Retreats & Such

This weekend we have our winter retreat/ski trip for the high school group and I'm pretty excited about it.  Winter retreats have always been up there as far as my favorite things to plan and experience with students.  We're supposed to spend Saturday skiing/snowboarding but it appears there'll be not enough snow for the mountain to open, so we'll be hanging out at the camp all together, which I actually prefer, to be honest.  I'm eager to spend these few days with our students and get to know them better as well as the leaders going.  We've got a good group headed up to the hills.  It should be good.  As I've been getting ready for this retreat and in recent days I've been asking myself what the difference is, and could be, between doing youth group ministry and youth ministry.  A lot of us spent some amount of time in "youth group" as part of church, but in all honesty, only a medium percentage of people who spend time in the youth group actually end up keeping with the church & with ministry after they get their diploma.  In hindsight, spending a few years away from "youth group" ministry I have a totally different perspective about what youth ministry should look like (in my humble opinion).  I'm a youth pastor, and with that comes a lot of expectations and presuppositions about what I should be spending my time doing.  To be honest, I still haven't figured out what a youth pastor ought to do.  It's a tension between relationship building and programming, teaching and entertaining.  Not saying I like that, but it seems to be what it is in our culture.  

I guess my struggle comes in wondering how to do youth ministry without the youth group mentality, where we have these fun, glorious few years in our church life but then move on to big church and the boring stuff.  How do we get away from entertaining students to empowering them for simply living  lives as disciples?  Why is it that there's this time from jr. high & high school where we create this bubble of ministry and then once you graduate it's like you should be good to go?  Why do we draw those lines, anyway?  How can we get to the place where there's a fluid transition and once you're out of the youth group it's just keeping right on instead of being in this place where we're bummed out because we can't go on the cool trips anymore?  

There's loads of books addressing these kinds of questions, but when it comes down to it i just wonder how to make youth ministry really youth ministry, and not youth group ministry.  My only really hope and hunch is to emphasize narrative and journey, even in the midst of our retreats, summer camps, and mission trips.  My hope and prayer is these things we do would be points on a greater journey, and not the peaks on our roller coaster ride of faith.  I hope that we can be used for creating a culture of Christ-following, and not just a weekly gathering for students to come and be safe from the world for an hour & a half.  

Anyway, just a few rants & ramblings.  Thoughts are welcomed....