Nostalgia in Youth Ministry

There it is on the top shelf of my childhood bedroom’s closet: the baby box. It is something my mom has worked on basically since I was born. It contains trinkets and knick knacks from every stage of my childhood, including my youth group days: church bulletins from youth Sundays, clippings from the church newsletter with my name and/or picture on it. Look under the bed and you will find a bin full of old and ragged clothing covered in paint and dirt that won’t come off. These were the clothes worn during my youth group’s annual trek to World Changers, a week-long trip where we would work on houses and tell people about Jesus. 

Just typing these sentences fills me with those warm fuzzies we call nostalgia. I look back fondly on my time in student ministry even though, by modern standards, we didn’t have the coolest or the most relevant youth group. Our youth pastor was a Vietnam veteran who had been leading a youth ministry for 30-plus years. We met in a concrete room with little space and one window, but the Lord was kind in those years as many teenagers were saved, baptized, and called into the ministry. 

Those were good days. Many youth workers have youth group memories we love and might even want to replicate in our current churches. Yet the question for me as a youth pastor is: is it wise to implement what I loved about my youth group into the youth ministry I lead today? To put it another way: should I incorporate those activities I look back fondly on in the ministry God has placed me over? How do I know what to avoid? How do I prevent the temptation to constantly compare the youth group I lead to the one I attended? In short: what do I do with all my youth ministry nostalgia?

I believe there are three questions we need to ask when navigating past and present youth practices: what was biblical, what was helpful, and what was harmful? These questions may also help long-time youth leaders evaluate their own ministry. 

What Was Biblical? 

If there were things your youth ministry did as a teenager that you want to implement in your ministry, the first thing you need to decide is if that practice is biblical. For example, we have a clear command to teach the Scriptures and point students to Christ (1 Timothy 4:13; 2 Timothy 4:2, 13). So if you look back fondly on hearing the Word taught and rightly handled at youth group, then do that! 

But what if the practice actually seems to be prohibited by Scripture? Is there a certain song or skit that was popular during your time coming up in youth ministry that might have questionable lyrics or themes? Examine them and compare them with the Scriptures. See if it is consistent with God’s Word. If there are things that are specifically condemned in Scripture, then they should have no place in your ministry. If they are biblically neutral, remember your goal is to lead students towards God’s Word, not to feed nostalgia. Overall, exercise wisdom and discretion as best you can.

This taps into an important foundational idea: you should have clear biblical reasons for how you lead your youth ministry. 

What Was Helpful? 

Helpful ministry practices invite students to know Jesus and grow in spiritual maturity that lasts into their adult years. By this definition, we can assess our own youth ministry experiences and determine what was helpful and what wasn’t. Did the teaching format and schedule contribute to the student's knowledge of Christ and growth in spiritual maturity? Did the events scheduled have a clear purpose connected to these goals? 

For example, maybe your youth group had an annual ski trip and now you are a youth pastor wanting to do the same. Examine your context and ask if that sort of trip would be helpful. Don’t ask if it would be fun or if it would get you brownie points with students and their parents. Rather, ask if it would help your students to know Jesus, grow in spiritual maturity, and genuinely love one another. Practically, ask if your students can even afford a trip like that. How much fundraising would you have to do? How much time would you have to devote to planning? How would planning and running this ministry event impact other ministry events that are more explicitly discipleship-oriented, either positively or negatively? 

Maybe you are wanting to take your group on a mission trip through an organization your youth group attended back in the day. Ask yourself: how did that trip cause us to know Jesus more? Were the people we served actually helped in the long-term or did we merely put a band-aid over another problem? 

In the words of Paul, all things may be lawful, but all things may not be profitable. It is completely lawful for a youth group to have their annual ski trip or to do a yearly service project. However, we must constantly be asking: is what our group doing helpful? 

What Was Harmful?

Sometimes the traditions of youth groups are not just unhelpful, but even harmful. Some of the ways topics like intimacy, modesty, and self-harm were handled may have caused a lot of hurt to people. For example, the famous (or infamous) Lifehouse skit that depicted a struggling teenager who drinks, does drugs, and cuts themselves may be incredibly triggering to students with trauma related to these issues. Some of the ways youth groups would play games led to students laughing, not with another student, but at another student, leading to embarrassment and even disillusionment in the church. 

Seriously consider whether the traditions or habits of your group, even if they are beloved by you and your generation, are truly helpful. Is it worth someone getting emotionally hurt in the name of a good game? Is it worth forcing students to watch an actress act out self-harm in the name of a good skit? 

As youth leaders devoted to pointing teens to Christ, we must be very careful that none of our practices or traditions harm others. 

Navigating Nostalgia 

The categories of “biblical, helpful, and unhelpful” can also be applied to examining, not just past youth ministry practices, but current youth ministry trends. If you are like me, you get hundreds of emails promising that this company’s curriculum or that retreat is going to “radically” change your students. We don’t want to dismiss everything that is labeled as “new and exciting”, but we also don’t want to immediately accept it either. There is something meaningful and beautiful about long-established traditions that generations share in common. But we need to think critically and honestly about both past practices and present trends. 

Using these categories can also help us celebrate all of the good that has come out of youth ministry and the work of so many faithful youth pastors. It’s unfortunately popular to hate on what youth ministry was like in the ‘90s and early 2000’s. Even though some of what was practiced was certainly cringeworthy, laughable, or even regrettable, God was calling teenagers to Himself, growing them in holiness, and training them to be godly spouses, parents, and coworkers. God always uses imperfect people and imperfect means to accomplish His purposes. Instead of mocking everything from the past, let’s consider using the categories mentioned so we can celebrate the good while rejecting the bad. 

These categories – biblical, helpful, unhelpful – guard us from both nostalgia and being jaded regarding the past. It also frees us from what is falsely defined as “success” in youth ministry. When examining your ministry, using these categories will keep your focus on the main thing: being faithful to what God’s Word says and making disciples.