Walker
                                 Submitted photo

Walker

Submitted photo

<p>Mel and Peggy Walker gather with their kids and grandkids.</p>
                                 <p>Submitted photo</p>

Mel and Peggy Walker gather with their kids and grandkids.

Submitted photo

Mel Walker, 66, has accomplished a lot so far in his life.

He landed a youth pastor job right out of college and has worked in youth ministry in various capacities since. He co-founded the national nonprofit organization Vision For Youth. He is the author of 13 published books and hopes to make that 17 by the end of this year.

But when asked what he feels is his greatest accomplishment, the South Abington Township resident didn’t tout any of that.

“My own family,” he answered without hesitation. “My wife Peggy and I have three kids, and now we have 10 grandchildren. And all three of our kids are active in full-time ministry.”

Their daughter, Kristi Walker, has been a missionary in Berlin, Germany, for 17 years. She is also a published author and, according to her father, a better writer than he is.

Their oldest son, Todd Walker, is their pastor at Wyoming Valley Church in Wilkes-Barre, where Mel Walker also works as a part-time youth pastor.

“To be able to work alongside my son and his kids is a great thing,” he said.

And their youngest son, Travis Walker, is a discipleship pastor in Iowa.

All three are Abington Heights graduates.

Finding his place

Walker discovered his talent for writing when he was a teenager.

“My high school English comp teacher encouraged me to be a writer,” he said. “And ever since high school, I’ve wanted to be a writer. In one way or another, my entire life I’ve done that.”

He attended college at Clarks Summit University (CSU; then Baptist Bible College) and graduated in 1976. He returned to work there on two occasions for a total of about 20 years.

He also worked for Regular Baptist Press, a publisher in Chicago, Ill., where he helped develop materials for junior and senior high Sunday schools and youth groups.

Before that, as a student at CSU, he sharpened his writing skills by crafting press releases for the college.

It was also at CSU that he discovered his passion for youth ministry. This was encouraged by his basketball coach, Jim Huckaby, who asked him to speak at the school’s summer youth basketball camp.

Walker said it was that experience that gave him a “burden for youth.”

Until then, he hadn’t declared a major, so he started asking people who knew him what they thought he should do with his life.

“Everybody I talked to said, ‘Mel, you ought to work with kids,’” he said.

So that’s what he did.

While in college, he obtained as much experience in youth ministry as he could.

And it paid off.

Right after graduation, he was hired as a youth pastor.

“So in one way or another, ever since 1976, I’ve worked with teenagers in churches or I’ve worked in colleges,” he said.

Then and now

Walker, who considers himself a “student of generations,” has seen a lot of changes over the years in youth ministry, but he said much has also remained the same.

“First of all, kids are always kids, and they struggle with things like insecurity and finding their way in the world,” he said. “But I do think that the influences around them have changed.”

He believes this has been especially true since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I look at kids today, and there’s a lot of family/household insecurities,” he said. “They’re seeing their parents and other adults react with fear, insecurity, uncertainty about the future, and financial issues, and all of a sudden there is a great deal of insecurity, uncertainty and fear, and that bothers me for kids, because I think they’re getting a lot of that from us.

“I think kids are more resilient than we think, but I am also concerned.”

He added that adults — and youth workers especially — can be “greatly used to build hope and confidence in the future in the next generation.”

“I think a lot of kids are like me,” he said. “That is, trying to find their place in the world. [They ask,] ‘what am I good at doing? What has God put me here to do? What is my mark, my influence?’ And I think kids want to be able to find that.”

For Walker, it was people like his high school English teacher and college basketball coach who helped him find those answers.

“Kids desperately need that, where someone can visualize potential and give them a vision of how their lives can matter and how their lives can be bigger than their own little world,” he said.

A Vision realized

Part of what Walker does through Vision For Youth is provide training for youth workers, youth pastors and parents.

It all started in 1985 during CSU’s Teen Leadership Conference, when Walker and several other youth pastors talked and dreamed together about what a national youth ministry network might look like.

One of the other pastors volunteered his church in Ohio to host an event, and the next year, they held their first National Youth Ministries Conference. A few years after that, Vision For Youth was incorporated and became a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

Walker is a co-founder along with the late Russ Howard. He still serves as volunteer president, and Tim Ahlgrim of Phoenix Arizona, another CSU graduate, is the national director.

In addition to its annual National Youth Ministries Conference and publishing ventures, the organization runs campus ministries and hosts inner city youth mission trips.

“But the main focus — and that’s a lot of what I do now — is to help train youth workers,” Walker said.

Being semi-retired allows him the time to do more of that. Throughout the pandemic, he hosted webinars about family ministry. Now that COVID restrictions are easing up, he’s back to traveling for speaking engagements at churches, conferences, training sessions and more.

But the best thing about youth ministry, he said, is seeing kids “going on for God” (which is also the title of one of his books).

And that’s something he’ll never tire of.

“A lot of people think you get too old to work with kids,” he said, adding he doesn’t believe that.

At 66, the calling he answered in college is as strong as or stronger than ever.

“You may get too old to play tackle football, but you never get too old to minister to kids,” he said.