I was leading an on-site recently, where we were talking about nurturing the lives of children in congregations, when a participant reflected that “We often make these broad statements about wanting to bring up young people and then never get to know them; proximity is important when passing a torch.” 

I almost choked on my coffee trying to stifle a laugh. He’s right, and I’ll say more about how right he is, but the image in my head of someone throwing a flaming torch into a distant crowd of disinterested teenagers and then being mad that they weren’t grateful was hilarious to me. I think this participant (who was very confused by my laughter) was right, without close proximity and active consent, passing a torch is just throwing a flaming object at someone. 

We were spending time at the on-site talking about what it might look like to engage young people in a more integrated and organic way, in a way that invited them more fully into the life of the church. He highlighted that we tend to think of young people as a category and not necessarily as individuals. We lament (or celebrate) that “young people want this” or “young people need that” without unpacking the reality that young people’s needs, desires, fears, and longings when it comes to faith and spirituality are as varied as adults are. There are some patterns among age groups, (young people these days tend to be justice-minded, isolated, and resistant to one-size-fits-all offerings) but just because those things are true on average for the aggregate doesn’t mean they are particularly helpful in understanding the individual hopes and fears of the specific young people around you. 

When we think about engaging young people more deeply in the life of the church, we are tempted to look back to the last thing we believe worked, the youth group model of the late twentieth century, in which many of us (myself included) found faith and belonging, and be frustrated that it doesn’t seem to be working as well anymore. The world has changed, and the church has changed, the model that was so effective for so many of us is dwindling in impact. 

What is helpful to remember is that while the youth group model may be the last thing that worked, it isn’t the only thing that has ever worked, and that there’s no reason to believe that that model was a Fukuyamaian end-state of ministry evolution.¹ In a post-pandemic church landscape, we have returned often to smaller, more intimate gatherings, reprioritized personal connection over attractional models, and explored social entrepreneurship as both a financial and spiritual path forward. In the same way, we can look back to faith formation models based on apprenticeship, mentorship, and deeply integrated intergenerational community as our new-old way.. 

Instead of relying on the law of large numbers to churn out at least some young people equipped and called for the work of ministry, we are now in a space where we must return to the faithful, slow work of cultivating those gifts and talents in the young people we already know. 

Looking back to the metaphor that first made me chuckle, if we throw the torch to a youth ministry of 100 teenagers, there’s a good chance that at least one of them will want to reach out and catch it. If there’s only one or two young people around, it’s a lot easier for them to just step to the side and let the torch hit the ground. 

We have to draw close enough to actually pass our torches, and our young people have to trust us enough to take it. We have to get in real relationships with the young people around us, know their names and their passions and their dreams, and then invite them into the work. This isn’t coddling, or any of the other derisive terms adults sometimes use to demean the work of meeting young people where they are, it’s just discipleship, done faithfully. 

After meeting young people where they are, getting to know them, and letting them into our world, then we have to do the scariest thing of all, we have to actually pass them our torch. We have to let them lead, before they’re really ready to take it on, and before we’re really ready to give it up. As Ministry Incubators leaders Mark DeVries and Trey Wince spoke of in their Duke Divinity article on keychain leadership, the church has a bad habit of treating people like they aren’t worthy of real leadership well into their 30s, an age far past when the same people have taken over significant leadership roles in their professional lives. Shouldn’t the church be the place where people get to lead first? Where we let people experiment with leading? Many of the disciples were in their late teens and early twenties when they were called; Jesus passed over many more qualified and experienced leaders because he decided these fishermen and students were the ones he would hand the keys to. 

He knew them, he had drawn close enough to them to know their strengths, their temptations, and see their calling as it unfolded in front of them. Notably, it took the much older and more established Paul a lot longer to catch on. 

So this week, how can you draw closer to the young people in your community? How can you start to close the gap between you and the people you would like one day to pass the torch to? Here’s a few concrete steps (drawn from my friends at the on-site)

1. Know their names. Take the opportunity to learn the names of your young people, even if they don’t know yours. Once you know them, use their names every time you see them, it means more than you can imagine. 
2. Talk good about them. Whenever you get the opportunity, proactively find opportunities to praise them, not just for what they are good at (sports, arts, school) but who they are. If you think they are funny or smart or kind, tell them, both to their faces and behind their backs. 
3. Invite them into your world. Young people desperately want to be taken seriously. Talk to them about things you’re working through (as appropriate). Not sure which hymn to use, or whether to change the order of activities in evening programming? Ask them what they would do. Not only will they feel trusted, but they will probably have insight you would have never thought of. 

Begin to close the gap, and you’ll find that young people will walk closer to you, and, in time, that torch will light, and be brighter than you could ever imagine. 

1. Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992) argued that with the end of the Cold War, Western Liberal Democracy had emerged as the final evolution of political and economic history. His theory was hugely influential at the time, but has since been largely discredited, or at least seriously critiqued. ↩︎