Life or Death Circumstances

I was hiding in the basement of a storefront building, along with my ride-or-die partner Besko (RIP). We had just gotten into an altercation at a party with some opposing gangsters who drew guns on us. We broke away and ran down a stairway in the back with no idea where we were going. Looking up at the top of the stairs, we saw the silhouette of the three men with guns attempting to murder us. They were walking hesitantly as they did not know the layout of the building.

We seized the window of escape, ran into the house upstairs, kicked down the locked door on a family who was smoking crack cocaine, and pushed our way through their front door to escape and save our lives. The next day, when we sobered up, we laughed about our narrow escape and kept moving with our day. This was the kind of life we lived every single day back then. It was just another day in the hood for us. We learned to live and function in drama, trauma, and chaos so much that it became normal.

This is a current epidemic in the city of Chicago, where gang banging has permeated urban culture, and the distress it causes goes, for the most part, unmentioned or addressed. Yet, by the grace of God, today I am a Christian and a pastor because I was introduced to the gospel of Jesus Christ and discipled into maturity as a young man.

My transformation did not happen overnight. It happened through the ministry of a local church that had unknowingly moved into our community in the middle of a war zone. We had shootouts right outside of their church and even shot up a car full of enemies right in front of their pastor. Crises like this are still prevalent today and even more abundant in the Chicagoland area, but the gospel of Christ is still powerful enough to reach youth struggling with the wiles of urban life.

The State of Urban Youth Ministry

I’m sure many urban-centered pastors today would agree that one of the most challenging ministries in the church is youth ministry. Churches are struggling with the turnover rate of youth pastors. They wrestle with hiring someone who will stick with the youth for the long haul. Pastors are constantly hearing complaints from people in the congregation asking, “What are we going to do about the youth?” Most of the time, those doing the complaining will not volunteer any time to work with the youth themselves, and the few who do volunteer are often not the right candidates with a heart for young people. This is why a significant amount of traditional Black churches do not have a youth ministry or a full-time youth pastor.

I currently serve as the senior pastor of Kingdom Covenant Church Chicago, on the far south side of Chicago. We are serving a traumagenic community in the heart of an area where young people are experiencing challenges that are drawing negative national attention to our city. Kingdom is a multigenerational church, but the young demographic in our congregation needs significant attention.

Since the early 2000s, research has shown a decline in church attendance among young adults who attended church as youth. According to Lifeway Research, “70 percent of young people will drop out of church after high school, and only 35 percent will return to regular attendance.”

The next generation is often leaving the faith while under the supervision of parents who believe they’re passing on their religious values. In the early 1990s, 16 percent of eighth, tenth, and twelfth graders said religion was not important to them at all. By the early 2000s, however, the percentage of high school seniors who completely dismissed the importance of religion to them personally began to increase dramatically.

The Youth Ministry Crisis

I agree that there is a youth crisis today, but I also believe the youth crisis is a symptom of the decline of youth ministry. I am a living witness that a strong youth ministry is able to infiltrate the chaotic setting that youth in urban America live in. Youth workers who treasured teenagers and valued the work of youth ministry invested in me, and I received the guidance I needed. I grew up on the far south side of Chicago in the Roseland and Pullman communities, an area known on the streets and around the world as the Wild Wild Hundreds. This area is called wild because of the urban chaos that is perpetuated here. But churches engaged the community, reached out, and raised youth in their churches, providing free and affordable resources to help youth get through their struggles without permanent mental and emotional damage.

A strong youth ministry can infiltrate the chaos of urban life and liberate young people from its trauma.

Research suggests that only 7 percent of youth pastors stay in their position for more than seven years. I have experienced that in the average urban African American church that has a youth ministry, most youth pastors stay no longer than three years. It seems that youth ministers are more likely to look at their assignment as a necessary step to another coveted position rather than a serious call to raise up the next generation of the church. Our youth are in desperate need of churches to understand the importance of youth ministry.

The Growth of Urban Youth Ministry

Youth ministry was once strong in cities across the country, but then there was a decline. The internal work of the church to develop young disciples is not the only struggle. The external work of the church to reach youth in the community is a struggle as well. There is a larger demographic of unchurched youth growing up in the urban context who are indifferent to the church, impressionable, and without a sense of direction and purpose. There is an immense population of youth who did not grow up in church and are totally oblivious to worship, God, and the Bible.

Church kids may struggle with the shame of the stigma as well as familiarity with church, so discipleship often begins with working through some of the church hurts they have experienced and finding inspiration from other Christian youth living a faithful life in Christ. Finding a model in young people who have a good balance of faith maturity and teenage swagger is helpful to the discipleship process. Sheep make sheep, which means that young Christians are helpful in making and developing more young Christians. This is why my philosophy and understanding of youth ministry is youth doing ministry.

Youth ministry must be more than adults ministering to youth; it has to be youth doing ministry. Youth ministries that focus only on ministering to youth may be missing a fundamental game changer: instead of ministering to youth, raise up your youth to minister to each other.