Growing a Gospel Culture in Youth Ministry
This article features an excerpt from episode 11 of the Youth Pastor Theologian Podcast, featuring Vince Greenwald. We wanted to share this excerpt in order to introduce you to a few ways Vince has sought to grow a gospel culture in his youth group.
Personally, the longer I (Mike McGarry) serve in youth ministry the more I’m convinced we need to give greater care to the culture of our ministry. If we proclaim the gospel but demand perfection and excellence from one another, then the way we’re treating people contradicts the “imperfect people welcome” message of the gospel. I like to think about culture this way: ministry culture is the way we treat one another by default. Since it can be so difficult to establish gospel culture, we wanted to highlight Vince’s podcast and his approach as an example. This certainly isn’t the only way, but we at YPT hope it spurs you forward in the ways you make the gospel more than just a good idea that students hear about when you teach.
YPT: When we’re talking about youth ministry and discipleship and evangelism and how do we help students develop lasting faith, it’s easy for us to get caught up in talking about certain programs or tricks of the trade or looking for a magic bullet. But one of the things that’s really important is developing a gospel culture that facilitate healthy priorities and practices. In your ministry at Immanuel, what does a healthy gospel culture look like in the church and how does that funnel itself down in the youth ministry?
VG: Our founding pastor, Ray Orlund, talks about this concept of gospel doctrine leading to gospel culture (read Ray’s article, Gospel Doctrine, Gospel Culture). Those two things need to go together, but they often don’t. When we talk about gospel culture we’re talking about the culture (the way we do things) being informed by the gospel and the great doctrines we’ve received. Gospel culture is getting that theology lived.
In terms of how that informs our student ministry - there are three basic practices that we’ve tried to incorporate that are opportunities for us to live out our doctrine on a regular basis.
Walking in the Light - Inviting students to confess their sin to one another and to walk in the freedom of the grace of God.
Honor Time - Encouraging to outdo one another in showing honor to each other.
Burden Bearing - An opportunity to live out the command to carry one another’s burdens.
These are things we try to intersperse into the regular ministry of Immanuel and we want these things to help us get the gospel lived out among our students.
Vince has graciously written a short explainer about what each of these gospel culture practices look like, and we’ve posted them to our Resources page for future reference. For more on these, listen to the YPT Podcast with Vince on episode 11, “Growing a Gospel Culture in Student Ministry” and read the summaries linked above.