Predators and the Pulpit

In my blog posts, I usually ease my way toward my conclusions.

Not this month.

I won’t sugarcoat it: I consider the concepts of “youth ministry” and “youth ministers” to be nonbiblical.  I consider those ideas to be spiritual and physical threats to the safety of children in this current era.  I would never allow my young son to attend “children’s church” sessions or, when he’s older, a church's teen-targeting “youth group.”

 

THE ABUSERS

Maybe you thought church-related child abuse and clergy sexual misconduct were mainly Roman Catholic issues.  But it turns out we non-Catholics can be rather selective in our perceptions of such things.

YES, ROMAN CATHOLICS: Scrutiny of Catholic child sexual abuse by clergy erupted in the late 1990s, confirming decades upon decades of whispers and, sadly, "jokes" about the atrocities.  Catholic church membership has been dropping dramatically throughout the western world since the media exposed the scandals (although Catholic membership has continued to rise in areas where the abuses are less reported, namely Asia and Africa).

SOUTHERN BAPTISTS: Scandals in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) of the United States were outed by a 2019 Houston Chronicle / San Antonio Express-News report titled “Abuse of Faith” that documented cases of sexual assault by nearly 400 youth pastors, senior leaders, and adult volunteers in that congregation.  Subsequent investigations revealed decades-long internal coverups by SBC church leaders who tried to hide abuse information from the very congregations where abusive pastors served, as well as from the wider public eye.

PENTECOSTALS: Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world, are currently facing scrutiny over system-wide coverups of sexual abuse reports made by their own members.  Many of the accounts involved child sexual abuse, alleging misconduct by over 200 pastors, church employees, and other adult volunteers.  The stories we know so far seem to only scratch the surface.  The abuse reports and the subsequent coverups date from the 1970s through to today.

ANGLICANS: A 2020 report by the Church of England and Wales details years of reported sexual abuse committed by priests, ordinands, and adult volunteers.  Like other denominations, the church covered up the accusations, prioritizing the reputation of the institution over the safety of victims, many of whom, again, were children.  A wave of resignations by upper-level clergy, including bishops and archbishops, followed the revelation of the coverups.

It's heartbreaking that I could go on.  And on.  Megachurches like Hillsong and the GatewayChurch.  The Independent Fundamental Baptists movement.  The Foursquare Church.  The Presbyterian Church.  Ever-increasing abuse reports about nondenominational gospel churches throughout the United States (the nation where such independent unaccountability is most prominent).  The pattern is gut-wrenchingly similar in most scenarios: children and vulnerable adult victims are entrusted to the oversight of powerful men who then abuse them, cover up the abuse, engage other leaders to help them with the coverup, and then tearfully repent in the face of exposure.

Then, somewhere else, another round of parents sends their little ones off to a breakaway session of children’s church.

 

WHAT’S “BIBLICAL” AND WHAT ISN’T

You may have noticed I haven’t cited any scripture yet in this blog post.  I did, though, make a claim that breakout “children’s church” and teen youth groups are nonbiblical.  Let’s pause my rant to explore that.  Language study always calms my nerves.

I selected the word “nonbiblical” carefully, since it’s different from “unbiblical.”  The term I used is neutral in tone, meaning simply that something doesn’t occur in the text of the Bible.  “Nonbiblical” covers a lot of things – jet airliners, soufflés, the Emmy awards, your Spotify account.  “Nonbiblical”  simply means something isn’t mentioned in the bible.  It’s easy to justify “nonbiblical” behaviors or material possessions.  You simply say, “It didn’t exist in Bible times.  Of course it’s not mentioned.”

The word “unbiblical” has a not-so-neutral meaning.  It refers to anything that conflicts with the Bible, either going against particular texts or going against general biblical principles.  “Unbiblical” behaviors are clear scriptural violations, things like worshipping idols or hating foreigners or eating lobster.  Actions or possessions that are unbiblical require deeper explanations if you’re going to hang on to them or call them acceptable.

As you might guess, I find children’s church and teen youth groups to be more than just nonbiblical, despite my initial use of that more-neutral term.  But permit me to consider the other side of the argument.  There are obviously plenty of churches that think nonbiblical youth ministries are a noble thing, not at all unbiblical, despite what I see as real-world evidence that they’re church breeding grounds for groomers and abusers.

 

THE SPIN

Adults leading youth ministries tend to defend such groups' existence by means of a handful of scriptures about teaching the young the ways of the Lord:

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 – “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

Psalm 78:4-6 – “… tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders he has done.  He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel , which he commands our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children …”

Joel 1:3 – “Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.”

Adults running youth ministries further emphasize the importance of teaching the young by highlighting Jesus’ command to allow the little children to come to him (Mark 10:13-16) and by insisting that welcoming a child is the same as welcoming Jesus into your presence (Matthew 18:2-5).  If Jesus didn’t want young people to be taught by their elders, why would he put such emphasis on how the kingdom of heaven is modeled on their very innocence (Matthew 19:14)?

Other rationales offered in support of youth ministry are more general:

• That we’re to make disciples of all peoples (Matthew 28:19) and to preach the gospel to all creatures (Mark 16:15) ... and our children, being both creatures and people, need us to do that.
  
  
• That Timothy was young and was encouraged by Paul not to let others despise his youth (1 Timothy 4:12), showing that young people needed ministry, too.
  
  
• That older women are to be examples to younger women in the ways of the Lord (Titus 2:3-4), thus modeling a “youth group”-type ministry.

 

GO NOW, SPIN NO MORE

The examples above aren’t my own random grabbing of verses.  I’ve seen each of them used in articles justifying the idea that independent youth ministries are “biblical” and that they justify (to some degree or another) the existence of “youth programs” and “youth groups” in churches.

And here’s where I move from my “nonbiblical” stance toward an argument that these programs and practices are unbiblical.

1. Each of the Old Testament citations I referenced earlier describes children learning about the Lord in one of two settings: either in the home from direct family, or in the church community at large, mixed into an intergenerational gathering (and not broken out from them).
   
   
2. The quotations from Jesus likewise took place in intergenerational crowds.  He is always calling a child or multiple children forward from the group, not sending them off on their own to be taught by younger disciples.  Jesus makes them the center of a crowd's intergenerational attention.
   
   
3. The quotations from Paul (which baffled me the most whenever they appeared as part of youth-group rationales) were always about adults – the older women were teaching younger women who already had husbands and children of their own (Titus 2:4), and Timothy was already old enough to be teaching whole congregation (as in 1 Timothy 4:13).  I'm not sure at all how those verses related to youth ministry, but each appeared in multiple articles I reviewed.

Paul expected his letters to be read aloud to congregations during their services (Colossians 4:16 and 1 Thessalonians 5:27 make this practice clear).  He expected the young members of the congregation to be present, listening along with adults and not broken off into separate learning groups or independent church worship areas.  We know this because he speaks to children directly in such places as Ephesians 6:1-3

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.  ‘Honor your father and mother’ (this is the first commandment with a promise), ‘that it may go well with you and that you might live long in the land.’”

and Colossians 3:20,

“Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”

just as his fellow believers do in 1 Peter 5:5

“Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders.”

and 1 John 2:12-14.

“I am writing to you, little children … I am writing to you, fathers … I am writing to you, young men …”

Yes, children are to be taught the ways of the Lord – and the biblical model is for them to be taught within the family unit and within intergenerational church settings while they worship and learn with their family.  Sending them off to learn our faith separately from non-family adults is a practice that steps away from the realm of the neutral nonbiblical and into the realm of the unbiblical.  What fruit does that kind of practice bear in far too many churches?  We answered that above.  We are putting our children in harm’s way.  We risk delivering them into the hands of predators, both the ordained type and volunteer laymen.

 

A BIT OVERSTATED?

Surely, I don’t think that everyone in youth ministry is a child predator, do I?  And not every pastor or preacher is a slave to his sexual-domination impulses simply due to the presence of a Y-chromosome, right?

Of course not.  And when I go to a concert, I don’t lock my car doors because I think everyone in that neighborhood is a car thief.  And I don't secure my home at night, protecting my family, because I imagine our city is fully populated by murderous maniacs only.  No, I don't protect against the many.  I guard against the few.

Most of those involved in youth ministry are likely to be good, kind, caring Christians who want to bring the messages of Christ to the young.  But there is a reason scripture so often warns us about false prophets and false teachers who are also noted for their perversity and sexual immorality (e.g., 2 Peter 2:10-14; Jude 4; Jeremiah 23:14; Hosea 4:14; I’ll let you look up all the others).  Simply knowing that there are “good ones” out there doesn’t excuse us from keeping our guard up against predator preachers and perverts of the cloth.

So, I conclude that youth programs that separate children from parents for any amount of Christian discipleship time is more than nonbiblical.  In my mind, I demote it to unbiblical.  Yes, I confess we Christians do plenty of church-related, nonbiblical things that don’t raise my ire.  “Prayer-warrior groups"?  If someone needs to feel that militaristically macho, I can pretend “prayer warrior” is a biblical term.  Women-only bible studies?  I guess if one wants to research ancient scriptural disgust with monthly periods, that would be the place to do it.  Men’s retreats?  No harm done to me if they decide testosterone needs a weekend off from the other half of humanity.

I draw the line – the unbiblical line -- at children.  We are parents.  We teach our own young the ways of the Lord.  Church leaders can be overseers, watching us do that well from where they stand.  But we keep our children with us in the community of the faithful.  That’s where our scripture says they are to learn.  Right there at our sides.  The biblical way.

As one trustworthy source told me: “Treat youth ministry as a high-risk context … not as a casual, informal church program.  That’s the smart thing to do, the safe thing to do.”

Marana Tha,

YoYo Rez / Cosmic Parx