Among other goals, a local congregation's youth ministry should aim to provide tools and support to help youth mature and to find their place in God's Kingdom.
Here are some principles that we can keep in mind when designing a Youth Ministry Program:
Youth Need to Understand Civil Disagreement:It’s possible and important for Christians to be able to disagree with the people around them (i.e. non-Christian Worldviews), while maintaining a spirit of love.
Youth need tools to be able to discern truth vs. non-truth:In today's modern world, we can expect thatYouth can and will be exposed to all sorts of teachings as it is readily available through channels like Youtube and Social Media (Did you know there's Christians on Tik Tok?) We won’t be able to control their access, so providing tools for discernment are more important.
Youth need to understand thatChristian Beliefs are different from Political/Cultural Groupings:We need to be careful that Christian youth identify with Christian Identity, and not just political or cultural groups that may have some overlap. The dangers of becoming entagled with other groups are that members of those group may not be as uniform in their beliefs as outsiders may think, and that the groups as whole may also hold beliefs that Christians disagree with. For example