“WOW — now that is cool — I am forwarding that to our youth minister. Thank you!”
Don’t be surprised if your youth minister does not become an advocate. Youth pastors are typically part of the problem - the model of evangelism they are taught is to use children in the church to bring other kids to youth events. The hope is that some of the kids with make a profession and get baptized,which allows the senior pastor to enhance his reputation for “evangelism” (even though he doesn’t really evangelize). That, and keeping children and teens out from under foot by providing them with entertainment, is the function of the youth pastor today.
A pastor friend told me once that if a youth pastor told the parents of the youth in the church that they should remove their children from government schools that the parents would kill him and then the senior pastor would fire his dead body.
Actually, I got a thank you back and he’s putting it in his weekly email to the youth parents. :-)
And I really should comment on the rest of your statement...
I’m sorry to hear about your experiences - but our youth pastor is incredible, and our church would not settle for what you seem to think is the norm. Nor does our pastor care about his “evangelist” reputation, he cares about the lives and the souls of his church members and the community.