As I said in the original post, I’ve never been involved with either program. I have no standing to criticize either. But I have been extensively involved in youth ministry for a very long time — probably about 35 years — not even counting my time as a youth.
When I was a youth, “leadership” in church meant “leadership in performing the Five Acts of Worship.” As a teen, I had classes on leading prayer, leading and passing communion and the contribution, preaching, and leading singing. I even preached one 15-minute sermon.
It was a small church, and males who could do these things were truly in short supply. I don’t really see any fault in such training.
I remember my first time as a communion passer in my current church, which I joined after college. We had an auditorium that was about 100-feet deep and many more members than my old home church had. Everyone sat at the ends of the pews — leaving the vast center sections empty.
They held a 15-minute class on how to get it done in a reasonable period of time. It was a complex ballet of tray passing, avoiding the reach of three-year olds, waking up the occasional member who’d worked a double shift, working around the great gulfs in the centers of the pews, and making sure that no one was missed. And I was very grateful for the instruction. (They had charts, even.) It was nothing like at my home church.
And so, without necessarily demeaning training for the Five Acts (why not train to do them well?), what leadership skills would you want your children trained in — perhaps with even greater urgency than knowing how to pass the communion trays? (By the way, if you’ve ever seen it done truly badly — with grape juice trays rolling down the sloped center aisle spattering staining juice on Easter dresses for aisle upon aisle — you’d appreciate those training classes.)
Remember, we’re talking about leadership skills that are age-appropriate to the ordinary teenager. What leadership training would you want our children to have before they graduate from high school?
