Last week, I came across this 2010 article on how youth ministry is killing the church.  While I still don’t believe youth ministry is a detriment, integrating youth participation into the already-crafted church life is even more imperative.

As a pastor of a small-ish church, I’ve been trying to integrate more youth participation into various parts of our church life.  Excitement is beginning to bubble from our young people contributing their time and talents in our congregation.  For a young person who never read in Sunday worship, they voiced to me how excited and grateful they were to be a part of the service.  Recently, I’ve seen the value of youth taking on different roles in our fundraisers.  They’ve been a hospitable presence to new young people.  One has taken a leadership role as he engaged the younger youth during children’s time.  Just yesterday, I consulted with two of our…