Moving Beyond the Shock Absorber - Part 4
YMCA
Part four of a 10-part series from an article by Stuart Crawshaw that appeared in The Briefing in 2008 titled: Moving beyond the shock absorber: The place of youth ministry—past, present and future
Cycles in youth ministry
Mark Senter in his seminal book, The Coming Revolution of Youth Ministry, shows how the Sunday School movement set the pattern for all subsequent youth ministries. He applies Max Weber’s theory of grassroots movements to establish that developments in youth ministry would come in cycles. According to Weber’s theory, grassroots movements are begun by a charismatic leader during a time of change.In the establishment of Sunday Schools, Raikes was clearly the charismatic leader because he inspired others to get involved in his cause.
As people join the cause, a movement grows. As it multiplies, the ideas it is based on are systematized by bureaucrats whom Weber calls the “priests” of the movement. This is a process of institutionalisation, which allows the movement to spread widely because it no longer relies on the direct leadership input of the charismatic leader. The Sunday School became a system through its newspaper, and the model then spread across Britain, the USA and as far as Australia.
Even though a movement grows through institutionalisation, it actually becomes less effective because it becomes less flexible. Not all the bureaucrats who led Sunday School groups had the same passion or understanding as the initiator. When another time of change comes, the now inflexible and institutionalised movement declines as it cannot adjust to the new lifestyles and values of young people. This is a pointed irony, for it was its ability to adjust to these forces that resulted in that movement’s emergence in the first place.
Senter argues that the period of growth, institutionalisation and decline (i.e. a cycle) took 50 years in the case of the Sunday School movement. In time, the Sunday School led to work with young people symbolized by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The distinctiveness of the YMCA when it started was its relevance to its times: it added a social component to the study of God’s word. In addition to meeting for Bible instruction, the model gave, first, young men, then soon after, young women, a place to stay as they became increasingly mobile, along with some fitness instruction. The YMCA is similar to the Sunday School: it was conceived as a grassroots response to change, but then, as it institutionalized itself, it became unable to change, and eventually lost its effectiveness.
The second cycle Senter identifies is the Young People’s Society for Christian Endeavour, followed by the third, the model of Youth for Christ in the 1940’s. According to his theory, youth movement cycles in the secular age last for 50 years. So by the early 1990’s, we were anticipating the emergence of next the 50-year cycle (hence the title of his book).