During my last season of coaching high school girls’ basketball in 2002, something changed in the way I approached urban youth ministry. Prior to that time, I saw urban youth ministry mostly from the perspective of what I brought to young people.
In various ways I brought to them the gospel of Jesus Christ. Bible studies, large group gatherings, mission trips, and campus visits were all methods for outreach and discipleship. I don’t say this as if to present these areas as not being vital to youth ministry. It’s just that for many years I saw urban youth ministry only from the perspective of what I brought to young people, not what I could do on their behalf. I understood urban youth ministry to include engaging youth in justice issues based on biblical principles, but I didn’t see youth themselves as a justice issue.
During my last year of coaching high school basketball, I had a player on my team whom I will call Rachel. She was a transfer student from another school who brought a lot of baggage with her. She had no father in the home. Her mother was very ill and simply couldn’t make it to most of our games.
Rachel was able to maintain good enough grades to stay academically eligible to play on the team, but she struggled to get many grades above a C. I remember talking to the athletic director one day about Rachel. I told him how important I thought it was for Rachel to go on to college somewhere after high school. He responded by telling me not to waste my time because she wasn’t college material anyway.
In my car on the way home that night, I remembered another youth from my first year of coaching girls’ basketball. Danielle had been kicked out of school for being involved in multiple fights. She was now going to an alternative school and dealing with a number of issues in her life. I approached the principal of the school she had been kicked out of and found out that a student could attend an alternative school and still participate in athletics at the local high school if approved by the principal.
The principal was totally against it, but I told him I wasn’t ready to give up on Danielle yet. I also told him if she didn’t make progress academically at the alternative school and if her behavior remained negative, I would not let her continue to play on the team. To make a long story short, Danielle gave her life to Christ that year, was able to enroll back into the local high school the next year, improved her grades, and then graduated. This might not have happened if I had not spoken up for her.
I met Ronnie the same year I decided to help Rachel. Ronnie was a kid with a very abusive mother. Now living in the foster care system, his one advocate was his social worker. She told me about an opportunity he had to get a job that summer but that he needed support to prepare. I took him to the mall and bought him his first dress shirt and tie and then began to work with the social worker to coach him on interview skills.
In the cases of Rachel, Danielle, and Ronnie, they needed someone who would believe in them. They needed someone who would speak to other adults on their behalf when they weren’t being listened to. They needed someone who could see in them qualities they couldn’t see in themselves.
Urban youth ministry is about evangelism and discipleship, but it should also be about speaking on behalf of those who aren’t being empowered to speak for themselves. Many youth feel abandoned, neglected, and/or ignored. They feel as if they’re being talked to but not listened to. They need to hear the good news of the gospel and grow as disciples, but they also need advocacy.
While youth advocacy is an issue that should be addressed in youth ministries everywhere, there are some unique issues faced by urban youth that make advocacy vital in the inner city. Under-resourced school systems, homelessness, families dependent on government subsidies, and high crime are issues that show up in inner cities and impact urban youth more often than their suburban counterparts.
Jesus said that as we address the issues of the sick, those in prison, and the hungry, it’s as if we are doing it for Him. I’m realizing more and more that in order to be an effective minister to urban youth, I must be aware of issues in their worlds that impact them.
Urban youth ministers must see advocacy as a vital element of their ministries. We must care about what’s going on in their schools. We must care if they don’t have adequate healthcare. We must care if they’re being bused to school from a homeless shelter, and we must care if they’re living in an abusive home.
Youth advocacy may mean that we have to tell parents, teachers, and coaches things they don’t want to hear in terms of how they are teaching, treating, and viewing the young people around them. Youth advocacy must not just be the work of the youth minister but all of those adults in the urban church who see youth through the eyes of God.
_____________________
EFREM SMITH is pastor of The Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis, Minn., an itinerant speaker with Kingdom Building Ministries, a member of the YS Core training team, the author of Raising Up Young Heroes, and a contributing editor for YOUTHWORKER JOURNAL.
