Essay 3: Afterschool as Mission

Youth ministry was my entrance into the Out-of-School Time (OST) field. At the time, I didn’t even know what OST was. As youth ministers, we all knew about “afterschool programs,” but that was what the big brands, like the YMCA and Boys & Girls Clubs, did. We did youth ministry. But many years later when I became the leader of a faith-based community development organization, I realized what the programs I was building in church were called in other settings: out-of-school time programs. I now see youth ministry as very much situated within the field of OST, and within that context, view my own work in afterschool programs as a “mission.”