, especially where teenagers are appointed to visible leadership positions (like leading in kids ministry, youth band and Value Team Leaders) are invite-only and based on youth displaying some fruit in their character and convictions of mature discipleship. Most other roles are open to all as 'part of the Christian life' which we're discipling all youth in.
That said, there will be some situations where judgment needs to be exercised within value teams on particular projects. For example, the Hungry team are thinking about doing some short videos to model how to do a quiet time. The leaders in the group will exercise judgement about whether individual youth have the maturity to do that role appropriately.
Al: What does youth ministry planning look like, practically, now that youth have a higher level of decision-making responsibility?
First thing to say is that it clarifies responsibilities for everyone. If you're an adult leader at youth, your first and main job is to have pastoral responsibility for the youth in your discussion group. Most of our team training is spent equipping leaders to do this better.
When it comes to games and MCs and other specific tasks of ministry, these areas of responsibility are given to different values. Games are United's responsibility, Bible Readers and pray-ers are organised by Hungry. Graphic design and intro videos for talks are done by Stunned Etc.
The only thing organised centrally is the preaching roster.
Our rough delineation is that the youth Team Leaders report to me (we meet monthly), and the adult youth leaders report to Miki (Co-Youth Pastor).
Al: Chap Clark talks about youth needing a sense of identity (who am I?), belonging (where do I fit?) and purpose (how can I contribute meaningfully?) in order to thrive in faith. Do these ideas ring true for where your group is at now?
Tim: I think before this shift, we had an answer for how identity and belonging might look for teenagers in our ministry. Purpose probably came for our real keen beans who were serving in kids church or in tech. But for the new to faith or teens from a non-Christian home, they didn’t have an avenue to contribute. They do now and I think that has made a real difference. Raising the profile of the values for our ministry probably helps to answer the Who Am I? question too – youth see that they fit into a ministry which has clear identity markers for what a disciple looks like.
Al: Was it easy to both explain to and inspire your leadership team of what you were hoping for? What about the youth themselves?
Tim: For us, it was a pretty clear case of looking hard at the data. It wasn’t encouraging. Then we started sharing stories of teenagers who we had seen walk away over the years (we’re praying they will come back!) but it was sobering. We agreed we needed to do something.
For the youth, we spent Term 1 of 2022 preaching through our values on Friday nights and teaching that it is every teenager’s task to disciple one another. At our April camp, before the change, we invited kids to sign up for a value to be discipled in, or if they didn’t care which value, they could nominate a friend they wanted to be in a group with. 98% of our youth chose a value. It said to our leadership team that our kids were on board with what we were doing.
Al: What were the risks you felt like you were taking? How did they play out? How did you deal with them?
Tim: I’m a pretty optimistic person by nature, but in the lead up to the change I would tell people that 6 days out of 7 I thought we were doing the right thing. The other day I felt like I was making the biggest mistake in the history of youth at our church! Age and gender-based Bible study groups are like an immovable object in youth ministry! Would I kill the ministry? In time, and in response to some leader feedback, we now spend the first half of our bible study time in the age and gender groups and we think we have the balance about right now.
Al: What lessons would you want to tell others who embark on a similar journey?
Tim: For people who want to do something similar, you’ve got to talk to your Senior Minister and honour his role as overseer. Work together with him to form a plan for youth engagement and then go about making it happen in your ministry. Chat to trusted people in youth ministry about your plans and listen to the feedback. It’s also probably not a change I’d recommend in your first couple of years in a position. You’ve got to build some trust with parents before you get too radical! Youth ministry is a long game.
As I talk with youth ministries across Sydney, we’re often trying to think through how to increase ownership at youth. We sometimes look at this diagram:
The result of Norwest leaders thinking hard and investing in helping young people up the ladder of participation and increase ownership and service is more engaged and more resilient young disciples of Jesus. It might take a different shape in your youth ministry.
What changes in your ministry could you make to help young people increase ownership, participation and service?
[1] Norwest’s Youth Value Statements. These form the basis of their value teams (service area teams).
We love seeing youth so…
Stunned by Jesus, they joyously get rid of everything to be rescued
Secure in Jesus, they humbly serve others first, putting themselves last
Shaped by Jesus, they plough for the lost in god’s harvest field
Anchored to Jesus, they are grounded through the storms of life
Hungry for Jesus, they treasure him in his word at every opportunity
United in Jesus, youth at 5orwest is a lovingly winsome community
