Youth ministry as a professional vocation has been around for about 50 years or so - many tracing its roots back to the 1970's. Prior to this, there were youth clubs at schools and in the community, but for the church at large, it was in this time that youth ministry as we know it today began taking shape.
I've been involved in youth ministry going back to my days as a youth since the late 1990's. From my earliest experiences going to a youth retreat and attending youth group, I've felt drawn towards youth ministry. As I've gotten older and followed my call into youth ministry, I've seen it at its heights up to where we are today. And where we seem to be is at a crossroads, a crucial moment of will or won't youth ministry survive. It doesn't take long for you to find books, articles, and statistics that point to the decline of youth ministry from its previous glory.
Honestly, those of us involved with youth ministry don't need those things as we have experienced this decline personally in some shape or form. And now with the continued pandemic, it's even harder to tell what remains of our youth ministries and what will come in the years ahead.
There are numerous books all dealing with this decline, and so many have great insight and ideas on how best to move forward in youth ministry for the age to come. I've tried to add to this growing list by focusing my book on the expansion of what theologies are shared with youth during their years in youth group.
In my almost 20 years of practicing and observing youth ministry, I've seen an overwhelming majority of youth ministries regardless of denominational affiliation pull from the same theology, something I call DRAFT (Dominant Regional Affluent Folklore Theology). I sense that in this growing trend of younger people leaving the faith behind, there are so many who do so because their ideas of the faith no longer align with what they believe to be the theology of Christianity.
But Christianity has many theologies, and if these theologies were somehow a part of our teaching and events, what might that do for some who only know one way of believing, thinking, DRAFT of the Christian faith. For me, the goal of youth ministry is to help younger people discover a faith of their own, and one way of helping them is to introduce them to more than just what we (as youth workers and churches) may believe theologically. To help them expand on not only our thinking but what others have thought and what has helped them in their Christian journey.
In the book, I explore the implications of an implicit DRAFT theology taught in most youth ministries and have created a field guide using non-DRAFT theologies like process, liberation, feminist, and radical theology that can help younger people in the church discover a faith of their own.