Youth
ministry has been around the block a few times in the last fifty years. Walk
into your average Catholic Church these days and you can get a pretty quick
feel for their brand of spirituality, and the diversity of brands on the
market. Some take the therapeutic approach, sporting the motto “Healing” and
“Justice” around a Christ-less stone “Serenity Prayer” cross while encouraging
mission trip upon mission trip at the expense of the ever foreign phrase
“Eucharistic adoration.” Others seek personal and authentic relationships with
young people through skits, songs, and the ever-precious goofy youth minister.
Still others have hopped onto the latest train of the New Evangelization,
coasting through Steubenville, Ohio, and Denver, Colorado, holding tight to
their papal crucifix’s. Yet whatever the modus
operandi, all are subject to the good, the bad, and the ugly (the latter
unfortunately most evident in the “California Jesus” and the cover of your most
recent Gather hymnal). Perhaps most startling are the lies that continue to
pervade even the best youth ministry programs in the Church. The following five
are only an outline, the beginning, a sort of “Five Deadly Faults” from which
all others stem from. Yet these have appeared time and again in all of the
aforementioned youth ministries. Enjoy, or perhaps, beware.
The First Lie: Come Down to Their Level
The freshest phrase in
youth ministry, “We need to come down to their level.” Or, better yet, “We need
to be incarnational.” And that means we need to dress like them, speak like
them, dance like them, have fun like them. We should be one of them, and in
doing so lead them to Christ. They will not respond to someone who is different,
standoffish, or too pious. They need someone who is one of them, like Christ
became one of us. Then they can be led to God.
Sounds
convincing. Very convincing. Especially the bit about being “incarnational.”
After all, is that not the goal of the whole human life, the general vocation
of all the faithful, to make Christ incarnate in one’s being? Yes, it is, but
the manner in which this is done has done far more to hurt youth ministry than
to help it. The reality is, young people do not want someone who dresses and
talks like them. They want someone who is different, who stands apart, who is
constant. They want someone who doesn’t blow with every light cultural breeze,
but someone who speaks with the confidence of a Dominican preacher and acts
with the decisiveness of a martyr. That is what young people want. They don’t
care if you wear name brands or funny Jesus-T’s or ripped jeans. In fact, the
people they respond to the most wear Roman collars and full habits. We do not
need to come down. We need to be constant. That is the virtue of magnanimity.
It is not pride, but rather confidence in the work of Christ in your soul. They
do not want someone who is down with them, but rather they want someone who is
up on the mountain, and who inspires them to climb to meet them. They want
someone on Calvary. And even though they may shout at you “Come down to our
level,” it is not because that will help them, but rather because they are
afraid of the difficulty in doing the good. After all, was that not the
challenge of the bystanders on Good Friday—“If you are God, come down…” We hear
it again today, “If you are holy, come down…” Yet we must not come down, but
instead call upon the young people to “Come higher, friend.” For Christ did not
save the world in coming down from the cross. He saved it by inviting us to be
crucified with him.
