On Youth Ministry

I've been asked to share my thoughts on Youth Ministry recently. I pressed some hot buttons recently when I said that youth ministers were not assured of a position in emerging churches. What I needed to add to that conversation was that senior pastors, associate pastors, worship pastors, etc. were not assured of positions either. These roles are fluid and determined ad-hoc by the community themselves, not through predetermined understandings of church structure...

Kara Powell, Director of the Center for Youth and Family Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary, sat me down recently to pursue these questions further. Here are a few of my thoughts...

Thanks, Kara, for your persistence and patience in making this happen...

Comments

[jason]

ryan,

we're no emerging church, but we are a somewhat larger community (over 1000) beginning to experiment with a leaner, more fluid paid staff utilizing less-defined roles. we presently have no youth pastor and have suspended our search for one believing that the Lord may be leading us in this direction. i would be very interested in hearing from you about the practices of the larger emerging communities you are in touch with. is there any way you could point me in their direction so i can do a little investigating of my own?

[Ryan]

Jason, you are definitely on the pioneering early/adopter side of things. My guess is you'll be teaching us down the road...

You might want to talk to Dan Kimball/Vintage Faith or Doug Pagitt, who both have fairly large emerging congregations as to what their approach is to staff positions...

[jason]

thanks ryan...blessings!