In June the Senior High Ministry at our church traveled to Colorado for Reformed Youth Movement (RYM). I could hardly wait until the bus door closed and we started our trip to and from Colorado! Really, I loved it—24 hour bus ride and all. It was a week of hiking, rafting, mountain biking, ropes courses, horseback riding, attempting to summit a 12,000+ peak, and taking on whatever else the front range of the Rockies threw at us. Each evening we worshipped together with great teaching and a time for small group discussions.

This year Joey Stewart and I had the opportunity to teach a seminar to youth ministers about youth ministry. When I was asked to be a part of this seminar, I immediately said “yes.” For more than twenty years now I have been thinking about youth ministry—strategies, camps, topics, relevance, discipleship, missions, small groups, leadership development, and Sunday School. It has never been easy and it never gets old. The lives of youth change all the time—fads come and go, and I am always at least a step behind when it comes to technology. I am amazed at how passionately students can love Jesus, and it breaks my heart when they drift. So a resounding “yes” was my reply when asked to help with this seminar. After all, I would just be talking about what I have been thinking about for years.

The problem was, I began thinking about youth ministry in a way that I have never thought about it before. I asked myself this question, “Why does the church need a youth ministry to disciple students?” At first the answers came quickly: students need people they can relate to and who will relate to them, students need a place of ownership in the church, we need a place for our college students to come home and do summer internships, and since students don’t listen to their parents, we must have a group of people that students think are cool enough to listen to them talk about Jesus. I am not saying these answers are correct—they are just the first things that came to my mind. So, now all I needed was the Bible to back up my arguments for youth ministry. Let me cut to the chase: there is no mention of youth ministry or youth ministers anywhere in the Bible. Ouch! (Not your ouch, but mine). Could I be committing vocational suicide? Maybe, but I don’t think so.

What I would like to suggest is a paradigm shift in the way we look at discipleship in the lives of students. Too often the youth ministry is like a boarding school, which may work well for educational purposes, but is hardly the model for the Covenant community. I can speak to this not as a youth director, but as a father of two teenagers involved in the youth ministry. It is very easy for me to let the youth ministry disciple my kids. As a matter of fact, most of the time I am counting on it. I am counting on the youth ministry to make up for the lack of time I spend praying with my children, teaching them the Scriptures and bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I have taken the vows I made at my children’s baptism and placed the responsibility on a ministry that should be supporting the discipleship of my children and should not be their primary mechanism for discipleship.

Here’s the paradigm shift: the Biblical model for youth ministry is Deut. 6:6–9,

“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

It is families and the body of Christ that raise godly children. Fathers walking and discussing the Scriptures with children—teaching them in word and deed how to be in the world but not of the world. But, it is not the parents alone—it is also the body of Christ. Did you see it in verse 9? When my kids come to your house they are surrounded by covenant life, and the same when your children are at my house. We don’t need a youth group to disciple students; we need each other—the church—the body of Christ. Just as our daughters look to their mothers and other brides who have gone before them in order to learn how to be a bride, so must we, as the bride of Christ, set the example for the younger generations.

So, I don’t desire to help in the discipleship of students because I am the youth director, but because I am a part of the covenant community. I raised my hand as a sign of my willingness to undertake the responsibility of assisting in the Christian nurture of children at their baptism, and many of you did the same at the baptisms in your church. We are bound as parents and a congregation to the discipleship of our youth.

Let me end by saying that I think the purpose of the youth ministry in the church must be to:

• Help facilitate this new paradigm
• Continue to be a tool for parents and the church to assist in the discipleship of students
• Help bridge the gap between baptismal vows made by parents and the vow taken by the congregation

Parental Vows:

1. Do you acknowledge your child’s need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, and the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit?
2. Do you claim God’s covenant promises in (his) behalf, and do you look in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ for (his) salvation, as you do for your own?
3. Do you now unreservedly dedicate your child to God, and promise, in humble reliance upon divine grace, that you will endeavor to set before (him) a godly example, that you will pray with and for (him), that you will teach (him) the doctrines of our holy religion, and that you will strive, by all the means of God’s appointment, to bring (him) up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?

Congregational Vow:

• Do you as a congregation undertake the responsibility of assisting the parents in the Christian nurture of this child?
• Equip the saints for ministry—in this case both parents and students (Ephesians 4:11–12)
• Make sure efforts are being made toward the “widows and orphans” —both actual and spiritual

Our calling to youth ministry is a call to equipping and facilitating the older generations to make disciples of the younger generations.

Bill Johns is Director of Student Ministries at Independent Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee.