What is one shortcoming of youth ministry?

Voddie Baucham explains in this video that he has worked with youth on multiple occasions at various youth events. To him, being at these events was like casting pearls before swine. Youth pastors all seemed to be the same and the events seemed to be the same.

Each of them were wholly ineffective. The fruit was negligible. Success was always determined in the same way – the successful person usually became a youth minister. There was no sense of a broader purpose or preparing young people for adult Christian life and experience. It is not surprising that youth ministry has now become college student or singles ministry, to target those in college and post-college singles. We ought to encourage our youth to pursue maturity and godliness.

Proverbs 22:15 (NKJV) – “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child;
The rod of correction will drive it far from him.”

I've done a lot of youth events over the year, some significant youth events over the years, and was really known in that circle, in those circles rather, as one of the go-to guys for events that related specifically the young people. And Although it's never been the majority of my schedule, there had always been 10 or 15 percent of my itinerant schedule that incorporated these significant youth events. So I've been there, and most of the things that I was doing were things that involved the most significant, the largest, the most well-respected youth ministries in local churches and also parachurch youth ministries in the country. Being at these events was like casting Pearls Before Swine. These events looked the same.

They sounded the same. These youth pastors were just sort of reincarnations of the same guy. The events themselves were sort of reincarnations of one another, always trying to outdo one another, and it was wholly ineffective. The fruit that was born in these ministries and through these events was negligible. In fact, success in these youth ministries was always determined the same way.

The successful person coming through the youth ministry usually went on to become a youth minister. The people who were most committed to the youth ministry were the ones who became, you know, workers in their college ministry or workers in their youth ministry or youth pastors themselves. There was no sense of a broader, bigger picture of preparing young people for full-orbed, adult, Christian life and experience. That's why youth ministry is not the term anymore. Now it's student ministry.

That's the term nowadays. The terminology has changed, sort of like global warming changed into climate change. So now what's happened was youth or teenagers were growing up beyond their high school years and falling out of church, because they were never part of the church as a whole. They were always part of a subculture within the church. So what do we need to do?

Well, since we've created a philosophy of ministry, since we've created an ecclesiology that looks completely different than the church as a whole. What we have to do in order to retain these people longer is to incorporate them into a college ministry and a singles ministry. So now the youth pastor is no longer the youth pastor, he's the student minister because the ministry now incorporates people all the way from their early teen years through their mid-20s and sometimes even beyond. So, Again, the fruit of this is just a self-perpetuation of this cottage industry of subculture ministry.