Over the past 10 years, our youth staff has noticed a significant shift in youth culture. 10 years ago, students would gather to link their Xbox 360s and play Halo with 15 of their best friends. Students would watch sporting events, go to movies, or grab dinner together.
Now, our students’ academics and extracurriculars dominate their lives. If they play sports, they often have morning workouts that are “optional,” watch film for future games during school, and have two to three hour practices after school. If students are involved in theater, they will be home from rehearsal around 7p.m. every night for three months.
In this ever-changing culture, our ministry strives to follow the example of Christ. When we look closely at the life of Jesus, we see that he entered the darkness of this world on our behalf to bring us life. John 1 tells us that Jesus left the comfort of Heaven with his Father to come down and tabernacle among his people.
Jesus initiated: he took on human flesh without us asking him to do so. Jesus identified: he was 100% man and 100% God. Jesus invaded culture: he brought light to darkness. Jesus invites us along to do the same with our teenagers: to initiate, identity, and invade, calling them out of darkness and into life.
Initiate
We initiate with students all the time: texting, calling, seeing them at school and extracurriculars. Truthfully, when we have outreach events and have visitors fill out “raffle” cards, we do not care about the raffle. The only reason we give away raffle prizes is to gain phone numbers of new students. Even when students refuse to respond, we initiate by writing letters or calling their parents. Jesus took the initiative, so we do the same. We do not wait and see who shows up at different events, programs, or services, we go after them.
Identify
We identify with students and ask hard questions to see how the gospel applies to their daily lives. I’ve always been bothered when parents make light of middle school relationships as if it is not a big deal at all. It might seem silly that a 7th grade girl is “heartbroken” after a two week relationship, but Jesus cares deeply about her hurting heart. Therefore, we do our best to try and identify with how she might be feeling.
Jesus, who was tempted in every way without sin, knows what it is like to struggle. He welcomes us in to identify with us in our pain. With social media, we’ve found that we are able to identify by taking some of the biggest social media trends and making them personal. Our staff might look foolish attempting to dance, throwing plungers at each other, or running through the church in strange costumes, but we want to identify with what is going on in their culture.
Invade
We also strive to invade their culture. This is why we have outreach events such as dodgeball parties or crawfish boils with a band. Part of invading a culture takes knowing and loving a culture. The temptation is to say, “I’m so frustrated these students can never come to anything because of sports, school, and extracurriculars.” However, knowing what students are excited about provides opportunities for discipleship and engagement.
For example, church-league basketball has become a huge attraction for many high school students. Instead of complaining about guys playing basketball, I decided to jump in and coach a team. The culture says recreational basketball is to let out steam, be serious about basketball, and compete. My team’s culture has slowly shifted to an opportunity to bring others into a community that laughs, has fun, and balls out. This may seem really small, but it has provided countless opportunities for conversations, relationships, evangelism, and discipleship, all because we saw something the culture was doing and jumped in.
A Light in a Dark Place
And yet, our ministry was missing a presence in a dark place: social media. After a quick look through other churches’ social media platforms, we started to see that to most churches, social media was just another way to send out information.
My temptation is to teach about how TikTok is from the Devil and cannot be redeemed. However, if our students are in this space, we must go where they are and attempt to identify and invade their culture. Our journey this year, albeit small, has been to use social media in two ways: to be a light in a dark place and to be a visible presence.
First, we strive to be a light in a dark place: our staff spends at least 20 minutes looking through the trending sounds in order to find one that we can redeem, whether that means committing to a #rushtok dance or the latest TikTok challenge.Although this process can be frustrating, we’ve seen an increase of responses from parents, volunteers, and students.
For example, we have found that many students are self-diagnosing themselves with anxiety or depression based on TikTok. Some might see this as helpful. However, this can also lead to misdiagnoses, incorrect labeling, and false hope. While we may not be able to control what else is on TikTok, we can control how our ministry talks about anxiety. One of our dreams is to start putting biblical content on our TikTok to combat these false narratives. Even if it results in only one student having a better understanding of what the Bible says about anxiety, it will be worth it.
A Visible Presence
Fifteen years ago, when students would talk about youth group on a Thursday morning at school, we would consider that a huge win. We created a fun culture that was consistently teaching the Word of God, worshiping the Lord, and creating shared experiences that people wanted to be a part of.
In our current culture, students are able to see those shared experiences (maybe with a healthy dose of FOMO) every Friday by looking at our “10 Second Summary”: each Friday, we post a fun, quick 10 second summary of what happened at youth group. We attempt to cram at least 30 pictures, a few videos, and fun music into a quick recap to let parents see what happened, let students see themselves, and others see what they missed out on!
Simply put, with all of the evil that exists on TikTok, we are honored to share what the Lord is doing in and through students in our ministry. Maybe TikTok isn’t for your ministry, but I’d invite you to consider where your ministry might redeem the culture or how the Lord might use social media for the betterment of his Kingdom.
Ultimately, we long for the day when we will no longer fight battles against social media. Until then, we continue to pursue relationships with students, remembering that we are not called to be successful in ministry, but to be faithful. I pray that you would find great encouragement in joining the ministry of Jesus as we initiate, identify, and invade for his glory.
