Book Review: Youth Ministry 3.0

Oestreicher, Mark. Youth Ministry 3.0: A Manifesto of Where We’ve Been, Where We Are, and Where We Need to Go.

Grand Rapids

: Zondervan. 2008.

 

Mark Oestreicher is the president of Youth Specialties.

 

Over the brief history of youth ministry, several people have attempted to trace the history, show where we missed it, and get us ready for the new iteration. My exposure to this was in Mark Senter’s Book The Coming Revolution in Youth Ministry. Oestreicher plainly states in the title that he believes he has the handle on the next, the third, iteration of youth ministry.

 

The brief introduction gets one at least partially interested because it recalls the days when youth ministry gurus actually endorsed the use of the hot seat (a stool with a mild electric shock) as an acceptable, fun apparatus for youth group meetings. Mark asks the question of was it really okay then? If so, why isn’t it okay now? If it wasn’t okay, why did so many thinking people (including parents) not rise up in arms against it? Perhaps it is a good metaphor for youth ministry and the uncertainty we face with what we are doing now.

 

The introduction also introduces a unique literary tool Mark uses. The margins of several pages are peppered with comments from youth workers. These have probably been gleaned from Youth Specialties events where Mark was formulating the basis for the book.

 

The first two chapters form a basis of Oestreicher’s view of youth ministry and its history. He draws greatly on a work by G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, and Religion (Appleton. 1904). He refers to Hall’s three key elements that were common to all adolescents: conflict with parents, mood disruptions, and risky behavior. In the endnote, the author states that this idea “was popular for a few decades, but then it fell out of style.” [129] He mentions that recent attention to it has been relegated to being a “blip” on the adolescent radar. I find this a little hard to accept. It seems to fall right in line with some of the recent findings in teenage brain development.

 

Then the author makes an unexpected turn. He returns to the idea of Hall’s three themes of adolescents, but this time they are different. He spends the remainder of the chapter discussing identity, autonomy, and affinity. While he spends several pages unpacking these themes, his point (seen only at the end of the chapter) is that early youth culture (and, by extension, youth ministry?) emphasized identity. Later youth culture emphasized autonomy. Now it is the time to address the area where he believes youth ministry has failed: affinity.

 

The next three chapters compare Youth Ministry 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Oestreicher traces a quick (and admittedly incomplete history of youth ministry. He really starts in the 1950s almost a decade after the rise of Youth for Christ and YoungLife, totally ignoring the Youth Movements of the late 1800s and pre World War II. Nor does he really deal with the local church aspects of youth ministry like 3rd

Baptist

Church

,

St. Louis

.

 

Oestreicher uses the Beatles to illustrate how youth culture came into it’s own in the 60s. In the early 60s the Beatles wore suits and had longer than usual, still short, hair. By the late 60s they had transformed into the “hippie” movement look. At this time church begin to high youth ministers in earnest. This was also the time of the birth for Youth Specialties. Since it is Oestreicher’s organization, he has some humorous insights into the creation in his endnotes.

 

Oestreicher does not hide his frustrations with the failing of 2.0. He blames it for the internalization of youth ministry, making it isolated, numbers driven, and too tied to cultural models. Though he does admit that it was in this kind of youth ministry that he grew up and it worked for him at the time.

 

The author almost “begs the question” as he describes what youth ministry 3.0 should be. He seems to suggest that 1) it is possible to know and understand a movement while one is in it, 2) that youth culture is a deeper and more mysterious thing than it was in the early years and 3) that affinity is a new principle. I’m not sure it ever had been. Just the affinities have changed and perhaps become smaller units, less based on geography and less hierarchical.

 

Yes, communion and mission seen to be taking a larger role in this general, but I’m not sure that we can yet call them the themes. Even if they are, programs certainly have sprung up to support them.

 

Here is his chart comparing the three iterations.

	Youth Ministry 1.0	Youth Ministry 2.0	Youth Ministry 3.0
Youth Culture Fixation	Identity	Autonomy	Affinity
Cultural Influence on Youth Minister	Language and Topics	Models and Success	Contextualization
Key Themes	Evangelism and Correction	Discipleship and Creating a Positive Peer Group	Communion and Mission
Driver	Proclamation	Programs	Not Driven, but Present
Theme Verse	Matthew 7:13-14 (the narrow and broad gates)	Matthew 28:19-20 (the Great Commission)	Acts 2:44-16 (the early church and the five purposes)

While Youth Ministry 1.0 may have helped youth culture establish identity, I’m not sure that Youth Ministry 2.0 helped establish autonomy. In fact, it may have done more to establish identity than 1.0 did. The main area where autonomy may have been an issue is in the buying power of the youth culture. It became the secret desire of every marketing plan (as it is still somewhat today).

 

Oestreicher at least attempts to make the book practical with the last chapter. He suggests three options to answer the question of how we get there. Alignment – the arrangement of the ministries, program, and staff around the same simple process.

1. Multiple Youth Ministries to Multiple Subcultures – this might be the easiest response and is easily visible in the life of churches with multiple ethnicities.
2. One Youth Ministry with a Bream of Supra-Culture, Kingdom of God Culture – Oestreicher seems to doubt that this might be possible, tending to migrate back to multiple groups. This might also be limited to the larger church.
3. Some Hybrid of the Two

• One group for some stuff, smaller subculture-specific groups for other stuff.
• One group most of the time, but with some specific, contextualized efforts to create space for the subcultures to which your ministry is called.

Oestreicher also suggests that these approaches mean that churches have to cut programs. This is a little of a straw man. Programs are not the problem. The problem is that churches hardly ever cut programs after they have run their course. In any iteration of youth ministry (or any ministry) programs need to be re-evaluated. This includes programs that don’t look like programs including mission trips, third space gatherings, and small groups.

Oestreicher ends the chapter with a warning against being “driven.” Driven, as he defines it is bad, but he doesn’t define it like Saddleback would. Again, he sets up a little of a straw man. His “driven” is more like George McDonald described King Saul in Ordering Your Private World.

 

The epilogue is more of a motivational tag at the end. Oestreicher gives his kudos to several youth workers he has met you illustrate the benefits and struggles of “getting” what he is saying.

For each of the youth ministry iterations, he provides a set of themes and drivers.