The Century Club - a curriculum sent to me that I greatly disagreed with...
This e-mail was written to the leader of a well known Christian organization which does youth rallies around the country. The head of that organization sent me a youth ministry curriculum in the mail for free with the following title and tag line:
The Century Club
A proven strategy for growing your youth ministry to over 100 in one year.
If you don't see any problem with that title and tag line, then read what I wrote him and see my beef. If you do, then read below to see if we have the same issues! I have added a little bit to this e-mail since I sent it for the purposes of this website, so what follows is a little bit longer and somewhat more preachy than what I actually sent him, but you'll get the idea.
Hey ____,
My name is Giles Davis. I am the Senior High Youth Pastor at Harvest Bible Chapel of Glen Ellyn. Several months ago you sent me a package in the mail containing the curriculum for “The Century Club”. The title on the front of it says, “A proven strategy for growing your youth ministry to over 100 in one year.” I have been wrestling with it since then and I feel compelled that I must speak to you on this. Perhaps you’ve gotten other feedback to the same theme, but I pray that God will prepare your heart and lay my words gently upon it.
I have been to your youth rallies and loved them. The heart and passion for the Lord there is awesome. I have seen that you have an incredible focus on content and that you don’t just think that the only thing that matters is numbers. I fear, however, that the title and tag line for this curriculum will urge many youth pastors towards placing their focus on the number of teens they have in their ministry instead of the Christlikeness of the teens in their ministry. Even though your curriculum trains them to seek God in what the purpose for their group will be, they will be studying it all with the unspoken assumption that their end goal is to get their group to be over 100. I feel strongly that this is not the goal that should be driving them.
I urge that instead a youth pastor should be driven by how to raise up powerful teenaged warriors for Christ who fight for a God they passionately love. Of course that’s not so measurable, so it’s not so popular as a means for determining success. Attendance is quantifiable. Spiritual passion and service is not. Yet, all throughout the Bible we are urged as church leaders to train up the Body of Christ and make it strong and more like Him. The assumption I see throughout the scriptures is that if the Body of Christ is healthy, then it will grow, but I see nowhere in the scriptures where we are urged to set our sights on any particular number of people attending the Body. Healthy things grow, but so do cancers. Just because your group gets bigger doesn’t mean that you’re doing the right thing. In fact, if your goal is to get your group bigger, then you are going to be very tempted to give kids what they want instead of what they need. Give them what they want and they’ll keep coming. That is an infinitely dangerous trap.
This focus on the number of teens attending a group is an incredibly entrenched mindset in America. Whenever anyone asks me about my youth group, I can pretty much guarantee you what one of their first questions will be, "How big is your group?" If I answer them, "300", then they will say, "Wow" and assume from that little bit of information that I must be a great success. If I were to answer them "12 kids who are on fire for the Lord", they would look at me with nowhere near the same adoration.
What makes this especially dangerous, in my opinion, is that such a focus on numbers can lead to incredible discouragement for a youth pastor that may be doing exactly as God wants him to! Having 300 kids attend your youth group means next to nothing if your group is not growing them and training them and helping them to become more like Christ. Yet the youth pastor with 300 kids in his group will be lulled into thinking that he is a great success because he has managed to build a youth group that 300 kids want to go to. Meanwhile the youth pastor with 12 teens who are on fire for God will be lulled into believing that he is a failure because he only has 12. Jesus only had 12 followers. He did rallies for thousands, but only 12 were in His group.
The sad truth is that the whole process of growing, training and helping teens become more like Christ is not a very popular process amongst teens. The youth pastor who insists on spiritual growth in his students will find that numerical growth will take a hit - at least initially.
Obviously I am passionate about this. I deeply apologize if I have come across arrogantly or rudely. I truly respect the ministry you are doing. In fact, it is because of my respect for you that I have taken the time to write this e-mail. If I didn’t respect you, I wouldn’t waste my time writing. I can see that you care about promoting Christ above all things and people. I can see that you are passionate about the same Lord I am passionate about. So I write this to you as a brother in Christ. Please pray over my words. If, after praying, you simply disagree with me, then I will trust God with that. I have lived long enough to see that I was wrong about things that I felt 100% sure of, so I recognize that I could be wrong here too. I simply trust God to guide you clearly in your prayers and that perhaps He has prepared you for this.
If you have the time to respond, I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks for taking the time to read this.
In Christ,
Giles
Created on 10/18/2005 10:19 PM by Giles
Updated on 10/18/2005 10:41 PM by Giles
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