The last 20 years have seen a huge increase in the number of youth workers in British churches — yet at the same time the church is losing young people. Alan Bright wonders if the two are connected.
Ephesians 6.4 is a verse for youth workers. Except that it isn’t. It talks about bringing up children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. For an Old Testament version see Deuteronomy 6.4-9. And the people responsible for bringing up children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord are not youth workers: they are parents — and specifically fathers.
I understand that an aide of George Washington — a great American president — once asked him after church what he thought of the sermon. ‘Well’, he replied, ‘it was fine but the preacher gave us nothing great to do’. Perhaps one reason why we see few men, few fathers, in church and why children turn away from the Lord when they reach their teenage years is because we do not have a biblical view of pastoring young people. We give fathers nothing great to do.
