TL;DR
How does the church form the vocation of Christians who end up in secular youth work? Fagg's answer, drawn from fifty interviews, is that it does so powerfully—and then largely abandons the people it has formed. A sobering but hopeful chapter grounded in real voices and real tensions.
David Fagg's chapter in the Transforming Vocation collection asks a question that sounds straightforward but turns out to be deeply uncomfortable: how does the church shape the vocation of Christians who end up working in secular youth work? The answer, drawn from extensive interview data, is that the church does this powerfully—and then largely abandons the people it has formed.
This is a chapter I wish more youth ministry leaders would read—not because it tells them what they want to hear, but because it names a pattern that many churchgoers have probably sensed without articulating. Passionate young leaders get formed in the church, and then they leave. Fagg helps us understand why, and what it costs everyone involved.
About the Author
David Fagg is a PhD graduate from Deakin University whose doctoral thesis, "Strangers at Home: Christian Youth Workers in Secular Contexts" (2022), provides the empirical backbone for this chapter. Based in Bendigo, Victoria, he brings over twenty years of experience across youth work practice, teaching, and youth worker education, and serves as an elected representative on his local municipal council. Fagg writes from inside the world he studies—a combination that gives this chapter both its empirical rigour and its pastoral weight.
Setting the Scene: Vocation and Its Enemies
Fagg opens by situating the youth work vocation against the forces that threaten it. Australian youth work has undergone decades of rationalisation—marketisation, secularisation, and professionisation—that have steadily eroded the space for "calling" language in the sector. The result is an efficiency-focused, outcomes-driven approach that sits uneasily with youth work's relational heart.
Yet the sector still wants workers who are "called." Fagg quotes Peter Wearne, a veteran youth worker who is no longer a Christian but who sees the problem clearly:
"The problem with the sector now, there's no vocation anymore." And I think what faith gives you is a purpose outside yourself and a framework and a paradigm outside yourself.
This is a striking admission from someone outside the faith. The rationalised youth work sector has, in important respects, hollowed out the very motivation it depends on. The irony should not be lost on Christians: a sector that has secularised still hungers for vocational commitment, and one of its richest sources of that commitment is the church.
Fagg frames this situation through virtue ethics, drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre and others to argue that a vocational ethic cannot be merely cognitive—it must be formed in community, like an apprenticeship. For Christians entering youth work, that formative community is the church. Fagg calls it an "ecology," drawing attention to the interdependent elements that constitute the process of formation. The question then becomes: what kind of formation does this ecology actually produce?
Participatory Community
The first finding is encouraging. Based on interviews with fifty youth workers (past and present), Fagg identifies participatory community as the primary mechanism through which the church forms the youth work vocation. This element has three interdependent dimensions: supportive mentors, opportunities to exercise practical responsibility in youth ministry, and the conjunction of both with a renewal of or entry into Christian faith.
The stories paint a vivid picture of what the church looks like when it works well. Phil, now a manager of a youth agency, describes his early experience:
I think I was asked to volunteer at a camp, and I found that I actually got along really well with the youth. And it got me thinking I guess about whether or not that might be something worth pursuing. So, I guess I just tested the waters, just volunteering and helping out where I could and found that I did enjoy it and young people seemed to be able to relate to me.
Rob credits his minister for fighting to give him a chance:
I think really just that relationship I had with my minister back home in [regional Victoria] . . . seeing him as my mentor and you know, sort of, you know him sort of encouraging and pushing me into you know having a go with that stuff early on was really key. You know, sort of basically fighting for me to give me that chance within the church.
These accounts suggest that the church at its best is a profoundly formative place for young leaders. It mentors, affirms, and gives responsibility. It creates spaces where people discover gifts they didn't know they had. This is no small thing. Fagg notes that these experiences instilled a conviction that youth development and participation is central to youth work, along with a focus on nurturing relationships rather than programs—dispositions that serve these workers well in the secular sector.
Discontent
Here the chapter takes its uncomfortable turn. Despite the affirmation of participatory community, most Christians in secular youth work experienced deep dissatisfaction with church-based youth ministry. This discontent—not professional advancement or simple opportunity—is the dominant reason for their departure.
Heather describes non-Christian young people coming to her church's youth ministry but being marginalised in favour of existing members:
I just thought that a lot of the kids that were coming to church needed a lot of extra help and there wasn't the help in the church to help them and there were a lot of non-Christians where I thought we need to be helping people, they need to know Jesus . . . they're homeless or they've got really crappy life backgrounds and we should be helping them a lot more and I just felt like the church was focused on the Christians that were coming to church and sitting in the pews.
Cameron's account is particularly pointed. After pursuing a career as a youth pastor, he was advised by a denominational youth director that his calling would be wasted in the church:
"Cameron, I see you have a real heart to release the last and the lost, you've got a real social justice bent, that would be wasted in the church. Most of our churches just want someone who will run their Friday night youth group and keep their kids out of trouble."
And Ryan describes the moment his heart broke from his church's priorities:
I had a group of our young leaders, and we were doing a six-week mission experience in the Philippines, so we were living in a little brick hut with mud floors . . . then receiving an email from our church council that our church had decided to spend $30,000 on nicer chairs for our church, and it was, for me, that was the moment where I realized how far my heart was from some of the things that our church was heading towards.
Reading these accounts was genuinely saddening. These are not cynics or casualties of burnout. They are people whose churches formed in them a deep love for marginalised young people—and then could not provide a context in which to express it. The church, it seems, is very good at kindling vocational fire and rather poor at giving it somewhere to burn.
Diasporic Connection
Fagg's third finding concerns what happens after departure. He describes a "diaspora" of Christian youth workers—still attending church, often very positively, but disconnected from their church's ministry to young people. The majority reported that their work was neither understood nor supported by church members or leadership.
Michael, a residential care worker, captures the frustration:
When people hear the word "youth work" in church circles, they immediately think "ministry," so to gradually get the message over—"this is what I do, this is what it entails and what it doesn't entail" . . . I mean to this day there are people that wouldn't have a clue. And I've been telling them for years.
Worse, when these trained and competent practitioners try to contribute to their church's youth ministry thinking, their expertise is rebuffed. Cameron describes offering Roger Hart's "Ladder of Participation"—a well-known framework for youth participation—to his church's youth think tank, only to be told it "won't work"—despite seeing it work every day in his professional role.
There is a misguided perception at play, which the youth workers themselves identify: that youth ministry is "more Christian" than youth work in the secular sector. Ange puts it well:
I think they would presume [youth ministry] is more Christian. Because again, it's very overt. You know, you're worshipping with kids, you're teaching kids about the Bible et cetera. Whereas I guess I'm coming at it from the point of view of, "does what I do reflect Jesus?"
The result is what Fagg calls "vocational isolation"—a sense that their work is not understood and valued by their Christian community. It is a painful irony: the community that formed these workers now fails to recognise the fruit of its own formation.
What the Church Could Do
Fagg closes with several practical recommendations. Churches should codify the processes of participatory community so that all young people can exercise responsibility. Youth ministry activities beyond the church walls should be encouraged and treated as "core" ministry. Churches should create settings for connection between youth ministry leaders and youth workers—inviting them to retreats, encouraging constructive criticism, and engaging them to deliver training. If youth leaders choose secular youth work, churches should commission them and support them. And theological colleges should broaden their remit to include training for secular youth work settings.
These are sensible and actionable suggestions. The most important, to my mind, is the simplest: if someone in your church works in secular youth work, ask them about it. Honour it. Pray for it. Stop treating it as a lesser calling.
What Fagg Gets Right
Empirical grounding. This is not armchair theorising. Fifty interviews give the findings weight, and Fagg lets his participants speak at length. The result is a chapter where you hear real people wrestling with real tensions—far more persuasive than abstract argument alone.
The virtue ethics framing. By positioning the youth work vocation as a virtue ethic formed in community, Fagg provides a theoretical lens that explains why the church matters so much to vocational formation—and why its failures cut so deep. If vocation is formed through apprenticeship in community, then the community bears responsibility for what it produces.
Honest reporting. Fagg clearly cares about the church. He is not writing a polemic. His summary of findings carefully notes both the "blessing" and the "curse" of the church's formative role, and he explicitly states that not all youth ministries suffer from the problems he describes. This even-handedness lends credibility to the critique.
Naming the divide. The gap between Christian youth workers in secular settings and youth ministry leaders in churches appears, from Fagg's data, to be both real and largely unacknowledged. He names it plainly and shows what it costs both sides.
Where to Press Further
Church diversity. Fagg acknowledges that not all churches are the same but does not explore which ecclesial cultures form the youth work vocation most positively. A follow-up study that mapped different church traditions against vocational outcomes would be valuable.
The theology of "safe" ministry. The tension between participatory community and "safe" youth ministry is raised but not fully explored theologically. What vision of the church's mission produces a youth ministry that cannot accommodate messy, marginalised young people? That question deserves sustained theological treatment, not just a practical recommendation.
Youth ministry leaders' perspectives. The chapter draws extensively from youth workers, but youth ministry leaders are largely absent from the data. Their reasons for resisting youth work frameworks, or for prioritising existing church members, may be more complex than the chapter allows. A companion study from the other side of the divide would round out the picture.
Beyond Australia. The findings are situated squarely in the Australian context. Readers in the United Kingdom, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and elsewhere will recognise much of what Fagg describes, but the dynamics of rationalisation and secularisation differ across national contexts. Cross-cultural comparison would test the generalisability of these findings.
Verdict
This is a chapter that should provoke honest self-examination in any church that takes young people seriously. Fagg's central insight—that the church forms the youth work vocation powerfully and then struggles to sustain what it has formed—is both empirically demonstrated and pastorally urgent. As someone more familiar with the youth ministry space than with secular youth work, I found it saddening to see the research confirm that discontent with church-based ministry is driving some of the most passionate people into the secular sector—and sadder still that the church may not have known how to support, encourage, and bless the vital work they do there.
I read this chapter with a personal stake in its findings, even if from a different angle. When I came to faith, it wasn't a church that reached out to me—it was God stopping me in my tracks. And when I did become a Christian, the local church didn't really know what to do with me. My needs were vastly different to those of the church-raised youth around me. Thankfully, Teen Challenge—a Christian rehabilitation and discipleship centre—was there to take me in and work with me over the three years it took to address the needs and challenges I presented with. Reading Heather's and Cameron's accounts of churches that couldn't accommodate young people with messy backgrounds, I recognised the pattern from the other side. I was one of those young people. The workers who reached me were doing exactly the kind of work Fagg's interviewees felt called to—and that their churches could not sustain.
The deeper irony is this: if the rationalised youth work sector has hollowed out the vocational ethic it depends on, then Christian youth workers carry something the sector desperately needs. That is all the more reason for their faith communities to stand behind them—not as a consolation prize for leaving "real" ministry, but as a commissioning for Kingdom work among young people who may never set foot in a church.
Fagg has written a chapter that is grounded, honest, and genuinely hopeful. It deserves a wide readership—especially among those it might make most uncomfortable.