When I first moved to Denver, I started volunteering with a youth leadership program run by a ministry dedicated to serving the city’s refugee community. Many of the students’ families had come from Somalia and the Horn of Africa region, and had a home culture vastly different from native Denverites. In addition to the obvious differences in language and food, Somali culture is deeply rooted in traditional Islamic values, with strong emphasis on family, clan, and honor. This stands in sharp contrast with the western, individualistic, progressive culture of Denver.
It was fascinating to watch these young students vacillate between their distinct home culture and their urban, hyper-secular, public school landscape. Over the years, I observed how the teenagers in my group were increasingly influenced by their school environment, which often drew them away from their family values and way of life. Some families became so concerned about these changes that they sent their teenagers back to their home countries for rigorous re-formation through studying the Quran and reintegration into a strict family tribe.
My experience with the refugee community revealed to me the profound influence of urban secularism that shapes the lives and values of teenagers in our city. Christian students face a similar tension between their Christian culture at church and at home versus the secularism that pervades the rest of life.
Living in a hyper-secular environment means that most of students’ daily interactions, messaging, and participation in society are not grounded in Christian belief or practice. Often, students live in a gap between what they experience as “the real world,” (school, media, the internet, their friends) and participation in the Christian community (Sunday mornings, youth group, youth leaders, their parents). They face a strong temptation to accept the world as ultimate reality, and Christianity as strange and irrelevant. One end result can be that when teenagers graduate from high school they may essentially “graduate” from church and following Jesus, too.
Pursuing Theological Depth
As a youth minister, I knew I needed to help our students adopt the gospel of Jesus and Scripture as their main interpretive grid, by which they view the rest of life. This is where theological depth in youth ministry becomes essential. Depth is a key word because it describes something that penetrates beyond the surface in order to enact real growth and transformation.
Borrowing an image from Jesus in Mark 8:15 (and all of you who started making sourdough during the pandemic), real formation functions like yeast. You don’t sprinkle yeast on the top of dough to make bread rise. You have to dissolve the yeast and plunge it deep into the mixture so it can spread throughout the whole loaf. Pursuing theological depth with our students means driving the gospel and Scripture into the core of their hearts, so it can work outward into their lives. A heart made new by the death and resurrection of Jesus, flowing with the love and grace of God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, begins to change desires, direct actions, and shape a students’ worldview.
So, how does one pursue this kind of transformational theological depth in youth ministry? By building a theological vision for ministry.
Theological Vision
In Tim Keller’s Center Church, he discusses how to build a theological vision through listening to the Bible and reflecting on one’s cultural setting. He says, “a theological vision is a faithful restatement of the gospel with rich implications for life, ministry, and mission in a type of culture at a moment in history.”
Youth ministers who seek deep transformation in students must build a theological vision that informs their youth programs, not the other way around.
I started by brainstorming and scribbling on a piece of paper every single biblical concept, practice, and theme I could think of that I wanted our students to learn by the time they graduated high school. From there, working alongside our director of children and family ministries, we outlined how we could incorporate those concepts into curriculum, classes, and events over the course of a student’s hypothetical seven-year (6-12th grade) journey in our church.
Since teenagers are always joining our student ministry at different stages with varying degrees of their own theological development, we never make assumptions about a students’ level of knowledge or background. Rather, we aim to continually lead them in God’s Word through expository teaching and key developmental milestones throughout middle and high school.
Expository Teaching
As the Apostle Paul was saying goodbye to the Ephesian church elders, he said, “Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:26-27). The key words here are “whole counsel.” Expositional teaching prevents us from picking and choosing only certain parts of the Bible to teach, or feeling the pressure to always come up with a topic that is most relevant to our students. Those approaches limit the scope of our students’ theological grounding.
Much like our bodies need a variety of nutrients through various kinds of foods in order to grow, our goal is that the whole counsel of God feeds and nourishes their hearts to receive God’s grace and learn to love and follow him with their heart, soul, and strength (Deut. 6:5). I practice a “whole counsel” ministry through building teaching series from the Old Testament in the fall semester, the New Testament in the spring semester, and an Epistle for an inductive Bible study over the summer. I choose each book of the Bible through prayer, observation, and reflection on the state of our students’ faith. After selecting the Scripture passage, we engage in weekly teachings that draw meaning and application from the text.
Developmental Milestones Structure
Building a theological vision helped us create formational classes and experiences around key developmental milestones in the life of a student. Right now, we have three of these classes we call (in the most-Colorado vernacular possible) Basecamp, Passage, and Summit.
Basecamp is for sixth graders and helps them transition from children’s church to attending the main service and our student ministry on Sunday nights. The curriculum overviews the meaning and value behind the various elements of a church service including singing, preaching, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, etc. We also encourage critical engagement with God’s Word through adult mentor-led small groups instead of the knowledge and object-based learning common in elementary classes.
Passage is for eighth graders to learn the major doctrines of the Christian faith while providing an at-home discipleship environment with a mentor. The classroom environment focuses on foundational teachings such as the Trinity, salvation, eschatology, and hermeneutics. Meanwhile students are spending time with a mentor parent, or other adult spiritual mentor, going through spiritually formative experiences such as reading the Gospel of Luke together, tracing their family’s spiritual lineage, crafting vision and values, and practicing sabbath rest. The hope is that, through this pivotal semester, they will embrace their faith as their own rather than identifying as Christian solely because of their family background.
Finally, Summit is a monthly dinner group for 12th graders to help them prepare for the confronting questions and challenges they will encounter after high school. The class explores apologetics topics such as the reliability of the Bible, major world religions, biblical sexual ethics, hell and judgment, and the problem of evil. At the same time, we encourage them to implement various spiritual practices into their life such as meditating on Scripture, prayer, fasting, sabbath, generosity, and being a healthy member of a church. The goal is to launch seniors with the mindset and tools to be life-long followers of Jesus.
Hearts Change by the Gospel
It is vital to keep in mind that . One of the lies of the modern age is that we can solve all our problems with more information. Moreover, theological depth isn’t about life-hacking with habits and practices to spit out a Jesus-product at age 18. Rather, it is about pouring the love of God into the hearts of students as we pray that God will transform them into the image of Christ. It’s about allowing the gospel to saturate their inner-being, so that they walk in the newness of life Christ purchased for them in his death and resurrection (Rom. 6:4-5).
As I’m sure you can tell, I am someone whose heart is stirred by deep study in God’s Word, reading academic commentaries, and talking about theology. As a result, I can be tempted to think that God will automatically bless my efforts to faithfully pass on the doctrines of the faith. However, the great aim of theological depth is to point students to the cross of Christ. Jesus is the only one with the power to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). Jesus must be at the beginning, center, and end of all theological development. For it is only the work of Christ that can equip students to walk through the difficulties of middle and high school in the joy and security of God, while living with assurance of their future in his eternal kingdom.
Theological depth in our youth ministries is an inroad to help students draw more deeply from the well of grace God has given to us in the gospel of Jesus. “For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Eph 2:8)—not through inductive Bible study!
It is essential that I remember this for myself, too. As youth ministers, we must draw from the same grace we seek to pass on, finding our ultimate hope and significance in the gospel of Jesus, not our skill as teachers.
If you’re looking for community and coaching in gospel-centered youth ministry, consider Rooted’s youth and family ministry mentor cohorts beginning in January.
