My name is Kyle Shultz, and I would like to thank you for visiting The Fishers of Youth Blog. As this is my first post, I would like to define here exactly what the purpose and mission of this blog is.
First of all, let me explain the “Fishers of Youth” part. I started Fishers of Youth in 2006. Fishers of Youth is a web-based ministry dedicated to offering help and guidance to people involved in youth ministry. (You can visit our main web site at www.fishersofyouth.com.)
I intend for this blog to be an important extension of the ministry, through which I hope to offer advice and encouragement on the topic of youth ministry as often as I can.
Why I started Fishers of Youth (and this blog) is the important part. Over the past several years, I have grown concerned with the approach most Christians seem to have adopted in evangelizing today’s youth.
In a nutshell, this approach is to make the church look more like the world in order to appeal to youth. I was talking with a friend of mine about this idea once. He was telling me about how his church has developed Christian music groups specifically for the teenagers in his chuch, groups that perform all the kinds of music they like, only Christianized (i.e. Christian rock, Christian rap, etc.) He said that that was “the only way to get young people in”.
The only way? So teenagers are just basically robots with sensors that hone in on contemporary music? I try to base my approach to the problem on the assumption that this is not the case. How do I know it isn’t? Because I am a teen (sixteen, to be precise).
For that reason, I feel very strongly about the way kids my age are treated by churches. Although I’m sure Christian adults probably mean well, I know if I were subjected to the popular approach used on youth by churches, I would feel as if they thought I was stupid, a “typical” 21st century teen, my mind reprogrammed by rap music, my philosophy of life undeveloped, my desires and longings shallow and worldly. I hope I don’t appear that way to people at first glance, but I know a lot of kids my age probably do.
But in my opinion, it’s damaging to the body of Christ to make that assumption. In short, I feel that if you try to lead youth into the kingdom of God by making them think it’s not too different from the world, they won’t really ever understand that the kingdom of God is anything but similar to the world. And if they think this, they’ll either steer away from Christianity because they’re looking for something deeper than simplistic, worldly answers, or they’ll enter the church without ever truly devoting their lives to Christ. Is that what we want?
It’s clear that as Christians, we need to rethink our ideas about what youth need and don’t need. I think we ought to start by presenting Christianity as it really is, a lifelong commitment to Jesus Christ which is radically different in every way from the “do what feels right” philosophy our culture is pushing on young people.
That is the main message I intend for this blog to have, and it’s also the foundation of Fishers of Youth in general.
Hope you enjoy future posts! And don’t forget to check out www.fishersofyouth.com.
Note: Fishers of Youth is NOT just concerned with teen ministry, but with ministry targeting ALL youth, including adolescents and younger children. We include not only trained, certified youth ministers in our outreach, but also anyone with the desire to reach out to young people with the gospel.
