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Confessions of a Failed Church-Parachurch Partnership
by Jason Kaat

Experiencing failure in ministry has a way of knotting your stomach until it becomes a twisted lump of goo in your throat. I hate it. Over the last two years I've endured the slow, painful demise of a Young Life church partnership, trying to act as both youth director and Young Life club director simultaneously—and I'm living to tell about it. Ironically, I'm writing this article while en route to a job interview with a church that's had a successful relationship with Young Life for 10 years. This has left me wondering, "What does it take to make a successful partnership between a local church and a parachurch organization?" You'd think that the church and other Christian organizations would just get along since we have the common goal of reaching teens for Christ—right?

It Seemed Like a Good Idea… at the Time

I started the partnership three years ago and had a very positive first year…and why not? The young church was growing fast, and Young Life wanted to start a club in a brand new school—and they agreed to share the cost of my salary. I spent the first six months building relationships with the youths of the congregation and their friends, spending most of my time with in-church youth ministry and Young Life training.

During the second year, I began to sense tension between the fast-growing Young Life club and church leaders growing more and more disgruntled, feeling Young Life was taking away their youth pastor. It became an issue of "whose time is whose?" rather than "Is effective ministry being done?" And in the end, it was like trying to perform two full-time jobs that weren't in partnership at all.

I'll never forget my senior pastor's question: "Great, you got 77 kids coming to Young Life club—why do we only have seven kids attending youth group?" My initial reaction was one of anger and self-righteousness. How could he ask this? Doesn't he understand that kids are coming to Christ as a result of Young Life? Sure, they don't all come to our church, but as long as they're coming to faith and being plugged into a church somewhere—isn't that the important thing?

After I cooled off, I tried to see it from his perspective. Out of the seven kids we had in youth group, only four of them were coming to the club. Some of the kids didn't like the club, and some of the kids felt disconnected from youth group. I began to realize that our problems were deeper than what the pastor, area director, or I were prepared to handle alone.

A New Strategy

That's when the knot in my stomach began to tell me that unless something changed, the ministry would come to a screeching halt. I began to network like crazy! I talked to an abundance of Young Life area directors, youth pastors, and established church partnerships, and one of the main problems was the way it was set up. Neither the church nor Young Life bought into the philosophy of Young Life being the church's outreach arm into the community. The church wanted an "in house" youth program, and Young Life wanted a cost-efficient way to get a potential area director on board in a fast-growing community.

With this knowledge, I started year three with a new mission: I was determined to help our church become an advocate of Young Life, and to help Young Life develop a system of plugging kids into local church ministries. I offered to come on board full-time with the church staff to prove my commitment to the church ministry. I even brought my donor base with me to help out the church financially…with the stipulation that I would continue Young Life involvement. The church reluctantly accepted the offer with a nine-month contract. But in those few months, I would learn the wisdom in the saying, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

While I was networking to save my career, I heard of the student-led, cell-group concept. I was convinced this was the way to bridge Young Life and the church. In those short nine months, we started to see it happen! My youth group kids began to understand that Young Life isn't designed only for them—it's a place to take their friends who don't know Christ. Cell groups began serving a dual purpose—a discipleship tool for the maturing Christian kids, and a safe, non-threatening environment where new Christians could connect to the church. Our church's student ministry went from a group of seven kids with very low morale to a group of 12 who were excited about our cell-group ministry and Young Life.

We started training five of the 12 as cell-group leaders and missionaries to their school campus. I thought that Young Life involvement, combined with cell groups at the church, could be the formula to realize authentic spiritual growth among all the kids in my area. That combination covered four of the five purposes outlined in Doug Fields' Purpose Driven Youth Ministry: Evangelism, Fellowship, Discipleship and Ministry. By the end of the year, we even had a team of people doing groundwork to create a quarterly worship experience! We could feel the momentum building.

But after the nine-month contract was up, it became painfully clear that the powers-that-be didn't share my enthusiasm. I was offered another contract—for six months this time—with the expectation that a Young Life-like program would be developed for the church. It was made very clear to me that if I wanted to continue working with Young Life, it would have to be done "on my own time."

Because I didn't discover until late in the game my church's perspective with regard to this Young Life partnership, I lost momentum just when things were looking promising. Through this frustrating experience, I've concluded that there are at least three red flags to look for when creating and maintaining healthy church-parachurch partnerships.

Red Flag #1:

The church sees the partnership as a financially responsible way to get a good youth worker on board—but hasn't bought into the idea that the local Young Life club is the outreach arm of their student ministry. Youth workers will find their loyalties split between youth group and Young Life. Parachurch organizations have been so successful over the last half century that they've heavily influenced the way church youth ministries are structured. And when youth workers are asked to build Young Life clubs and youth groups for the churches, they're being asked to focus on two purposefully similar and high-maintenance programs. When this occurs, church leaders' concerns often shift from a holistic vision of student ministry in the community to the issue of which ministry is receiving more of the youth workers' time.

Setting up Young Life clubs as the outreach arm for the church must have support from the entire congregation. Otherwise the partnership will fail.

Red Flag #2:

If there's more than one school that feeds into the church youth ministry program, having the youth worker serve as a club leader for one specific school can bring about division among parents and youth. I'll never forget the guilt I felt after an angry parent confronted me about how much more time I was spending at the high school where I conducted the Young Life club than at her son's school. She was absolutely right.

To help minimize this issue, the youth worker must network with other clubs and their leaders at parachurch training sessions, camps, and all-city events. It's important that kids know that, although you may focus your evangelism in one particular school, you're keeping up with their campuses, too. They need to know they're not forgotten.

Red Flag #3:

The parachurch organization sees the partnership as a quick-growth opportunity. There's a new trend to establish a campus ministry for every student, on every campus, in every community in America. I support it whole-heartedly. However, I feel that we're often in such a rush to build the width of our ministries that the depth of the ministry suffers. Church partnerships can be strategic tools that build depth within parachurch organizations experiencing rapid growth. When the parachurch organization takes up the challenge to work with the church, there'll be greater depth to the church ministry.

Remember that 10-year church partnership in Ohio that worked so well? Well, I found out what made it tick. The church adopted the Young Life club as its outreach to the school, and the Young Life staff person was a daughter of a church member who helped initiate Young Life in their area. There was a tremendous amount of trust between Young Life and the church. The desire to work together and do whatever it took to introduce students to Jesus Christ and disciple them into a mature faith was more important to them than drawing boundaries around whose ministry was whose.

(If your church is interested in pursuing a church partnership program with Young Life, you can contact your local or state Young Life office for more information (or visit www.younglife.org). Some great resources to check out include: The Church and Young Life: Partners in Ministry by Mary and Charlie Scott and Millennial Leap by Mike King. Both offer great insight on how local churches and parachurch organizations can work together to reach their communities for Christ.)


Jason Kaat has been serving in youth ministry for seven years and has recently become the director of a parachurch, campus-based ministry program, Lost & Found, in Boise, Idaho.


 

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