Effective Youth Ministry Strategies: Purpose
In Springtide’s site visits for the What’s Working project, leaders shared their wisdom and insights from years of experience in youth ministry. Five themes shaped our inquiries during these visits: adaptability, integrity, inclusivity, fun, and purpose. While these are universal concepts, each manifested differently in theory and practice, providing a rich landscape of best approaches in this work. Our research shows that in faith-based work with young people, helping them to discern purpose looks different at every stage of the process.
Purpose often starts with giving young people the space to explore, and Alexandra Tureau Meyer, Managing Director of GatherDC believes early adulthood is the peak season for that discovery. Part of GatherDC’s work is giving young Jews the space and guidance on how their Jewish beliefs, meaning, and purpose can all fit together.
“[We get to] know, empower, and activate young people to build Jewish lives that are relevant to their lives, active to them, and actually meaningful to them, not what someone else passed on to them or told them to do,” Alexandra says. “And young people in this stage of life are really … looking to build who they are on their own two feet, on their own terms, their own purpose, and their own meaning. And our education methodology, combined with being relational, really shows that age group that you can do this. It’s in your power, and it’s what you want, and it has to be authentic to you.”
Servant Year, a 12-month program where young adults live and serve together as they formulate the next steps of their lives, offers a formalized space in which to discern purpose. Like GatherDC, all of the Servant Year participants are young adults, and they often utilize each other as sounding boards.
“I’ve found that a lot of the really big breakthrough moments of this part of my life have happened when a community member who has come to know me really well has just said, ‘Well, have you thought about this?’ or ‘What if you considered this?’,” says Emily O’ Heir, Servant Year participant. “They kind of asked me those guiding questions and showed me that compassion that comes from being a strong dialogue partner who’s willing to poke at things, —get you to reconsider … And I find that it’s really rare as a young person to meet someone and immediately start to ask those big questions. But when we’re all here in this environment where that’s what we came here to do, that’s what we’re all seeking.”
How Relationships Can Help Shape Purpose
Sometimes helping young people to find purpose requires adults recognizing gifts in others they might not realize they have themselves. As Founder of The Place, Trevor Beauford tapped young adults he knew to create and maintain The Place’s monthly gatherings. Trevor says it’s “important to start with ‘relationship’ before you start with ‘task’;” getting to know a young person is an essential first step in identifying their gifts. Then, one can “invite giftedness to come forward.”
“So when you, as a spiritual leader, feel the inkling of gift in someone, you notice it,” Trevor says. “And sometimes you name it—‘I see this gift in you. Why don’t you try on this gift?’ And then you nurture it, providing space and opportunity to do that with the permission to fail. And I think after that, people tend to come out.”
The Benefits of Youth Leadership Roles
Leadership roles can be formative for young people, but they often require some form of adult support to maximize the experience. In Together Lab’s work with denominations and community organizations, young people own leadership roles as community organizers and adults play supporting roles. Director of Youth Initiatives Chris Dela Cruz believes this gives young people a sense of agency in defining who they are and where they belong, while not feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of the work.
“Young folks are in their becoming,” Chris says. “They are also juggling so much [and are] just learning about some of these pressures and structures for the first time. To be invited into something greater than themselves [provides] that sense of purpose. Once they have that sense of belonging, once they have those connections—what the invitation in this organizing work has been is long-term sustainable organizing and change that also doesn’t burn them out. It actually helps them with their well-being rather than kind of grinds them to the ground.”
Co-Leaders Melissa Tucker and Marshela Salgado-Solorio of SD United recruited young adult leaders to help create curriculum and lead youth group nights. While they love providing young people the ability to lead, the two adults didn’t realize how healing the experience of crafting this group would be for the young adults themselves.
[There was] a lesson on inherent belovedness that you—as part of creation—are not just created good, but created supremely good … a ministry student at a college in town was teaching the lesson—and she was naming that it’s not just that your soul is good, but that your body’s good and therefore your desires are good, and your creative sparks are good. At the debrief after that, one of the young adult leaders was crying, saying, ‘Never in church have I ever heard that my desires are good. Rather I’ve heard often my flesh is weak or corrupt or my desires are suspect.’ You could see that this was healing for them, too. And often I’ll notice when I’m teaching, my young adult leaders are leaning forward, and they’re nodding their heads, and they’re tracking. So it feels like reparative in a way.
We have an application process that you fill out when you want to be a leader. One of the questions is, ‘Why this opportunity? Why right now?’ And without a doubt, nearly everybody says, ‘I’m ready to build the youth group that I wish that I had.’ And it is acknowledging that youth group spaces were some of the most important spaces and also some of the most harmful. And holding those together is a tough thing to carry… I just think the opportunity for young adults to do that healing work and then also generate what feels right and appropriate and needed for our teens is super, super special.”
Leader Insights: Latino/a Identity, Faith, and Purpose
Engaging Stories provides a week-long retreat for Latino/a young people to explore their Latino/a identity, faith and purpose. Juan Escarfuller serves as Executive Director of Instituto Fe y Vida, the organization that leads Engaging Stories. Juan says the discovery of purpose is embedded in Engaging Stories’ structure. Those who attend are later invited to step forward as the organizers and facilitators of the program, which allows them to center their own experiences and develop as leaders. Here, Juan tells the story of one Engaging Stories participant whose service provided a new path to purpose.
