The Liturgy and Worship of Youth Ministry
This essay was written for the Liturgy and Worship unit of the MTh program, and my question was: What is the ‘liturgy’ of American evangelical youth ministry in the western United States, and how could it be better shaped for discipling young people into worship? It explores many questions I’ve had about what youth ministry needs and what my vision for ministry will be as I look to the future. As with my other blog posts of my submitted work, this is only a small piece of a much larger essay and written in a less academic voice, so if you are interested in reading the whole thing, I’m very happy to send it if you get in touch with me!
Every church has liturgy, whether it would call itself a ‘liturgical church’ or not. Though many churches in the evangelical tradition in the United States would resist liturgy, viewing it as stifling, inauthentic, and dry, they keep to regular patterns, traditions, and practices that could be classified as ‘liturgy.’ American evangelical youth ministry (AEYM) is no exception, and, in the practices of its weekly meetings and annual rhythms, follows a pattern that aims at forming youth in a certain way. The key then to effective youth ministry is to examine the existing liturgies to ascertain how it is currently forming youth and how it might be better shaped according to a theology of worship.
Liturgy in this essay is defined as “culture-defining practices.” It is based on Smith’s understanding: “liturgies [clarified in a footnote as a synonym for worship]—whether ‘sacred’ or ‘secular’—shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and our most basic attunement to the world. In short, liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us is what we love.” (Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 25) We are looking here at what we love through what we do.
To expand on the context, I discovered that “evangelicalism” is incredibly broad in its practices, beliefs, and traditions, but basically, evangelicalism stems from the Protestant Reformation and holds to sola Scriptura. Evangelicals are cautious about holding “tradition” in authority as it is considered limiting and adverse to the “seeker friendly” value of many evangelical worship services, which often strive for authenticity through open worship.[McGrath, “Faith and Tradition,” Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology, 91] This is reflected in the practices of youth ministry, which seeks to be relevant and limits aspects that would put off those not familiar with church and its traditions.
Evangelical churches may consider themselves non-liturgical, but liturgy here includes practices and rhythms that actively shape habitus through desire. Our embodied, ritualistic practices reveal what we desire more than professed statements of belief or than what we think we believe. Any liturgy identified in youth ministry, then, is the practices that form the heart, embodied in ritual and repetition.
The ritualistic repetition of phrases and rhythms of traditional liturgy gives worshipers freedom of expression within helpful parameters and with practiced ease. Garrigan writes, “The point is that liturgy shapes us not as automata, stuck repeating a limited repertoire of given acts, but as free agents, artists really, trained to act in a whole heap of ways in response to a whole heap of situations. By engaging our whole selves, body and mind, over and over…we become accomplished improvisors.”[Garrigan, “Ethics”, Study of Liturgy and Worship, 200] Like pianists must practice scales and understand music theory in a deep sense before playing complicated pieces, or improvising in jazz sets, the repetitive actions of liturgy performed day after day, week after week, year after year, effectively form a person’s whole being, allowing them to “get the Story.”
Considering worship as participatory action in God changes it from a weekly rehearsal to a transformative experience because it is a space for the worshiper and God to meet that happens through liturgy, which builds a habitus of worship through aiming and ordering desires so that living like Christ extends beyond a weekly service. In the same way the pianist practices scales so she can produce beautiful, complex music, we transform liturgy for effective ministry by examining the end toward which the liturgy is aimed, what music is being performed.[Smith, Desiring, 34] Liturgy’s structure helps give meaning to the self and the individual’s place in a larger community and world, which is the desired end of the adolescent life stage. In attempting to live a God-honoring life, liturgy as repeated practices help Christians develop theological habits of a worshipful life that extends beyond the youth ministry gathering by “training our hearts through our bodies.”[Smith, Desiring, 25]
Youth ministry faces a difficult challenge: an increasingly postmodern, post-Christian culture, and a generation that rejected religion and tradition in favour of individual success and truth, with access to more resources yet experiencing less community than ever before. To minister to this lonely generation, youth ministry must reintroduce youth to the Church through the person of Jesus Christ. If postmodern youth are going to be interested in Christianity, it is because it fulfils their need for identity security through relationship with Christ, and youth ministry can help meet this need by giving structure to relationship-building with Jesus and the Church through carefully aimed practices.
AEYM must find the balance between contextualization and adaption and communication of the true gospel. One way it attempts this balance is through a relatively recent model of youth ministry: incarnational ministry, championed by Root in the US and Ward in the UK. They claim that as Jesus was incarnated among people and related his gospel message in a compelling way, ministers should also be “incarnate” in youth culture, and as Jesus maintained his divinity though incarnate, pastors communicate the essential message of the Gospel. This model is an effective response to postmodernism by using relationship instead of religion to reach youth; however, the incarnational model threatens to sacrifice tradition for the sake of relevancy, especially in an evangelical context which has already loosened its ties to tradition. The focus on relationships as an end is often guilty of “theological shorthand,” using theological phrases lifted from Scripture or creeds without a full understanding of their depth.[Baily, Youth Ministry and Theological Shorthand] Liturgy that explicitly communicates doctrine is essential for the incarnation model. Liturgy-shaped theology re-grounds practice in tradition and becomes a “counter-pedagogy”[Smith, Desiring, 24] to postmodernity’s aversion to objective truth from a higher authority and Gen-Z’s aversion to communal identity and morality. When AEYM talks about imitating Christ, it must think in terms of becoming Christ, embodying his sacrificial love and taking on his holiness. Christ must remain the telos of youth ministry practice, and not just the incarnate Jesus. Before thinking about how the liturgy needs to be better shaped, we need to look at what liturgy actually exists in AEYM, keeping in mind that liturgy is practices that form the heart.
To do this, I took a survey, asking youth pastors to list their practices and why they do them. I got a smaller-than-expected response, but it confirmed what I suspected. Most youth groups use teaching, bible-reading worship, prayer, small group discussion, and games weekly or close to it. There is little presence of traditional liturgical practices, and the annual rhythms and celebrations match up with the school year rather than church calendar. In questions about goals, there was a heavy emphasis on relationships, again aligning with my research into current youth ministry literature.
What I found most fascinating about the results was that most youth pastors could easily report why teaching, bible-reading, worship, and small group discussion contributed to their discipleship goals, yet not one articulated how games fit into their goals, though they are almost universally used weekly, and many youth pastors said they put on fun events and programs annually. From my experience, if students are asked to look back on their favorite parts of the year in youth ministry, chances are they are won’t say the sermon series or time of prayer, but the overnighter where they stayed up all night playing dodgeball, or the park day when the youth pastor got pied in the face. Those in youth ministry know from experience that these games often take up the most resources and time, so why can’t we say why we do them? I highlight this not because I think we should cut out games and all the crazy youth ministry events, but because I think we need to better consider how these are forming youth since they are so vital to youth ministry: If we are so eager to reach out and build incarnational relationships with students, how can we do that through games?
I suggest in my application that we consider relationships not the end of youth ministry, but as a liturgy in itself. We must remember that we are introducing them to Jesus, so youth pastors using an incarnational model can be dialogue partners with youth, revealing who God is through their relational “communicative acts.” For ministry without creeds, dialogue is the confession of youth ministry, emerging through the liturgy of relationship when ministers interweave gospel truth into youth culture: “Wise contextual witness that moves beyond purposeful presence to speaking about the story amongst young people needs to be employed or rediscovered.”[Smith, Desiring, 234] The move from presence is key because “speaking about the story” is how teenagers hear the explicit gospel, to reject or accept.[Dean, Almost Christian, 191] Pastors admirably pursuing ‘place-sharing’ from Root’s model must consider how they can speak the story through established practices and disciple young people into worship. It may not be helpful or realistic to introduce traditional liturgical practices into youth ministry; that has to be up to the youth pastor to decide if the youth group would benefit from declaring creeds, confessing publicly, participating in advent or lent, reciting communal prayers, or any other practice evangelicalism has excluded. What I do think we need to do is carefully examine our practices and how can they really form youth’s heart toward worship. Teaching edifies youth with an accurate view of the God they are worshiping. Communal singing and prayer are expression and declaration of the Spirit’s truth, and a moment to live in relationship with God. Small group discussions help youth understand what they have been taught and consider how they might take it into their daily lives, building Christian character. Relationships, if considered liturgy, communicate Christ’s love and invite youth into relationship with God through Christ. Even games can be used for worship, as they welcome youth into community. The key is keeping sight of the original end of each practice: glorification of the God who invites his people into relationship with him.
There’s certainly more to this question, and I’m sure I will be considering it for the rest of my ministry. It makes me excited to pursue my calling as I continue this degree and attempt to bridge the gap between theological studies and ministry! Thank you so much to those who answered the survey, your input was so helpful and it was inspiring to read how you teach and care for the students in your ministry!
Hopeful Wanderer 