Religiosity has a profound role and influence on youth development within a community. Religiosity promotes risk reduction and positive moral characteristics and thus remains an avenue of opportunity for transformation in considering the lived experiences of vulnerable young people living on the Cape Flats in the Western Cape, South Africa. The Cape Flats is an area that is overwhelmed with unemployment, poverty, gang violence, chemical substance abuse and a general societal abandonment of young people. It is out of dire hopelessness that a meaningful relationship with God can be experienced by youth. The Cape Flats is, therefore, a fertile space for an intervention of religiosity. This article will research how the agency of youth ministry as a positive youth development can assist in youth development within a community in tension like that of the Cape Flats. While youth development is a broad category for consideration and research, this article will primarily focus on identity formation of young people, in particular, the vulnerable youth living on the Cape Flats.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The agency of youth ministry, in an evangelical epistemology, should seek to address the influencers on adolescent identity formation, as one’s identity has a direct bearing on faith formation. The potential outcome of the article would allow the youth ministry to take serious the impact of the lived realities of youth and adjust their programmatic designs and outcomes, in relation to youth faith formation.

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There has been an increase of discussion and focus on matters of theological significance in the area of youth ministry. An area that remains neglected concerns the professional youth worker in Southern Africa. This focus on professional youth work has gained a great amount of urgency from the office of the presidency of Southern Africa, who in collaboration with the Commonwealth desk have prioritised the focus on youth work in South Africa. Unfortunately, the focus on the professional youth worker, the career youth pastor, within the church in Southern Africa fails to receive a similar amount of attention. The article will highlight the need to pursue a theological articulation around the office of the career youth pastor by building a practical theological argument for the office of career youth pastor. The article will address a case study of a mainline evangelical denomination regarding its theological articulation of the career youth pastor.

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Youth ministry within an evangelical protestant epistemology has predominantly been evangelistic, with the aim of reaching and proselytising unchurched youth and youth who do not have a personal and confessed relationship with Jesus Christ. Youth ministry, however, since its inception until the contemporary context of the 21st century, has gone through many challenges and transformations. The historical challenges of the youth ministry have birthed many developments to address the ever-increasing need of the adolescent world both globally and within South Africa. Youth ministry can no longer only be interested in the spiritual condition of the youth; instead, youth ministry should be an agency in the lived realities and experiences of the youth. The aim of the article is to argue that the efficacy of youth ministry in a contemporary society depends on its function as a descriptive agency that is informed by its mission, which is primarily ministry.