It was recently pointed out to me that many people may be confused in the distinction between youth work and youth ministry. On this blog, I tend to categorise my posts and links under these two headings quite often so I thought it would be useful to quickly define what is meant by each term especially given the different slants given to the youth work globally.
Youth Work
Wikipedia states:
In the United Kingdom youth work is the process of creating an environment where young people can engage in informal educational activities.
When I post things under the ‘youthwork‘ category, I am referring to this definition of creating an environment for young people to engage in informal education. I assume that these posts and links could hold an interest for the whole field regardless of method or agenda.
Youth Ministry
Youth Ministry comes as a sub-heading under youth work really (at least in my thinking). Ministry is the spiritual work of a religion, so in this context it refers to informal education with young people that has a particular purpose of exploring the Christian faith. Many Christian organisations (including my own) will do both youth ministry and the more generic youth work where there is no distinct spiritual agenda.
For any links and posts that I tag ‘youthministry‘, I am referring to youth work that has a specific slant or bias toward the Christian faith.
4 responses to “Some Definitions”
Jon
Brilliantly helpful and simple definitions, over an issue which has got muddied and been the source of much debate over the years. Nice. If only churches would be so clear as to which emphasis they were wanting to put on job posts…
Jon
Brilliantly helpful and simple definitions, over an issue which has got muddied and been the source of much debate over the years. Nice. If only churches would be so clear as to which emphasis they were wanting to put on job posts…
Thanks Pete, nice to see you here!
Thanks Pete, nice to see you here!