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This may not seem like a very spiritual article but it has come to me with real force in recent weeks.

Accurate record keeping is not on most youth leaders’ agendas as it is a bit of a pain taking registers of young people and there are many more exciting things to do in an evening of youth ministry. At a recent Root 66 training session (no plug intended!!), I asked the leaders to write down the names of five of their group and asked them to estimate how often each of these students came to the group. The usual response to that question is something like, ‘I suppose it’s about half the meetings this term’.

Much of our energy in youth groups is centred on keeping our weekly meetings well organised and doing our best to maintain good teaching to our young people. If that’s so, great — keep it up.

But I wonder if it’s possible for our groups to become so insular that we lose the perspective of what is happening in our world. How often do we mention world mission in our group meetings and should we anyway? Is it wise to give our young people insight into a world that is beyond their everyday existence?

On occasions, those of us who have stayed with youth ministry in advancing years are the subject of ageist banter from our younger colleagues. But I wonder if the oldies should fight back a little on an area of ministry where, just maybe, our younger partners in the gospel have lost the plot.

I was recently involved in a university mission and the inevitable question arose about how friends are to be invited to the mission events. Different people recounted their successes and failures and one student came out with the statement: ‘I have texted and emailed all my course mates’, and then, as an afterthought, he said: ‘Oh yes, I spoke to one person face to face’, and it almost came out as an expression of failure that he had to forsake technology and speak to a human being. His case is probably extreme but I wonder if inter-personal skills are going out of fashion or, at the very least, conversation fashions are changing.