Young people continue to leave our churches, although the rate seems to have slowed.
The remedy we came up with was to appoint youth workers / leaders / ministers to our staff teams in the hope that they would solve the problem. There are now quite a few of those people who have completed ten years of active service and are beginning to ask the question, ‘What next?’
Perhaps they shouldn’t even be asking the question — perhaps they should just keep going until the end of their days, but, because cultural relevance is often given higher currency than gifting in ministry, many of these people are looking to move out of their work into either adult pastorates or secular employment. We are now losing a very valuable resource — a group of experienced youth ministers. After ten years of employment many of them have young children and simply cannot live on the packages they are offered. By this time they are often, at least, the second most experienced member of staff and know the church well, but, because the vast majority are not ordained, they are not seen as being in a senior role. As I heard a church leader once say — ‘he’s only the youth leader’.
