Youth Ministry in the tradition of Constantine?

At Wesley we offer a special emphasis in youth ministry for people seeking their Master's Degrees. A former youth director myself, this programmatic emphasis was particularly appealing to me when I received Wesley's first informational packet, including a sermon on "Youth Ministry After 9/11" that made me wish I could read it aloud to the youth group at my old church. (Unfortunately, it turned out that the emphasis is only workable for M.Divs, not M.T.S. students.) Back home in Minnesota, my closest community is shaped by those with whom I served in the youth ministry trenches through church groups, mission projects, and Bible Camps.

This month's Youth Worker Journal has an article, Domesticated Prophets (it's a PDF), by the director of the Huntington University (where?) MA program on youth ministry. He looks at the development of youth ministry as a discipline from his early days, when unbudgeted risk-taking youth workers put it all on the line and embraced a childlike faith, and compares it to the industry it's become, full of proper respect, more resources than you can shake a stick at, and organizations whose sole purpose is to track other organizations.

Sometimes it bothers me to think that more than a few really outstanding men and women of God can work in youth ministry without having a single meaningful relationship with a teenager. It can frustrate me to consider how many wonderfully gifted people seem hell-bent on developing the next national campaign, program, organization, curriculum, or speaker’s tour that will launch us all forward into an unprecedented season of fruitfulness. I wake up wondering if running ministry leaders through the gauntlet of formal schooling may not exactly be what God had in mind for the Church.

He concludes

We youth ministers once embodied a prophetic message that the rest of the faithful needed. Kid-rescue required fearless adventurers, personifying Jesus’ profile of disciples who couldn’t be dissuaded because there was no money, resources, or respect. Our lack of regard for all things professional was simply an unintentional by-product. “Let’s go, Jesus! I’m ready, if you can use me!"

Some called such bravado naïve. I prefer to think of it as childlike. And now that we’ve been properly domesticated, I fear we’ll all settle for a Church we would’ve never tolerated 25 years ago.

That’s a legacy this old-timer would rather not be a part of.

Plenty of y'all are involved in some sort of youth work now--do you share these concerns?