Bonfire Youth Ministry

I think we've all heard stories of the kids who have had that experience around the bonfire.  They've been at camp for a week and get caught up in the emotion of it all and have that moment where it all comes together and they accept Christ.  God uses those experiences and I don't want to discount them.

However, there are some youth pastors who do ministry as if they are trying to set the world on fire.  They are pros at creating the bonfire experience.  Their time is spent trying to create a unique, high impact experience (organized) when in reality the most valuable thing they could create is shared experience (organic).  In my opinion, this is one of the ways youth ministry has to change.  Our churched kids are growing up in an environment where their spiritual experiences are manufactured.  These manufactured, high impact experiences have a beginning and an end.  They have a high and they have a low.  For youth ministry students this is all the more true because these manufactured experiences end when they graduate high school.  All of a sudden they are out on their own, making their own decisons, deciding for themselves if they wan't to go to church and what are they looking for in order to make these decisions...a bonfire experience.  Shared experience, no matter how big or small, is what will keep our kids grounded in the church.  I've found that by allowing for more shared experience the unique, high impact or bonfire experiences just happen.

What does all of this mean?  I think that it means youth ministry needs to be more of a slow burn.  Kids, youth pastor, and volunteers need to be living a day to day life together and find the bonfire experiences in the shared experiences of life.  Their relationship with Jesus needs to be functioning day to day and not just whenever their is a church activity.  It is the youth pastors job to keep the fire burning.  I think their needs to be less emphasis on big missions trips and big activities and more emphasis on big relationships.  Relationships that can find a bonfire experience while camping with some guys instead having to manufacture one at camp.  My point is that kids are not always going to be able to go to camp, but they will be able to camp with the guys.  If this is the experience our kids have while in youth ministry, it will be the experience they look for or even try to create when they graduate.