In children’s work, the focus is almost always on the Bible story. Well, sometimes the focus is on producing an amazing craft item at all costs, but there’s a Bible story in there somewhere. Yet, youth work often tends to focus on a topic: sex and relationships, drugs, school, parents… Why does this switch happen? Does it come from our drive to be ‘relevant’? To keep young people interested and in church?
The Bible is a complex book, or collection of books, and it can be daunting to open up for ourselves, never mind helping young people get inside it. The attraction of topic-based youth work is clear: take something from the world of a young person and see what the Bible has to say about it. You connect the young person with the Bible and God – bingo!
But is it bingo? What kind of spirituality arises from this approach? What kind of relationship with God does this Bible engagement engender? Thinking about it more closely, I suspect we are leading young people to a place where their relationship with God is only built on how they should behave. The Bible is reduced to a book of rules and guidelines and spirituality is judged on the success or failure of the young people to meet ‘holy’ standards of behaviour.
This kind of topic-based session can elevate behaviour above all else, and might even form a rod with which the young people can beat themselves with when they don’t meet the exacting standards laid out before them. Could this be why we are losing young people from our churches? Do we introduce young people to the rules, rather than to Jesus? When young people falter (and they will), many feel that they aren’t worthy to follow Jesus, because they’ve crossed the behavioural line. And so they drift away from church and the ‘gospel of sin management’ that we preach there.
The Sticky Faith research by the Fuller Institute in the States highlighted this issue – that young people were missing the gospel of grace because they were being led towards managing their own sin. We need to help young people connect with the God of grace and not the ‘do this, don’t do that’ approach.
I wonder why we’re so shy of letting the Bible speak for itself. The Bible is an awesome, crazy, topsy-turvy, unsettling, counter-cultural, astounding book. We don’t need to dress it up to make it relevant because it already is relevant. God speaks through the words of the Bible to everyone who reads, but if we don’t help young people handle the Bible and navigate themselves around it, we deprive them of the chance to grow to spiritual maturity. They remain spiritual children, always reliant on others for their nourishment.
Mark Walley wrote a post about leading a Bible-centred youth group, particularly among young people from outside a church community and that’s worth a read. In addition, we need to be looking at equipping children, as well as young people, to engage with the Bible for themselves. If we give children the right skills, then by the time they get to a youth group, they’re already well on their way with their spiritual journey and be expectant about hearing from God through the Bible.
So let’s work together with our children’s work colleagues, to help children develop a love of the Bible and desire to hear God. And let’s let young people loose on a book that will change their lives, without putting it through a filter or a theme. Let’s get out of the way and help children and young people meet with God.
Alex Taylor is a volunteer youth worker and constantly confuses his young people with references to the Eurovision Song Contest.
Image: Bible & Coffee by Kevin Christopher Burke, used under Creative Commons licence.