THE SHOCK ABSORBER
There is a 1971 book in the Soul Revival studio called Way Out Ideas for Youth Groups. It was written by Mike Yaconelli and Wayne Rice, published first in 1968, reprinted into the early 70s. The cover is wonderfully psychedelic. The contents are a catalogue of youth group games that range from mildly awkward to genuinely cruel.
One game involves placing a funnel in the front of a boy’s trousers, balancing a coin on his forehead, and — once he has his head tipped back to drop the coin into the funnel — pouring a cup of water in instead. He walks away with wet pants. Another has two boys tie their left wrists together and attempt to stab each other in the face with a banana. A third blindfolds a contestant who believes he is jumping from three feet in the air; in reality the board is only an inch off the ground, and he falls flat on his face.
The book is funny in the way things from fifty years ago are often funny. But the games aren’t really the point.
The strategy underneath the games is.
The Medicine Model
Mike Yaconelli and Wayne Rice were genuine legends of youth ministry. They had a massive gospel heart. They wanted young people to know Jesus. Everything they built, the games, the resources, Youth Specialties, came from that desire.
But the strategic logic beneath the games book is this: young people aren’t going to come to hear about Jesus. So you need something more exciting than Jesus to get them in the door. Once they’re in, you give them the gospel. The fun is instrumental. It exists to make the medicine go down.
It is, as the Shock Absorber would put it, the Mary Poppins approach. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. The sugar is the point of entry. The medicine is what you actually came to deliver.
The problem with that frame is what it says about the medicine.
If the gospel is medicine, if Jesus is the bit you have to get through before dinner, then the whole structure of your ministry communicates something before you open your mouth. The young people sitting in the room are not stupid. They can feel when they are being managed toward an outcome. They can tell when the fun part is real and the Jesus part is the price of admission. And once they feel it, the question becomes: if this person is running a bait and switch on me, why would I trust anything they say about Jesus?
Bait, Switch, and the Funnel
In 90s Sydney, this tension played out as an argument between youth ministry strategies. The funnel approach said: run a big, exciting event with almost no gospel content at the top of the funnel. As people become more committed, move them to progressively more Jesus-heavy settings. The logic was that you had to earn the right to talk about Jesus by first proving you were worth being around.
The bead approach went the other direction: find one person, build a friendship, invite them to something genuinely Christian, and disciple one at a time.
Both approaches took the same theological starting point, young people need Jesus, and arrived at very different strategies.
The Subtle Language Problem
A youth ministry program runs games for an hour, then small groups and Bible talk, then dinner. A junior leader is managing group behaviour during the talk time. Kids are restless. And the leader says, quietly, casually, without thinking: “come on guys, let’s just get through this and we can get to dinner.”
Nobody wrote that into a policy. Nobody trained for that. But in five words, the leader communicated something the whole program exists to deny: that Jesus is the boring bit. That the activities are the real thing. That the Bible is the medicine in the middle that we all have to endure before the part we actually want.
This is the bait and switch in miniature, not a strategy, just a reflex. But it reveals that if leaders don’t genuinely believe the Jesus bit is as good as the Nerf guns, the kids will know.
A Sugary Hit
The alternative is not to strip out the fun. Nerf guns are great. Pizza nights are great. Frozen chicken bowling is great in a disgusting sort of way. The argument isn’t against frivolity, it’s against using frivolity as a wrapper for something you’ve already decided is less interesting.
Our argument is: a community of people who love Jesus and love each other and love the young people in front of them doesn’t need a bait. The fun isn’t instrumental. It is an expression of friendship, itself an expression of what it means to follow Jesus.
Paul puts it to the Thessalonians like this: we shared not just the gospel but our very lives. That’s not a strategy. It’s a description of what genuine Christian community looks like. It includes the gospel. It also includes everything else.
When the strategy is right, the practice doesn’t have to look very different. Both youth groups might be shooting each other with foam darts before someone opens a Bible. But in one group, the Jesus bit is what everyone actually came for, and the leaders mean it. In the other, it’s the bit they have to get through first.
Young people can tell the difference.
Being In On It
Imaginative play is not the same as deception. A child can know they are playing a game and still experience the full delight of it. With Santa or the tooth fairy, everyone in the family knows that mum and dad are the ones putting the coin under the pillow. The joy is in the game, and the game is real even when the fairy isn’t.
What makes deception deceptive is not the fiction. It is the gap between what people think is happening and what is actually happening. When a kid walks into a games night thinking it is just a games night, and the organiser is quietly hoping they will leave having been nudged toward Jesus, there is a gap. Maybe a small one. Maybe a well-intentioned one. But a gap.
To be more transparent, we can say we love Jesus. We love Mario Kart. We’re going to do both tonight. No trick. No switch. You came knowing what you came to, and you’re welcome whether the Jesus part is for you right now or not.
That transparency is not a strategy. It is an expression of integrity.
What Youth Ministry Is Actually For
The cringe factor in the 1971 games book is real. Some of those games are genuinely unkind, they rely on humiliation in ways that sit poorly even by the standards of their own time. But the deeper problem isn’t the games. It’s the strategic logic that treats the gospel as something young people need to be tricked into receiving.
The theology at the base of the Shock Absorber approach is simpler: young people made in God’s image, curious and capable, who don’t need to be managed toward Jesus, they just need to be genuinely loved by people who follow him. That love will include the gospel, because the gospel is the source of it. And it will include Nerf guns, because friendship is like that.
Long-term, low-key, relational discipleship. Not because it is the most efficient funnel. But because it is what being a friend of Jesus actually looks like.
Discussed on this episode
Mike Yaconelli
Way Out Ideas for Youth Groups - Mike Yaconelli and Wayne Rice
Hurt 2.0 - Chap Clark
Listen to the full conversation on the Shock Absorber podcast.
The Shock Absorber is a podcast for church leaders doing church a little differently. Next episode: the tangibles of church project management. Subscribe so you don't miss it. Email Joel at joel@shockabsorber.com.au, and join the Shock Absorber Network at shockabsorber.com.au.
Soul Revival Church is an Anglican church in the Sutherland Shire and Ryde.