YPT in Action: Brad Hough
We like to talk about the importance of theological depth in youth ministry - but what does that actually look like? YPT isn’t promoting a one-size-fits-all approach to youth ministry. Instead, we want to encourage youth workers to be anchored in the biblical essentials while practicing wise contextualization in their particular settings. “YPT in Action” will be an ongoing series where youth workers from a variety of contexts answer the same questions.
Name: Brad Hough
Church: Christ Community Church
Title: Student Ministries Director
Location: Carmel, IN
Ministry Setting: Suburban
How long have you served in this ministry: 3 1/2 years
How long have you served in vocational ministry overall: 3 vocationally, 10 as a volunteer leader
Average Church Attendance: 300
Average Youth Group Attendance: 10-15
Age range of students in ministry: Grades 6-12 (ages 11-18)
What are your ministry's regularly scheduled programs over the course of a month?
Youth group on Sunday evenings
Wednesday evening program
One monthly event (sometimes a small group event, sometimes whole-group)
Are there any retreats/camps or other special events that are semi-regular or annual features of your ministry?
Fall Retreat: We gather with all the other youth groups in our presbytery (some 200-300 students) for a weekend retreat with teaching, games, all the normal retreat stuff.
Winter Retreat: Weekend retreat with just our students at a YMCA camp for teaching, games, relationship building.
What does "Youth Group" look like in your ministry?
Sunday evenings from 4-6pm during the school year (we're figuring out summers at the moment). We start with a game, transition to worship, then a Bible lesson in whatever series we're doing. We end with 10-15 minutes of snacks and fellowship. Two or three times a year our students "host" the 3-5th graders for a student-led game.
How would you describe your teaching style in youth group?
My teaching style tends towards sermonic with discussion. I have a central truth with a couple sub-points, but each of these have their own discussion questions.
Sometimes this has looked like breaking into small groups when we have enough volunteers, but more recently it has been more along the lines of large-group conversation/interaction time. I've found that this approach helps maintain a balance between focused teaching time (i.e. I know what I want my students to come away hearing) and keeping the students engaged. Some weeks this feels awesome. Some weeks it falls flat.
What are some recent series you’ve taught through, and how many weeks long were they?
We took the Fall Semester (9-10 weeks) to go through the book of James. The subtitle was Living Faith, with the focus of considering what it looks like for our faith in Jesus to impact how we live (each week's central truth was "Living faith is _______" based on the passage).
Most of the Spring semester (7 weeks) was a series on Jesus the Healer, where each week was focused on one of Jesus' miraculous healings in the Gospels. The main idea was that because Jesus is the Great Healer, He brings wholeness to our brokenness. We talked about the brokenness we saw in each story, how Jesus brought healing and wholeness, and how He brings those things into our lives and world today.
YPT obviously values teaching theology and doctrine in our ministry to students. What does that look like for you?
Each lesson is anchored to a specific passage in Scripture, which allows for relative ease in identifying an element of doctrine or theology that we can pull out for our students. My goal is, in part, to help our students recognize that they are capable when it comes to studying God's word and understanding theology. I don't want theology to be a scary idea or one that they think only Bible scholars interact with, but rather the natural outworking of applying God's word to our lives.
How do you prioritize partnering with parents?
I'm still growing in this. My primary focus in the last couple years has been establishing clear and consistent communication with parents, so they are clear on what we are teaching, how they can be praying, and ways that they can be following up with their kids. My hope is to grow in personal (face-to-face) interactions with parents to get a better understanding of how they perceive the needs of their kids, and how I can be a support in this.
How do you integrate students into the life of the church?
We highlight opportunities for our students to serve on Sunday mornings, and I also try to connect each student with another adult in the church who isn't involved in the Student Ministry (with varying degrees of success). We are working with the church as a whole to integrate students in other ways so that our ministries aren't siloed off. This has been a slow process, but there is buy-in from many people, which is encouraging.
What are some particular issues/struggles that your students/families encounter that may not be prominent in other ministry contexts? How does that affect the shape of your ministry?
I can't imagine these struggles are unique to our church, but Carmel IN places a high priority on achievement, and so our parents and students are very focused on spending their time in extracurriculars to boost their future prospects. Less priority is placed on making it to church. Our church is also on the border of several townships, and so several schools are represented among students. Combined with our smaller numbers, this means that no two students (besides siblings) attend the same school. So, our students don't spend time with each other, and it has been difficult to facilitate friendships between students.
What are some of the books you think every youth worker would benefit from reading?
The first three I read are ones I would recommend to everyone:
Gospel-Centered Youth Ministry edited by Cameron Cole and John Nielson
Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry by Doug Fields
A Biblical Theology of Youth Ministry by Mike McGarry
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