Protected Service

The Suffering Servant. The Servant for All. A servant leader. These are just a few of the titles of Christ that reflect his heart, and what he came to do. His role as a servant, subverted the expectations that his contemporaries had for a Messiah and showed his followers how he expected them to bring his kingdom here on earth. Service is a paramount act for a believer. Serving others shows that we are truly Christ’s disciples. Serving others without judgement, without fear, and without concern for our own needs is what set the early Christians apart from those around them.

But as with most things that sinful humans touch, the act of service has been misused and twisted from the beautiful gift that Christ presented to his church into something that has harmed many. It’s so easy to see how this call to serve has been manipulated when you look at the stories and scars of many who have left the evangelical church. Across social media platforms, when one finds someone who is deconstructing their faith after a life in the evangelical church, oftentimes this person will bring up hurt from serving. With a critical eye to their experiences in church communities, many of these “exvangelicals”, the term that many who have left the evangelical community call themselves, claim they were overworked, under-prepared, manipulated to serve, or even used as child labor. Their scars are real and deep, and those left in the church have a responsibility to examine what has been done and how it has drifted so far from the gift of service that Christ promised.

The misuse of service is sometimes most evident in how a church teaches service and uses the service of youth groups. Youth ministers, and all called to serve youth, have an interesting role to both instill the skill and gift of service into youth but to also guard them from being overburdened with service. This is a complicated and nuanced issue, but here are some basic principles to have in place when considering how youth should serve.

It is GOOD for youth to be expected to serve the Body of Christ.

Youth in the church need to serve. This is a statement I can make with confidence. Christ calls all the members of his Body to serve. Biblical examples of young people serving God abound from Samuel living in God’s house to a young Mary carrying the coming Messiah. Psalm 100 calls followers of the LORD to serve Him with gladness, regardless of age. Age has never stopped God from calling those he wants to his service. With a sinful nature that is bent towards selfishness, serving feels unnatural. This tension between feeding our fleshly desires and nurturing our spiritual growth is good for youth to experience. A teenager who has devoted their life to Christ needs to be led in how to lay themselves down for Christ. A teenager in a youth group who is still lost can benefit from protected service as they see the Body of Christ serving around them. This can be one of the greatest presentations of the gospel for a youth. One of the hallmarks of the early church was how they served each other, met the needs of individuals, and supported the mission work of Paul.

Today, youth should be challenged to engage in service opportunities that meet the needs of others such as building wheelchair ramps and they should take part in forwarding the gospel ministry of their church in ways such as helping with crafts for preschool students. The answer then is not to remove the youth group from serving. Not only is this detrimental to the church, but it leads the teenager to have an anemic faith that can take years to properly nurture to productivity. With the benefits of service so high and the lack of service resulting in a dull and dead faith, why then should a leader not have youth serving at all opportunities for the church?

It is NOT GOOD for a church to rely on youth services.

Though service is a necessary and biblical part of a robust faith, serving in a way where youth are demanded to serve will not lead to a fruitful faith. In many churches, it is necessary for the youth group to serve simply because of the tasks that must be accomplished. I absolutely NEED the youth group at my church to serve during Vacation Bible School. I could not run one without their help as group guides, recreation and craft assistants, co-teachers, music leaders, and sound team members. However, my adult workers equal or outnumber my youth workers. VBS is a huge undertaking that is only possible when the Body of Christ comes together to serve. Here the youth are an integral part of that Body and it is beautiful to see.

Unfortunately, this is not how service is modeled in some churches. Sometimes the youth are expected to carry the weight of the Body. When anything at the church needs to be accomplished, the youth are “volun-told”. Chairs need moving? Tell the youth minister. Communion cups need to be filled? Preschool children need to be watched? Easter eggs need to be packed? It reaches a point where the church could not function without the youth group’s work. This overworks the youth and leads to the rest of the Body not serving where they are called. In these situations, youth are oftentimes spiritually manipulated in order to get them to participate in yet another exhausting and unrewarding job. Watching children for free is couched as “doing it for the Lord”, and though this can sometimes be true, a babysitter can do it for the Lord while being paid. It is situations like this that come to mind when I see Tik-Toks about child labor and forced service in the church. It breaks my heart to see the scars left on individuals from mishandled service that should have been carried by the whole Body rather than pawned off on young and impressionable youth. It is hard to recover from this kind of spiritual abuse. None of these things are inherently bad things to ask the youth to do, but if the rest of the church is uninvolved in service or there is an expectation that the youth will take care of all undesirable tasks, then the attitude of service in a church needs to be examined.

It is NOT GOOD for youth to serve more than sit.

In situations where youth are the main workforce, it is easy for youth to spend most if not all of their time associated with the church in service. As the youth serve, they give continually. This outpouring is never refilled with intentional times of sitting and soaking up the Word. Is someone paying attention to how many weeks in a row that 7th grade girl has been missing the sermon to help with the children’s church? What about that junior who is very gifted on the sound board? When was the last time he had a week off? Does that shy girl have any youth friends supporting her or is she too busy in nursery to make peer connections? When you serve from emptiness, it is easy to fall prey to many traps. A student could be manipulated into a works-based mentality where they equate their value to their service. A group of youth could never find their actual gifts because they spend all their time filling roles at the church without thought to what God has planned for them. A teen could be burnt out and emotionally dry before a youth leader even notices because they are not spending time being refreshed by the Word.  It is easy for youth to become disenfranchised as they leave church continually worn out rather than nourished.

If this is the current state of the church you are serving, don’t let guilt from the past or pressure to maintain the status quo cause the situation to remain unresolved. Ministry is hard, and looking for help from the easiest place is normal. However, by reading this article you have lost the excuse of being unaware of overworking youth at the church. As those serving the youth, it is imperative to look at the big picture of how youth are serving the church so that the youth are being nurtured spiritually rather than being used and run dry constantly.

It is GOOD for youth to be trained to use the gifts God has given them.

Many who are called into ministry or who serve the church faithfully as adults began serving the church as youth and we have seen biblically that all Christians are called to serve regardless of age. With this in mind, a careful youth minister will lead the youth to serve in ways that will help them grow their gifts and talents for the Lord. There is no program for this training that works for every church let alone every individual, but seeing giftedness and giving opportunities to use that giftedness, and perhaps even fail safely while using it, is an invaluable gift that a church can give a youth.

Service becomes more of a gift for youth when they understand the purpose and value of what they are doing. Walking a preschool child by the hand into a VBS room may seem trivial to a middle school boy, but when it is explained as helping that child enter church feeling safe and loved so that their heart is open to learn about Jesus, the work the teen is doing changes. Every minor task in a church has a purpose in sharing the gospel and changing lives. Youth leaders need to help the youth to see their role in all of this. If an act of service does not have a connection to sharing the love of God, then perhaps it should be examined whether the youth need to spend energy on that task.

Jesus and Paul are excellent examples of leaders who sought out gifted young people, taught them, gave them opportunities to grow, and then sent them on to their own ministry. Silas, Timothy, the Disciples, and likely many that are unnamed all learned by serving with Jesus and Paul before being entrusted with incredibly integral ministries of their own. Teenagers should be given opportunities in the church to grow not only in the “obvious” gifts of teaching and musical abilities, but also less public gifts such as caring for children or troubleshooting computers. This can prepare them to serve God in whatever capacity he has for their future. I can imagine the joy Jesus felt when Peter preached on Pentecost knowing where Peter had come from as I watch a student grow from shy and disengaged to leading preschool recreation as a senior. This is one of the most incomparable joys of ministry, but it is only attainable if youth are protected as they serve.