location: 6th grade guys small group, this past wednesday night

highlight: we showed a short film clip of people tripping and falling (lots of laughs!), and shared our own embarassing stories of tripping and falling in front of people. then i floated a question i wanted them to think about, but assumed none could actually answer: “how do you think this could be an analogy…” (”what’s an analogy?”) “it’s when something is like something else…” (”i thought that was a simile”) “yes, you’re right, it’s a simile when you say something is like something else; an analogy is more like a story or picture or idea that can also mean something else…” (”ok”) “so… how could this video be an analogy for our spiritual lives?” shane started ooh-oohing. then he nailed it: “it’s like, when we stumble and do stuff we shouldn’t do — like, sin — especially when we do that in front of other people.” i just sat there with my mouth hanging open, before high-fiving him.

lowlight: it was the gassiest night of small group in the history of 6th grade boys small groups. seriously, the farting got so out of control — especially one kid who gave us the dry-heaves about four times — that our little underventilated and hot room could have gone up in a burst of flames if anyone had created a spark. i found the mom of the rankest kid afterward and begged her: “whatever you fed him for dinner tonite, please — i beg of you — never feed that to him on a wednesday evening again.”

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a friend sent me this pic of these jesus hologram sunglasses. and, planning on giving them a jesus junk award, i googled “sunglasses jesus” to see if i could find a link to a place that sells them. and the first thing to pop up was a link to these, even worse, award-winners:

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(ht to steve case for the first pair)

very nice book review today on jonny baker’s blog, of mark yaconelli’s new book, contemplative youth ministry.

we (ys) developed the book with mark, and are publishing it for the non-uk world, with the official release in may (but could be in stores and otherwise available sometime in april). but mark signed a uk deal with spck (which is the version jonny reviewed — the only differences would be minor language choices: aluminum and aluminium, you know). you can download a PDF of the first chapter here, free.

also connected to the release of this book, there are six FREE events with mark — in minneapolis, chicago, san francisco, denver, nashville and los angeles. each of these is a one-evening-plus-the-next-day event. on the first evening, mark will talk about the concepts in the book. and the following day is a mini spiritual retreat for youth workers, or anyone else who wants to attend (along the lines of the sabbath events we used to offer in partnership with mark). more info on those free events here.

lots of good challenges and questions and rants this week about the state of youth ministry. ooh — all this gets me excited, because tough questions and complex problems are usually the impetus to substantive change (in our lives, in our thinking, in our systems, in our programs, in our models and assumptions and metrix and…).

so i enjoyed reading seth barnes’ post. seth is the founder and exec director of adventures in missions (really, the short-term missions org i trust more than any other — though they think of themselves more as a discipling ministry than a short-term missions ministry these days). he’s got a freakin’ brilliant and inquisitive mind. if you have any interest in thinking about discipleship (or practicing it!), you need to read his blog.

chuckk, the student ministries guy at santa cruz bible church, has written a really helpful biblical response to the question of christians getting tattoos. it’s part of an interesting larger site that highlights ink christians have put on themselves, and what those tats mean to them, called “sacred ink“.

(ht to randy)

no, really. don’t you SO want this unicorn on a shelf in your office? i do. and there are more — like the stuffed “kid who fell off his bike”. unfortunately, the website is in german, and i don’t even have any idea if they can take international orders. would someone in germany pick one of these up for me?

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(ht to dave barry)

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the UCC has a very interesting (and painful, i think) new commercial. you can view it here. there’s a companion website, where people can post stories. food for thought.

(ht to bob carlton and steve case)

this reads like something off a fake news site. but it’s the grand ol’ BBC, baby. and they’re talking about OUR pentagon. so, um, somehow the whole thing seems credible, while still wildly wacky.

i can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see non-u.s. readers on this blog. and this morning, i peeked at my “country share”, using the handy-dandy freeware called ’site meter’, and found my lowest u.s. percentage yet — only 71%. not that i want LESS americans to journey with me; i’m just pumped about having my friends from all over the world. world party! (a very special welcome to you 4% from “the unknown country” — sounds like a super-hero kind of place!)

tall skinny kiwi (aka andrew jones) linked to a great post by aussie (i think) blogger hamo, called ‘discipleship dilemma in youth ministry’. really, you need to read the post if you’re a youth worker (it’s a bit too long for me to paste the whole thing here).

but i will paste in hamo’s reflective questions, and give some initial responses from my own little perspective:

* Are teens really responding to the gospel? If so what gospel would that be?

of course, this depends on the gospel being preached.
yes, teens have, and continue to, respond to the gospel. but as hamo accurately does, that “yes” is SERIOUS cause for us to ask his second question — which is, i think, substantially more important than the first question.
teens do and don’t respond to various forms of the gospel; sometimes that’s good news, and sometimes it’s bad news.

first, the bad news: WAY too many youth groups (this is unfortunately true in many, not all, larger ministries) preach a gospel of fun, a gospel of ease. this is, i believe, i primary factor in the rise of what christian smith has named ‘moralistic therapeutic deism’, the dominant religious world-view of american teenagers. it’s a seductive trap: being in a church of any size and resource provides the momentum of starting-point-size, combined with facilities, and often combined with financial means. then, the catylist — the secret ingredient — is the stated or unstated measuring stick of success, namely, numerical growth. with the right resources, it’s really not that difficult to experience numerical growth. that is almost always followed by internal and external ‘affirmations’. we’re told ‘good job’ and we feel good about ourselves. and before we know it, we’ve jumped in bed with the mistress of programmable youth ministry.
don’t misunderstand me: i’m NOT saying that large churches are all trapped in this affair. there are great exceptions. and there are plenty of smaller church youth ministries pining away under the same assumptions.

more bad news: many teenagers hear a gospel of legalism from our churches also, cloaked in (biblical) language of right and victorious living.

neither of these ‘gospel’ messages is sustaining once the buzz of youth group is gone.

the good news (is that a pun?): teenagers ARE responsive (often in ways adults are not) to the revolutionary gospel of jesus and the kingdom of god. clueless as to what that means? read kenda dean’s . i’m also currently reading scot mcknight’s , in hopes of better thinking about how i talk about the gospel with teenagers.

* Do we set ourselves up for this kind of situation by having youth services that can only ‘keep them’ until they are in their early 20’s at best before they feel ‘too old for the youth service,’ but also feel ‘way too young for the adult service?’ They are left in a consumer’s vacuum.

absolutely. this is a huge new problem we’re propogating with the wave of youth-oriented church services across the u.s.a. it’s not a simple question or answer, as there’s something to be said for creating worship experiences that reflect and connect with the norms and values and tastes of a generation — or, more accurately, of a people group (which often crosses generations). i don’t pretend to know the way through this quagmire. but i agree with hamo that we’re in the midst of creating a ’solution’ that could ultimately prove more problematic than the original problem. this is ESPECIALLY true if the reason for creating something new is, as hamo says, ‘to keep them’.

* Do we set the bar high enough for them? Do we ask enough of them? Someone has said ‘Christianity in the west won’t die because we ask too much of people, but rather because we ask too little’. On a similar note Tony Campolo once said ‘Youth is made for heroism not for pleasure’, yet much of youth ministry seems to focus on bringing young people fun rather than calling them to a life of self denial and counter-cultural living.

at first blush, the clear response to hamo’s question here is ‘no’ — we don’t set the bar high enough. and certainly, as i commented above, a youth ministry centering soley around fun is missing the mark. but we all know that, right? or at least most of us do.
but here’s the rub: i’m finding (and have had some interesting discussions about this, particularly with my veteran-friends of young teen ministry) that often, when we talk about ‘raising the bar’, what we’re really talking about is justifying our existence as career youth workers. strong, i know — and certainly not universally true. but i, for one, have crossed the line on this more than once; and most of my friends who’ve been around the block a few times in youth ministry, and are given space to be reflective and honest, would agree. i agree we need a different bar, but i’m not sure that the language of ‘raising the bar’ gets us where we want or need to go. maybe a metaphor of momentarily clearing a point in time and space (the bar) isn’t the best metaphor for discipleship.

* Are we as their leaders too much a part of the problem to be able to offer solutions with integrity? Have we bought the whole Jesus as ‘accessory’ mindset - (Jesus as an addition to my otherwise happy middle class life) so that now we are not able to challenge young people to a life of authentic discipleship?

yup.
but that doesn’t mean we’re a lost cause, and that it would be better to wipe the slate clean and start with a whole new batch of youth workers. i think the way forward is in reframing our role in the lives of teenagers: we’re leaders and mentors, yes; but we’re fellow travelers, broken and imperfect as they are. so, we address the real issues of life (the ones hamo mentions are ‘integrity’, ‘jesus as accessory’, ‘authentic discipleship’) WITH students, not FOR students.

* Are youth pastors concerned that if they went harder on the discipleship angle that it could mean their jobs? I have seen otherwise mild mannered parents go like pit bulls after youth pastors who don’t do the expected meat and 3 veg youth group / Sunday night church gig. Do you dare to break with protocol and risk incurring the wrath of the tithing parents? Lets face it this is a real issue. Working with a handful of truly devoted followers won’t pay any bills, but I seem to remember someone speaking about the way being narrow and few finding it… Maybe we need to say ‘Screw the paycheck. We are going to have a crack at this from a different angle’.

hamo sounds a little like yaconelli here! (which, if you know me at all, is a huge compliment.) i don’t disagree (which, of course, is a wimpy way of saying ‘i agree’). but i hope the solution doesn’t have to be either/or. i still want to offer a youth ministry for ALL teenagers, not only those who are willing to dive into a group of 12 disciples. focusing only on the example of jesus’ public ministry, or only on the example of jesus’ mentoring role with the 12: both would offer rather incomplete versions of the story of jesus and any example we’d hope to glean from his ministry life.

Just for the record, I have seen so called ‘fun based’ youth ministry models produce disciples and I have also seen apparently ‘discipleship based’ models lose young people. So I am not convinced the model is the problem.

wow — what a great closing paragraph from hamo. bottom line: if the ’solution’ or way forward were clear, we’d be in much less of a mess right now!