Are We Getting It Wrong?

Last fall I watched a documentary on youth ministry called "Divided." It rocked me... made me ask some tough questions. Questions whose answers could potentially shake my future dramatically.



If filmmaker Philip Leclerc is right, I've spent the last 10 years working with students with unbiblical methods, and the last 2 years of studying youth ministry have been wasted. So I went back to Deuteronomy 6 to take a closer look and to see what I had missed.

The premise is that in Deut. 6:4-9 Moses is teaching that it is the parents responsibility to disciple their children,  not an age-segregated youth ministry! Back in October of last year, Greg Stier posted his response to the movie, and a lot of youth ministry advocates loved watching him stand up for his "little brother." The article is worth the read because Stier makes a great case against the movie. But he misses on one point. Stier writes, "Deuteronomy 6:4-9 was written to dads and moms, not youth leaders and sponsors. The gravity of God’s command through Moses to the people of Israel still reverberates for parents today."


Read the passage yourself.

 ⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ⁵Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Who exactly is Moses addressing here? Is he instructing the parents of individual family units on how to disciple their children?  "Hear, O [individual families of] Israel..." The Israelites were about to enter the promised land, so maybe Moses assumed that each individual family would be abundantly blessed with multiple houses and gates. I seriously doubt it. I hear Moses challenging a nation, an entire community of believers, to raise up a new generation that would love God. Israel was a community, and they raised their young as a community. Youth ministries are a part of that community as are institutions such as families and schools. Whether or not you agree with her politics, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton got this one right: it takes a village to raise our youth.

Glad to know I'm not working against God as I seek to love students and their families.