Pyromaniacs blog featured an open letter written by a former teacher at a Christian school in the Chicago area to pastor James MacDonald regarding the fact that the youth he saw from Harvest Bible Church didn’t seem to have heard the Gospel but loved the ice cream socials and silly games. It brought in a lot of comments with quite a bit of disagreement. Phil Johnson weighed in on it today as well.

While the Elephant Room 2 is definitely the motivation for posting the open letter, the letter is still worth looking at for those involved in youth ministry, for those who pastor a church, and for those who have children involved in a youth ministry.

I am reminded of the youth pastor who put peanut butter in his armpits for the students to lick out, the “Chee-toes” video, or of the story of the youth pastor who dressed boys in diapers and had them sit on the girl’s laps so they could feed them baby food and have them drink from a bottle, or maybe the strip Pictionary game to teach kids that they need to have boundaries. Todd Friel of Wretched Radio had a good take on it, which I’ll include below. Despite being a YouTube video it is only audio. (If anyone wants an article that discusses this more, and it does get worse, here is the link.)

Why has youth ministry turned into this? Wouldn’t the Gospel be better proclaimed to the youth by spending time proclaiming it? What happened to preaching the Gospel to the kids rather than entertaining them?