Martin Saunders - The Think Tank: 100 Adaptable Discussion Starters to Get Teens Talking

Text copyright 2010 Martin Saunders
This edition copyright 2016 Lion Hudson

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ISBN 978 0 85721 681 6
e-ISBN 978 0 85721 751 6

First edition 2010

Acknowledgments
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan and Hodder & Stoughton Limited. All rights reserved. The NIV and New International Version trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790

Cover design: Todd Oliver (www.toli.co.uk)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Contents

For Joel and Naomi

Preface

Eight years is a long time in youth ministry. When I wrote the first edition of The Ideas Factory , the first of my two books of discussion starters, the economy was still looking pretty good, wed just welcomed over 2,000 youth workers to a dedicated national event, and there was an air of optimism all around.

Quite a lot has changed since then.

The financial crisis, and ensuing recession, has had a devastating impact on the sector; certainly in the UK, and probably a lot further afield. Churches decided that the first cut they would make would be the youth worker; others merged the distinct roles of youth worker and childrens worker together in a sort of crazy cost-saving fudge. Christian organizations had to radically downsize their staff numbers; some disappeared altogether.

Outside the Church, the story was even more brutal. Youth work roles melted away in many towns, often leaving no youth services available to the young people left behind. One major British city replaced all of its statutory youth work provision with a one-off 1 million grant fund for the voluntary groups that would have to stand in the gap. That money is of course long gone; the need remains and has indeed intensified.

Although voluntary groups (of which faith-based organizations such as churches make up the vast majority) have been relied on to fill these huge sinkholes in provision, theyve not always found financial support easy to come by. Thats been especially true for Christian organizations, especially those that list the promotion of the Christian faith as an explicit aim.

So while the needs of young people havent lessened, our ability to meet them has been seriously undermined by the financial picture. And while a sort of recovery may mean that churches find the pressure on their coffers slowly easing, the continuing commitment from the governments to austerity and funding cuts suggests the burden on the voluntary sector is only going to increase.

Thats not necessarily bad news of course; local communities and councils will increasingly look to the church as a provider of youth and childrens activities. It is, however, something were going to have to get our heads around, and fast (for a basic guide to setting up church-based youth provision, check out my book Youth Work From Scratch ).

The seismic shift in the financial picture isnt the only change weve seen. In a related story, the number of people leaving youth ministry appears to hugely outweigh the numbers incoming. The workforce seems to have dwindled; the major youth ministry events in the UK are now attracting closer to 500 youth workers a long way now from 2,000. Thats educated anecdote for now (although at time of writing, Youthscape is currently undertaking a major piece of research into the numbers of youth workers and young people involved in the UK church check out www.youthscape.co.uk for details) but theres no doubt that while the numbers of people enrolled in youth ministry training courses has fallen dramatically, weve also seen many youth ministers both local church workers and higher-profile national specialists leaving the sector. Many of the older heads have moved on; there doesnt seem to be a huge amount of new blood coming in in employed terms at least.

What this almost certainly means is that youth ministry is becoming slowly de-professionalized, and in many places being handed over to volunteers. Again, this is not necessarily bad news, provided those volunteers can be found, envisioned and trained properly. Indeed, as a reader of this book you may well be one of the new emerging army of volunteer youth workers. Hello if so. Hooray for you. Youre the cavalry!

At the risk of sounding gloomier still, weve also seen a change in the cultural temperature since the beginning of the last decade. In the past, most young people grew up in homes that were either sympathetic to Christianity, or else at least ambivalent about it. Now my seven-year-old returns from a playdate to tell me that her friends parents have been explaining why her faith is nonsense. Many children grow up in atheist homes which make them suspicious of the churchs motives when we try to engage them.

Its no surprise then that were also encountering young people who have fixed (and antagonistic) views on Christianity earlier too. The New Atheist and secular humanist movements are beginning to have a powerful impact on young minds; the questions we face from young people are often harder, better researched and designed to trip us up. Again, thats not necessarily a bad thing; rather a young person who wants to engage on the question of faith than one who simply cant be bothered.

So a lot has changed. And this heavy combination of blows to youth ministrys gut can feel pretty hard to take. Its not all bad news though as Ive suggested, and its not All Change either.

For a start, and most importantly of all, we still serve the same unchanging, everlasting and undefeatable God. Hes not finished with young people, or with the church that seeks to serve them. He is at work in our communities, schools and families in ways that we cant see and might never know. His mission is unrelenting, whether we choose to join in with it or not. And when we do, amazing things continue to happen.

In the last few unsettling years Ive heard stories of near-revival; of the power of God breaking out among a group of young people. Ive marvelled at the transforming lives of the young people in my own church, some of whom are among the most incredible world-changing, dead-to-self, hope-drenched wonders Ive ever encountered. And Ive watched as in the UK the Soul Survivor youth festivals have continued to attract over 20,000 young people every Summer, and each year more than a thousand of them make a commitment to follow Christ. Stop and read that again, because its easy to skip over that extraordinary figure. Even in the context Ive described, over a thousand British teenagers are choosing to put their hope in a man who lived, died and rose again 2,000 years ago. Jesus isnt dead, and the faith of his followers isnt either.