LAUSR

I write this article as a youth ministry practitioner and a teacher of youth ministry in Canada. The church in Canada, as well the United States to our south, is in a crisis because of a failure to retain young people. A quarter of a century ago, American historian Mark Senter called for a ‘revolution’ in youth ministry and urged a ‘total restructuring’ in our methodology. Citing the coming changes that would impact young people, he wrote, ‘continued modifications of the current system simply will not keep up with the changes in the world in which we live’ (Senter 1992:29). Twenty years later, Mike Yaconelli, co-founder of the influential Youth Specialties, a major youth ministry resource for training and publishing youth ministry resources in the United States, stated, ‘youth ministry as an experiment has failed’, and, ‘the success of youth ministry in this country is an illusion ... very little youth ministry has a lasting impact on students’. His contention was that we need to ‘completely change the way we do youth ministry in America’ (Yaconelli 2003).