It’s amazing what youth will eat. I love sushi, but it’s quite different than eating a live goldfish. I sat near the back of the crowd and watched with a curious sea-sickness—gazing at the teenage wonder while keeping one eye on the nearest trash can! A loud unified chant shook the entire room: “Mar-cus, Mar-cus.”

And down it went, to the praise of cheering youth. He was the envy of every guy and the disgust of every girl. The champion collected his prizes and walked off the stage with a hero-notch on his belt.

“So what can we do next week,” I thought to myself. “There’s no way I can top eating a live goldfish.” I was helping out with the youth program at the time, and we had been gradually escalating the “shock factor” to attract more youth. And, for all intents and purposes, it seemed to work. Every week, we saw new youth, who occasionally seemed to embody a little of the “shock factor” themselves.

Over time, though, we began to run out of ideas and started getting desperate. The youth seemed bored, and we had to think of something fast. We didn’t have much money in our youth budget, so we decided to be good stewards and spend the rest of it on bringing a “Christian” rock band to the church (though nobody had ever heard of the group). The band arrived, set up, and did a sound check from a stage in the church gym—and topped the show with choreographed dancing. I was pumped! “The youth are going to love this,” I thought out loud.

To my great horror and disbelief, only eight youth came. They stood lined up in a row with folded arms, listening to the thumping noise echoing around the vacant gym. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was burned out of youth ministry, and I had just begun. There had to be something deeper, richer, and more satisfying than this. There had to be something that nourished the youth more than a wiggling goldfish and a high-priced band.

We Can Do Better

The absolutely amazing truth is that God has already supplied us with the means to nourish his people, and we find ourselves thinking we can do better. These include the historic “means of grace”—especially the Word of God, prayer, and the sacraments.

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Brian H. Cosby is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as associate pastor of youth and families at Carriage Lane Presbyterian Church in Peachtree City, Georgia. This is an excerpt from his latest book, Giving Up Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry from an Entertainment Culture (P&R, 2012).