Anxiety = Youth Ministry!?

Here is a question for you, why do you think most youth  ministries get started?

I tend to fall on the side of those that think that many churches started youth ministries or are starting youth ministries out of the shear anxiety that many adults feel when it comes to teenagers.  

The different clothes, the different music, the haircuts, the drama of high school, the relationship issues, the developing bodies, etc. All these things add up to many adults feeling a great sense of anxiety when it comes to being with teenagers.  Therefore, the church goes out and hires an expert to recruit a couple of odd people from within the congregation to work with these anxiety causing people on their own, a youth ministry is born.

Of course there are also many churches that have started youth ministries for all the right reasons, I just thought that I would share the above thought as a simple way of saying that anxiety isn’t always bad.

This series on anxiety vs. love could lead someone to believe that we need to avoid anxiety at all costs.  Well, if we were to try to do that not only would that be pretty anxiety producing, it just would be true.  Yes, we need to work toward living on the side of love but it is true that anxiety is sometimes what it takes for us to actually get something done.  After all, there are a lot of people out there that can say that they are living a life of following Jesus today because of one of those youth ministries that was born out of anxiety.