Teaching temptation #1: Leader-centered teaching
I work in multiple worlds – education, youth ministry, and publishing. They wonderfully mix together in my love and concern for the youth of the world and I’m able to contribute in a variety of arenas that work with young people ages 10-25.
One of the consistent concerns in teaching and youth ministry is the trend toward adult-centered programming. Much of how decisions are made and what is ‘produced’ is centered on the adult by convenience (it makes the job ‘easier’ for the leader) and purpose (the adult determines what it taught and rarely, if ever, checks to see if anyone is engaged or not). Gavin Richardson observed this about youth ministry this when he wrote, “Youth ministry as it is most often lived out today is really a series of adult controlled environments strung together with the hope (and expectation) that youth lives will be transformed.”
What if we could move beyond hoping that lives are transformed?
Youth ministry and education used to be far more student-centered than it is practiced today. The dash toward concert-mimicked youth ministry meetings where worship music and a 30+ minute talk are the staples, has left student-centered values far behind. The evaluation of ‘how it went’ pivots on production values. And we ‘hope’ students are worshiping and learning through the one-way delivery methods.
Teaching in schools has become no different, as we adults push students toward passing some form of a standardized test. Creative individuality and unique gifts have been shoved to the margins and the focus is on passing the final exam… even if students haven’t actually integrated any learning into their lives. You can see this commitment to teacher-centered instruction in how schools are designed and how we approach substitute teaching.
Even in small group settings, youth ministry can look like an adult giving advice to students. We’re so accustomed to the adult-focused approaches to how to teach that we aren’t sure what to do to get students to talk, learn, grow, and develop a faith that sticks into adulthood. Remove the authoritative teaching adult (which happens upon graduation from high school) and what will you have left as students also leave their parents for college or career?
I think we’ve lost our love for teaching in youth ministry circles. We’ve almost become performers through music and message now, avoiding the relationally demanding practices. Time spent with teens continues to drop (observed in various graduate research I’ve supervised) while time in the office planning our next program(s) rises. A quick scan of the New Testament would suggest this programmatic push has taken us off the frontlines and away from those to whom we are to be shepherds. How is ministry defined and enacted in the New Testament?
If you work with youth, take a break, make a change (cue the music), and lead a discussion … listen … spend time where youth are … and listen some more.
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