Why Next Generation Ministry Matters
by Melissa Kelley
“Reaching the nations and the next generation.” That’s the mission of Global Youth and Family Ministry (GYFM), led by MTW missionaries Eric and Rebecca Larsen. GYFM provides support and care for MTW missionaries and their children—often referred to as Third Culture Kids—and ongoing training for those seeking to influence global youth culture. Following is an interview with GYFM director Eric Larsen.
Your path to youth ministry is personal. Can you talk about your own experience as a Third Culture Kid (TCK)?
I was a military brat, missionary kid, and PCA pastor’s kid. And by eighth grade, I was on my 12th move, eighth school, and third continent.
I had a really difficult transition from Australia to the U.S. after graduating from high school and moving to Covenant College. I remember sealing up my Australian belongings in a box and shoving it in the back of my closet; I stopped reading letters from my Australian friends; I changed my accent. I remember thinking, “I can’t continue to straddle multiple worlds when others can’t do that with me.”
Many years later I finally learned to make peace with that part of who I was. God helped me unpack the box again, helped me become integrated in who I am. My father always said, “You minister out of who you are.” I think that getting in touch with our own stories, as well as spiritual gifts and temperament and giftedness ... all of those things are woven together, and God’s uses those to uniquely express Himself and reveal His gospel through us.
Why are you compelled to work with Third Culture Kids? Why is it a priority for MTW?
TCKs are uniquely equipped to impact a globalizing world. We hope that as the church invests in TCK ministry, we will see an emerging generation of missional leaders raised up. Also, we want to help them learn how God has hardwired them for crossing cultures—it may be that God is weaving this into His calling on their life.
But beyond that, we think it’s important to undergird mission families by surrounding them with a web of support. Adolescence is tough enough to navigate without the compounding effects of mission service: isolation, spiritual warfare, the intensity of frontline ministry, and the challenges of growing up cross-culturally.
You’ve said that ministry to youth is more critical now than at any other time in history. Why is that so?
Reaching the next generation is a must for the church—and the church should always have that orientation. We see in the Bible that God is always reconciling generations to one another, and that the burden is on the older to reach out to the younger—not the other way around.
But several things are unique at this point in history. More and more, the church is emptying of young people. There is an exploding global youth population (by the end of this year, 50 percent of the world’s population will be under the age of 25—that’s three billion people). Also, there’s the phenomenon of the extension of adolescence around the world. Kids are thrust into adolescence earlier and earlier and are extending it later and later. Now, it’s common for that period to stretch from 10 to 30 years old.
We’re also seeing a global youth culture where kids have more in common with one another than with the adults around them. Some of the key factors causing that include media, technology, and the common experience of abandonment.
How would you like to see the church engage with youth?
One big problem is the systemic adult abandonment of kids. Adults are not engaging young people. We have to raise up an army of folks who will engage young people together, as a church. We need a community of faith to rally around kids and care for them. It’s a great opportunity for the gospel, for a church to say, “We’re going to go after these kids.” We want to equip leaders to mobilize the adult community of faith to do that, to be catalysts, to become champions of the cause, to become a resource for their local area. And we want to ground them biblically and theologically to do that work.
How does your partnership with Covenant Seminary help accomplish your goal of training others to do youth ministry?
It’s important to see youth ministry movements as integral to our church-planting efforts around the world. So we’re involved in training cross-cultural youth ministers sent as missionaries with MTW, as well as equipping and encouraging field leadership, national leaders, and indigenous churches in engaging the emerging generations in their context.
Our Global Youth and Family Institute (GYFI) is based out of Covenant Theological Seminary, which has adopted GYFI’s training modules as its curriculum for a master of arts or master of divinity concentration in global youth ministry. So, training is a key piece of our vision. We also provide training all over the world—in Nagoya, Japan, several times a year, for example, and also at an annual European leadership forum.
It’s good to see Covenant Seminary and MTW—two PCA agencies—partnering together in this effort. It results in a theologically robust program where training is grounded in practice and kingdom mission.
To learn more about Global Youth and Family Ministry, visit www.gyfm.org
