Partnering for Success in Youth Ministry

The MAYM Degree: Partnering for Success in Youth Ministry

By Andrew Zirschky

Austin Seminary's cutting edge (MAYM) degree program was created in response to the changing landscape of youth ministry and provides students with both theological training and practical experience.

While youth ministry degree programs across the nationare disappearing, Austin Seminary is bucking the trendwith the MAYM which now boasts more than sixty fulltimestudents. According to data from the Association ofTheological Schools, a third of youth ministry degree programsin the United States and Canada disappeared between 2018and 2022. Due to shrinking enrollment and other factors,some programs ceased to exist altogether, while many otherswere folded into more generalized ministry degrees.

Dr. Andrew Zirschky is research professor in youth ministry and director of the MAYM Nashville Extension. He previously taught at Memphis Theological Seminary and with the Center for Youth Ministry Training (CYMT) for nearly a decade before joining the Austin Seminary faculty. He brings a focus on theological reflection and youth ministry innovation honed across two Lilly Endowment Inc. grants received in partnership with CYMT: The Theology Together program which provides MAYM students with summer youth and theology events and is the basis for one of his elective courses at Austin Seminary, and the CYMT Innovation Laboratory which forms part of the practicum experience for MAYM students.

Meanwhile, Austin’s youth ministry program has more than doubled in enrollment during the same time frame. One of the drivers for a different story at Austin Seminary is the unique collaboration between the Seminary and the Center for Youth Ministry Training (CYMT). Understanding what makes the MAYM unique requires a closer look at the nature and history of this partnership as well as some of the advantages that the MAYM program provides.

HISTORY OF A PARTNERSHIP

CYMT was founded by United Methodist youth minister Dietrich (Deech) Kirk in 2006 as a means to assist aspiring youth ministers to obtain the training, education, and social support needed to thrive in ministry for the long haul. Both Kirk and the organization’s co-founder PC(USA) minister Mark DeVries lamented the short tenure that many people were experiencing in youth ministry and the fact that little seminary education focused on the needs and challenges of those doing youth work. In 2006, CYMT began offering a two-year youth ministry certificate program with the goal of mentoring a group of young youth directors. However, they quickly discovered the need for collaboration with a seminary to fully accomplish their aim. By 2010, a three-year Master of Arts in Youth Ministry degree had been established in collaboration with a seminary in Memphis, Tennessee. In 2016, with that program stretching the resources of the school in Memphis, and with a desire to expand geographically, CYMT approached Austin Seminary about replicating the MAYM program in Texas.

This caught the interest of Dr. David White, The C. Ellis and Nancy Gribble Nelson Professor of Christian Education, who has written and taught extensively in the field of youth ministry. White was a strong advocate for the establishment of the MAYM program in Austin, and his support was crucial in forming the connection between Austin Seminary and CYMT. Today, White teaches many of the youth ministry-specific courses in the MAYM program and also took a leading role in the establishment of the Sam O. Morris Award for Youth Ministry, given annually to a graduating MAYM student.

Academic Dean David Jensen lauded the partnership between CYMT and the Seminary when the program was launched in the fall of 2016. “Combining internship with study, this program allows students to be deeply immersed in the ministry of a particular church and the cutting-edge research of a leading theological seminary,” he commented at the program’s founding.

In 2020, the success of the Austin MAYM cohort and the dynamic relationship that had formed between CYMT and the Seminary prompted an expansion of the partnership. The Seminary gained permission from its accrediting bodies to launch a Tennessee-based extension site, and CYMT’s graduate residents, previously based in Memphis, were formed into the Nashville cohort of the Austin Seminary MAYM. For two weeks each year, these students attend class on the Austin campus, completing fewer than half of their course hours at the Nashville location.

WHAT MAKES THE PROGRAM UNIQUE

From a student’s perspective, the adventure in the MAYM begins by applying to become a graduate resident with the Center for Youth Ministry Training. CYMT places each resident to work with a congregation or other Christian ministry between twenty and thirty hours per week over the course of the three-year residency. Acceptance as a student in the MAYM program at Austin Seminary is a condition of their employment as a graduate resident with CYMT. Applicants come from all over the country (and sometimes even other countries!) and CYMT works to match them with a ministry environment that fits with who they are personally, theologically, and denominationally. MAYM students serve in the same ministry position for all three years of the program, as opposed to the semester or year-long supervised practice of ministry typical in other master’s programs.

In addition to having an onsite supervisor, MAYM students meet weekly with a ministry coach who assists them to thrive in their ministerial context. Since students frequently come to their ministry assignments from outside the region, coaching aids them in making academic, ministerial, and social transitions go more smoothly.

In addition to the rich formational environment provided by the Seminary, the CYMT graduate residency is committed to integrating five components that have been proven key to ministerial longevity. CYMT refers to these experiential components as the Five C’s: Church, Cohort, Classroom, Coaching, and Care. Residents in the program serve and learn ministry hands-on in a three-year ministry placement; they’re enriched by lasting relationships with peers through the MAYM cohort model; theory and theology form students’ understanding and skills in the seminary classroom; coaching provides them with needed help and guidance through the thick and thin of their educational and ministerial experiences; and CYMT’s care component provides additional student services such as access to psychological counseling beyond what the Seminary alone provides. These unique features lend themselves to high retention and graduation rates for students in the Austin Seminary MAYM program, and tracking by CYMT shows that upwards of 90% of program graduates remain in ministry for at least five years beyond graduation.

MAYM students are placed to work in ministry settings across eleven different states, which makes attending weekly class on campus impossible. So, in keeping with Austin Seminary’s commitment to in-person learning, classes in the MAYM program are offered in an intensive format. Normal course hours are spread across one five-day and two three-day intensives per semester, and students complete readings, assignments, and brief online class sessions on the weeks when they are not attending an intensive. This hybrid model allows students to experience all the dynamism of in-person courses, but with the flexibility usually only afforded by online programs.

The MAYM’s leading-edge approach even extends to funding that allows students to earn their degree without any academic debt. Student costs in the program are fully funded, including housing, books, tuition, travel, and a monthly living stipend for working at their ministry placements. This unique initiative is funded in part by partner churches, scholarship money from Austin Seminary donors, and donations raised by CYMT.

The usual introductory courses one would expect from a theological degree are given a youth-oriented twist in the MAYM curriculum. Students with an interest in youth or children’s ministry come to biblical texts and theological study with different questions and needs, so the focus of courses is amended to make sure these issues are front and center.

Rooted in theology and grounded in practical experience, the MAYM program serves as a unique model for collaboration between an educational institution and a non-profit who together share a calling to form the next generation of youth ministry leaders.

Dr. Andrew Zirschky is research professor in youth ministry and director of the MAYM Nashville Extension. He previously taught at Memphis Theological Seminary and with the Center for Youth Ministry Training (CYMT) for nearly a decade before joining the Austin Seminary faculty. He brings a focus on theological reflection and youth ministry innovation honed across two Lilly Endowment Inc. grants received in partnership with CYMT: The Theology Together program which provides MAYM students with summer youth and theology events and is the basis for one of his elective courses at Austin Seminary, and the CYMT Innovation Laboratory which forms part of the practicum experience for MAYM students.