The Church Answers Podcast
#152 Where Have All the Student Ministers Gone?
Welcome to the Church Answers Podcast presented by Chaney & Associates. Chaney & Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here's the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. I know you don't want to hear me sing a 60 song. I know I've done a lot of 60 songs on podcasts. I know you're tired of hearing them. But in my mind, as a song by Peter Paul and Mary, one of the great folk groups of the 60s, where have all the flowers gone? Long time, Bessie. Where have all the flowers gone? Long time ago. I'm not going to continue to recite it to you, and I'm not going to sing it to you. But I just thought about that song with the title of this particular podcast. Where have all the student ministers gone? And I have a book coming out in about three or four months from the release of this podcast called Where Have All The Church Members Gone. So we're on that kind of Peter, Paul, and Mary theme of Where Have They Gone. Where have all the flowers gone? Was a piece protest song? And whatever your view is on War and Peace and that particular thing, it was still a good song. I love you. Great harmony with those three, the two men and the woman. But you're not here to hear me talk about 60s, and if you are, I can talk about it all day long. But we're going to talk about where have all the student ministers gone? Now, that's a reality. There is a shortage of student or youth ministers. There's a shortage of those who have age-grade responsibility for those who are middle school and high school age. We're going to talk about the why behind it. And it's not necessarily a solution, but at least you need to understand what is going on. And we're going to talk about why we love Chaney and Associates, the accounting firm for the church. They've been around for over 21 years. Everything's in the cloud. Everything is safe. They do your accounting and payroll services. They are the accounting firm for the church. From small churches to church plants to mega churches, they serve them all. They've got you covered. Okay, where have all the student ministers gone? Let's talk about why there is a shortage. One of the reasons that there's a shortage is many people who went into student ministry in the past now go into church planting. I'm not going to say it's the cool factor. I'm just going to say it's the desired factor. Many, many of these people who did student ministry now are attracted to church planting. They see it as kind of the new area of excitement and enthusiasm. Love the fact that we have a lot of church planters. Love the fact that many young people went into church planting. But many of these people who went into church planning would have been in student ministry. And once again, I'm talking about student ministry being really middle school and high school. Whatever grades that is in your community and your school system, I'm talking about that age group. And quite frankly, I'm hearing again and again and again that we can't find a student minister, whether they're looking for someone part-time or full-time, there's a distinct shortage of them. So where have all the student ministers gone? Some of them are planting churches. It's good that they're planting churches. It's bad that we have fewer student ministers for our churches today. Another place that they have gone is a position called family ministry. And that basically means it's combining several areas. Like it could be children's ministry, it could be then student ministry and maybe something with even the parents of them. It's in other words, there's just this combination of different areas. And that combination has taken away, again, it may be the right thing to do, but it's taken away from the specific age group responsibility of middle school and high school. So one of the reasons that student ministers are gone is they're planting churches. That's good. Another reason that student ministers are gone is that there are more involved in family ministries, which is broader, which in most cases is broader, which gives us the failure to focus upon that specific age group at that specific time. So where have all the church members gone? Where have all the student ministers gone? Where have all the flowers gone? I think I've stopped doing that. So church planning, family ministries, a number of people who would normally be in student ministry have been attracted to church revitalization. And it kind of like church planning and family ministry. I am grateful for these young leaders who want to go into churches that need revitalization. I am grateful that they're going into church planning or family ministry. I'm grateful that they see a church that is barely hanging on and they want to be a part of God's work to bring life, to revitalize those churches. And that not too many years ago, nobody wanted to go to a church that was doing poorly or maybe even dying. Now we have more and more of these young people, young adults who would normally be in student ministry said I'm going to go revitalize the church. I'm grateful for that. But once again, those who've gone into church planning, the broader area of family ministries, those who've gone into church revitalization, many of them would have normally been student ministers or youth ministers. So if you in your church are having trouble finding this person, you're not alone. I hear a lot of time from churches that are looking for that student ministry. Now, let me tell you why this is so critical. The number of people who become followers of Christ before the age of 18 is somewhere between 60 and 80%, depending on the study that you look at. Now just just grasp that for a moment. From a statistical point of view, the chance of someone becoming a Christian after the age of 18 diminishes significantly. Now I'm talking from a statistical point of view, not from God's point of view. But we have as many as eight out of ten people who are becoming followers of Christ before the age of 18. Many of them during the children's ministry time, particularly the older children as well. The fewer people that we have leading these ministries, the more we're risking the evangelization of a generation. And if we don't reach them while they're young, the chances of reaching them have diminished greatly. Once again, I affirm that God can do and reach whomever he wants. But I also acknowledge that more people become a Christian before the age of 18, some of them even as young before the age of 12, than other ages. And so when we begin to have a scarcity, a positive student ministers and children's ministers as well, we are seeing the potential fall off in the evangelization of a generation at their most receptive time to the gospel. There are many reasons why I'm concerned about student ministers not being available these days. But I guess for me, the number one reason is that we're missing an opportunity to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with those who need to hear it and are ready to hear it. Now is there a solution to this? There is no single easy solution. I would say this to many church leaders, the more that you can do to raise up these type of people within your own church. Maybe they won't come on your staff full time, but they can be part-time, they can be bivocational, they can be co-vocational. The more opportunities you have to raise them up within the church, I think the better it'll take place. And it may be that someone will beat your student ministry part-time, bivocational, co-vocational part two or three years, and then someone else comes along. But right now there is a scarcity of student ministers available for churches, both part-time and full-time. And as a result, we're missing in some ways the opportunity to evangelize an entire generation. My prayer is that more people will step into the world of student ministry. Maybe even if you are a layperson and you have not considered vocational ministry, maybe in some sense as God will be calling you to this ministry. Where have all the student ministers gone? It's a great question. We better get it answered pretty quickly. Thank you for being a part of the church answers podcast, YouTube, your favorite podcasting out. Hey, if you are on YouTube, subscribe, just hit that subscribe. 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