Cross-posted from YouthMesh.org:

I just got back from Malawi and Zambia where I was involved in trying to help look at ways forward for reaching young people in these countries. In most cases young people in these countries are drifting away from church because it is becoming irrelevant for them. Church can still be in a style or structure from the 1960’s and yet young people are connecting to a new century.

I found the gap between youth culture and church culture at times very sad and at times scary. Young people (by nature) were embracing many aspects of global youth culture. There is the music, the media, and the dress sense, but it was more than this. It was the freedom of speech and information that young people were discovering that was causing a big rift between young people and the church.

When I spent time hanging out with young people I found them to be optimistic. They had big dreams for themselves. They had plans about who they would like to be and what they would like to do. They also had strong hopes for the local youth ministry they were part of, but they were aware that the local church was not able to relate to young people and that often youth ministry never got past the “do’s and don’t’s of the Christian faith.”

As I spent time with individual young people, and ran pastors' and youth leaders' workshops, I was excited about the level of hunger there was for the local church to understand and connect with young people. There was a sense that things weren’t working, but there was a sense of expectation. As I ran seminars the youth leaders that were there seemed like sponges. They soaked up everything I said and the ideas on ways to work forward.

These pastors and youth leaders were generally working from a point zero in terms of youth ministry, and their excitement and energy as I helped unpack youth culture, youth ministry ideas, and ways forward was exciting. You could tell that they wanted to connect to the young people around them, but didn’t have the ideas, structure, or encouragement needed to make it happen. As our time together went on, they started to come out of their shells more and expressed their ideas and what they could put in place.

I felt it a privilege to be part of helping to shape their ministry journey. It made me realise how hungry these leaders were to find some ways forward. They could see the reality of youth work but felt restricted in how they could deal with it. I was reminded of the importance of having youth ministry people with the right skills being able to go to places like Malawi and Zambia and bring encouragement and ideas and also hope.

I came back from this trip convinced that I need to do more to get youth workers out into countries where youth culture and church culture is so far apart so they can play a part in helping to bridge this gap and to help churches understand how to connect to young people in their communities. Because relating and working with leaders who are so hungry to learn and grow is such a buzz.