Preparing for the long haul

One of the most persistent paradoxes of the youth work world is that you often need to travel, but on a youth worker salary you tend to rattle around in dodgy, undependable cars.

Driving is essential to my job, but I have an absolutely atrocious history of keeping cars alive. I’ve owned eight vehicles in the last five years, most of which met very sticky ends. I rolled my trusty Seat Ibiza down a hill right into an angry farmer’s field. I paid less than £200 for a Ford Escort, which after just one week released an atmosphere-shattering whine before its engine blew up. My favourite, however, was the British Racing Green Nissan Primera with the white leather seats and wooden steering wheel which quite literally broke in half. Oddly, these events always seem to transpire when traveling to or from a youth work conference.

It was, in fact, at the end of a particularly fruitful youth work conference about ‘getting up and going’, that one of my ill-fated cars decided to pack up and die. My team had loaded their suitcases, jumped in and buckled up. I, however, sat in the driver’s seat and turned the key to – nothing. After an embarrassing pause and some macho reassurance, the girls headed back inside the hotel for a drink while my friend Dewi and I attempted to fix it.

‘Fixing it’ meant opening up the bonnet and pointing at various parts we knew and naming them, “radiator, dipstick.” We poked at the engine with all of our masculine might for what felt like an hour, while periodically grunting. Not to be beaten, we tried pushing it (before getting stuck at the bottom of a hill), jumpstarting it (depleting the Youth For Christ National Chairperson’s battery pack), and even laying hands on and praying over it. Nothing. Eventually, our ‘expertise’ comprehensively depleted, we gave in and called a mechanic.

The mechanic was a non-shaving, scrawny twig of a lad who looked about 14 years old. He got out of his van, glanced at my lifeless car for a second, jiggled something near the engine and yelled ‘try it now.’ Very skeptical, I got back in the driver’s seat and turned the key. Shockingly this produced the juttering yet unmistakable sound of a twenty-year-old diesel engine coming back to life. Dewi and I looked at each other, visibly crestfallen, each secretly wondering how many man-points we’d just lost. The entire repair took less than thirty seconds, from the mechanic getting out of his vehicle to effortlessly starting my own.

A Little Knowledge...

Sometimes passion, enthusiasm and ‘chutzpah’ just isn’t enough! A little foundational knowledge, carefully cultivated, nurtured and passed down makes all the difference.

This cultivation and protection of foundational knowledge is a central principle for youth work found throughout the Bible. Rather than leaving their kids stranded by the side of the road inside dodgy theology, those ancient parents and teachers did everything in their power to make sure young people knew God.

Because of this we find a really clear mandate in the Bible to establish the foundational basis of who God is and how to relate to Him personally.

Foundations of truth

When I started out in youth work over a decade ago, I only really taught three types of things:

- Things I knew a lot about
- Things I was really interested in
- Things that I had just heard about

This did mean that my talks were interesting, passionate, and full of intriguing tidbits. The problem, of course, is that my young people were getting Tim-flavoured theology rather than a broad solid foundation of truth.

When we have a responsibility for teaching, it’s really important that we sit down once a year and map out the broad-brush stroke: What are the big, foundational pieces that every Christian needs to understand? What does your group particularly need to spend more time on? What is their next step toward maturity?

Doing it for the long haul

Most of what’s above is an excerpt from my book, Rebooted: Reclaiming youth ministry for the long haul – a biblical framework. In its first chapter I dig more into this idea, encouraging all of us to plan out teaching that lasts and grows in maturity over years of development – not just weeks of programming.

Let’s commit to long-haul teaching that covers young people in the broad foundational truths that they’ll need for their whole life. Passion is great – but let’s fill it out with carefully cultivated knowledge too.