A youth minister is an ordained pastor whose goal is to provide religious education to the youth of the church. Youth ministers come with passion, understanding and training on how best to reach and disciplize young people. They bring the wisdom and knowledge of the church on how to become a church that welcomes this essential generation. At the same time, if youth ministries are trying to use fun and games as the main attraction, Netflix, PlayStation, iPhones, sports, barrel parties, etc.
A youth minister arrives with a better understanding of the culture and needs of young people, as well as a better knowledge of the development of young people teenagers, and can therefore inspire a church to arrive more effectively and fruitfully. There are organizations within the Unitarian Universalist Association (the main organization of universalist unitary congregations in the United States), as well as within the Canadian Unitary Council (the national body for universalist unitary congregations in Canada), which minister to and with young people, of which Youth Unitary Religious Universalists (YRUU) are the largest and most obvious. She has been volunteering and paid for parish youth ministries and diocesan youth ministries for eight years. Paul's famous accusation of Timothy “preach the Word of 2 Timothy 4” is as applicable to young pastors as it is to adult pastors.
Church youth directors, also called youth pastors, guide young people, usually in the middle and high school years, in the development of their faith. These include weekly Bible study, Sunday school for youth, overnight stays or confinement, weekend retreats, and local and multi-day mission trips. Actually, reflecting in retrospect, I wish I had opted for the youth minister, but the youth pastor was definitely better than the youth worker. Youth ministry can be an incubator for pastors as they learn to work with volunteers, build systems, and preach the Word, all with the investment of a senior pastor.
Usually, many youth and adults volunteer to organize and lead these events, but the youth director supervises the volunteers and tracks the progress of the youth leaders. It is the responsibility of the youth director to organize a variety of activities, both in and out of the church, that attract many different young people to the church and maintain their interest. A youth pastor must see the young people in the youth group as potential missionaries to achieve their culture of Jesus Christ. Young workers were often expected to be superheroes, capable of turning their hand to everything and anything.
The doctrine of Sunday Sabatarianism held by many Christian denominations encourages practices such as Sunday school attendance, as it teaches that the entire Lord's Day must be dedicated to God; since many children and adolescents often return to church in the late afternoon for the youth group before attending a night worship service. Each youth ministry is structured differently and culture will vary between youth ministries depending on how the ministry cultivates culture.
