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Last week, I posted about the prominence of “attraction-based” models of youth ministry and their common pitfalls. Today, I’m laying out a vision for a different type of youth ministry – one that is mission-based, instead of attraction-based.

A mission-based youth group is entirely different in its outlook. The typical attraction-based model invites young people to church and then implicitly encourages them to ask, “What can this youth group do for us?” A mission-based youth group attends church asking “What can our youth group do for our friends, our schools, our church, and our community?” It is inherently outward-focused. Special events are the method by which we bring outsiders into the church in order to share the Gospel with them, see them saved, and then send them out as teenage missionaries.

Teenagers On Mission
In our world, everyone asks “What’s in it for me?” and most youth groups ask the same thing, because we have led them to think this way. I want the mindset of the youth group to not be “How can you serve us?” but “How can we serve you?”

When I use the word “mission-based,” I am not only speaking of the youth group as being “missions minded.” Of course, we want the youth to be eager to go on mission trips and share the Gospel. But that is not enough. Teenagers need to begin seeing themselves as God’s missionaries in whatever place He has put them. Every Christian is called to be “on mission” 24 hours a day. I consider all the young people as full-time “ministers,” working to advance the Kingdom of God in their families, jobs, schools, and communities. Being the church Monday through Saturday is just as important as doing church on Sunday.

Counter-cultural and Culture-Redeeming
The mission-based youth group is simultaneously counter-cultural and culture-redeeming. No segment of society is off-limits when it comes to God’s redemption. We should welcome in the youth with wild hair, tattoos and nose-rings. We should have open arms for the intellectuals, the achievers, the thinkers and the athletes. We should comfort the abused and hurting. We should work to see minorities included and integrated within the youth group. The church is the one place where people that are different in many ways can come together united by the Gospel.

The darkness of the outside world is not something to hide from, boycott, or scold from afar, but is instead the very place the youth are called to extend God’s light. A youth group should be a channel for God’s blessing to flow out to the surrounding community.

Being Jesus for the World
If I learned anything from my time tutoring middle-school children in failing Kentucky public schools, it is this: there are kids and families in our neighborhoods who are dealing with unspeakable pain and grief. I yearned to send those teens to a youth group that finds its purpose in being the embodiment/incarnation of Jesus Christ for our broken world.

People who are always focused on their own troubles and problems continually find more troubles and problems to focus on. But those people who look outward and try to meet the needs and relieve the troubles of others find themselves empowered, joyful, and spiritually fulfilled in a way that they never could when they assumed all church ministry existed only for them and their needs. The mission-based model moves youth to a place of greater spiritual vibrancy as they see and meet the needs of the others.

written by Trevin Wax. © 2007 Kingdom People Blog

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