Urban Ministry Must Move to the Forefront

Today urban, hip-hop, and black youth culture often has an amazing influence on the whole youth culture—white teens far from the inner-city streets are influenced by the slang, fashion, and music of the ’hood. I’ve heard it said in many hip-hop articles that if white suburban teens stopped buying rap music, the industry would go out of business. If this is true, we must change the way we minister to young people. If this is true, we can no longer put up with divisions between urban youth ministry and so-called "mainstream" youth ministry. If this is true, we need to question why most Christian music festival lineups usually include 100 rock and alternative bands and 3 urban/hip-hop groups.

If it’s true that the youth culture has become more urban and multiculturally influenced, then why does mainstream youth ministry in its leadership, marketing, training, and practical theology still come across so male, suburban, and white? Youth-ministry speakers, leaders, and professors seem to care very little about putting urban youth or multiethnic issues at the forefront of their agendas. Some of the reasons may be that there aren’t very many full-time urban youth pastors, especially in comparison to our suburban counterparts. Maybe youth ministry has become big business today, and there aren’t enough urban youth workers with the resources to pay the price to put urban youth ministry in the mainstream.

For the most part, white, suburban, megachurch youth pastors are marketed as the experts in youth ministry while urban youth pastors of color rarely, if ever, get a chance to write, teach, or present practical theology to transform how we think about youth ministry. I’ve even had youth ministry leaders question me about whether urban youth ministry should even be presented outside of what they call mainstream youth ministry—which many times is just a code word for rich, white, suburban, programmed youth ministry.

Even though today’s kids cross racial and ethnic lines more proactively than any generation before them, I’m concerned that adult leaders are satisfied with presenting a suburban, white model that seems to care more about game ideas and raising up corporate, white, male youth ministry experts than talking about what’s really influencing students.

None of the youth ministry leaders and so-called experts seem to want to deal with why the pain, hopelessness, and anger of the urban youth are now reflected in the rural and suburban areas through school shootings all across the country. No one really wants to talk about how racism has kept us from developing a radical and revolutionary global model for youth ministry that could raise a generation of young people to build the authentic, Christ-centered, and multiethnic church laid out in chapter two of Acts.

Youth speakers who were radicals in the ’60s and ’70s sound mainstream today, mainly because they won’t deal head-on with race issues and the urban influence. We can no longer afford to treat urban youth ministry as a misfit, outcast ministry. Urban youth workers, speakers, and theologians can no longer be treated like modern day Samaritans of ministry. Urban youth ministry must move to the forefront.

Youth culture is changing in many ways, because the new radical voice of ministry comes from the ’hood. The voices of rappers in the inner city aren’t just influencing the hearts and minds of urban youth. The voices have found their ways into the soul of youth culture as a whole. I just hope and pray that youth leaders will take the time to pay attention, be real, and catch up.