Respond: God is dead to culture.

Andy Root


I’m tempted to just cut and paste a review from Charles Taylor’s Secular Age here. I won’t! My response to this statement is that it is true. God is dead! As Taylor has brilliantly argued, we have constructed societies and cultures where it is easy not to believe in God. What is interesting is that just a few hundred years ago, it was nearly impossible not to believe in God. Now, it sometimes feels like it is impossible to believe. Atheism really is an invention of modernity and, as Taylor would argue, modernity’s obsession with the self.

One of the most interesting things I remember about Taylor’s tome (an idea he actually stole from Max Weber), which I think relates to this response, is that our world has become disenchanted. For most of human history, God (not to mention demons, angels, and other supernatural forces) was everywhere. The forest was haunted; the lightning struck because of God; the rain came because of religious practice.

But since those days, our natural world has been turned inside out, revealing its mysteries through the instruments of science. Sure, maybe Pat Robertson or some other TV evangelist will make God the source of natural disasters, but many of us devoted believers tend to turn to the Weather Channel and its meteorologists for answers more than our Bibles or priests.

So, in how we have organized our lives, God is dead. It is amazing how long many of us can go without thinking about God or church or communion. We have a world, unlike the past, that is built beyond God. We live without mystery.

Or do we? Science killed God through the use of doubt. Science began doubting that our conceptions of God and God’s work matched empirical examination. Yet, what is interesting is that in our time doubt has grown and now has been turned on science. Not long ago it was assumed that science, while it used doubt, existed beyond doubt. Yet many of us are now coming to see that even science (maybe especially science) has its bias.

Many of the world’s mysteries may be explainable, but even so, there still exists within us a huge mystery, the mystery of our own existence, the mystery of why there is something instead of nothing. Our lives may be organized beyond God; we don’t need God to exist in our culture (where in the past it was impossible to live without God). But nevertheless, there remain deep mysteries that surround issues of life and death, mysteries about love and possibility.

One of the reasons I have focused so much on the place of suffering in ministry in my writing is that it is in the experience of suffering—the experience of coming face to face with nothingness—our hermeneutically imposed cultural lenses of living beyond the need for God come crashing down. And, of course, the God we find in suffering, questions, yearning, and need is never the God we imagined, never the God we’ve caged for our own use. Rather, we find this God, in love, weak so we can be strong; we find this God dead so we might live. In a world where it is so easy to live as if God is dead, “only a suffering God can help,” as Dietrich Bonheoffer uttered from his prison cell while Berlin lay in ruins in view from his cell window.

It may be true that we can live as if there is no God, that God is dead. I can fill my life with many things; I can work and entertain myself without any need for God. I can assume all mysteries are solved, or that my job is to buy and gratify myself. But up against the thinness of my being, up against broken love, lost dreams, fear, and need, I recognize that I’m neck deep in mystery that yearns for transcendence.



 





Dave Rahn


What an interesting statement! I could only wish that I were sitting at the coffee shop with a friend who had just uttered it. It begs interrogation.

I first want to know if it is intended to say that the way that God interacts with humankind somehow transcends or ignores culture. Such a position only makes sense if God is a distant deity. The Bible certainly does not present such a picture.

Culture is at least a derived creation of our Father, who loves diversity in his design. Even the climate differences on planet earth lend themselves to persons having vastly different life experiences together. Ice, cold, and long periods of darkness provide backdrops for human relationships that have little in common with life on a tropical island paradise. This natural dimension suggests that we be slow to assume that all aspects of culture are the result of sin’s fallout.

But that doesn’t mean culture is not often co-opted for sinful purposes—such as an arrogant people united together in pursuit of godless greatness at Babel. God always opposes such pride—for our benefit. In this instance, he responds with humanity’s first centrifuge mixer, and participants in the great tower building project are linguistically divided. Lest future generations learn other ways to bind their hearts in willful opposition to their Creator, the Lord confounds them with language differences.

Culture has been linked to language ever since. As language evolves to accommodate each people group’s distinct communication needs, culture continues on a trajectory that seems increasingly particularistic. There are even subcultures within high schools that hang together by using their own identifying lingo.

Fortunately for us, culture has also been used by God to deliver the hope of the world. The Lord God anchored his communication to the world he loves within defined cultural limitations. He chose a nomadic people to enter into a covenant relationship with him, one through which he could bless the nations. This people has had a unique history and been tethered to a smallish parcel of land that is, to this day, hotly contested.

Neighboring countries have had an impact on Israel’s culture. Prophets, poets, and kings left their imprint. Some stood as faithful messengers for the Lord God; others were case examples of how not to behave if you are one of God’s chosen people. Ultimately, into this nation’s script, God entered the Roman-occupied scene in this theatrical production as a babe born in Bethlehem.

To understand what the Lord has said—what we need to know—we must appreciate that there are cultural distinctions through which the Word of God has come to us. We can be saved because God delivered his redemption plan in and through culture.

But maybe that’s not the intent of this provocation. It could be that we’re being invited to critique the culture that is forming us today. This is no easy task. Culture is such a pervasive, life-forming ingredient that most of us have genuine difficulty even questioning how or if we may have been duped by the water we swim in every day.

Does culture bend us toward godlessness? Yes. But what should we expect? Our sin-soiled hearts are inclined away from the Father, not toward him. And culture is ultimately a sociologically understood phenomenon. We sinners collectively shape our culture.

What’s difficult for me to assess as a fellow water-dweller is whether the American space and time I’ve occupied for 57 years is significantly less friendly to the reality of God than other times/spaces/places in history. I suspect we’re spiraling down and away from the Lord today. One reason is that I think I’ve seen Romans 1 accurately describe the movement I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. I also wonder if we’re not reaping Enlightenment-born self-sufficiency as a macro-fruit that conforms to the eschatological story line of Scripture. Things will get worse before Jesus returns for his people.

By the way, God’s ultimate redemption will usher in the culture of King Jesus, no longer via minority witness, but through his triumphant rule everywhere. That’s cool!




Steve Argue


If God is dead to culture, we have a problem. The sacred texts we read, the creeds, art, literature—even .Slant33—are embedded in cultural forms of text, context, illustration, images, events, and community. It is impossible to think or dialogue about God apart from culture.

So, in this space, let’s frame this statement for a youth ministry context. Maybe a concern isn’t that God is dead to culture, but unknowingly, youth workers can become dead to culture. Atrophy toward culture grows through subtle statements I often hear in youth ministry discourse. Here’s what I mean…

“We just teach the Bible here.” While every youth worker must grow in the discipline of careful exegetical and hermeneutical study, no one can “just teach the Bible” as if immune to cultural forces. When someone approaches the Bible, he brings his own cultural assumptions into the text, causing him to emphasize certain things more than others. What a youth worker teaches, how she teaches it, what illustrations she uses, etc., say as much about her as they do about the text. To think otherwise is to be blind to one’s own cultural perspectives. Your gender, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education, etc., affect your view of the text. Failure to see this claims a false objectivity and often results in a dangerous use of power. Be wary of this mentality in others and in yourself.

“Jesus did it, so should you.” A.J. Jacobs’s book A Year of Living Biblically highlights the beautiful and absurd with trying to live just as the Bible says. The challenge comes when one tries to connect pre-modern writings with modern/postmodern, 21st-century, western culture. If they’re honest, most youth workers self-edit passages that “don’t apply” today by turning them into spiritual metaphors—except for Jesus. Most of youth ministry practices and youth worker charges to youth are to do as Jesus did.

While I support the Christian call to follow Jesus, I don’t believe this means that Christians can copy Jesus’ behaviors because it’s out of reach. It’s impossible because Jesus is, well, God; and because one-for-one cultural transposition from 1st-century Palestine to, say, 21st-century Grand Rapids, Michigan, is rarely possible. Approaches that turn Jesus into a behavioral archetype create either a genie Jesus who fulfills all our needs (if we do what he says) or an oppressive big brother who’s an impossible act to follow (“Why aren’t you more like Jesus?” Poor James!). Jesus cannot be the trump card for youth ministry practices and behaviors unless youth workers are comfortable with following an acultural Jesus that contradicts his very incarnation and renders his followers (the church) irrelevant to this world.

Us/Them. Listen closely to youth worker conversations among themselves and with students, and you’ll often notice an us/them perspective with culture—saved/unsaved; good/bad; happy/sad; enlightened/lost, etc. I’m not suggesting that everything is up for grabs, only that nice, neat categories where one claims to have God on their side fails to appreciate life’s blurring reality. Things are rarely all bad or all good. People are rarely all right or all wrong. Christians don’t have their act all together, and non-religious types often act more Christian than Christians! Those who hold neat, clear lines between Christians and others fail to appreciate God’s story that is ringing in every part of our world.

Therefore, youth workers need to quickly move away from labeling things as Christian or secular—whether it’s books, movies, art, or music. Labels like these rob youth workers (and those they shepherd) from learning about the dramatic gospel story that springs up through multiple art forms. Humanity, longing, love, betrayal, relationship, sacrifice, community, faithfulness, struggle, and unresolved issues are part of our human existence—one that God chooses to engage, even enter. What we find is that we’re all in this together. Culture wars aren’t necessary, and there is always a we starting point somewhere, even if it’s simply our humanity.

“Jesus is the answer.” Youth workers’ desire to help students is beautiful, but I notice that their message often gets reduced to Jesus being the answer. The message goes something like this: Everything will be better; your problems will be solved; your situation will be resolved; your anxiety will go away…if you just trust Jesus. Certainly we want people to find Jesus trustworthy, but youth workers must be careful not to reduce culture’s problems to a generic solution, even if it’s Jesus.

What does it mean for Jesus to heal a son’s pain over his parents’ divorce; a school’s fear over the continual threat of violence; or a sophomore girl’s anxiety over her boyfriend pressuring her to have sex? Youth workers must be more articulate about how to help students find culturally specific good news. Let’s not offend students with generic Jesus answers to their specific needs and pressures that are relationally, emotionally, developmentally, and culturally complex. There is a specificity of the gospel that our cultures need, or it’s not good news at all.

Let’s listen to each other and encourage one another to understand the cultures of which we are a part. Maybe these reflections can serve as symptoms or warning signs for youth workers becoming dead to the cultures in which they are undeniably bound. We must pursue a maturity that appreciates the cultural complexities that transcends neat categories, or else we will become dead to culture, offering answers to questions no one is asking; proclaiming an irrelevant and insensitive gospel. May it never be.


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In what ways is hope essential to our theology?

Andy Root


You don’t have to hang around youth ministry people (by people, I mean full-time youth workers, publishers, organizational leaders, and denominational higher-ups) for long before you hear them add some kind of adjective to faith. “What we’re trying to do in our ministry is move kids into mature faith.” “Our new product promises to provide kids with vibrant faith.” “Our organization helps leaders direct kids toward having a deep faith.” “We’re hoping to support churches so their children can have a live faith.”

I do understand the (over)use of these adjectives, in cultural situations where “faith” can easily slide into socialized religions that become wooden and stale. That is always a risk in a context like ours, where so many people assert (on questionnaires) that they believe in God and/or pray at least once in a while. Yet it appears, at least to more devoted followers, that such people’s faith makes little impact on how they live their lives. Wanting young people to see faith as something more than a cultural religion’s socialization, we add our adjectives to distinguish that we really mean business, that we’re wanting kids to really, really take their faith seriously.

Like I said, I understand the feeling that these adjectives are needed. But, hoping not to offend anyone, let me be honest. I think it’s stupid, and it shows an important theological misconception of faith. This misconception can quickly separate faith from its lifeblood, from the reality that makes faith more than a cultural religious socialization; it can easily separate it from hope.

For Paul, discipleship is lived out through three core realities, three realities that are distinctly interconnected. Paul calls his young churches into faith, hope, and love.

There is much we could say about love here, but blog space is limited. So for these ramblings, let me focus on faith and hope. It appears that, for Paul, faith and hope are inextricable realities. They cannot be separated because both faith and hope are bound—anchored—in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the source both of faith and hope. Following Jesus engenders, even demands, faith and hope—not certain knowledge and completion.

For Paul, faith is actually trust in the absurd reality of the foolishness of the cross. Faith is the trust that what is backwards is true, that the crucified Christ is alive, that the God of the cross is found at dead places, bringing new life out of dry bones.

But the subject of this faith is hidden. This is why it takes faith—because it cannot easily be seen; it cannot be seen in logical, formal ways. It can only be seen with eyes that look from different angles; eyes that are willing to see things from below. Faith is never something achieved, something that can turn from “stale” to “vibrant.” Faith is finally and only the willingness to stand in a reality of death and seek God.

Faith is trust next to your own deaths that the God of life will move, that the God of life will be present. Faith does not flow from the streams of knowledge (which is usually what our added adjectives mean; “Our organization, ministry, denomination has a way of really getting kids to know stuff and therefore can move their faith into something vital.”) Faith comes rather from churning rapids of trust, next to death. Faith is always grasped next to doubt. Like the father in Mark 9 who trusts Jesus, but trusting him takes faith in midst of the chaotic white water of a sick child. Next to his deaths he believes; help his unbelief!

The father in Mark 9 believes; he has faith, even next to his doubt, because he is willing to risk hope. There is no faith without hope. Faith is bound in our present time, in our experiences of death and fear, but hope is bound in God’s coming, in God’s completed work, in what my six-year-old son, Owen, calls “the very, very end.” Faith stands in the heaviness of the now, bending its life toward the future that is coming, and hope is this future.

If, for Paul, faith is trust in the foolishness of the cross, then hope is anticipation in the coming of God’s new reality (new creation, new humanity, new life). This new reality, for Paul, comes through the small, weak, backward window of the cross because, just as faith is bound in the death of Jesus, so hope is bound in his resurrected life.

As Moltmann has said, faith is nothing more than anticipation of what is hoped for. The problem we have in youth ministry is that we talk too little with young people about what they hope for. The only way to free faith from religious socialization is to invite young people to hope, to imagine the very, very end, and in faith to begin to bend their lives toward this new reality that is not here yet but which we trust in faith will come.

Our problem in youth ministry is not that we don’t take faith seriously enough but that we have disconnected faith from hope. We fail to ask young people what they hope for in and up against all their college and consumer hopes, to nurture an eschatological imagination that sees hope as deep and powerful, as the ending of death in the embrace of God.




 





Steve Argue


I’d like to limit the “our” part of this question to the context of youth ministry, in particular youth workers, and frame my answer in mutually informing theological, developmental, and sociological perspectives.

Theological Hope. Simply (but profoundly), theological hope remains essential when we begin our Christian narrative in Genesis 1 rather than Genesis 3. When youth ministries start with Genesis 3 and creation’s fall, they create a problematic starting point. “Gospel” adapts a truncated message of saving poor, miserable sinners from themselves. It takes the perspective that the world is broken, evil, needing to be rejected, escaped, even destroyed. When we remember, however, that the gospel narrative starts in Genesis 1, we keep in God’s story, the reality that God created our world and called it really good. Therefore, life isn’t about running from this world but embracing it. From this theological place, we don’t see people as the scum of the earth but as God’s image bearers. The gospel becomes more than saving sinners from hell (and earth) and becomes a hopeful declaration that God is Lord of all, calling people to live into what they have been created to be in a world God has called us to live in and care for.

Any explanation of our Christian story must not start with, “You are separated from God.” It must start that, “You are created by God.” Only then do fall, cross, and resurrection make sense. Good news, then, is not teleporting out of here. It’s living into God’s story in this place right now, believing that God is bringing heaven to earth.

All this is important because research is revealing that adolescents are great imitators of adults—especially of parents and youth pastors. Choosing to ground our theology in Genesis 1 or 3 will shape our adolescents’ theologies and frame how they live both now and in the future. The outcomes of the theology we teach explicitly, through our formal teachings; and implicitly, by what we emphasize through our dialogue, questions, perspectives, and expectations will shape adolescents’ views of God, themselves, and their world.

Developmental Hope. Our theology of formation must take into account a developmental hope. Too often I’ve experienced adults attempting to impose their “adult faith” on adolescents. This is unfair because it places unrealistic expectations on adolescents’ developmental maturity (cognitively, socially, emotionally, relationally, spiritually). The reality is that it’s fairly easy to get adolescents to conform to certain behaviors, even do risky things for Jesus with the right combination of authority, manipulation, and spiritual proof-texting. Superimposed adult expectations of adolescents’ spiritual faithfulness; unfair demands on them to do peer evangelism; and rushing them into leadership often create damaging expectations that betray the developmental place adolescents are at spiritually.

Hope comes when we see that adolescents often have more faith, more depth, and a more holistic view of the gospel than adults, even though their faith looks more awkward and less refined. Youth workers must strive to encourage a developmentally appropriate faith that honors the place and the journey adolescents are at. This will challenge adults to rethink the beauty of the adolescent spiritual journey and may make adults more open to learning from them rather than judging or manipulating them. This hopeful, developmental perspective encourages adults to embrace and learn from adolescents, rather than fearing or controlling them.

Sociological Hope. Most American spirituality (especially those in predominantly suburban, white contexts, where most formal youth ministry resides) and the theology driving it tend to emphasize the individual. A personal relationship with Jesus; encouragement to get right with God; and most applications in youth ministry messages tend to focus on the individual.

While it is important to emphasize personal responsibility, appeals to the individual must be situated in a broader context of the world in which adolescents live. Failure to see systemic solutions for systemic sin; to call people to respond to God’s commands together; or to offer relational support beyond overly siloed youth programs, misses out on an essential part of a hopeful theology—that we are created to love God with others.

Hope in youth ministry (and what I believe is something we must strive for) is for adolescents to actually want adult connections and authentic peer relationships. It means rethinking the competitive, individualized, segmented perspectives that get adopted into youth ministry culture in order to embrace a life of knowing, caring, and supporting one another. In our fragmented world, this is very good news.

Theological hope, therefore, lies not only in proper doctrine but in proper relational contexts where life, faith, theology, etc., can be talked about, questioned, and wrestled with together. Together, then, a youth ministry learns to grow, serve, suffer, laugh, discover, question, debate, and love in ways that far exceed their individualism.

Putting it All Together. A theology of hope starts with the perspective of who we are (not who we’re not); it celebrates developmentally appropriate faith expressions, no matter how unrefined; and journeys in community because no one journeys alone. May hope continually remind us of who we are, where we are, and whom we’re with.




Mike King


I remember a specific conversation I had as a 28-year-old youth worker. I was talking to a veteran youth worker, 20 years older than me, who was going through some difficult times. I confided in him that I couldn’t identify with the pain he was dealing with and that I felt guilty because I had experienced such a charmed life and knew nothing about suffering or sorrow. The wise youth worker mentor calmly replied, “Mike, you are still very young.” He wasn’t suggesting that a storm would surely envelop me someday. He just reminded me that I was still very young.

Nearly 20 years after that conversation, a storm of devastation and despair did arise in my life. It was the kind of crisis that sucks the life out of you because it was just so unfair. An evil injustice occurred to one of our children, and suddenly everything seemed to collapse into utter desolation. Yes, I passionately questioned God. My theology was turned upside down. I spent hundreds of hours crying. I wrestled with God, but nothing seemed to make sense. In the deepest darkness of my despair, my soul obsessed, God, why?

It was during this period of utter darkness that the reality that God was with me in Jesus Christ became most profoundly apparent. Jesus Christ identifies with the suffering and pain of humanity as he cries out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This cry resonated with my experience.

Theologian Jürgen Moltmann wrote a book entitled The Crucified God that helped me wrestle through my crisis of faith to embrace hope. He writes, “The cry of Jesus in the words of Ps. 22 means not only, ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ but at the same time, ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken thyself?’ In the theological context of what he preached and lived, the unity of Jesus and God must be emphasized as strongly as this… The rejection expressed in his dying cry, and accurately interpreted by the words of Ps. 22, must therefore be understood strictly as something which took place between Jesus and his Father, and in the other direction between his Father and Jesus, the Son—that is, as something which took place between God and God.”

Shortly before the imprisoned Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis, he wrote, “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matthew 8:17 makes it clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.”

I found hope in the realization that Jesus Christ identifies with the hopelessness of humanity through the weakness and suffering of the cross.

Jürgen Moltmann states, “Christian faith stands and falls with the knowledge of the crucified Christ, that is, with the knowledge of God in the crucified Christ, or, to use Luther’s even bolder phrase, with the knowledge of the ‘crucified God’.”

For me, this brings hope for a meaning for life, a life with God. This hope is possible because I live on the other side of the resurrection. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ brings the theology of hope to its fullest meaning—a hope for the future.

For Jesus’ disciples, his death and burial was the end of the story and the end of hope. It was not until the bodily resurrection of our Lord Jesus that hope springs fully to life for Christ’s followers, who now experience the beginning of a new day toward a future that embraces a living hope. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the hope for us of what’s to come. Hope for Christians does not mean “wish” or “thinking positive, good thoughts.” Hope is bound up in the promises of God. “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).

One of the most hopeful verses in Scripture is found in Revelation 21:5, “And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’” Until that day when all things are made new, it is essential that we be people who are honest. Some of the goofiest, most absurd statements emerge out of a misunderstanding of what hope is truly about. Statements made concerning death, such as, “At least they are in a better place;” or, “God just wanted them to be in heaven with him,” are not exclamations of hope but very bad theology.

Death is our enemy. Death is God’s enemy. In fact, we are told, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). Christians of all people should tell the truth about this. The young people we minister to need to know the truth about our enemy—death and must be discipled into a robust theology of the cross. I believe this is the only way to truly discover and embrace a hope that is not built on wishful thinking.

Yes, one day, death shall be no more. Jesus Christ, the crucified one, is alive. This is our hope. It is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993, p. 151.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison: The Enlarged Edition. London: SCM Press, 1971, p. 36.
Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993, p. 65.


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What research have you come across that would be helpful for youth workers to better understand how the systems and events of this world are affecting us?

Andy Root


So maybe one of the latest research movements that has impacted youth ministry is new discoveries in neurology and overall brain science. The latest big finding has been that teenagers actually have primitive brains—brains not fully developed—making certain forms of decision making and moral reasoning impossible—so says the research. And youth ministry people pick this up and go with assumptions that kids (especially the boys in their ministries) have animal-like brains. Lately this has led some youth ministry people to ask big questions, like, Can a young person live a life of discipleship before his or her brain fully develops? Is what we are calling them to be and do realistic? Can a teenager live a sanctified life, even?

I have to admit I’m not a big fan of this research. Not because I don’t think it might be right. Believe me, I’m no brain doctor. But I’m worried about the popularized perspective that many youth workers are drawing from because it holds the danger of perpetuating the ontological state of adolescence. If there is a teenage brain, if the young person’s brain is developmentally primitive, then we should keep young people caged behind the walls of adolescence. We should fortify teenage-hood. The problem is that this research so easily becomes reductionistic: Of course we can’t have young people fully involved in the congregation; of course we can’t listen to their theological voices; their brains are primitive! Which too often gets defined as “less than”.

Plus, this perspective is not only reductionistic in the sense of seeing adolescents as less than but also in the sense of ignoring the environmental impact on the brain. It may very well be true, and powerfully so, that when the hard sciences take pictures of the brain, exposing its dimensions and shape, the teenage brain looks different from the brain of a 45-year-old. But that static picture is all that can be seen in a laboratory. It does not take into consideration how the brain changes and what impact society and culture have on the biological organism.

We know for certain that culture does impact biology, not just the other way around. For instance, we know that girls’ menstrual cycles, not long ago, started much later (between the ages of 15-16), but in the last few decades, we have seen a significant drop in the age of a girl’s first period (around ages 11-12, sometimes even 9). All the answers for why this biological reality has changed point to culture. It may have to do with exposure to light, or hormones in the milk children drink and other dietary realities, or greater exposure to information. Whatever the reason, this illustrates that culture has the power to change biological realities.

The problem with the popular brain science that many youth workers are drawing from is that it sees the human brain as static, disconnected from social, relational, and cultural realities. We no doubt are beings with brains, but these brains are wired for social connection (as explored in object relations psychology) and culture (as studied in the sociology of knowledge, à la Peter Berger). And if you scratch beyond the surface of this popular brain science, what you find is that most theorists, especially those who have drawn brain science into interdisciplinary conversations (as does Daniel Siegel and Louis Cozolino), say that the human brain is plastic, changeable, because the human brain is social. These theorists, drawing from the best in neurology, have shown that our social relationships—our engagements with culture—have the power to reshape the brain. For instance, they’ve discovered that the brains of those who’ve experienced trauma or abuse look different than they did prior to the experiences.

So sure, culture and society may shape 12–24-year-olds’ primitive-looking brains, but doesn’t that only call the church deeper? It means we need to engage young people in social realities. Social realities, like life in a congregation, can quite literally reshape their brains. Youth ministry actually has the power (through the Holy Spirit) to change the shape of teenagers’ brains. That’s a pretty big deal, and that’s what the research implies. Rather than pulling back from what we give to or expect from teenagers, it pushes for us to open the doors of the youth room and get young people involved in the social/relational reality of the wider congregation. Because the brain is social (plastic), then getting their teenage brains engaged with adult brains will transform them.




 





Dave Rahn


True confession. I winced inwardly at this question, like an alcoholic might struggle when someone innocently asks which beer tastes best. Without totally dodging the question, I want to take advantage of this moment to tell my story and offer the caution of my experience.

First, I am wired by the Lord to be logical, analytical, and strategic. I love solving problems by applying skills of intellectual reasoning. Lots of my friends are inclined to use their minds; I tend to wear them out. Some of the most significant disciple-making influences in my young Christian life—I put my faith in Jesus when I was 16—were books. Before finishing high school I had read Francis Schaffer’s True Spirituality, Watchman Nee’s The Normal Christian Life, and Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Whatever else was true for me, following Jesus made sense.

Without benefit of much self-reflection and being evangelistically zealous, I began leading a campus life outreach ministry as a college freshman. Over the next 13 years, my role in the organization expanded. And I led on the strength of my diligent activity driven by strategy. How can I reach that particular kid for Christ? Which school should our ministry expand into next, and why? Who are the young staff members I need to bring on the team so we can grow? What activities do we engage in that distract us from doing our best? How can we make our programs, our wrap-ups, each relationship more effective? In the midst of this experience I slipped away for a year and got a master’s degree, fortifying my conviction that thinking well would lead me to greater fruitfulness in ministry.

When I migrated into a college teaching role, it seemed like a natural and strategic use of my gifts. I could leverage this new job for continued influence in the kingdom. After getting a PhD from Purdue, I realized I had something strategic to offer our little Christian college. If I were turned loose to do research that concentrated on the practice of youth ministry, Huntington College (now Huntington University) could stake out a distinctive niche in a young academic discipline. We could emerge as contributing leaders by serving through research.

This focus seemed to fit me perfectly. While I distributed my energy equally between big-question research problems and life-on-life investment with my students, the strategic noisemaker for the college was clearly our published research. I still believe that research can make incredibly important contributions to the body of knowledge in youth ministry, especially because our common practices have lacked rigorous tests of effectiveness. Youth ministry has been largely shaped by a process of trial-and-error experiences that get interpreted and passed along through a conference/workshop delivery system. It’s not that such insights are not valuable; it’s just that we are vulnerable to biases of interpretation that will mislead us without proper scrutiny.

As I approach nearly 40 years of doing youth ministry, I find myself leading the national ministry strategies of Youth for Christ, an organization of evangelistic missionaries that has very little patience for research. Far from imposing my own values on our efforts, I am coming to reckon with the limitations of my own über-strategic inclinations. I have realized that being strategic has made it harder, not easier, to pray with childlike dependency; that transformational love is delivered to lost kids one at a time by people who know they are well loved; that the power of God’s Word to change lives is downright mysterious and resistant to research-based understanding; that observable, fruit-producing unity is unattainable without heart-hidden humility leading the way.

In a fascinating way I feel like I am standing at a moment in my life where I gain the benefit of a backward-looking fresh explanation of how my ministry has been fruitful. It’s like I’m living in the “reveal” moment of The Sixth Sense, discovering that the storyline I have used for years to explain how I have been effective might be masking the truth. What the Lord wants to do in and through me has met considerable resistance from the research-oriented, strategy-crafting side of my soul.

Had I chosen to answer this blog’s question in a straightforward way, I would have given a shout out to the fabulous sociological research done by Christian Smith and team that maps the adolescent landscape of spirituality and religiosity in America. I also would have tossed a bone to the world of distinct domains research, inaugurated by Elliot Turiel in the late ’70s. He and others have made timely contributions to understanding the common structures we employ as we construct meaning for making moral judgments, explaining how teens and parents, for instance, arrive at different conclusions around all kinds of issues. My friend Denny Howard has made a discovery during his clinical counseling practice with more than 3,000 ministry professionals that has allowed him to predict what the major crisis issues will be, based on ministry experience and age. His sample of 400 constitutes a strong pilot study that he hopes to expand into a wonderfully robust research project with immense benefit to the care of ministers.

I still value research very much. In the master’s program I lead, graduates make original, research-based contributions to youth ministry as part of their final projects.

But to guard the progress that seems to be taking place in my own heart, I refuse to personally camp out in the research forests any more. As a matter of conviction, searching through research for solutions is a slippery slope that requires me to be tethered to soul-guarding friends before I traverse its terrain.

My apologies if I’ve disappointed any readers. I’m sure my blog was a “slant” that was not anticipated by those writing a worthwhile question. For what it’s worth, my heart is a bit lighter as I’ve offered this unsolicited testimony. God is good!




Mike King


A paper titled “Brands: The Opiate of the Nonreligious Masses?” has been published in Marketing Science 1. The research team was made up of scholars from Tel Aviv University, Duke University, and New York University. According to their data, they claim that religiously minded people are less interested in consumer products that are branded by a major brand name. In the study, those who claim to be non-religious are much more reliant on well-known brand products, especially when they have the financial means to afford major brands.

The research team theorizes, “Brands and religiosity may serve as substitutes for one another because both allow individuals to express their feelings of self-worth.”

“‘Brands are a signal of self-worth,’ Fitzsimons 2 said. ‘We're signaling to others that we care about ourselves and that we feel good about ourselves and that we matter in this world. It's more than I'm hip or cool,’ he said: ‘I'm a worthwhile person, and I matter, and you should respect me and think that I'm a good person, because I've got the D&G on my glasses.’” 3

The Christian faith is to be lived within a community of practice. Being connected to a faith community says a lot about who people are and what they value. If we don’t know who we are in Jesus Christ, and if we struggle to make meaning out of life through faith, then certainly Apple, Juicy Couture, Gap, or Urban Outfitters are more than willing to help fill the void by providing some sense of meaning or self-worth, right? Some marketers are actually attempting to attach religious overtone to their brands in order to attract consumers looking for meaning, identity, and purpose in life—think True Religion.

Andy Root, at a recent youth worker training at Youthfront, pointed out that young adults are selecting and creating identities for themselves. One can create a profile and craft an identity based on what one buys, wears, and consumes. This increases the importance of a renewed and vigorous emphasis on Christian formation and an intentional theological exploration of what it means to help adolescents form identities rooted in Jesus Christ. A theology that focuses on what it means to live a cruciform life is essential in the midst of our consumerist cultural realities.

This study is very interesting for those of us involved in ministry to adolescents and young adults as we engage in dialogue about what brings meaning to our lives. The researchers’ claim that those who are identified as “religious-minded” people are less likely to be enslaved by major status brands is encouraging to me. Embracing an ethos that Jesus Christ is enough will help us counter the script that suggests we find meaning through the creed I consume, therefore I am.

1. "Brands: The Opiate of the Non-Religious Masses?" Ron Shachar, Tülin Erdem, Keisha M. Cutright, Gavan J. Fitzsimons, Marketing Science, articles in advance, Sept. 24, 2010. DOI: 10.1287/mksc.1100.0591
2. Gavan J. Fitzsimons; R. David Thomas Professor of Marketing and Psychology; F.M. Kirby Research Fellow; Duke University
3. http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2010/09/brandreligion.html


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In what ways are reading Scripture and letting Scripture read us different?

Sarah Arthur


Picture the lone scholar in his study, poring over a biblical text. On the one hand, he is embracing the kind of single-minded passion that the psalmist celebrates in Psalm 119:97: “Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long.” On the other hand, he is engaged in an activity that is foreign to text’s intent and function.

The Scriptures were not intended primarily for individuals to read in the quietness of their rooms, with private meditation or personal enlightenment the only goal. Rather, as Stephen Fowl and Greg Jones put it in Reading in Communion: Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life, “Scripture is primarily addressed not to individuals but to specific communities called into being by God.” When we read Scripture, we read Scripture. The community of faith reads it together, beginning with the mere act of biblical translation (the work of dozens of scholars in conversation) and then in group Bible studies, but most importantly in worship. And not only do we read it—as if simply hearing and reflecting on the words were enough—but we read it like an orchestra reads a musical score. The goal is faithful performance.

It’s like picking up the text of a Shakespeare play. I can read it on my own, but the whole time, I’m aware that the letters on the page are simply the prompts and cues for a much larger communal production. Writes Nicholas Lash, “The performance of scripture is the life of the church. It is no more possible for an isolated individual to perform these texts than it is for him to perform a Beethoven quartet or a Shakespeare tragedy” (Theology on the Way to Emmaus). This performance takes place in worship, Lash says, but more specifically in the sacrament of communion. Through communion we enact the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as expressed in the gospels. We hear the Word, speak the Word, sing the Word, ingest the Word, and then leave with the task to share the Word with the world.

In that sense, we are always reading Scripture toward group performance. The scholar in his study, if he is honest with himself, is merely practicing his lines. His dissertation may be an important safeguard for making sure the whole group gets the lines right or puts the proper emphasis on certain phrases or doesn’t overlook the less popular passages, but the dissertation is not the ultimate goal. The goal is his cupped hands at the communion rail—the same hands that will grasp his son in a hug or pick up a mop at the soup kitchen.

But it doesn’t end there. While we may read Scripture toward performance of the text, the performance of the text is also reading us. Take the sacrament of communion again. During the Chilean dictatorship of Pinochet, for instance, the Roman Catholic Church at first was cozy with the regime that silently tortured and eliminated thousands. As William Cavanaugh describes in his powerful book, Torture and Eucharist, the perpetrators of violence were right there on Sunday morning, taking the body and blood of the tortured Christ along with everyone else—even with their victims. And eventually the church began to realize this was deeply, fundamentally wrong. The reading and performance of the Passion each week had begun to read them. So the church began to create a counterculture, a community that offered its own outreach and care to the victims. It no longer endorsed what the government was doing, no longer participated in government programs, even took steps of excommunicating perpetrators of violence.

“The play’s the thing,” said Hamlet, “wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” The faithful performance of the text, which is the goal of reading the lines in the first place, has the curious effect of reading us: of taking our spiritual vitals, gauging our spiritual temperature, pointing out anomalies, holding up mirrors. The two readings cannot be separated. Which should give us pause the next time we advise youth in our ministries to spend time reading their Bibles every day. If we don’t add the important caveat, “There will be a performance on Sunday”—or even, “There will be a performance the minute you leave your room and talk to your mother”—then we’re not being honest about the nature of this text we claim to live by.



 





Chris Folmsbee


Before I even answer this question, let me say this. If you have not read Eat This Book, by Eugene Peterson, go to Amazon and get it now. You will be blessed by its contribution to your spiritual formation.

Now, to the question at hand… Four thoughts come to my mind when asked the difference between reading Scripture and letting Scripture read us. The best way I know to answer this question is through my own life experience. These thoughts may not be true for you, but then again, they might be very true.

1. Accessibility or Authority. When I read the Scriptures, I go looking for something as if I am the authority on the text/subject. When I let the Scripture read me, I go into it with a soul that is open and accessible, able to be reached (for example, during the practice of lectio divina).

2. Practice or Principle. When I let Scripture read me, I am in search of a forming practice or a faith-shaping discipline that transforms me from the inside out. When I go to Scripture, I am often in search of a particular premise or principle. The former is much more difficult and requires more of my conscious effort.

3. Soak or Surface. When I let Scripture read me, it means that I am permeable, and I absorb the truth into my very being. Letting the truth soak into my soul opens up new dimensions of truth. Sometimes, when I read the Scriptures, I am simply searching for truth on the surface.

4. Mission or Myself. Usually when I read Scripture, I am tempted to read into the passage(s) what I need God to do for me or what God has done for me. A particular blessing, perhaps? On the other hand, when I let Scripture read me, I usually end up finding ways that God can use me for the sake of the world, as opposed to me using God.




Andy Root


I really don’t know about this question. It has always bugged me, or at least confused me. Or maybe it has bugged me because it has confused me. I like the idea that Scripture does something—that it reads us as much as we read it. I potentially like that we give Scripture some form of agency. I think this escapes some of the propositional truth exegesis that dominated evangelicalism decades ago and is still holding on in places today. But what I don’t like is that it too easily (and confusingly) assumes that we don’t read Scripture (it just reads us) and then blurs the importance of hermeneutics when reading the text. In other words, it can distract us from realizing how deeply we bring prejudices and perspectives into our reading. I wouldn’t want to undercut the importance of what we’ve learned from philosophical hermeneutics. But that’s for a whole other post.

Okay, here is what I really think is at stake in this question and how I would like to nuance the conversation. Either way you frame the question, Scripture is an agent. But Scripture is a collection of written texts, pieces of paper (or papyri or whatever) collected into a book that can sit on your desk or keep a door open. Of course, it is possible that words that make up ideas can be transformative, but it is you—the human agent, the subject—who reads them and brings them to life. In themselves these pages don’t live.

A kind of postmodern interpretation would be that only the community of faith lives, so Scripture only reads us as we read it together, drawing it into our subjective experiences. Part of me really likes that argument, but I think it makes the human agent too central. I’m worried that some have tried harder to make the Bible, the inanimate object, live, as though the Bible is one of Andy’s toys in Toy Story. I actually don’t think this is very helpful—therefore I do not think Scripture reads us.

Rather, I think the Word of God reads us. I hold that it is Jesus Christ who is living and moving in the world; it is Jesus who is encountering us, “reading” us, if you will. Jesus is a subject, an agent; Jesus is the living Word—living as the fullness of life, as the one who has passed through death. As the Johannine literature asserts and as most theological traditions affirm, Jesus Christ is the Word of God, and this Word is moving and active because this word is a living person.

So this means that our goal in youth ministry (and brace yourself, I’m about to say something to get you thinking) is not primarily to have kids read and know the Bible. We don’t care if they know about the inanimate object. Rather, what we want—and want deeply—is for kids to use the Bible to interpret the activity of the Word of God. What’s important is not that kids can memorize verses but rather that they embody the Bible enough to use it as a lens to seek God in the world.

The Bible is not the fourth person of the Trinity; the Bible is not divine. It doesn’t need to be error free to be true. The Bible is the authoritative lens (tool) to discern where and what the living God is doing. So the whole whining-about-kids-being-biblically-illiterate shtick is a red herring. Who cares if kids can pass some stupid Bible test? Who cares about biblical knowledge? What we want is for them to become interpreters (and of course, now, from this perspective, biblical knowledge is very important!) who devour the Bible—not to pass a test but to have the eyes to see the beauty and suffering of God’s action in the world.

The Bible is the authoritative gift God has given us to see the normative shape of God’s continued action in the world through Jesus by the Spirit. Chew on that for a while—and if you have more questions, wait for the third book in my theology and youth ministry series, which will be out first thing 2013. And for now, send all your angry emails to Mike King.


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What are some effective ways to inspire, encourage, and equip parents in your ministry?

Mike King


There seems to be a lot of resources on youth ministry websites that provide youth workers with practical ideas and effective ways to inspire, encourage, and equip parents in your ministry. So I want to suggest something that probably won’t be on a list of 10 things you can do to help the parents of the youth you minister to.

Here it is: Make sure you have a parent prophet in your faith community to tell parents the truth about parenting adolescents. It will probably need to be someone other than you, the youth pastor. If you are a 25-year-old youth worker without children, it is impossible to be the truth teller concerning parenting. Until you’ve experienced parenting (especially parenting of an adolescent), it is wise to have another pastor, parent, adult youth leader, or all of the above serve in the role of speaking truth to Christian parents in your faith community. If you aren’t old enough to serve in this role, you can definitely provide resources, information, and content to your parent prophet(s). The prophetic message that needs to be heard by parents is sometimes one of encouragement and sometimes one of exhortation.

As Vicki and I began our family back in the early '80s, we were firmly entrenched in a Christian culture that held the view that spiritual marriage relationships would be perfect if you put God first (you won't even argue or disagree with one another), and as long as you follow the rule book, you will also raise perfect kids who will never wander from faith in Jesus Christ.

Our culture overall and our church cultures specifically have created an unrealistic expectation that parents have a responsibility to raise perfect kids. Even if we could produce the perfect kid by the cultural standards of academic achievement, moral excellence, economic success, and productive citizenship, this certainly doesn’t mean we have nurtured and shaped disciples of Jesus Christ.

Too often Christian parents are made to believe that if they follow a specific formula, they are sure to raise spiritual giants. If you don’t raise a spiritual giant, well, it’s because you aren’t a spiritual parent, so goes the logic. This view of Christian parenting is a lie and is not consistent with Scripture. Too many Christian parents live in insecurity and shame over what is perceived as their inability to serve as guides for the spiritual formation of their children. We were not made to parent alone without the help of a community of people committed to being the people of God.

While I believe that we parents have a crucial role in the Christian formation of our kids, we have taken on too much responsibility with the idea that we are the ones who transform them. We resort to desperate tactics and rules we hope will somehow turn them into the kind of young adults who believe and do the right things. We often overlook the role we have of nurturing the environments where God’s Spirit transforms them.

We must help the parents in our faith communities quit living under the guilt of trying to parent successfully and embrace the concept of parenting faithfully. In January, Christianity Today featured a cover story written by Leslie Leyland Fields.

She stated, “We are not sovereign over our children—only God is. Children are not tomatoes to stake out or mules to train, nor are they numbers to plug into an equation. They are full human beings wondrously and fearfully made. Parenting, like all tasks under the sun, is intended as an endeavor of love, risk, perseverance, and, above all, faith. It is faith rather than formula, grace rather than guarantees, steadfastness rather than success that bridges the gap between our own parenting efforts, and what, by God's grace, our children grow up to become.”

Parent prophets can encourage the parents of the adolescents we minister to and help them through the challenging task of raising their kids.

On the other hand, parent prophets must also be willing to exhort and challenge parents. One of the most alarming trends I see today (as a youth worker for 36 years, a father for 30, and a grandfather for 4) is the emphasis parents place on preparing their children to excel in sports. I love sports. I play sports. I follow sports. However, there is something terribly dysfunctional about parents pushing their kids to excel in sports by investing in personal trainers and jumping from one competitive sports season to the next in an endless pursuit to raise the next LeBron James, Tiger Woods, or Andre Agassi. I know college is expensive, but the likelihood of training your child into a college athletic scholarship is about as probable as winning the $200,000,000 lottery.

I am disappointed that many Christian parents aren’t more zealous about making the Christian formation of their teenagers a first priority. Where are our values as Christian parents? I wonder what parents who define themselves as practicing Christians would choose if they could pick (with a guarantee) between a) my kid will be a major, successful, and wealthy sports star, or b) my kid will love Jesus Christ and faithfully live a life glorifying God?

We need parent prophets to speak truth into the lives of parents in our faith communities. What if Christian parents invested in the Christian formation of their children as passionately as some parents invest in the athletic training of their children? I believe this kind of investment in the spiritual development of the emerging generation of young people is desperately needed.





Brooklyn Lindsey


How do we know if we’ve been effective in this area? There are the occasional thank you emails, voicemail messages, or, if we find ourselves blessed enough to remain at a church for any length of time—the obvious results of great Christian parenting made visible in the students themselves over the span of middle school and high school years.

Knowing that a teenager’s faith importance is closely linked to the faith importance of their parents1 , it’s non-negotiable that we continually address this need—especially since it’s so easy to overlook or underestimate in the practical work of youth ministry.

So near the end of the post, I’ll share some things that have worked for me in being a helper to parents as they guide their children through adolescence.

However, one lesson I’ve learned more recently needs to be shared from a parent in a culture different from my own. His name is Joelson. He is from Brazil and is the father of four beautiful children—two grown, two still in school. I met Joelson while studying for ministry abroad. He graciously hosted my husband and me in his home while we stayed in Rio de Janeiro. I noticed that his parenting style was different from what I’ve observed in the States. But more recently, I’ve been able to observe it again because he is currently staying with my in-laws in Ohio to learn English for a few months.

On a recent trip to Ohio, I watched “Papa Joe,” as the family calls him, take my eight-month-old daughter to the ground (he’s 6’10”). He sat with her on her level. He played with her closely and gave her personal attention for at least an hour. In our culture, many times our attention to time constraints keeps us from making it to the floor and spending the one-on-one time with our children that they need, myself included.

Joelson was asked to help coach the high school basketball team. True to form, he pays little attention to what society says about getting to know a student. He told my husband’s parents, “I want to go to every boy’s home and meet his parents.” Their caring response was, “Maybe you should talk to the head coach first about your plans.”

A genuine desire to help and be a support to others can be hindered by the fear that we aren’t doing the right thing, asking for the right permission, or getting the appropriate signed waivers. Joelson doesn’t seem to care what the head coach thinks in this situation. He wants to care for the guys on the team, and going to their houses to meet them where they live is a part of that process, so he’ll do it, regardless.

I’m learning from Joelson that we shouldn’t be paralyzed by “what ifs” when seeking out families in our ministries. If we desire to help them, then we must get to know them. If we desire to love them, then we must open our doors—or encourage our leaders to open their doors. Encouraging, equipping, and inspiring parents begins with a passion to know them, and to know them means to understand them, and to understand them means to respond to their needs with help.

Now what that looks like is going to be different for every family we meet, every culture we encounter, and every hardship or blessing we experience in the process. And of course, the Holy Spirit will help us. We aren’t left standing to figure it out on our own. The divine paraclete—the comforter who walks beside us—also walks with us to the front door of our youth ministry where parents and teenagers stand waiting, sometimes broken, sometimes confused, sometimes simply needing a refreshing word to keep doing what they are already doing so well.

So my advice below might be helpful, but following Joelson’s example might be even better. Meet the parents. Go on. Do it. And see what happens next.
 1. Listen. Give parents in your ministry your personal attention when they come to you with a concern. I may not have the answer they need, but I’ve found that listening and paying attention are often the best gifts you can give. Most of the time I find that parents end up answering their own questions. The ones who can, oftentimes just need a little nudge in the right direction. For those who face issues or challenges much bigger than we can address, walk with them in referral until they find the person who can help them best.

2. Provide solidarity. Give parents designated space to talk, mingle, and share stories. When they begin sharing with each other, many realize that they aren’t the only ones facing an obstinate daughter or dealing with a kid who can’t seem to make it home with his homework. Offer a parent connect time once a month. Provide coffee or brunch before a worship service. Make it easy for them to join and easy for them to leave.

3. Offer training on felt needs. Each quarter, offer a discussion group on needs that you sense are hot for parents in your group. Encourage parents to share their ideas with each other and offer up your expertise. You can do this with many areas of needs or just one.

4. Plan ahead. Meet with parents before their teenagers go through major transitions. John Wooden used to say that preparing for an opportunity when it arrives is too late. Prepare before it comes, and you’ll teach parents to be successful.

5. Pray. Pray for your parents. Pray without ceasing. Pray for them when you feel led. Pray for them when you’re at odds. Pray and you’ll find ways to encourage and inspire that you never dreamed of before.

[1]  To read more on this correlation read: Soul Searching by Christian Smith.  Oxford University Press, 2005

Andy Root


Warning: this is my most concrete, practice-driven post ever! You may not recognize me…

Parenting is hard work! I think we all know that, but to know the depth of the difficulty, you really have to be a parent. I used to think, before I had kids, that I had a pretty good idea of what it would take to be a good parent, and I thought (and I know this sounds a little cocky) that I would be a really good parent. I had, after all, spent a number of years working with young people and had read a truckload on children and adolescents.

I remember watching parents in public places have their less-than-best parenting moments and being able to deconstruct and reconstruct what they should have done and what difference it would make for them and for their children. Watching parents appease their crying kids in Target with a face full of candy swiped from the aisle mid-tantrum, I used to shake my head in disapproval – until it was my own kids melting down and it was me shoving Gummy Bears down their wailing throats.

Parenting is hard work, and most parents feel pretty defensive. We feel like most days and weeks we’re just barely holding on, and honestly, the last thing we need or want is some punk youth worker telling us all the things we’re doing wrong. We know there are many. A lot of them have to do with shortage of time, which zaps patience, so your little parent training event seems like just another thing on my to-do list that will make me feel worse than I already do, so forget it! That’s honestly how I feel, and I’ve been a youth worker and now spend my time training them, ironically, to care about families and see young people as inextricably bound to them.

So despite feeling like that, here are a few things to think about when it comes to relating to, inspiring, encouraging, and equipping parents.

First, approach parents as a broken advocate, not as a specialist. You may be the youth pastor and maybe even have a seminary degree, but you’re no parenting expert. Plus, even parenting experts are rarely welcomed into the family’s private space. Especially if you’re young and childless yourself, don’t approach parents like you have something to teach them. Rather, approach them as someone who wants to help, someone who wants to be a listening ear. Encounter parents as someone who wants to be with them, sharing their place as they go through the ups and downs of parenting.

From the perspective of a professional expert, you have no right to confront or tell parents difficult things, but as someone advocating for them and someone who is in deep relationship with their children, you actually do—if you approach them as someone who cares for their children. Think of it this way. Don’t go up to a parent and say, “Hey, I heard you’re divorcing; I would really like to get together and share with you some of the negative ways divorce affects children and then provide you with a sheet of ten dos and don’ts to keep in mind as your divorce unfolds.” If I were that parent I would want to kick you right in the you-know-what.

But if you approach a parent and say, “Hey, as you know, I’ve been spending some time with Gwen, and she mentioned that some really hard stuff is happening in your family. I can’t imagine what this must be like. I know she has some worries that she’s expressed to me; is it all right if we talk at some point?” This statement is hard in its own right, and feelings of defensiveness may come, but instead of being a judging expert, you rather simply a sympathetic advocate.

The second thing we can do is create a space for parents. In many ways it’s amazing that parents who spend time in congregations don’t feel supported as parents. The congregation is one of the only places in society that allows space for people across the parenting landscape (some with infants, some with grown children, some with teenagers) to encounter each other, learn from each other, and be supported by each other’s stories.

This should be one of the concrete practices youth and family ministers do—create a parent storytelling space. Don’t make it a parenting “mentoring group” or parent “passing the wisdom” group. Let that stuff just naturally happen. Have no agenda; just the invitation to all sorts of people to tell their parenting stories. I guarantee that wisdom, advice, and concrete practices will follow, but they will follow from the story and from encountering each other, which has a much deeper impact than a seminar or book.

So, in other words, the church already has the resources it needs to support families. It is a yearning, searching community; we just need to allow space for support to happen.


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How might youth ministry improve in becoming more family oriented?

Chris Folmsbee


Below are nine considerations youth workers might employ to provide a more family-oriented approach to youth ministry.

1. See the bigger picture and start younger. A more family-oriented ministry cannot happen unless we work hard to start when our youth are children. This requires youth workers to have a broader perspective and definition of youth ministry and to be intentional about creating harmony with the church’s work with children.

2. Develop and commit to a theology of formation. A youth ministry that does not have a theology of formation often lacks the ability to see how others in the church might help them guide students into spiritual formation for the mission of God. I'm not referring to a programming structure as much as I am a pathway for developing teens and families toward becoming more like Jesus. Your programs can help this, but they can't do this. You need a theology of formation to guide your efforts.

3. Understand family systems. Every youth worker does not need a degree in sociology or psychology. However, every youth worker does need to seek out and develop a working knowledge of how healthy families function and then help other families embrace those traits.

4. Lead by listening. Listen well. How aware are you of the various needs your families have? There will be many, and they will be unique, and you may need to ask.

5. Resource families with tools and practices. One of the easiest yet most helpful things you can do is provide tools and practices for families to use to engage spiritual formation. For example, my family has a prayer cube that we use before each meal. It was given to me by my youth pastor years ago.

6. Schedule fewer events/services and encourage the families in your faith community to use the extra time for family gatherings. You may want to offer suggestions for families of ways to use their time. My experience has been that families want to do this but don't know what to do to engage all their children, who may be at various age levels.

7. Develop a team of parents who represent various families from various backgrounds. Let families speak into your ministry. This will help ensure that you are engaging families right where they are. This is hard to do for many reasons, one of which is age. If you are a younger, less experienced youth worker, you may want to delegate the leadership and coordination of this team to a more mature staff person or volunteer while you sit back and learn.

8. Create opportunities for the youth and families to experience the youth ministry together. This does not have to be elaborate or even often. However, your effort and willingness to do this will most likely be viewed by parents as helpful. Most will be grateful.

9. If you have a family yourself, lead your own family well, and others will learn from you. I know too many youth workers whose families come after the youth ministry. That sucks. Lead your family well and model family formation, and you will help others do the same.
























































































Watch for Barefoot’s new Parent Journey series, the first component of which is scheduled to release spring 2011!

Jim Hampton


There has been a move in youth ministry toward becoming more “family oriented,” which I celebrate. This move has been made because of the simple reality that parents are intended to be the primary spiritual caregivers for their children. Yet, as I talk with youth workers around the United States, I am still seeing a lot of youth ministries that, for whatever reason, tend to ignore parents or, at best, send them an occasional newsletter to keep them in the communication loop.

If we want to really make a difference in the lives of teenagers, we have to reorient our ministries to allow parents to become participants in youth ministray rather than just observers. Here are three suggestions for how youth ministry can become more family oriented.

1. Involve parents. I know it seems simplistic, but it’s just not happening. As Mark Senter points out his in his excellent book, When God Shows Up: A History of Protestant Youth Ministry in America, youth ministry approaches are often regionalized. And in my extensive travels, I’ve found that there does seem to be a lack of real family-oriented youth ministry in certain areas of the United States.

Part of the problem is that youth workers have developed the sense that, because they are the trained professionals, they are the ones who will make the biggest impacts in the lives of teenagers. That is a falsehood! Every study over the last 50 years shows that parents are still the number-one influences in their kids’ lives. Why would we then attempt to divorce our students from the very people who have the opportunity to most influence them for the gospel?

Find ways to involve parents in the youth ministry.

(While I am talking primarily about Christian parents, I think it is also important for us to reach out to non-Christian parents and find ways they can contribute to the youth ministry. This will expose them not only to what the ministry is doing for their children but also to Christian adults who can speak into their lives in profound ways.)

2. Resource parents. There is no tougher job in the world than parenting, especially when teenagers are in the household. We in youth ministry have been trained to understand developmental issues, spiritual formation of adolescents, family systems and counseling, and many other areas that assist us in our ministry to youth. But think about what types of training parents receive. Most have none, other than replicating the way their parents raised them.

The church should be a place that seeks to bring together parents of adolescents in order to resource, encourage, and challenge them in their sacred task of parenting. Consider how you could implement some of the following ideas:

• Bring in an expert on parent/teen communication for a weekend seminar.
• Create a 13-week Sunday school class for parents of teenagers focused on helping them understand the culture in which their teens are engaged.
• Develop a support group where parents can support, encourage, and pray for one another.
• Develop a parents’ council to help give guidance and support to the work of the youth ministry.

3. Celebrate Parents. The reality is that many parents feel they do a bad job of parenting and are regularly disappointed in themselves. If the church could find a way to celebrate their roles in the lives of their teenagers, this would not only affirm them but help them better understand the real impact they can have on their children.

Find ways to celebrate with parents the major milestones of their parenting lives. While these milestones are often celebrated with family, the church tends to be absent in these times. Parents earnestly desire to know that they are doing a good job and that others recognize it.

Here are some potential ideas to help with this:

• Many youth groups have a special ceremony to welcome new sixth or seventh graders into the youth group. In addition, consider having a special ceremony for the parents of those teenagers as a way of reminding them of how significant they will be during their kids’ teenage years.
• When teenagers make significant faith decisions, send letters to their parents, thanking them for their faithful lives and their desire to see their children grow in Christ.
• During confirmation (as part of both an opening and closing celebration), find ways to involve parents, celebrating their part in getting their children to this point.
• At a graduation banquet, allow the teenagers to give thanks to their parents for helping them navigate their teenage years.

If we can learn to really engage parents in sharing the faith formation of their teenagers, then we will really have succeeded in our jobs as youth workers.

Andy Root


It’s been a few decades now since youth ministry started adding “family” to its title. I’ve never done any real research on this, but my hunch is that this add-on came from the academy. The addition of family to make it youth and family ministry came nestled within the same unfolding of youth ministry programs in colleges and seminaries.

Now, this is good. I think youth ministry professors and researchers looked deeply at the research in the social sciences and saw clearly how important family is to adolescents, that family was the major element in so many outcomes—whether faith commitment, education performance, or avoidance of risky behaviors. And it was clear that most of youth ministry on the ground had not taken enough account of the family. In many ways, one could argue that youth ministry ignored the family and wanted very little to do with it.

Para-church youth ministries—the para-church ministries that set the terms for so much of twentieth-century youth ministry—almost always functioned outside of contact with the family. Adolescents seemed, at least socially, to be living in government institutions (like the high school) and the peer groups formed in these institutions. Being a teenager seemed to be a radical step away from the family, so these para-church ministries did the missional thing: they focused on where young people could be found—outside the home and in the school. And of course it was more than just this because the young people encountered through the para-church had no familial contact with the para-church; the para-church was solely a youth-driven entity. Besides needing a camp signature, parents and families were excluded from this religion-based peer fraternity.

When youth ministry migrated from the para-church to the local congregation, the adolescent-centered, family-excluded perspective migrated with it. Though the congregation was a family-centric reality (besides needing a few volunteers), youth ministry was practiced inside the congregation beyond the family.

So adding family to youth ministry has been a good move. It acknowledges something both ecclesial (that the church is made up of families and is intergenerational) and something anthropological (that young people as full persons are bound within families, forming identity and meaning from within the family).

But here’s the rub. And every one of you who works with families knows this: No matter how much you believe it is important to minister to families, it often feels impossible. One of the reasons the early para-church folks steered clear of the family was because of their read of the culture, and even today (and maybe more so), there are deep cultural changes that make it very, very difficult to work with families. You could actually make an argument that we are living in a post-family era.

Of course, we still have “family,” but families are changing and transitional; from step-families to blended families to kids bouncing from one to another, it’s hard to know what family means to people and to have any family ministry without stepping on a mine somewhere. Family has become more multivalent and porous, making it inappropriate to assume what is and what is not a family. So turning our attention to families is much more difficult than adding family to our job titles.

But the picture I’ve just painted with my historical brush is mostly in youth ministry from the mid-twentieth century on. And that’s usually where we start when we think about the need to get the family back in focus in our congregations. We often think that if we could just get back to the golden era of the 1950s, all would be good. But this is a misconception; I don’t think the church had any better idea of how to do ministry with families in this black-white, sitcom era of high Americana. It seems to me that the church has been treading water on how to do ministry with families not just since the 1950s but since the Victorian age of the early nineteenth century. So to make you depressed, it’s not that the church has been out of touch in doing ministry for the last 60 years but for the last 200.

Why? In the Victorian age of the nineteenth century, the family became what historians call a separate sphere. In other words, for the first time, most people left home daily to go to work, returning from the competitive workforce to find solace in the family. Women were no longer central to the work of the family as an economic reality (as Abigail Adams was in colonial America) but were now in charge of making this private sphere comfortable and safe for working husbands and vulnerable children. So the family became private and separate from the rest of life (you can read more about this historical change in my new book, The Children of Divorce, chapter one).

Very practically, what occurred is that the church was now no longer given voice inside the family—it was private, after all. For most of western history the church spoke directly into the family, especially in the medieval age. The church was the notary (legal representative) of family unions, judging who could marry and merge wealth and land. The church ruled (through marriage as a sacrament) who could be married and who couldn’t and how those marriages should function. Of course, this left open the possibility for a great deal of abuse. But it did mean that the church was involved in the family.

However, since the Victorian age, the pastor needs to be careful not to cross boundaries and will be told—when she/he speaks too much about parenting—to mind her/his own business. Because now the family is no longer the church’s business, it is no longer public—though it had been for centuries.

And this is what makes adding the family to youth ministry much easier said than done. It’s difficult for us to know how to do family ministry when, for most people, what happens in their families is their own business, and nobody (particularly you young, gel-haired youth workers) has a place to tell me what my kid needs and how I should parent her.

I’m tempted to stop here and let the depression just spill over you—for after all, this is a really difficult situation we find ourselves in; family ministry is very hard. But maybe that’s where we should start—by communicating to parents that we know what they wrestle with every day; that parenting their children is really hard; that confusion and fear are all around them. And with the family being private, parents can often feel stuck and fearful about how to express the difficulty and confusion parenting can bring.

So maybe the way we break through the tall walls of the private sphere of the family is not by providing advice and counsel but forums for parents of young and old children to express their fear and confusion. Maybe the work of the church in our time is not to have the moral high ground to “fix” family problems but to provide spaces for parents to connect with each other and share their stories and, through their stories, open up themselves and their families to each other.

Good luck, because I think family ministry is darn tough!


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How do the ways in which we respond to failure shape and form our lives?

Steve Argue


Dear Failure,

It’s been awhile since I’ve written. You’ve probably liked it that way. But I’d like to take a minute and define our relationship. Here’s where I think we stand:

You’re my worst nightmare. I’ve been told all my life that if I believe in something hard enough, I can accomplish anything. I feel your pressure to accomplish. Anything. Everything. As soon as I experience success, you’re right there next to me, saying, “Bet you can’t do that again.” Or, “nice job this time, but you’ll need to wow them more next time.” Or, “Way to go, but do you think it was good as so and so?” So there you are, warping my perspectives, even my successes, in my American context that fuels your convincing fire.

You’re way too big. I want to get rid of you. I try to pretend you are wimpy, that you’re just an obstacle to overcome or a lemon that can be harnessed into lemonade. Rugged individualism tells me that what won’t kill me will make me stronger. Yep, I eat failure for breakfast. The problem is, you never go away. There always seem to be more obstacles. More lemons. I’m getting tired (and my bladder is really full).

You don’t shut up. My personal history has preserved your message. I try to shut you out so I can’t hear your recurring words speaking to me through familiar voices from my past. I pretend that it doesn’t bother me, but these voices find their way to some of the deepest parts of my soul, whispering your bitter words. “Your failure defines you.” “You may believe you’re fine now, but I know what you’re really like.” “Those good things you do look great, but I’m making you do them out of fear of me, out of anger to prove me wrong. You can’t shut me out with your good deeds; I’ll use them to make me even stronger, to haunt you even more.” How do I get you out of my head? Or is it impossible? It’s like someone telling me not to think of the color blue.

You’re an evangelist. You have even succeeded (failure is successful!) by getting me to believe in a different god and savior. I’ve been lulled into treating god as the one who makes the pain go away or gets me the job or makes it all better. You’ve convinced me that happiness is the greatest goal and that struggle isn’t real; it’s just “God closing the door because there’s something bigger for me.” What if struggle is the bigger thing?

Honestly, I get frustrated with God that God doesn’t just take you out. After all, aren’t Christians supposed to live victorious lives? Small groups would be so much more popular if people didn’t need to share their failures. The god of your church has people who are always “fine,” with a few daring to ask others to pray that they “have more patience.” You’ve succeeded to lull me and our Christian communities into groups that avoid talking about you for fear we find out that you really exist in all our lives. Therefore, we hide from each other and from ourselves. Nice job.

You exist. I don’t want to believe in you, but I’m choosing to. In fact, I’m going to love you. Yes, you’re lovable. Maybe, if I can embrace you, I’ll understand you and put you in your proper place. Therefore, I’m going to choose to think about you this way:

You are a reminder of my limitations but not a definer of my person. I know I can’t do everything perfectly, but I am called to live faithfully. I will not let you define who I am, but I think you can help me remember that I’m not made to do it all.

You are my limp, not my cancer. You highlight my natural limitations that aren’t burdensome but liberating. This freedom allows me to celebrate, not compare. It allows me to extend grace to others and to myself. You’re a limp that reminds me, not a cancer that kills me.

You are my teacher, not my excuse. I will seek to learn from you. You have something to tell me when I do experience you in my life. I will resist seeing you as an exception to blame someone else or excuse my responsibility.

You are my cheerleader, not my heckler. When you remind me that I have failed, I will choose to hear, “Good job, you took a risk!” rather than, “Told you so.” You are my gauge that celebrates risks and keeps me from playing life too safe.

My sense is that you’re not going to like this letter because it’s written directly to you, and I think you prefer a more stealthy relationship. My hope is that if I can be honest with you, I can be honest with others and get on living life the way I’m created to live it. See you soon.

Your friend,

Steve

Lilly Lewin


I fail a lot. I fail at being a good mom, a good wife, at saying “I’m sorry,” at thinking of others before myself. I fail at paying attention to what God is doing, to the needs around me. I fail at remembering names, and I always fail at remembering numbers. I also fail at making deadlines…a lot. Just ask all my editors.

Let me just say loudly, I hate to fail. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life trying hard—really, really hard—not to fail, yet I’ve been programmed most of my life to equate doing anything wrong, any little screw up, missed opportunity, or even a missed phone call or deadline, with failure. My view of failure has been one of the primary parts of my life. If we’re going to be friends, then you need to understand that this is how I see the world.

Is it possible that we can relate to all people simply on how they define failure?

My first full-time ministry job left me feeling like a failure. I was on a large church staff, my husband was also on staff, and it was my first job back after having a baby. At that point in my life, it wasn’t easy for me to tell the truth to people in authority and not easy for me to say I had a problem with something. So I wrote a letter to my supervisors and told them my frustrations with my job and why my job needed to change in order for me to continue doing it. I wasn’t looking to leave my job; I was just getting stuff out on paper. This was back in the dark ages of the early ’90s, before email. The result of that heart-pouring letter was…I got fired.

I felt like a complete and utter failure. The way it was handled was horrific, and we had to move because we couldn’t afford to live on just one salary. But more than that, I questioned my call to ministry. Had I totally missed it?

Twenty years later, I can safely say that I know myself better, and I know what Bill Cosby means when he says, “I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

What is it about failure we just don’t like? Or we just can’t stand? I hate to fail, yet I fail all the time. Doesn’t that seem stupid? I failed at getting this post in on time. How we define failure and who defines failure determines our view of our lives; and how we learn to love or hate it.

Many of us equate failure with pain. If I fail this test I’ll get in trouble with my parents, or I won’t make the grades I need to go to the college I want. Or, If I fail to pull off this event, this retreat, I won’t get the raise or get the props or get the praise I want/need.

I was programmed to strive for perfection in my family of origin. I was the performing firstborn who tended to do the right things and in the right order. I was driven to perform well; not to fail.

The sad thing is that my drivenness came from a dad who said, ”It’s a 99, why isn’t it 100?” when I showed him my report card. So I’ve spent much of my life striving for that 100.

Yet we all know in our heads that only God makes 100s; people do not (not to mention that God doesn’t have a big grade book in the sky). People mess up, screw up, and fall flat on their faces. All the time. It’s what people do. It’s one of the things that makes us human. The beauty is that we can get up and start over. We get to say we’re sorry and start over.

That’s one of the best gifts I can give my kids and my family, both at home and in my church—to say I screwed up, I was wrong, I handled that badly. And on my good days I even get to acknowledge that it might take them a while to forgive.

How we define failure and who we’ve allowed to define failure for us determines how we view failing. We allow other people to define failure for us—most often our parents. Or it’s the invisible “they.” If “they” define failure for us, then we can blame them and not take responsibility.

We tend to run from failure because we equate failure with pain. And we define pain as bad, instead of as a gift. We believe failure is bad, not good. If we believe that failure equals pain, then we will do whatever it takes to avoid failing because we don’t want to hurt. But what if pain is not my enemy? Pain can be my friend. Wouldn’t this change a lot in how and why we do things?

What definitions are we passing along to our kids and students? What are our everyday definitions of failure, and how are these affecting how we live our lives?

• We need to redefine failure so we don’t see it as only painful.
• If we are free to fail and free of the pain we feel when we fail, then all bets are off. What if we engage our common humanity, accept failure as just human, normal?
• We—you and I—get to choose how a mess-up affects us.

Is failure is an opportunity? Can we see failure as a gift, not a curse?

In the movie A Good Year, Uncle Henry Skinner says to young Max, “You’ll come to see that a man learns nothing from winning. The act of losing, however, can elicit great wisdom. Not least of which is, how much more enjoyable it is to win. It’s inevitable to lose now and again. The trick is not to make a habit of it.”

Andy Root


Failure really is no fun, but it is entertaining. I bet we could create quite a list of failures in ministry—failed games, failed events, etc. Some of my favorite youth ministry stories are stories of failure.

Like the story of my student Derek, who decided one night at a lock-in to play the game “break-in.” The idea was simple: young people divided into teams with the first team to break into the church winning. The kids loved it, but after a neighbor saw some kids trying to pull open a window, she called the police. My student, the intern youth pastor, next saw his student in the back of a squad car. That’s a failure, and a funny one.

Such failures are embarrassing and difficult in the moment but are great fodder for entertaining stories because they reveal that we’re human and that we’re not perfect. Embarrassment has an uncomfortable way of reminding us that we’re fallible. We love to hear of others’ embarrassment because it assures us we’re not alone with our failures and finitude—and maybe it’s just plain funny.

Now, of course, failure can be amusingly funny, but it also can be no joking matter. Leaving a group of young people because of a failure of discretion, or realizing that you failed to properly interpret your fit can be very, very painful. There are so many people who have hard feelings toward the church after working in it. And it is so painful because these failures forcefully remind us that we’re human—in fact, that we’ll die.

Failure feels like death; it can communicate that we’re not worth much; we might as well be dead because we’re worthless—at least at this task. And this often cuts even deeper because we’d felt like we were called to this task, like God had assigned it to us, and we either failed God or God failed us—either one is deeply painful.

So how do we deal with failure? I hesitate to answer this, for fear that I’ll start sounding like some self-help loser, trying to convince people that “failure is just the first opportunity for a new success” or something lame like that. Because anyone who has experienced real failure knows it is only the dark pit of hell. Plus, that sentimental crap is almost always the speech of winners; only the person who has mastered success can look back nostalgically at her failures. For those in failure, it’s just a heavy burden.

And what’s interesting is that the biblical narrative is filled with losers and failures. And not as counter examples, not as signs for why you should follow Yahweh so you can avoid failure. Rather, the crazy thing about the biblical text is that its central figures—its heroes, if you will—are failures. From infertile Sarah and Abraham to stuttering Moses to little David to the peasant Jesus from Godforsaken Galilee. It seems that the God of Israel likes losers; after all, Israel itself is qualified to be God’s people because they are small and insignificant. They are failures.

So I want to make an argument that I hope won’t be misconstrued or confusing—but I think the God of Israel is a God who embraces failure, who actually uses failure as the fuel for God’s own action in the world. I know, I know that this could be misused or misunderstood, opening up to some pretty crappy abusive practices—but honestly, so can making success the measure of God’s activity. So let me explain.

Throughout the biblical story, you have a God who acts from what theologians call ex nihilo, out of nothing. What this means is that God is not dependent on anything in creation or humanity to act, that God creates life out of nothing. Not only is creation ex nihilo, but from the ex nihilo of Sarah’s womb comes Isaac; from the ex nihilo of the virgin womb comes Jesus. God takes what is nothing, what is dead, and brings forth life.

I’m actually quite convinced that the Christian story is the story of a God who takes all that is dead, placing Godself in death, so that life might spring ex nihilo, out of death. God, throughout the biblical story, moves from death to life. If that is so, it is no wonder that this God, who places Godself in death, uses failures and losers—those with nothing, those knowing nothingness—to be God’s instruments and vehicles in the world.

So how do you deal with failure? Not by looking on the bright side; that’s just an optimistic candy coating that makes the failure go down easier. No, the way to deal with failure is grieve the hell out of it; to feel it; to be angry about it; to cry and cry; to be brave enough to get inside it and know it; and then, to take it and seek God in it because this God takes what is dead and brings forth life. The way to deal with failure is to trust in prayer, anger, hope, and fear that the God of failure will move out of our failure. Don’t make failure good; it isn’t (even the funny stuff). But in its horror, in its pain, seek God, knowing that this God promises to be present where there is failure, suffering, and death. This God takes failure into Godself so that from the darkness of reality, a light of life might break in.


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Theology.God Environments

What are the necessary aspects of creating environments where God can be experienced?

Sarah Arthur


I find this to be an intriguing question. It’s rather like asking, “What are the necessary aspects of creating environments where wind can be experienced?”

On the one hand, we can’t force the wind to show up. Growing up sailing on the Great Lakes, I learned the truth of Jesus’ statement, “The wind blows wherever it pleases” (John 3:8). Our boat could be cruising along for hours at six knots in a steady breeze, and then suddenly the wind would die—bam. And we’d be stuck out there, bobbing around, trying to start the motor.

On the other hand, there are certain places and times when the wind has been known to show up. On the Little Traverse Bay in Lake Michigan, for instance, sailors on a sunny summer day usually can count on a phenomenon known as the afternoon thermal. As the sun climbs higher in the sky, it warms up the air over the coastland. But the air over Lake Michigan stays cool because of the chilly waters. So as the warm overland air begins to expand and rise, it creates a draft that pulls the cooler air inland, generating a steady breeze all afternoon. Then as the sun begins to set, the overland air cools off again and stops rising, which no longer creates a draft—and experienced sailors know to make their way home because the wind will die [1].

Now, obviously, this isn’t always the case. Some afternoons all you get is a flat calm. A sailor could stand on the dock for hours hollering, “Blow, wind! Blow!” and nothing would happen. Or he could hook up an industrial fan, point it at the mainsail, and still not get very far. Other days he might watch the barometer fall and know that a dangerous storm is on its way. Too much wind from the east, and he could end up in Wisconsin. But while he can’t manufacture or create the right environment for the right amount of wind coming from the right direction at the right time, he himself can be present and ready to sail at the times and places such a wind has been known to show up.

Which brings me back to the original question: What are the necessary aspects of creating environments where God can be experienced? Well, like the wind, the Holy Spirit is going to do whatever the Holy Spirit pleases. I can create the most amazing mission trip, complete with powerful devotions, mind-blowing intercultural encounters, and profound group bonding, but unless the Holy Spirit is moving in our midst, not much lasting formation will happen. Or I could fail to plan adequately for the youth retreat at my house next weekend, and the Holy Spirit might move in mighty ways in spite of me.

Even so, over the centuries Christians have identified certain circumstances, events, and experiences in which God has been known to show up. Worship, for instance. The sacraments, in particular. Prayer, serving the poor, Bible study. And many other spiritual practices, such as confession, simplicity, tithing, Sabbath-keeping, and fasting. (Notice how sub-woofers are not on the list.) Does God show up every time? Perhaps not in ways we can grasp. Perhaps we feel like we’re left standing on the dock, staring at calm waters, wondering if we somehow misunderstood the forecast.

Or maybe, like Elijah on the mountaintop, we find the flat calm to be just where God meets us.


[1] For visual learners: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/hnl/kids/seabreeze.gif

Chris Folmsbee


The environment is where students engage the narrative and mission of God at deeper levels. Healthy and effective environments that develop story-formed students are keenly aware of three transformative elements: time, space, and matter.

When I talk about time, I’m not referring to the starting and ending times of your program. It isn’t just about minutes and hours but a pacing that cultivates a peace-filled, calm, and reflective atmosphere. What I mean is that whatever your program (environment) is, it should have a tempo that doesn’t work to impose learning but instead invites learning.

An environment that’s aware of time composes a sense of calm, stillness, and harmony that infuses all that it does. The environment isn’t in a hurry to make story-formed students. Rather, it remembers that transformational youth ministry is about a process, not a product. An environment that is aware of time also leaves room for students to observe and reflect on what’s happening, what they’re learning, and how they may practice it.

Space isn’t a buffer zone but a sacred, aesthetically intriguing, and astonishing physical or mental “room” in which to contemplate and consider the wonder, beauty, and creativity of God’s narrative and mission. Environments of space cultivate the opportunity for students to encounter God in meaningful ways. These spaces are sacred.

The space you cultivate doesn’t have to be about method as much as it is about mission. Maybe this involves a dimly lit room with a wonderful ambiance, lighted candles, and beautiful art and icons. Or maybe space involves freedom from those things that distract our minds and hold us captive. At times I’ve felt free in the strangest places: my car, my office, my living room, a movie theater, a coffee house, etc.

Matter isn’t the theme but the cooperating substance of an environment. Matter is the content that evokes the imagination, imparts for a recreated life, and inspires toward transformation. Matter is critical. There must be some material that transforms the lives of our students. There must be a basis for the program. It might be purely relational; it might be about leadership development; it might be about formation or any combination of the many issues we deal with in youth ministry. Whatever the reason for gathering, there must be content that helps our students imagine what a life with God could look like.

The matter involved in our environments must be matter that motivates and stirs within our students a passion for the narrative and mission of God. Typically, matter that accomplishes these purposes is experiential in nature and seeks to help students learn, not help teachers look or feel good. It is comprised of times of reflection, permission to ask questions, continuous dialogue, and situations in which to attempt to practice what’s being learned.

Creating healthy and imaginative environments of time, space, and matter is vital to your youth ministry. Without these, programming will be insufficient and will quickly become obsolete.

This idea of creating environments where God can be experienced and these elements of time, space, and matter are fleshed out in more detail in my book Story, Signs, and Sacred Rhythms (Zondervan, 2010).

Andy Root


This is a really interesting question. I want to start by answering in a controversial way. So here we go. Ready? We can’t. We can’t create such environments. God can’t be found by the effort of human beings; God can only be experienced through God’s own action, through God’s own choice to make Godself known.

To think that we can create or build some landing pads that will guarantee God’s arrival is idolatry; it’s to cage the freedom and otherness of God. To say it crassly, too often it feels like we use our programs as treats to lead God (and young people) to the ministries we’ve built, like I lead my dogs to the basement.

God moves where and when God chooses to move. There is nothing we can do about this. God shows up when God shows up. And sometimes, maybe often, God shows up in places we wouldn’t have expected (“The Lord is in this place, and I did not know it”). How often in our ministries has God arrived in times and places that you never could have planned? God is not dependent on us to act—sure, we’re invited into God’s action, asked to be faithful to God’s people as we yearn for God to move, but no silver bullet in ministry can guarantee it. There is no money-back guarantee that any environment we construct will bring the presence of God.

When we ignore this reality, we can easily fall into assuming that it’s our efforts or talents that bring God’s presence. Then we assume that we can concoct a youth group recipe that will promise the arrival of God. But so often this makes God not an agent who acts and moves in and through our ministries but an object we can’t quite control but can—with the right actions on our part—predict like the weather.

This position, that somehow we can create such environments, makes us quick-fix, new, catchy-idea addicts. We can be fooled into thinking it’s our job to bring God’s presence, and therefore, we have the great burden of always looking for the next big thing, next catchy idea that can do this for us. We want a kit that comes with directions for creating environments where God is experienced. This shifts all the focus onto our actions instead of God’s. But the God of Israel is a God who moves, who chooses to act in a personal way, to be called Father, to address and be addressed by God’s people. We can trust that God will act with and for us, but we can’t force this encounter; we can’t create artificial environments where this can happen.

And I think that’s much of our problem in youth ministry. When we get so caught up in creating this environment, when we work so hard at it through our own effort, it becomes clear to young people that it is artificial. So they either come to youth group and experience an artificial God in our artificial environment and then leave it behind to reenter their lives; or they simply avoid us, aware that our youth group environment is a fake soundstage pretending to be a place to experience God.

And so we fall into the trap of giving our attention (and money) over to those who think they have some secret recipe, instead of seeking dialogue partners and ideas that will help us not bring God’s action but have the eyes to see it.

To me, this is why being able to think theologically in youth ministry is more important than being able to think programmatically. The programmatic element is important, don’t get me wrong, but just because you have great programs that create great environments doesn’t mean that God will “show up.”

A theologically minded youth worker seeks the activity of God, seeking to create programs where God is moving, not the other way around. The first step is not to create something but to see something, to see God moving and seek to participate. It is then that we build our environment or our programs. When we see that the Lord is in this place and we did not know it, we build our memorial, we build a structure, a program that witnesses to the action of God. So to create an environment of experiencing God is to continue to invite young people to look, to strain their eyes to see where and how God is moving not in youth group environment but in the world, in their world.

In the Old Testament, in places like Bethel, when God appears, it is a shock. Environments are created not to bring God but after God has shown up. After experiencing God, then we build our memorials.

So maybe the point isn’t to create such environments to experience God but to invite young people to be interpreters, making the youth group the place of shared interpretation, the place where we articulate where and how we have experienced the action of God in our lives. When we create the environment, we ask young people to be passive consumers of what we’ve created. But when we invite them to be interpreters, to go into the world and seek God, then both God and young people are the active agents.

So to answer the question directly: How do we create environment where God can be experienced? By inviting young people to interpret where God is moving in the world, in the church, and in their lives, we experience God by together seeking for God. We the youth workers create this environment by not making the environment our sole concern but by making God’s action our focus.


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Leadership.Empowerment vs. Encouragement

What is the difference between empowering people and encouraging people?

Danny Kwon


The question of empowering people versus encouraging people cuts to the heart of my ministry philosophy and how I wish our ministry would function as far as it concerns our leaders, volunteers, and student leaders. People always say I am a great encourager. However, I have found that true encouragement can be found in empowering others. My studies in organizational leadership from the corporate world have helped me refine how I practice empowerment in the church.

In quoting W.A. Randolph, Fred Luthans, a scholar in organizational behavior, states the definition of empowerment as “recognizing and releasing into the organization the power that people have in their wealth of useful knowledge and internal motivation.” Another scholar defined it as “releasing the knowledge, experience, and motivational power that is already in people but is being severely underutilized.” These definitions of empowerment from the corporate world help one begin to understand what empowerment is all about and why and how we need to empower people in the church. For me, this ultimately means that I am nurturing ways in which others can lead within our ministry and use their God-given gifts for the church.

There are other vital elements of empowerment from the corporate world that can be applied to the church and relate to nurturing others to lead. For example, trust is a key issue in relation to empowerment. Those who write about empowerment in the corporate world note that trust is a two-way street where managers and employees have to believe in each other. They also discuss trust in reference to releasing the power within an individual. In doing so, they state how management must ensure individuals that they will be trusted within the empowerment process.

Finally, trust also comes from the sharing of vital information that equips employees to be informed to make important organizational decisions and lead themselves. Within a youth or any ministry setting, it is the difference between a ministry being just (youth) pastor centered and having other leaders, such as volunteers, lay leaders, and student leaders who are empowered in trust to lead and execute the ministry as shepherds also, rather than being spectators.

When trust is practiced with those we empower, we are also breeding loyalty to organization. As one business executive put it, empowerment is an act of trust that functions positively to breed loyalty in an organization. Perhaps then, engagement is a more precise definition of the loyalty that results from empowerment. Nancy Lockwood, another scholar, notes in relation to this that “employees who are highly involved in their work processes, such as conceiving, designing, and implementing workplace and process changes, are more engaged.”

Many ministries have issues with retaining effective volunteers. Perhaps empowerment can be one way to breed a loyalty of effective volunteers. It has surely helped in our ministry. We have volunteers who serve over the long haul because they feel a real sense of loyalty because they are empowered leaders.

Finally, organizational design is also a key element of empowerment. If an organization is to nurture empowerment, then it must provide the framework for it to flourish. Ministries that are more vertical or top-down in nature do not promote empowerment. However, horizontal organizations and leadership structures speak to ways that an organization can promote empowerment. Hence, as far as ministry in a local church, this means that ministries must be led by more than just the head youth pastor or lead pastor. Rather, leadership must be spread among different avenues and people.

Similarly, ministries can be designed to foster empowerment in their organizational design so that volunteers, lay leaders, and student leaders will be vital parts of the leadership of the ministries. Ultimately, this may be challenging to some leaders who have been engrained in a top-down leadership structure. However, if this is not done, the empowerment of others will never be nurtured, and the gifts and talents of many will not be utilized.






Helpful Resources:
Immerse: A Journal of Faith, Life and Youth Ministry

Lilly Lewin


I had coffee with a good friend this week who is an assistant pastor at a church. Recently their staff team went on a “retreat” together. As soon as they got in the van, the senior pastor began to cast the vision for the fall and upcoming year. Sadly, the tasks and goals lists just kept coming. There was little praise or encouragement for the year just finished, and there was no dialogue about problems and hurdles for the upcoming year.

My friend thought they’d get a chance to reconnect personally, get encouraged, and have some fun. He was expecting a year-in-review, some honest dialogue about what they’d been doing, and perhaps a little empowerment to get them going on the next things. But the entire weekend was task oriented, not relationship based.

The sad thing about most ministries is that we are too often asked to do our jobs and just “git ’er done”…with very little encouragement, much less the money or people power to do it well. What we really could use is a large glass of encouragement and gallon of empowerment; the freedom to do our jobs and do them well without being micromanaged. (And it would also be nice to have some time to recover in order to keep going!)

How does one empower someone else? Easy, really—help her see that she has power to begin with or give him true power without using it to control him. Know the gifts people have and allow them to use those gifts in ways that they will succeed.

Too often we encourage people—students, friends, our own kids—but we don’t help them attain what we’ve encouraged them to do or be. We don’t help them get the tools they need to do the tasks at hand. We cheerlead, but we don’t set them free to engage on their own terms. We encourage without empowering.

So, what does it mean to empower? Giving power and authority, enabling someone to do something in a positive way.

In order to empower someone, we often have to give up or give away our own power or status. We have to decrease so others can increase. It means letting someone else lead, teach, create.

And to encourage? Giving someone the courage and confidence, the hope to go forward. Sometimes it’s a real pat on the back; sometimes it’s a verbal blessing; sometimes it’s listening and actually hearing someone’s story.

What do I really want? Both! Don’t you? Please encourage me, and then empower me to do it well! Give me the tools I need to get the job done. Enable me to have the time, space, and tools to succeed. Give me honest feedback. And provide me with the resources I need to do well. Set me free to try and fail. And then encourage me to get up and try again.

Why doesn’t this happen more often on church staff? The reasons are simple and sad.

• When we get power, we never want to give it away.
• Others are a threat to our power and want to take it for themselves.
• The design of most churches is to be an expression of one person’s vision, held accountable by a group that doesn’t understand the real inner workings and problems of a church staff.
• What we really want is to have enough people and therefore enough money. If what I do doesn’t obviously lead to more dollars, what I do doesn’t matter.

While this is reality in many places, we all know it’s not kingdom living. Maybe you and I can’t change the system overnight, but this can and must change. What can we do?

• Change the definitions and lose the fear of power and giving it away. • Learn and practice taking the time to listen to each other and give good feedback to those we work with.
• Model the behavior we seek. Encourage others and give away power.
• Help others to see their gifts and allow them to use them!
• Help our students, our communities, and ourselves see our mission and use our gifts outside the church building—being the church in the real world.
• Build a real support system outside the church staff where we can get authentic feedback, courage, and hope.

Let’s choose to encourage and empower others as we long to be encouraged and empowered ourselves.

Andy Root


Empowering and encouraging seem indelibly connected to me. I think the core to encouragement is really seeing another, hearing another, and acting with and for another. I think we all feel encouraged when this happens.

And I think this kind of encouragement has rich theological significance. Being seen, heard, and acted with is what makes us human because we confess that God sees us, hears us, and acts with and for us. God does this within Godself first. As Trinity, God sees self, hears self, and acts with and for self as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Encouragement is central to love; and at the core of Godself is the love between Father, Son, and Spirit. But the love of encouragement always sends, and sending is empowering.

You’re a bad parent, even if you love your kids, if you don’t send them out into the world. We prosecute people who say they love their kids so much they locked them in the basement and never let them out into the world, never empowered them to be selves. Love always empowers to be sent into the world.

But this sending (to give it circular flavor) has to be connected to encouragement. You’re also a bad parent if you say, “I don’t give a darn what you do, just go out and have fun,” giving no support or encouragement in being sent.

So God’s love, as Trinity, sees, hears, and acts then sends. When God sees, hears, and acts God sends—first Godself and then, through Godself, us. Swept up into the love of God, encouraged, we are empowered to participate in God’s movement in the world.

And we see this most clearly in the second person of the Trinity being sent into the world as fully divine and fully human. Jesus is empowered by the loving encouragement of the Father to go into the world. He is sent to be human so humanity might know that God always see, hears, and acts and, in knowing, might participate in God’s own love, also being sent (empowered) to love and encourage those in the world, to witness to God’s action.

This means that God, through and in Jesus, encourages us to be human. God encourages us to face our questions, to be honest about our limits, to seek God within our human journey as we are sent and empowered by the Spirit to encourage others. So then in ministry, we empower people by encouraging them to be human, to live honesty in search of God—not in perfection but in their questions and doubts. The God of the cross empowers us by comforting and encouraging us that God is with and for us in our deepest sufferings and longings. We encourage and empower people in our ministry when we invite them to be human and, in their humanity, to search for a God who will send them into the world to love it, through the empowerment of the Spirit.

This is the problem with disconnecting encouragement and empowerment. To tease them apart can lead to spiritual abuse. Without encouragement, you don’t really care about the humanity of your adult leader, just that he or she is empowered to do the tasks you have for them—if you’re honest, to make you look more successful. So you can try and try to empower them, but if they never feel encouraged, never feel seen, heard, and acted with, then they can never really do ministry. Because, in the end, you’re inviting leaders to be sent into the lives of young people, to empower young people by encouraging them, by being with and for them as God—as Trinity—is with and for us.

But you also can’t encourage adult leaders without sending them, without empowering them. How often do we tell adult leaders that they’re super important to what we do and then never give them any leadership, never allow them to take ownership? To have really encouraged them is to give them the ministry, to trust that their empowerment to be human with and for young people, to go and encourage young people, will be the fullness of the ministry of the Trinity.


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Culture.Church Response

What are healthy and unhealthy ways the church is responding to culture?

Danny Kwon


In considering the church’s response to culture, I am reminded about how those not directly related to our youth ministry at our particular church respond to our students and our youth ministry. Since our particular church is relatively conservative in its theology and ecclesiology, there are those who find the way the students dress, talk, and even worship as strange, disrespectful, and even downright wrong in comparison to their views of what church should be. At the same time, there are those who try to understand the way the students dress, talk, and worship. Moreover, in trying to understand them, they are building a bridge for greater relationships and mutual respect and learning.

Considering this latter group of people in our church makes me wonder why they are trying to understand and dialogue with the students in our church. Similarly, it somehow reminds me that contextualization is one key and vital element to how the church can respond either in a healthy or unhealthy way to culture. One well-known pastor put it this way: “To over-contextualize to a new generation means you can make an idol out of their culture, but to under-contextualize to a new generation means you can make an idol out of the culture you come from.” Let’s unpack this a bit.

If we under-contextualize culture and don’t begin to make the church’s message relevant, then the church’s message will become just that…irrelevant. This is something youth ministry does well, and I am still a proponent of the foundations of relational ministry because relational ministry seeks to understand the context of our students, have empathy for them, and build relationships so that in God’s time, the gospel would impact their hearts.

Similarly, as I recently returned from a mission trip to Haiti last week, I realized another way that the message of the church can contextualize with a new culture of believers. In serving with young adults and students, we considered the idea of tithing, and while I still hold to this biblical teaching, I felt it was worth considering their questions of what place the tithing of time and talents has within this teaching. Similarly, this younger generation of believers asked whether spending a week in Haiti serving the Lord while sacrificing vacation time and a week’s salary is not a form of tithing. New generations of believers are going to ask and seek biblically centered questions and answers, and the church needs to consider and be able to contextualize them.

On the other hand, if the church contextualizes too much, the ministry and message of the church can get lost in that, and subsequently, we will not be confronting or calling people to the message of the church. And most importantly, that will make the church’s message irrelevant also.

I have certainly seen a shift in how youth ministries are functioning. The days of games, fun, and even just hanging out with students are now intentionally focused to be more than just a way to contextualize the students’ lives. Rather, youth ministries complement these activities with a more intentional focus that is ultimately headed toward a deeper spiritual and biblical center.

Hence, not lost upon us is that the church is ultimately the gathering of Christ’s people and not just a gathering. Moreover, if the church is not in the service and love of others to eventually call people into a loving relationship with our Christ, then exactly what is the function of the church? The church, in its attempts to contextualize, must never lose the core of its message.

Ultimately then, I am reminded of another quote from the pastor I quoted above. He notes that “the gospel makes you humble enough to listen and adapt to non-believers but confident and happy enough that you don’t need their approval.” Hence, if the church is to be healthy in responding to culture, we must contextualize but not lose the message of the church.

Mike King


This is a critical question. I could easily use all my words just to scratch the surface of the complexity involved with trying to define the meaning of culture. For example, in the book Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, by Kroeber and Kluckhohn, the authors flesh out more than 150 definitions of culture. On the other hand, poet T.S. Eliot, who wrote a book entitled Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, stated that culture could be described simply as “that which makes life worth living.”

The issue of what posture to take toward culture (even the posture toward defining culture) has been one of the most dominant and important conversations of the church for 2,000 years and will be for the next 2,000 years. How the church throughout history has defined and reacted to culture (in whatever particular context it finds herself in) has significantly determined the course of history in both healthy and unhealthy ways. Tragic periods of church history involving inquisitions, pogroms, and political abuse were linked to cultural ideals. Beautiful periods of church history involving the creation of art, architectural advancement, and care for the sick, poor, and marginalized were fueled by the church’s posture toward cultural engagement.

Often, the desire to “change the world” has fueled unhealthy behavior from Christians through attempts to gain political influence and efforts to “redeem” the culture. James Hunter, the Labrosse-Levinson distinguished professor of religion, culture, and social theory at the University of Virginia and executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, has a new book called To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. In the book, Hunter critiques all the misguided attempts that Christians and churches engage in to change the world. According to Hunter, the various strategies to impact culture and ultimately change the world are driven by tragically ill-conceived concepts of culture and cultural influence. Hunter examines the political, sociological, and theological paradigms of the Christian right and left, along with the Anabaptist approach of Hauerwas and Yoder, showing them all to fall far short of anything resembling broad culture-changing realities.

Andy Crouch, senior editor of Christianity Today and author of the book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, recently reviewed Hunter’s book. Crouch writes, “Christianity in America, as Hunter sees it, is very much on the periphery, for all its numerical strength. Its institutions, such as they are, tend to be weak, they tend not to be in culturally central locations, and they tend to address the "lower and peripheral areas" of culture—secondary education rather than university research, popular culture rather than high art, ministries of mercy rather than public policy. At their worst they glory in their marginal status, feeding a subculture that churns out substandard cultural products for consumption by other Christians, simultaneously the most energetic and the least effective culture-makers you could imagine.”

I have spent years (literally—years), I mean in real time—years, talking about church and culture and gospel, and yet I still find the question this week perplexing and challenging. Even though some declare that I have a good intuitive understanding of how to engage culture, I will acknowledge that this question is so important that I must adamantly admit that I don’t have an answer. But I’m committed, as all youth workers should be, to immersing myself in deep theological, sociological, economic, and political reflection and dialogue about what it means to engage meaningfully with and in culture. This conversation is so important for discovering what T.S. Eliot describes as “that which makes life worth living.”

Promoting To Change the World on James Hunter’s website is this paragraph: “What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls ‘faithful presence’—an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life. He offers real-life examples, large and small, of what can be accomplished through the practice of ‘faithful presence.’”

Crouch declares that this important work by James Hunter will “be provoking better Christian conversations about culture for years to come.” I hope this is true because—God help us—we need more healthy conversations and behavior vis-à-vis the relationship between church and culture.

Andy Root


This has dogged youth ministry and youth-ministry-type people for a while. Those of us who work with people who seem obsessed with their own and/or popular cultures (if there is a difference) have often struggled to figure out how we should engage culture. After all, it seems that young people and culture are inseparable. And I think in many ways this is true. I think young people are obsessively bound in culture—but no more than their parents; no more than anyone.

To be human is to be a cultural animal. There is little to no escaping it. Of course, this anthropological reality heightens the stakes when it comes to ministry because, though we can’t escape some kind of culture, we do possess (as human beings) the ability, while stuck in culture, to reflect on it. Therefore, we can aesthetically and morally judge it. We are bound to culture, but even in our boundness, we can resist and disdain much of it.

So as Americans, we are stuck in a culture of reality TV, low-cut jeans, a fetish for youthfulness, and a dogmatic passion that anyone can make anything of himself. You may not understand much of this, or you may find it banal or evil, but those are the cultural waters in which we all swim, even in resistance. Even in resisting consumption culture, we have to buy a whole lot of crap to get off the grid and live green.

So how should we respond to culture? We can begin by recognizing that we can never escape it! Many young and hip evangelical Christians have helpfully realized this, stopping the conservative Protestant game of beating culture like a piñata, only to realize that it’s made of steel. So instead, these young and hip evangelicals have turned from culture bashing to culture constructing. I guess this is a good move…I’m just not sure how it happens and how it escapes just Veggie-Taling everything, giving popular culture some kind of Christian morality or aesthetic. I know, I know, that’s not the cultural construction they’re pushing for, and I know that Christianity has been a force for culture creation. Believe me, I’ve heard of Abraham Kuyper and how this theologian changed culture by engaging it theologically.

But I guess this is the problem. Such a perspective of culture building often has an innate theology that contends that God’s action in the world happens through the unfolding of cultural realities; that the will of God is found in culture. So now you have these young thinkers looking for all sorts of Christian themes in movies, video games, and music. So because God acts through the unfolding of culture, we are stuck trying to find God’s action in episodes of The Hills or Coen brother movies. It starts to feel weird to me.

But more than weird, it has a theological problem. I, in contrast, to Kuyper (and the neo-unaware-Kuyperians), don’t think that revelation happens as a cultural construction. I don’t think God is somehow inertly pushed into our context through the waves of culture or societal structure. I think the God of Israel breaks into our world, thrusting our cultural conceptions of God into question, showing us how culture always makes idols. I, in a more Barthian flavor, don’t think culture can ever hold the act of God; I don’t think we can look at cultural creations to reveal the otherness of the action of God.

Okay, but I guess then, game over, no reason to care about culture (this perception is often people’s disdain for Barth), and if that’s true, doesn’t it make all the crap I just said about the anthropological necessity of culture inconsistent? I don’t think so. We are cultural beings, no escaping it, and we use culture to make meaning and form identity, but simply Christianizing it isn’t going to do any good. A Christian culture (like those pre-WWI and WWII in Europe) doesn’t guarantee that we will participate in the action of God, just that we’ll make God into an idol to justify our culture (hence, the whole problem with Christendom).

So maybe the way we engage culture is not to try necessarily to create it or enfold within it a Christian story/message but to listen deeply to it, to crawl next to it so fully that we can hear its deep cries for meaning, its deep longings and despairing questions. I actually think we should engage culture—not necessarily to find God but to find our neighbor—to see, hear, and act for her (and yes, there is a little Tillichian flavor to my Barthian read). In doing this we close the circle. When we engage culture to encounter the humanity of our neighbors, we are drawn into places where God’s revelation does meet us—in encounters with humanity of the other.

So this gives us both a constructive and critical way to engage culture. Where cultural constructions open us up to otherness, we shouldn’t label these as revelations but as helpful ways of seeking God by seeing the humanity of our neighbors (where the revelation of God is found). But where cultural constructions stereotype, abuse, and objectify (like the way porn is becoming pop culture), we should resist it. This takes deep cultural engagement that respects the creator of the cultural text—it forces us to try to understand what the songwriter, director, etc., is trying to communicate, not just baptize it with some trite Christian meaning.

So the revelation of God is not bound in culture but next to my neighbor, and at times the cultural construction or text (songs, movies, video games) can help me see my neighbor. When it does, it has become a gift.


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