Jesus as youth minister

Jesus would not have been considered a good youth pastor in most of our evangelical churches. Jesus was obviously willing to give followers the time and space to understand. Too often the expectations is that the youth that come to our churches better know by the end of their first experience with us that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God.

mike king, presence centered youth ministry

i actually had another quote in mind to expand on, but this one i stumbled on again this morning. oh well.

it reminded me of mark yaconelli once saying that if when people say we need to get back to the way Jesus did ministry he would go oh great and expand. if you are a youth minister as Jesus was a minister then you run people off, keep only 12 boys to mentor. you would tell them stories that they wouldn't get and you would get frustrated constantly and call them stupid. one would deny even knowing you. another would want to poke at you to see if you were there. one would have a need to see you dead. the rest would run away at the first sign of trouble.

that's youth ministry as Jesus would do it. do you think our churches would stand for that?

* i hadn't planned on reading this book, but shane was deeply impacted by it and suggested i read it. he felt so strongly that he sent me a copy. i just opened it last night (after carrying it on and off for months) and just started to fly through it. an excellent read for the staff youth minister and lay youth minister.

Comments

[John Meunier]

Our youth minister preached a sermon last confirmation Sunday that was built around the theme that Jesus, in fact, was a youth minister.

Had lots of info about the age at which youth went to study with rabbis and get jobs.