On the top-secret hush-hush e-mail forum of the network of the Advisers of Youth Work to the Dioceses, there is a bit of a canter happening at the moment on the advantages and disadvantages of employing a youth worker (a talk a church has asked for). As ever, the collective wisdom of our wonderful community of practicioners has been useful. In a tangental thread to this someone has posted a list of bad reasons for a church to employ a Youth worker:
1. We can't get anyone else to do it so we thought we would employ someone.
2. It is the Vicar's bright idea, but no one else really thinks we need to.
3. There are no young people in our parish, community that we are
in touch with - but the local Baptist (change denomination as applicable) church seems to have lots of young people and we need to keep up.
4. We don't really know what we want - a bit of this a bit of that- so far our working title for the role is "Children's, Youth and Families Pastor and Community Evangelist and Outreach Worker with special responsibility for the Choir and Fresh Expressions of Worship Co-Ordinator"
respect to the legendary Ali and please add to the list ........
(for a more serious piece on important steps before employment click here)
I think you're really on to something with #4. That seems to be pretty descriptive of every paid youth worker I've ever known.
5. The vicar needs someone to look down on.
We need someone young, because then we'll be a more relevant church. Youth workers are young right?
Just about the most inappropriate reason that I ever heard was of a church that employed a friend of mine, because he was young, male and would 'attract teenage girls into the church'.
Needless to say, he was mortified when he heard this!
We need someone young......because the church down the road has a young trendy worker, we must keep up!