Aligning Youth Ministry With the Overall Vision of the Church

How can a youth pastor align the youth ministry’s vision with the overall vision of the church?

If you asked students, “What church do you go to?” and they said the youth group over the church, that should be an issue.

Early on in the ministry, that wasn’t a big priority for me. I’ve been in ministry for 22 years in one church, and at one point our youth ministry started going deeper than the actual church. We were coming to Snowbird and we had all these rules and expectations for our leaders, we gave them profiles to fill out and we interviewed each of them, and the church wasn’t even doing that. At that time, we said it’s fine, let the church do its thing and we’ll do our thing.

Sharing a vision

But after all these years, we had to say- wait a minute. Our students were starting to rise up as far as understanding things of Scripture and the Gospel, which turned into these adults feeling intimidated by the students. We had adults pulling back from being involved in VBS because our students were there. There was a literal pulling back of adults because they began getting intimidated by the fact that these students knew more than them spiritually. Well, students may know more spiritually in one sense, but they still lack wisdom and need to be taught respect for others. But seeing that dichotomy happen, I started realizing that we needed to move as a church. We needed to back up and start asking, how can we unify and what is the vision of our church? Instead of the vision of our youth ministry. So after we had worked on the vision of our church, I then took that vision and overlaid it with the youth. It became our vision and our purpose statement.

The church started to align and even moved to the place of celebrating the things going on in the church with the students.

Fostering Unity

I got this advice early on in youth ministry, he said, “In any leadership meeting you’re in through the church, or any staff meetings you attend,” he said, “Always be ready with a word of encouragement, sharing something inspiring that’s happening with the students, whether it’s students coming to faith or anything that is happening, share that!” And I do that to this day.

Just saying, “Hey, I want to share the story about this student coming to Christ and how it happened,” And when you share it with leadership, now they’ve just gotten involved, and now they’re rooting for the youth ministry. They can get so encouraged when they know what’s going on, and that’s a great thing. Always be ready to share something, not taking over time, but get those things out there and be ready to share.

In John 17, Jesus says, “May they be one, just as you and I are one, Father. So that the world can know that there is unity…”

Are we portraying that if there is division in the church and there is division in our staff? If you’re doing your thing and they’re doing theirs, that doesn’t reveal unity to the students. Then we have students who are leaving the church, they go to college and say, “Well, I’m not a part of the church, because I was just in the youth ministry.” But what do they have after that? There are no adult youth ministries. Then they just have nothing.

The more we align the church in unity, the more we set our students up for success.

Supporting the Church

And then there is the topic of longevity. The only way you can keep longevity is to encourage what’s going on as a church. Keeping up with what is happening in the youth, but also with the children’s ministry, and how each of these things overlaid and inter-connected. Talking with the other staff, how can our students help in this and how can we join in this, and be in a place of submission. put the health of the church, the health of the bride of Christ, put the health of the church in front of everything and literally have a visual where you say, You know what? It’s about the health of this church.

What’s most healthy for this church?

Not what will bring me more glory or what will grow the youth ministry, it’s what is healthiest for this church. If we need to back up as a youth ministry, put a halt on things, and wait to get to the point where the adults are growing, then we need to do that. How can we invest in the church, there’s so much fruit that comes from that and yes, it may be tough, it’s a tough thing to balance. It comes with a lot of submission. It all comes back to your identity, orphan spirit versus a child of God, we often think if I’m not going to get celebrated as much or if it doesn’t go my way, we don’t want to do it. But it’s not about us.

What is healthy for the church?

I’ve even had hard times and said “You know what, Lord, if it’s healthier for the church that I move, that I don’t stay at this church anymore, then show me that,” I’ve been at my church for 22 years and I love comfort, but if I need to leave for the health of this church and the ministry, then I’m ready to go. Because it’s not about me, and when that’s carried on, you’re not guarding your piece of the pie, always be celebrating the other ministries, be looking for how to be involved and encourage and God will honor that and bless it. He breaks it, multiplies it, blesses it, and He will honor us in that area as a church.

Here are some additional thoughts from Joseph Tucker:

We do a disservice to our students when we encourage them to love student ministry and not love the church. The reality is that they are going to graduate, they are going to go off to college, the military, or the workforce. But you can’t ever graduate from Jesus. You can’t graduate from the local church. So if you get them to fall in love with Jesus and the church- then you’re winning. So do your best to try and figure out how do we not segregate our students from the life of the church, and instead integrate them. This whole idea of multigenerational ministry lies in the church.

Steve Brooks is a veteran student pastor from Hillside Church in Woodstock, GA, and a long-time ministry partner of Snowbird.

Joseph Tucker is a long-time student pastor and now serves as the lead teaching pastor at Red Oak Church in Andrews, NC.