My Educational Theology 1: Introduction

Introduction: A year ago, I had to write my theology of youth ministry for a class I was taking in seminary. The paper was the result of a years work in gathering information and processing a variety of books, lectures, and discussions with my class mentor and my colleagues at CSCS and youth pastor friends in town. My supervising professor at Fuller must have liked it because I got an A on it, but would like other opinions. For this reason, I’ve decided to break the paper down into a series of blogs with the hopes that I could get some people to read them and give me feedback. If you choose to read this and the further blogs, I would be honored to get your opinion and to discuss the points I’ve made here. Thanks for reading!

The paper: My theology of youth ministry in a Christian school setting is built on the biblical-historical foundation of the partnership of God ordained institutions to provide for the vocational and spiritual training of the young person. I also find a biblical-historical precedent of God’s use of mentors in partnership with mid to late adolescents in their training. Finally, I see the biblical-historical record shows that God has a tremendous value for adolescents and has created them with zeal, ambition and a sense of adventure so that He can use them to accomplish His will on earth. In summary, my theology of youth ministry is as follows:

I believe that God has ordained the family and the church as the primary institutions for the spiritual and vocational education of children; I believe that God has historically used mentors to train up young people for His Kingdom; I also believe that God values mid-adolescents and that He created them with energy, zeal, ambition and a sense of adventure in order to carry forth the work of His Kingdom; and finally, I believe that cultural relevance is crucial to any youth ministry. Because of my beliefs, my ministry to youth in the arena of Christian education will partner with the home and the local church. In doing so, I believe that we should build upon the foundation laid by our students’ parents and home churches to mentor our students in the use of their youthful energies in order to further the Kingdom of God on earth and to provide a lifelong benefit to the local church. In doing so, we will seek to remain culturally relevant in our means and methods of ministering to, mentoring and releasing the mid-to-late adolescents who attend our Christian school.

On the following pages (and blogs) I will expand on my theology of youth ministry in a Christian high school and describe how I am working toward implementing my theology through our Student Ministries Department at Colorado Springs Christian High School (CSCS).
I believe that any education or ministry of children and adolescents begins with the parents and church flow from our belief that the Bible sets up the family and the church as the primary institutions of influence on children. From my knowledge of Scripture, there are three basic institutions[1] that God has ordained for mankind:

1. The family (Genesis 1-3)— to model the image of God and the family of God to the world, reproduction & socialization.
2. The civil government (Romans 13)—law & order, protection of God-given rights.
3. The church (Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8; Ephesians 4:11)—advancement of the Kingdom of God on earth through evangelism and discipleship

footnotes:
[1] This discussion on the three God ordained institutions comes from a paper I wrote for our Bible Department entitled The Role of Christian Education in the Family and the Local Church.