Record Live Podcast

  Hi there, everyone. I'm Jared. And I'm Zenita. We are your hosts of Record Live, a podcast where we talk about church, faith, and living well.

We believe as followers of Jesus, faith is more than just a set of beliefs. It's a way of life, something we put into practice.

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 Welcome back to another episode of Record Live. It's great to have Dr. Peter Williams with us today. Peter, you've done a study about youth ministry, so

we're

very excited to

get into that, today. But firstly, just tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, sure. I've been in Adventist education for my whole career. I'm probably a little bit of an anomaly, in that I've taught primary, secondary, and tertiary education, so, the last 12 years I've been at Avondale. University, where this research project was undertaken. And at the moment I'm actually transitioning across into a new role.

So I'm at North New South Wales schools. I'm in a general manager role. So that's, a bit of my context always within Adventist education and young family, all primary aged kids, three of them. So yeah. Full on at work, full on at home.

You're juggling a number of things, it sounds like then. You, conducted a study recently that was in the record and you've also written a book about, I believe.

Can you tell us a little bit about what this study was, why you did it, and yeah, just what it involved? .

So, one of my colleagues at Avondale University at the time, , Professor Tony Williams. was the originator of the project. He had, been to church, was driving home with his wife. She pointed out that there was a youth congress that was going to be taking place in Kassel, Germany.

And she pointed out more because, they'd been there in recent years. But Tony, kind of picked it up and thought, Oh, that'd make an interesting research project. So, the intent of the project was to go to Kassel, attend the World Youth Congress, talk to as many people as possible, from ideally all of the different kind of geographic regions of the World Church, and, to have an opportunity to kind of hear the lived experience of youth ministry.

So that was a big part of it, is, you Hearing from their perception, hearing their experience, the lived experience process. We had to jump through some typical processes to be able to work with it in a research context. But that was the intent and that was the group.

So there were people in youth ministry, department directors and all sorts of people who had practiced, was the key thing. , they'd worked in youth ministry, developed youth ministry. Roughly how many participants did you have in the study? And what was, you said they were from all around the world.

But. What? What does that mean?

Yep so there was 13 world, divisions and we had representatives from every single one of those that we interviewed. So as far as participants wise, the study is actually what we refer to as a mixed method study. So there was both a quantitative component and a qualitative.

So the qualitative component really rested on the focus groups and the interviews that we did. So there was about, I think there was close to 50 participants, for that. So that allowed us to drill down a little bit, but we'd done some higher order stuff that was quantitative in nature. And we'd done a survey that had I can't remember off the top of my head, but close to 300 responses.

So we use the survey to inform, what it was that we wanted to draw out from , our interviewees and the respondents on the ground in castle. but as you said, yeah, they came from pathfinder backgrounds, adventurers, youth ministry, as far as the church arms, people that have been in, yeah, youth ministry context, both in school.

And another more churchland context. So that was who the group was.

Yeah, I saw it was described as a warts and all study. Is that what you mean by that? The quantitativeness?

Well, I didn't choose the term warts and all, but the lived experience and the fact that these guys, you know, they experienced challenges, they experienced, difficulties.

But yeah. Very much from my perspective found that those were outweighed by the benefit of bringing people to Christ and walking side by side with these young people through their their formation years.

Interesting. Can you just, I guess, elaborate on that a little bit more? Like, what was some of those common difficulties that they're experiencing?

Yeah, lots of different challenges. I can speak broadly. Culture did play a big influence, in the different places, experience different things, because obviously it's within the context of what's asked of them in their various divisions and conferences. I think probably. A couple just to bring out were, there's pressures, you know, there's financial pressures, they can't do everything they want to, there's financial resource implications that follow that. There's time implications too the single biggest thing that these youth ministry workers were reflecting on is this is a ministry of presence.

You can't do this from a distance. You've got to be side by side with these young people. It's relational. You've got to have rapport with them. You've got to be able to have them trust you to open up to be able to work alongside of. And so, in that context you can't be everywhere all at once.

So those time pressures were very real. There were family pressures, there were pressures from within the church, there was a perception for a lot of youth ministry workers that youth ministry was and you would have picked this up in the article, you would a holding ground where people just went, spent a few years, and then were expected to gravitate after they'd done something in youth ministry over into more traditional pastoral ministry.

So, there were a lot of pressures, the pressures they experienced, , there was expectations to justify youth ministry. Baptisms, these types of things, they were fairly typical of the types of pressures that kind of came from within the church setting. And then obviously, there were a range of personal factors as well that impacted on that, but the impact on family, the impact of being consistently under the microscope, people are looking at these people as.

, church representatives alongside the youth, and yet they're going through their own struggles. They have their own periods, obviously, in their own spiritual journeys that are up and down, as everyone does. So, there was a range of challenges in that space.

I just want to pick up on something you said because I've heard it in a few different

contexts, this concept that,

it's a holding ground or it's a training ground and then real ministry happens once you're in a local church or in a, in a different department, , you sort of cut your teeth as it were in the youth ministry scene.

Did the study. Show, or do you yourself have any speculation if it didn't? What, why is that attitude so prevalent across the church? Like, why does that keep cropping up?

To be honest, I think that from the perspective of the youth ministry workers, what they were articulating in that space is just, , that, it's just a really challenging high turnover space. And I say that in the sense of, because a lot of the people that we actually interviewed were long term in youth ministry, this was their passion space, they'd found their calling, doing what they wanted for some, there was a view that, it wasn't a, a high priority area as far as the resourcing side of it went,, I mentioned earlier there was that perception coming through from the respondents of the need to constantly be validating youth ministry, and that it has a purpose and that it has a, a strong, I guess, impetus as far as, leading people through the church.

So I think, yeah, there was a range of different kind of things that came through, but I think one of those, one of the contexts that they spoke into a little bit in that , yeah, it was, was more that youth ministry had traditionally maybe not been seen to be on par with some of those other church ministry areas.

And so in that sense, , they were always very challenged because it was kind of largely forgotten about, you were left to your own devices. It wasn't strongly resourced unless the baptisms, which was, I guess a key metric they kept coming back to., we're there then it was kind of a, oh, well, it's just, you know, organize some events, have a fun time and, off we go home.

So, that was a misconception that from their perspective. As to how they viewed youth ministry and the importance of it, because they really did, these youth ministry workers really did push forward the idea that youth ministry is a critical role, has a critical role to play both in tomorrow's church.

That's the title of the book. But also the ability to link home church and, it's young people. So they saw a really incredible link there to be made. .

Yeah. In my experience, it seems like. a lot of church members are aware of the need of young people in a church. And it's probably one of those areas, I'd say most churches probably lack young adults, like statistically, they're the generation that leave the church the most.

And so it's interesting that, yeah, we don't value the young adults. workers more because of that need. But I think that a lot of members sometimes think, Oh, just run an event and they'll come and they don't see how long it actually takes. Like you said, to build that trust and to build those relationships.

Like that is a process that takes a long time. How can we, make people more aware of that process and how can we get them involved in that process as well.

Yeah, great question. And just coming back to something earlier that you mentioned just there, there was a strong perception that came across from these youth ministry workers of the disconnect for the youth at the local church level. , they go away to these events that are youth specific and they have the ability to worship how they want to worship with people in their age groups. They structure it how they want, they get in and they're involved and they lead it. And then they kind of wind up back at the local church level, and it's a bit of a generational gap that exists there.

And so their churches don't necessarily embrace them as young people and say, Hey, let's worship the way that you want. , so those were some of the challenges that they did talk about earlier as far as,, what can be done in that space. I think, yeah, look, that's probably something that the book really probably just fell short of doing it reflected on their experience.

It didn't necessarily say, Hey, so therefore this has to happen, or this has to be an undertaking. I think that. What's there is the lived experience loud and clear enough for those who pick up the book, whether it be church administrators, whether it be, theology and ministry students, whether it be interested parties that pick that up to recognize what youth ministry looks like to be able to understand better its value.

And then from that point forward, plot a path for how youth ministry, can be more effective going forwards. I would come back to the point that was raised earlier that, two things really emerged in that space. The first one is The ability of these youth ministry workers to be alongside these young people and be a key catalyst for their spiritual journey warrants, that in and of itself is valuable.

if you look at it in the school context, because a lot of these guys, some of them were school chaplains, for example, the ability there to be that connector between church and school. And, those, the opportunities there to strengthen these networks so that these young people have support, so that they have pathways to come through where they're valued, where they're involved, where they're connected.

Where they're given leadership opportunities to grow into that future generation of church leaders, those are all spaces, but I think, , really warrant further investigation and further study and further, , further thought around how that can happen and what that looks like. Yeah, hopefully that speaks into that space.

Did the study, , it says, and you mentioned it yourself, the balance between their own personal spirituality and helping to serve the, the people that they're serving, the young people, are there similarities between what the battles are that they're facing or is it different? how does that play out

in, in the survey?

Yeah, it probably plays out a little bit differently based around age demographics. I think it's fair to say that a big proportion, I think, if you go back and looked at the early statistics in the book a lot of them had been in youth ministry for an extended period of time.

We're talking 10 plus years and some of them 20 plus years. So, they've probably arrived at a point where, and certainly we were hearing in the family, factors. There's challenges on their time and, the difficulties of being away from family for so long. being, just that walk of being so, , because it is so relational and there is so much around the need to spend time with these young people to hear their concerns, to grow that relationship, to be able to mentor and guide them along their spiritual journey, that it's just It takes a toll in a number of ways, there was a lot of, particularly in some of the lesser developed countries where we had respondents saying they were putting money into it themselves out of their own pocket to support the needs in those areas for their youth.

, That wasn't happening everywhere, but it goes to show that. Those who are really called to it, they face a range of challenges, not just from a lack of resources, whether that be financial, but resources of time as well. And so, that getting that, that balance right , of saying, well, Hey, you know, I've got to make time for my own spiritual journey.

I've got family commitments. You know, , my conference doesn't allocate enough resources for what we want to do with the youth. There was all of those challenges that put there. So yeah, a lot of challenge in those spaces.

I guess we've spoken about the challenges. Were there any things that came up in the studies that, whether it was just one group of people or a number of people that were things they did that were beneficial or helpful to their role?

Yeah. It definitely was. One of the big kind of take away points actually that, and we didn't predict this going into the study because, we used, , the survey, we used other research around in the space to guide the formation of our terms of reference, the things that we wanted to ask respondents.

Interestingly enough, one that we didn't have on there that emerged, as we did the analysis of our respondents data, was the role of technology. So this is actually identified both as a challenge and an opportunity. So you can very easily see the challenges space, , young people have more information available to them, than ever before.

They can go to their mobile, that comes with all of the social technology, you know, social medias. pornography, all of these type of things that, you know, and now just so available to our young people because they have a phone in their hand. They're fairly clear around what the challenges of technology represent.

But one thing that really emerged was the opportunities that it presents as well, because we had people, I remember one, responder from the North American division who was saying, Hey, we can go to, we can go to a youth event now and we can, ask questions of our youth. They can, put anonymous questions up things that they would never in a million years have to have the confidence to ask in a group setting,, out loud, but they can do that not identified and it can lead to,, some really meaningful conversations around issues that the young people are struggling with.

So they store opportunities. They saw opportunities for resources to be available to young people on apps and things like this. So,, there was that real interesting tension point involving technology, but there was these challenges, but there was these opportunities as well. And so we didn't really, , predict that going in.

We weren't really, mindful, I guess, going in of how prevalent technology was going to be in that space. But certainly they were able to see the opportunities. In that space, the biggest opportunity these guys saw was they the calling was so strong that despite all of the challenges, this amazed me, this is something really significant for me, despite all of the challenges that they put forward and the difficulties.

When they just reflected on those experiences where they've seen youth ministry impact, it's almost unanimous Everyone had a story of being able to lead a child to a relationship with Jesus You know at whatever level they were at and one of the interesting things for me was hearing the youth ministers actually you know Narrowed down an age group that they felt Most fit,, with the ability to, impact them for a lifelong walk with, with Jesus.

And it was actually a lot younger than I expected. I thought, Oh, because I, I have to acknowledge because of my background, I'm not from a youth ministry background from an education background. So when I came on, I , I'd always thought of youth ministry as kind of 17 to 25., but it's much younger than that, obviously, when you, factor in adventurers and pathfinders and these type of groups, and these guys were saying it's actually, kids around about 8 to 10 years old that are most impressionable in this space.

So, yeah, just a range of things like that these guys brought to life based on their experience that, potentially so many people haven't really reflected on or thought of. , there was just a lot of that that came to light in the book.

And I guess that's another challenge is the range of ages that some of these guys have to minister to.

You know, you've got, , four or five year olds now studying adventurers and you've got 25 year olds studying, Families or careers or that sort of thing. So, and, and youth sort of is the cover all for that. Um, often there'll be youth and family ministries or youth and children,

children's ministries. So it is a

challenging field.

We just had a couple of comments as well, and it's great to see those who are watching along with us. Maranatha is asking, do we have access? And as we've mentioned, the book is there. I put up the, Link to the record article and there's actually a direct link to that. It's on Amazon. I believe Peter

Yes So

that's great.

That's easily

accessible. If you're interested in what we're talking about today,

you can jump out and grab that., ,

so for those watching at home, we

may have people in the local churches, , people involved in youth ministry certainly would have an interest in this topic. What's something that we can do to support our youth and our youth ministers? Because, these are two groups that the study is reflecting on, , in a practical sense, in a big way, how can we as lay people , or as church members also support those groups of people, , in a better

way?

Yeah, I think, I mean, for the lay person who's not trained in youth ministry, or, in those roles, the biggest thing that jumped out from the book is just how much they are seeking connection, they're seeking that connection. So,, getting around those young people at the local church level, how was your way starting those conversations?

Just building that, that rapport because they are, they have questions. They are seeking out people that they can turn to to help mentor and guide them on their own spiritual journey. So,, it might just be as simple as, you know, focusing on one or two people in your local church who you start to get around each week and develop that relationship with so that, they know that there's people that take an interest in them, , more broadly at the local church level, it might be, being more intentional about involving the youth, , they have a different style of worship, maybe more contemporary than what a lot of churches.

Feel comfortable with, but allowing those chances to lead, acknowledging those ways of worship, that maybe go against the, , the more traditional, older generations of, of thinking and worship at the local church level. , they want to be involved. They want to be involved, and it was pointed out by a lot of these youth ministry workers that if you look at the history of our church, young people are involved in that all the way.

They have the energy to do it. They have that. They don't have that naivety that comes with maybe being told no or no. No, you can't do that. Or,, they think they can go out there and do this. And in a lot of instances, if they're resourced and equipped and supported and affirmed, they can. And so it just really builds back to those simple things of just uplifting these young people, recognizing where they're at in their, their journey on providing, support and affirmation and ways to just, keep them on track.

We don't want to lose out on anything. At the end of the day, if the difference is, being able to include them at the local church level, we can think of ways to do that

there is an old lady at Gold Coast Central Church. Her name is Bridget, and I think she's a good example of this because she's, you know, She's a hit with the youth and young adults.

And she simply just tries to like learn their lingo and she feeds them. And,, she, she doesn't really do anything extraordinary. She just will talk to them, remember their names and do those things. And they love her. And so I think sometimes it is. Simpler than we think.

, yeah, absolutely. And I, and I've been the beneficiary of that in my own church context.

You know, I'm a a Lakeside church, but, I really feel like it's an intergenerational church. And as I said before, I've got young kids, three primary aged kids and I can remember, it's just the small things. I remember looking around one day thinking, oh, where's my youngest? He's wandered off and I turned around and I saw an older member just kind of catch my eye.

And, you know, he's sitting there on the knee, you know, and I've seen, ladies. been over interacting with my kids in that church setting. So, it's just taking an interest in our young people. It's just small steps to just encourage support and affirm them that they're there, that they're the future of our church and trying to find ways to just involve them, give them opportunity and just.

allow them to connect into our, into our churches better than, , maybe what some do.

One other thing that came out in the article, , that was sort of summarizing this study was the, , impact of Ellen White or the ability for youth ministers to communicate her, maybe make her accessible to younger generations.

, that can be a challenge, but potentially there's also opportunities there. , what did you find around, how youth ministers are feeling about Ellen White and her, obviously she's made a huge contribution to the Adventist church. And when she got involved, she was a young person herself. So, young people started this church essentially, but how do we translate that for the newer generations coming through?

How do we make that accessible to them?

Yeah, this was a really interesting, space because, we haven't really talked about, the impact of culture yet, but this was a cultural one. You know, there are still places, you know, some of the more, Eastern European type countries. If John was here, who was one of the, authors of the book, this was very much a space that he would speak into.

But,, there were certain country context, certain divisions of the world church. Where, , Ellen G. White's writings and the impact of the influence of Ellen G. White through these youth ministry workers really, , was still very strong. There were other places, though, that kind of said, our kids don't identify with this. It's a struggle, you know, that, they don't have interest in this. I think it's for another time. So, I mean, we really saw. discrepancy of the feeling amongst the young people from the youth ministries perspective,, of, how Ellen G White's writing impacts upon the youth today.

And, , to be honest, and a somewhat a sad reflection, a lot of youth ministers reflected on the fact that particularly the ones that have done this for a long period of time, they'd noticed, a bit of a shift and the Bible knowledge, of a lot of our young people had slipped and so that presented a concern for them because they're then introducing a lot of things for the first time.

, which made it, yeah, presented some challenges for them. So yeah, look, the issue of Ellen G White as I said, if John was here, he'd speak a lot more into it. That was an area that he really had a focus on, but I did find it interesting to note that certain cultures.

Seem to still find that in those cultural settings that it seemed to be much more commonplace for young people to be familiar with, rather than certain other ones that seemingly the youth had moved away from it a little bit more.

Yeah, interesting. Hopefully we can read more about that in the book. Otherwise we'll get John on and another time.

.

Well it's been awesome to talk to you today, Peter. Thank you so much for coming on and informing us. If anyone would like to learn more, yeah, they can go to that link there.

It's also in our comments and you'll be able to head to the article and also head to a link to the book. So yeah, thank you again for coming on. It's been awesome to talk to you. No

worries at all. Thank you.

Everyone else, we will see you next week for another episode of Record Live.

Thanks everyone.

See ya.