OK thoughtful youth workers,
The kind folks at the Journal of Student Ministries expressed interest in an article idea I had for their "Fun" issue. They are looking for it to be a featured article, so long as it doesn't suck (otherwise it will end up as a sidebar or web article). I've pasted it below for your thoughts. Please be brutally honest in your critique, and if you see a typo, please let me know. I need to have it to the editor by Friday, so please read it before then if you want your comments to be noted.
Is Your Ministry Too Much Fun?
Before I address this question, let me preface this article by saying that I’m all about “fun.” When I was once asked what motivated me in life (besides the obvious Sunday School answer of “Jesus”), my honest answer was simply “fun.” As it turns out, I’m not highly motivated to do anything for the sake of money, fame, or even success. I really just like to have fun. For years, however, my high “fun-drive” had a tremendous impact on my ministry with young people.
For those who’ve worked with me in youth ministry know that I love food games. That’s right… FOOD GAMES! I’ve never really liked using an official “game book” to organize my games—just give me a can of spinach, a tin of cocktail wieners, and pack of Kool-aid and in less than a minute I’ll have two lines of teenagers forming for what will be the most talked about game of month. Why? Because it’s gross. It’s messy. And, in short, it’s fun! What teenager doesn’t like to fish out wienies with her mouth from a pot of unsweetened Kool-aid filled with spinach? While I’m pretty sure your fun might not take this exact format, I’m positive that most of you could, without a seconds notice, conjure up a list of fun activities that have personified your ministry—favorite games, skits, paintball outings, movie nights, lock-ins, trips to the mall and a dozen other activities that aim at bringing teens together to have fun. But often these activities lack any real greater purpose.
Please don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been about fun in ministry, but there comes a time when we lean back in our chairs and wonder if all our fun and games are genuinely aimed towards leading teenagers closer to Christ or are they just “fun” for fun’s sake? I’ve often wondered if this generation of youth ministers fear that if we don’t offer teenagers fun in our programs that we will lose them to something else in popular culture that’s more fun. Let’s face it—pop culture does have a lot to offer teenagers. Companies spend millions of dollars a year to make sure teens are having fun. Popular culture titillates our senses, makes us laugh, entertains us, cheers us up, and ultimately leaves us longing for more. And we often try to do the same, but for what end?
As a wise person once said, it’s all fun and games until Jesus comes to town. OK, OK, I just made that up, but if we were all honest, doesn’t it ooze with some level of truth? Think about it for a moment. I’m willing to bet that we can all think of some youth program that consists of an hour and twenty minutes of games, goofy skits, and a few rounds of Sweet Home Alabama, and a five minute “talk” about what a cool, radical, hippie Jesus was (and just for the record… he was a cool, radical, hippie). Behind these endeavors we think if we give teens lots of fun, maybe they’ll sit through our short talks about God. The question that we must ask ourselves then is, why do so many of our youth programs err on the side of more fun rather than more Jesus? Perhaps “fun and games” are more attractive to young people than answering the radical calling that Christ places upon our lives. If that’s the case, it’s a good thing that fishing wasn’t more fun than it is, or Christ would have had a few less disciples.
This is why the old “bait and switch” (no pun intended) has become such a common practice in many of our programs. It’s like when we were kids and our mothers said, “Let’s go get some ice cream, and wear some clean socks!” You thought to yourself…“ Ice cream and clean socks… that’s odd, but I’ll put on some clean socks for ice cream any day!” Then, just as the first dribble of ice cream runs across our fingers, the real truth is revealed. It never dawned on us that after our cool, sweet, dairy dessert that we would spend the rest of the afternoon trying on new school shoes. Once the real agenda is revealed, often our ice cream doesn’t taste so yummy anymore. I’ll admit that in the past I’ve caught myself thinking “If I can only get them in here with this activity, they’ll stay for my friend Jesus.” Unfortunately, sometimes I forgot to make the switch.
In the end, whatever we win them with… we win them to. That is to say, so long as teenagers are drawn to our youth ministries for our fun activities, crazy games, and hilarious skits, that’s what we’ll have to keep offering them in order to keep them. When our “fun” programming becomes the central drawing point for young people, that element risks becoming the reason they come to church. It’s kind of scary to think that we might be shaping the perception of a generation of young people to think that church is really just fun and games, with just a peppering of a sandal-wearing hippie, when in reality they long for something entirely different. If we can’t offer our teenagers the truth, we are only offering them a moralistic, fun-based, evening program. As Kenda Dean puts it, “Without a truth capable of transcending lesser commitments of the self, Christianity [and the church become] just another sided dish in the postmodern cafeteria of personal choice.” And when we fail to meet their accustomed expectation of fun, they will inevitably seek something more appealing elsewhere. Nevertheless, the challenge we face is that it’s clearly easier to engage and attract young people with “fun” rather than Christ. Perhaps this is why so many of our ministries are defined by games and activities over our worship of the living God. We are afraid to make the switch, or simply to offer young people Jesus from the start. While at the core of our hearts, we want to see teenagers changed by Christ, we often don’t trust the power of the Spirit to do its work. If we relinquish a sizable portion of our games, we might lose the critical mass of our ministry. Then the church boards, sessions, and councils will begin to question our success in reaching out to young people. We often forget, however, that Christ calls us to be faithful, not successful. That’s not to say, however, that being faithful and fun are incompatible.
Thus, our task is to find a balance between using “fun” as the hook, and allowing “fun” to be fostered as a natural aspect of our worship and fellowship. Yes, teenagers want fun and need fun… but what they really want and need is to enter into an authentic community that is radically different than the one that popular culture seeks to offer them. At the core of their hearts, they long to be reconnected with their Maker. But, we offer them balloon-games, dating skits, and Twist and Shout instead. The bottom line is this: the church cannot compete with pop culture. It does fun way better than we’ll ever do it. We can’t argue that point. And the more we try and imitate the culture to win kids over, the more we risk abandoning the only reason we are even in ministry—Christ! So how should we approach fun then? How can fun faithfully and organically exist in an authentic Christ-centered youth ministry? Perhaps the answer is, that we must insist that our “fun” be characterized by two things: intentionality and spontaneity.
First, fun in our ministries must be intentional. What I mean by that is that the era of fun for fun’s sake needs to encounter the ice age. Too much is at stake for the church to become another quasi-Christian YMCA. Everything we do in our ministries should come with a purposed level of intentionality. I’m not talking about “baptizing” everything so that it has a Christ-like shimmer to it, but rather we must begin to ask ourselves, “How does this activity, game, skit, outing, etc… draw young people towards Christ? If we can’t answer that question we are back to fun for fun’s sake. We need intentionality in everything that we do in our ministries, bar nothing. At this point, I’m guessing some of you are saying “Stop the presses…Are you saying that we shouldn’t have fun without purpose?” In a manner of speaking, Yes! I’m saying that we shouldn’t plan something that is aimed at “fun” without first being centered on leading young people closer to Christ. Fellowship, fun, and all the like are essential parts of every youth ministry, however, we must remember what our job is. We have been called to lead young people to Christ. We are not called to be activities directors, game show hosts, or glorified babysitters, but rather teachers who lead young people to a truth that can be only found in God. While we often wear those hats as part of the territory of our job, they are not the reasons for which we answered Christ’s calling! When we are intentional about our programming, our fun becomes faithfully executed. Perhaps intentional fun will make more sense as we look at how spontaneity can play role in our “fun.”
How can we be both intentional and spontaneous you ask. While they do seem contradictory, when we consider teenagers proclivity towards having fun, it makes perfect sense. If you stick a group of teenage boys in a room with a bouncy ball, in no time you’ll see some “fun” evolve. Although one of them might get their eye gouged with that little rubber ball, the point is teens have a natural knack at creating spontaneous moments of fun. Spontaneous fun is part of what makes teenagers such a joy to work with. For far too long we have tried to plan and organize the fun in our programs, rather than allowing the genuine enthusiasm of adolescents to emerge on its own. This is what I mean by allowing fun to evolve organically. They will inevitably find a way to make every activity that we offer them fun (sometimes even those we are not intending to be fun). Consequently, when we plan an activity or event with Christ in mind, we can rest assured that the teenagers will provide the fun. Our job, then, is to make sure that they learn something in the midst of their fun.
While craziness and fun will always personify our youth programs, its time for youth workers across the globe to become more intentional about how they program their activities. Fun is a natural and organic facet of every ministry, but that shouldn’t mean that fun should steer our programs. There was a point in my own ministry where I had to take a hard look at what defined my ministry to young people. I had to ask myself if I was merely trying to corral a herd of teenagers into my ministry through fun programming, or was I faithfully and intentionally seeking to offer teenagers the one thing that popular culture could never offer them: an authentic Christ-centered community that challenges them with the truth. Trust me… it’s not easy to ask this question, but it is necessary. And I can promise you this, if we are intentional about how we center our ministries on Christ, our spontaneously fun teenagers will make sure that there is never a dull moment.
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