Archive: Too Much Arrival—Not Enough Survival

By Duffy Robbins

The Christian life is a marathon. It is not about speed; it is about distance. It’s not about how fast our kids grow; it’s about how far our kids grow. If we want to nurture in our students a faith that does not fail, we need to focus on strategies that encourage survival, not just arrival.

In the last issue of Good News, we discussed the problem of what we called “Tarzan Christianity“—an up-and-down Christian commitment that survives only by swinging from one “tree top” experience to the next. It is a discipleship that looks great in the high times, but then fades in the jungle. Unfortunately, it is also a virus of anemic Christianity that seems to thrive in strong, active youth groups.

Our intention in the next several issues of Good News is to discuss some of the errors of imbalance that allow Tarzan Christianity to breed within our youth groups. Without question, the most common error is rooted in an imbalance between outreach and nurture—an approach that focuses too much on arrival, and not enough on survival.

Our mandate as youth workers is to make disciples (cf. Matthew 28:19, II Timothy 2:2). Nowhere in Scripture are we called to make Christians. Only God can make Christians. Only disciples can make disciples. That is not to say that outreach is unimportant. Obviously, we are commanded to be witnesses for Jesus (Acts 1:8). Those who pit discipleship against evangelism as opposing goals do not understand that evangelism is the first stage in the process of discipleship. No one has ever been discipled who was not first evangelized.

I have met “discipleship snobs” who talk about evangelism and outreach as if it were a lower life-form of youth ministry. “I don’t have time to mess around with kids who aren’t interested in doing something radical for Jesus! I didn’t get into the ministry so I could do fun and games.”

Standing on the beach that day, Jesus looked squarely into Peter’s eyes and said, “from now on you will catch men” (Luke 5:10). And yet, as a fisherman, Peter knew the actual joy of hauling in the net was only part of the job. There were nets to mend and nets to wash, bait to set, and boats to repair; and after all that, long nights on the boat waiting for the fish to come.

Imagine Peter complaining that he was through with “all-nighters,” that he had more important things to do than sit in a boat and wait for fish to come, that this business of fishing is too important to waste time with “fun and games.”

It takes two things to catch fish: bait and patience. Whether we like it or not, fishing for men will always involve both (and it may occasionally require an all-nighter or two). That’s the evangelistic task.

On the other hand, no fisherman in his right mind continues to catch fish without giving some thought to how he will preserve them and keep them fresh. Otherwise, at the end of the day, all he has to show for his labor is a big boat filled with smelly, dead fish. Big catch. Big deal.

The problem is that catching fish is more exhilarating than scaling them, cleaning them, and preserving them. Evangelism generates greater excitement and bigger numbers than discipleship and nurture.

There is always more excitement in the arrival than there is in survival. There are hugs and kisses and animated conversations when the guests first arrive. Who wouldn’t want to focus their ministry on that end of the equation?

But then, after a few days of sharing the bathroom and cleaning up someone else’s mess, we begin the mundane work of life in a shared community. That’s not quite as exhilarating.

Storming the beachhead is exciting. Fighting it out in the trenches to maintain your ground—that’s just hard work.

Witnessing Lazarus’ raising from the dead. That’s a miracle. Helping Lazarus to strip away his grave clothes after four days of death. That’s just gross, smelly work.

So much of our youth ministry effort is focused on helping kids to “become Christians” that we have lost sight of our central God-given mandate. We get all excited just because a large number of students show up, but Scripture has always made it clear that our task is to help them spiritually to grow up. There are too many youth groups that are ten miles wide and one foot deep.

Our task in youth ministry is not just helping kids become Christians; it’s helping kids be the Christians they’ve become. There is nothing wrong with cook-outs, ski trips, movie nights and bowling parties that draw a big crowd. But when it’s all said and done, we dare not focus so much on getting kids to arrive that we neglect the hard, less glamorous work of helping them to survive.