Veteran youth & children's pastor, now serving as pastor to college students at College Church of the Nazarene on MidAmerica campus
YWJ: Do you have any other insights about youth ministry in the 21st century? What are you seeing?Stevens: We have realized lately that spiritual development is a life-span thing. So we have begun partnering with the other folks around here. The Children’s team as well as the Young Adult team and us have begun to look at spiritual development as an issue that spans all of life.
Curtiss: What I’m seeing is a deep dissatisfaction of youth pastors with the church and their desire for kingdom orientation rather than denominational orientation. And I think that is true with kids as well. This is tough for me to say, because I work for a denomination, but as far as students are concerned, they care that the poor are reached, cared for and loved. They care about kingdom issues. But, denominational loyalty for them is pretty much is out the door.
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: A lot has been made in the last several years about relationships. Ministry has always equaled relationships, whether through small groups or just hanging out. But the end product of relationships has to be making disciples. I’d love to see every student have an adult coach. We’d like to see adult followers of Christ passing on this faith to the next generation.
Berger: We are wrestling with the whole issue of young adult ministry. We have been attempting to find ways to engage our young adults with the justice issue.
We have a model we call “2MJ squared” (2MJ2). We put these young adults in a “live in” community, like you see on those reality shows on TV. We wanted to give them a chance to not just talk about racial reconciliation but also to live it. They might serve all day in a soup kitchen or go to a homeless shelter. Then later ask, why did we do this, what did we learn as well as how can we take what we’ve learned in college and reflect the kingdom of God better.