Youth Ministry Experts

By Doug Franklin October 5, 2010

I’ve been reading a book recently about youth ministry and it’s been making me really mad. The book, while focused on something I am deeply passionate about (building relationships with students), continues to frustrate me every time I pick it up and read it, and I’ve finally figured out why. While the author means well in his approach and I fully believe he wants to help me in ministry, he has no authority. Sure, he may teach youth ministry at a university; he may have written multiple books about youth ministry; and he may even have a huge following, but at the end of the day, he has no authority in youth ministry because he’s not actually doing youth ministry.

The more I dive into this book, the more I see all of his “examples” of youth ministry are either from years before when he was a intern for a single year or stories he made up to fit the point he is trying to make. He may have the greatest ideas in the world, but how can I trust them if he’s not actually living them out with students right now? He calls himself an expert, but has nothing to back it up.

Truth is, we have a lot of youth ministry “experts” in our world right now, but how can we be sure we can trust them? When it comes down to it, you have to ask several questions: How long have they been in youth ministry? Are they in youth ministry right now? Are they doing the very things they are telling all of us to do? If you can’t get solid answers to these questions, maybe they aren’t really experts after all.