Student Ministry and the Supremacy of Christ

Book excerpt: According to Ross, the goal of student ministry is students who spend a lifetime embracing the full supremacy of the Son, responding to His majesty in all of life, inviting Christ to live His life through them, and joining Him in making disciples among all peoples. Ross notes, Student ministry that does not matter for a lifetime does not matter much. For the past 50 years, most churches approached student ministry as: 1. students primarily relating to one youth leader, 2. students experiencing church almost exclusively with people their same age, and 3. parents outsourcing the spiritual leadership of their teenagers to the youth leader. The result? The great majority of youth who were faithful to youth programs now have walked away from the faith. Now there is broad agreement that this approach to student ministry has been a failed experiment. Student Ministry and the Supremacy of Christ proposes a model of student ministry that is far different from the past. This approach calls for: 1. immersing teenagers in life-on-life, transformational relationships with several godly adults, 2. drawing teenagers into a web of rich, intergenerational relationships in the congregation, and