The State of Youth Ministry in 2024

Whether I’m a glass half-empty or a glass half-full kind of person depends on what moment you’ve caught me in. Or more accurately, I swing between glass bone-dry and glass overflowing! When I’m in an optimistic mood I can become unhinged with expectation; but when I’m feeling pessimistic, I can see problems and shortcomings everywhere!

So on some days, where we are at with youth ministry in 2024 looks particularly bleak.

Challenges of Part-Time, Untrained Leadership

With church budgets under strain, the youth ministry jobs in the ‘positions vacant’ lists are filled with part-time roles, many of which are simply asking for too much for too little. Bigger churches have replaced the children’s minister and the youth minister with a ‘children’s, youth, and family minister’ (which is often just two part-time jobs squished together), or a ‘generations pastor’ (because ‘Children’s, youth, families, and young adults pastor’ is too much of a mouthful!). Smaller churches might be able to afford 20 hours a week; many aren’t able to offer much more than an honorary position to run the youth program on a Friday night.

Part-time roles attract untrained leaders. In the best-case scenario, the part-time youth minister is studying part-time at theological college so there’s at least some on-the-job training. Oftentimes the rest of the youth minister’s week is taken up with some other kind of university study or a part-time job as a barista.

Part-time roles end up being short-term. Either the ministry trainee finishes their study and becomes eligible for a ‘proper job’ ministering among adults or with a para-church organisation, or the young adult is ready to move out of home or gets tired of living in someone else’s garage. Eventually a part-time salary isn’t enough to live on.

Youth ministry synonymous with ‘part-time, untrained, and short-term’ cements the myth that this is simply a training ground for ‘real ministry’. So even if a church has the funds to employ a youth minister full-time there seems to be little reason to do so, when youth ministers are all just passing through.

The Need for Long-Term, Full-Time Youth Ministers

It ought not be surprising then, that when a church has the capacity and vision to invest in a full-time youth ministry position, there are very few candidates available to fill the positions! Without a viable vocational pathway to follow or community to join, emerging leaders aren’t lining up for theological formation with a view to long-term ministry among young people. Without new youth ministry students, there are few youth ministry graduates. Filling viable positions for youth ministry leaders becomes a game of musical chairs where there are always more positions available than there are people to fill them.

There is a systemic immaturity in Australian youth ministry.

We’re locked in a system that is not producing youth ministry leaders who have been able to stick at it long enough to get good at it. I look around other areas of Christian ministry and can name numerous elders - those who are over 50, have 30 years’ experience, who continue to serve in their vocation, and bring thought leadership to emerging leaders. We have elders in church leadership, preaching, chaplaincy, evangelism, pastoral care, cross-cultural mission, Christian education in schools. Where are the youth ministry elders? Why are there so few?

Where is youth ministry in 2024? Stuck in a cycle of part-time, untrained, short-term roles that leaves youth ministry lacking the collective experience to meet the challenges of the day and resulting in a continued decline in the number of young people involved in the life and ministry of the church and the mission of God in the world.

And that’s the real issue—we are failing in our mission of evangelism and discipleship of young people. The children of Christian families continue to drop out of church life by the time they become young adults at alarming rates. Young people continue to be under-represented in comparison to the general population (in all but the Pentecostal denominations).

We know that the teenage years are a time that people make significant commitments of belief or unbelief. We know that teenagers live at the leading edge of cultural change and face a more hostile environment for Christian faith than older generations experience today or experienced in their own youth. We know that the kinds of questions being asked and challenges being faced by emerging generations are confounding and perplexing. Faced with these opportunities and challenges we seem stuck with the paradigm of finding an energetic young adult with no training to give two days a week to do ‘something’ with the young people. Is it any wonder that our ministries among young people are struggling?

But what if we could invest in youth ministry so that part-time roles could become full-time, or near-to-full-time ones? What if we supported youth ministry leaders to remain in their vocation long-term? What if we enabled youth ministry trainees to get fully trained and equipped them with skills for life-long ministry?

Now the youth ministry cup is starting to fill up.

When I look around the church in Australia there are wonderful ministries among young people. God has blessed us with outstanding leaders and faithful ministries to, with, and by young people through which we are seeing the Spirit at work calling young people to life and releasing them to bring the light, love, and life of Christ to their world.

These are not just bright lights of big churches who have managed to secure that elusive ‘critical mass’ where young people attract more young people (coupled with the suburban security and generational wealth where young adults hang around to keep the youth ministry machine moving forward).

Reimagining the Role of the Youth Minister

The bright lights of youth ministry in 2024 are those places who have reimagined the youth minister to be a congregational ministry leader, with a special expertise and focus on the life and faith of young people, bringing their expertise and passion to enable the whole congregation to take up their shared privilege and responsibility to share their faith with the next generation.

Reimagined youth ministers are leaders who advocate for how the gifts and dreams of young people might bless the whole church. They are theologically formed teachers, not only preaching the word to teenagers, but preaching in the whole congregation, and doing so with a special interest in how the challenges of adolescent life are addressed in the scriptures, and how the message of Christ can shape the teenage experience. They are training leaders and developing resources to effectively share Jesus with young people. They are resourcing parents and carers, helping them navigate the complexities of having teenagers in their home, and equipping non-parent adults to know how to engage authentically with young people (without necessarily having to learn how to play dodge ball!).

Where we are at in 2024 is a time where we can and must reimagine the youth ministry role. Not as a pied piper who will rally the young people to himself (and it is usually a ‘he’ who fills the ‘youth ministry guru’ persona). Not as an activities coordinator who will keep the young people sufficiently occupied that they’re still somehow connected to the church by the time they become adults and finally match the congregational demographics. We need more ministry leaders who are committed to paying close attention to the adolescent experience of life and faith, and are skilled in leading congregations in ministry to, with, and by young people.

Investing in the Future of Youth Ministry

We need youth ministry leaders who are released to serve full time so that they can work on the ministry as well as in the ministry—not just running programs but designing ministry strategies to evangelise and disciple young people, developing effective links to ministries in schools, collaborating with ministry teams in smaller churches, supporting transitions from childhood and into young adulthood, and training leaders for all these opportunities.

We need youth ministry leaders who are well-formed in Christian faith, biblical literacy, and theological understanding. Leaders who can respond to a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world with faithful innovations that live out the gospel of Jesus in new settings and in response to new questions.

We need youth ministry leaders who will serve long term, who are growing in expertise through many years of experience. Leaders who have the freedom to experiment with new ways of engaging young people outside of the church as they imagine how we might reach those young people whose friends aren’t friends with Christians.

Where we are at in youth ministry in 2024 is a time that will require costly sacrifices and bold investment. But we pursue costly things because we see the investment to be worthwhile. Of course there are less expensive ways to go about this. Employing someone untrained part-time won’t cost as much. But if we proposed a high school system offering our families zero fees and requiring almost no government funding, where all the teachers were part-time young-adult trainees, who turned over every two or three years, I can’t see parents lining up to entrust their children’s education to such a plan!

Questions for Churches: Evaluating Your Youth Ministry Approach

So, if you’ve got a part time, untrained youth minister, what would it take to keep them around long term? What would it take to shape them into the kind of person you’d be desperate to have full-time? What might they need to become the kind of person that can help us meet these significant challenges? Are they getting it from you?

If you don’t have anyone serving in youth ministry, I wonder, what are you looking for? Is it an activity coordinator? A pied piper? Or a lifelong discipler of lifelong disciples? Ask yourself, is our position description contributing to a larger systemic immaturity? What kinds of changes in resourcing and staff responsibilities could we make to invest in ministry and mission among young people?

A Call to Action: Building Stronger Youth Ministries

We invest in what we value. Investment in youth ministry is not only valuable for the preservation of an institution, but as the privilege of our faith and our responsibility as God’s people.

A Prayer for the Future of Youth Ministry

Psalm 71:17-18 is my prayer. Perhaps if 2024 were the time that we all shared this prayer, we would live to see the youth ministry cup overflowing with blessing, to change the lives of young people, to transform our churches, our nation, and the world, for the glory of Jesus!

“Since my youth, God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvellous deeds. Even when I am old and grey, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come” (NIV).