Can the beauty of God speak for itself?

Archie Honrado


To contemplate God is to see beauty.

What a pleasure to see a piece of installation art speak for itself. In one of my pieces entitled “Wastebasket,” several crumpled pieces of paper are scattered around a wastebasket. To make it beautiful and simple installation art, I put a soft, aqua-blue spotlight on it. In this prayer station, I proposed two questions: How should you be looking at this art? and What do you want to do here? I witnessed two different reactions. A boy and his mom emptied the wastebasket on the floor, and the boy declared, “Just like God, dumping my waste.” A different family put all the crumpled papers in the basket without any comment.

I lived in Western Europe and was immersed in the architectural beauty of their sacred spaces, and I couldn’t agree more with Thomas Merton when he felt the presence of Jesus through the architecture of their cathedrals. But sadly, most of the cathedrals have become more like museums. After my time in Europe, I moved to Los Angeles—a land where I was concerned that my need to experience religion through sacred art could become malnourished. I know, I was a bit of a snub. I realized art’s limitation when I went to places like the Getty Museum. Museums and galleries put art on pedestals—not just literally—and unnecessarily venerate the creators.

I am most intrigued and mystified when artists allow their art to speak for itself. The less they say about their art, the more it speaks to me. I am drawn to it because of the lack of noise it makes. No wonder there’s an aspect of God’s beauty, character, and nature that speaks for itself. This reminds me of Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the works of his hand.”

Have you ever been to a mediocre art show, music concert, movie, or even worship service and walked away half satisfied? We long and yearn for beauty; nature is good at satisfying this need. We get disappointed at a mediocre artistic expression or show. We subconsciously want to symbolize the beauty of God in us because we demand God-like performance from imperfect creators imitating the beauty of God, don’t we?

Have you noticed how the experiential worship style continues to grow in popularity? There is a cautionary tale about experiential worship spaces that unknowingly mimics what artists and curators in museums try to achieve—a pure art-imitating life, or an educational experience—but often, they push their boundaries and flirt with providing patrons with a religious experience or otherworldly transcendence. That is why I copy them sometimes or get inspired by them. These avant-garde artists and museum curators are no doubt brilliant at transporting us to a world of beauty. It is a beauty, however, that in some ways only counterfeits God’s invitations to God’s beauty.

Creating sacred space can be limiting and limited to a museum type of experience only. Let us not create artsy, sacred space that venerate art and relegate the art of daily living out of God’s dwelling beauty in us. We can only try to create something powerful that will open us up into the awareness of God’s presence in our lives and not just an ornamental space like the post-modernists dictate. Imagine the psalm I have seen your sanctuary and behold your beauty and strength being reflected inside a staid, nineteenth-century, industrial-era building design. Can the beauty of God be seen in such a space?

God’s beauty can only be gauged by us. We’ve all been awed by nature and have thanked God for the beauty, right? What about the beauty found in the art of doing the dishes and the laundry? Do you revel in God’s beauty that is present in your quotidian living, and not only in spaces venerated or consecrated? When we do mundane stuff soulfully, the beauty of God will speak.

When we live our lives before the face of God daily, whether in the mundane, in the sensational, in affliction, or even in the virtuality of our realities, the beauty of God will speak for itself.

“Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” –David Hume, Essays, Moral and Political, 1742.

To contemplate God is to see beauty and be invited to live in it.


Archie Honrado is a passionate worshiper of God and a 25-year veteran of children, youth, and family ministry through Youth With a Mission(www.ywam.org) in Los Angeles.  He is also the Los Angeles city coordinator for the DeVos Urban Youth Leadership Initiative.  He creates and guides prayer walks and curates prayer space for Youth Specialties and is a speaker with the Urban Youth Workers Institute (www.uywi.org). 


 





Lilly Lewin


I would say yes, the beauty of God can speak for itself, if we understand it; if we have access to it; and if we are encouraged to look for it.

When I think of the beauty of God, I think of a sunset over Lake Michigan, or the silhouette of the Olympic Mountains on the horizon with their snow-covered peaks against the crystal-blue sky of Washington State. I also think of my kids, especially when they were born; the beauty of those small faces, hands, and those amazing little toes.

For me, the beauty of God is about experience. I’ve experienced the beauty of God listening to music—like Handel’s Messiah. Or I’ve seen God’s beauty through others’ creativity in great works of art at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the National Gallery in London. As a visual person and an artist, I hunger for beauty, especially in vistas. God’s beauty found in nature always inspires me.

We all need help seeing the beauty of God—both the tangible beauty in creation and the beauty of God as our Father and Creator. Too often, we have placed ourselves in boxes—in cubicles in office buildings and in boxes made of brick, wood, or stone that we’ve designated for worship. For me, I’d rather be at the lake, on the beach, by a campfire in the woods, or even in my backyard. I’ve always experienced more of God’s presence and his beauty just from being outside, rather than in the building designated for the job.

In high school I sat in the balcony of our church and gazed out the window at the trees, wondering what God was talking about and doing out there. I met Jesus at camp in the mountains of North Carolina, and it’s still much easier for me to connect with God by taking a walk and watching the sunset. Thankfully I’ve had access to the beauty of God and have chosen to go after it.

Sadly, people often have limited access to the beauty of God. Or, we have access, but we don’t really live like we do. When we engage God on Sunday, it’s a routine and just the same as last week.

Living urban without resources; it’s a thing that closes us from the beauty of God. The authors of the Bible certainly never saw the dreary inner cities of major American metropolitan areas in the middle of winter. Yet tons of people in inner-city ugliness worship Jesus better than any suburban or rural people. Does poverty really prevent someone from seeing the beauty of God? I do think it makes it harder. In fact, George Hunter, in The Celtic way of Evangelism, says that we live in a pagan society today because so many of us live in the land of concrete jungles—places where trees and mountains and rolling hills and rivers are nowhere to be found. How do we help change this and help people engage in the beauty of God, even in a city?

We need to reacquaint our communities with the beauty and mystery of God. We need to provide ways for them to experience nature, like retreats and parable walks and times just to be outside in God’s beauty. Also, we need times to create. We need time for art, music, writing, poetry, etc. We need to help ourselves and others learn to practice silence and being still with God for longer than two minutes at a time.

We’ve either been trapped in our cars, driving on pavement from box store to box store, or we are in front of computer screens most of the day, so we are unable to see what beauty lies around us. We have lost beauty in busyness and in our need for organization and practicality. Thankfully, beauty for beauty’s sake can be rediscovered through art and exploration and pilgrimage to places of beauty and spiritual significance. It just takes time and practice and giving ourselves permission to try something new.

So I started taking students and our family on pilgrimages to experience places of beauty and spiritual significance. In the last few years, our church community had a bi-monthly practice of going to the Cincinnati Art Museum to listen to Scripture and see where God is and how God might speak to us through the various art pieces. Art Walk became a big part of my personal church experience, and I have spent the last decade designing spaces of beauty—sacred space—where people have time to experience God’s presence and engage his Word through all of their senses. And I have friends in Kiev doing medical missions because an entire church was founded there, thanks to a group of Ukrainian musicians who played and sang Handel’s Messiah for the first time and wanted to know the person they were singing about! The beauty of God in music and art is truly powerful!

Can you see the beauty of God if you want to? Can you choose to see it anywhere? According to the Bible, if we have seen the sun or the stars, we’re without excuse. So I’m toast. I’ve seen the beauty of God. I have to continually choose to see God’s beauty, and my desire is to help others learn how to engage God’s beauty for themselves. I’m choosing to make time to experience the beauty of God my Lenten practice this year. I’m looking forward to just being in his presence in the beauty of his world.




Steve Argue


Beautiful things are reflections of the creator. God speaks and creates (Genesis 1). Creation speaks in praise (Psalm 19; 150). Creation speaks to creation. Let’s not miss God’s beauty speaking within us and around us, that interprets and needs interpreting.

There is beauty within. Sadly, there are too many messages that tell us we’re not good enough, healthy enough, pretty enough, or productive enough. Being human is often described as a deficiency rather than an asset. I’m not calling for some sort of self-love that demands the entire world to worship me. Rather, I believe that God’s good news is our good news—that the best we can bring each day is our God-given, image-bearing selves. It’s when we resist this or try to bring someone else that we betray our beauty. Embrace the reality that God created you and calls you “very good.”

There is beauty around. It’s easy to believe this at a sunset, sitting on the beach, skiing down a mountain, or walking through the woods. It is much more difficult in traffic, in arguments, in tragedy, and in devastation. As a result, people can quickly fall into half-empty or half-full camps that either naively choose to see the world through the lens of Disney or who are unable to see beyond darkness and despair.

It seems to me that the hopeful message of Jesus is that we can find God’s beauty in everything. The obvious beauty (sunsets, laughter, happiness) doesn’t escape our attention, and we celebrate with it. Vigilant beauty-seeking rescues us from blinding routines that dull our senses to the miracles that are all around.

The less evident beauty is increasingly seen through a lens that is fueled by hope as we walk the crowded streets, seeing each person as made in the image of God; as we see the profound masterpiece of each awkward adolescent and as we discover that even our greatest enemies are more like us than different.

God’s beauty also moves us to weep over beauty’s absence. Those who seek beauty weep more over events of war, devastation, and oppression. They see systemic poverty as their own, own up to being part of the problem, and look to be part of the solution. They pray for all people, their own, for those in hellish situations, and for the people their country chooses go to war with.

They find that the beauty in our world is found in the blurred lines that resist being divided by conservative/liberal; modern/postmodern; male/female; Christian/Muslim; gay/straight. Beauty is found in third, creative ways that hope for all people everywhere. Thus, noticing beauty is more than an activity for the ignorant, young, hopeless artists, or the inefficient. It’s for all of us to notice, to name, to celebrate, to enter into.

Beauty interprets and needs interpreting. Does the beauty of God “speak for itself?” It certainly is speaking, and like any good message, it has layers of meaning. No one gets the message of love once. It takes on deeper and deeper meaning. No one values friendship because they acquired it once. It grows deeper, multifaceted qualities.

So it is with God’s beauty. As we understand (intellectually, experientially, developmentally) God’s story, it interprets what we see. And what we see interprets God’s story. Sometimes our experiences run ahead of our understanding, and we crave words/art/music to interpret what we’ve felt. Sometimes we know cognitively the concepts of love, grief, or faithfulness, but it bursts with color when we experience what we know.

Thus, I find I am drawn to the people who have thought and lived deeply. Beauty isn’t an experience or a concept but something that has been interwoven into the very person. There’s a quality in their words, a safety in their presence, a mystery I long to discover, a hope that runs deep. This is evidence of beauty discovered and beauty joined. Life lived here inspires everyone to join in, responding to God’s hopeful embrace that is speaking faithfully, perpetually, beautifully.


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

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.


Comments (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

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.


Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

Why is spiritual formation so often referred to as being on a path or journey?

Steve Argue


At a cursory level, I suppose it simply captures the reality in all of us that we are in process, in between, trying to find our way. Like many words (e.g., missional or authentic), this term risks becoming an ambiguous, hindering concept, co-opted into youth ministry subtexts. While youth workers use the word constantly in dialogue, teaching, and preaching, its meaning remains vague.

I do believe we’re called to a journey or pilgrimage, and I think each person must embrace its meaning before attempting to use it on others. What may be a hurdle for some is not the reality that spiritual formation is a journey but that journey (noun) calls them to journey (verb). Just because there is a journey doesn’t make someone a journeyer any more than acknowledging the existence of marathons make one a marathoner. Further, activity is not synonymous with journey any more than randomly surfing the web is research. Thus, I offer some signposts:

You know you’re on the journey when you’re moved by wonder. New territory heightens your senses as you experience something for the first time. Often the view is obstructed when one’s language, outlook, or assumptions blind one. Journeying people have the ability to see people and situations with continually first-time eyes. They believe that each situation, each person, every day is worth discovering more fully. Journeyers see. This is worship.

You know you’re on the journey when you embrace personal goals along the way. While journey is often referred to as the opposite of destination, this does not mean passive wandering in hope that the destination will appear. Do not hide behind the journey metaphor as an excuse for aimless wandering. Journeyers actively seek God, critically reflect on themselves, and discover that outcomes are likely not random events but fruit. Journeyers sweat. This is spiritual practice.

You know you’re on the journey when you’re laughing and crying. Journeyers get close enough to be moved by others’ journeys. Life is not lived at a safe distance, protected by power, theological dogma, or busyness. Journeyers find ways to come close enough to be moved to tears of joy and pain. They feel deeply, experiencing wonder and exhaustion. They recognize that there is nothing safe about their journey. Journeyers feel. This is solidarity.

You know you’re on the journey when you view the mundane as sacred. It’s the daily practices of love, charity, emails, conversations, spiritual practices, etc., that sustain the journey. These are the things that no one notices, yet this is the sacred stuff of journey. Leadership, vision, or events can blind journeyers from the smaller, more sacred, more essential things. Those who lose sight of this roll their eyes when receiving parents’ emails and get annoyed at “interrupting” phone calls. Journeyers live for the small, unnoticed acts. This is prayer.

You know you’re on the journey when you see yourself as the guest. Journeyers give up control. They come as visitors to every context, graciously learning, honestly seeking to understand, and resist forcing their agendas on others. Journeyers see every relationship as holy ground and every person as an image bearer. It’s been said that when one sees another as an opponent, the result is competition. But when one sees the other as a fellow journeyer, the result is partnership toward a shared goal where everyone risks change and transformation. Journeyers accommodate. This is self-giving love.

You know you’re on the journey when someone asks you how you’re doing and you say more than, “Busy.” Those who are on a journey have a story to tell, a discovery to share, an experience to express, and they can’t help it. Journeyers are beat poets and artists. This is witness.

You know you’re on the journey when you depend on others to journey with you. Those truly journeying recognize that they need the company of others. As numerous theologians have reminded us, the Christian life is personal but not private. The essence of Christian spirituality reflects the nature of the Trinity through journeying communities that perpetually tell the story of God in word and sacrament. Journeyers connect. This is the church.

You know you’re on the journey when you see faith as improvisation. When traveling, it’s tempting to overpack your creature comforts. Journeying is about packing less and leaving familiar things behind. It is more about improvising than making everything fit old paradigms. It exposes the limits of your faith categories and asks you to let go of your pre-packed theology, programs, and dogma. It asks you to reconsider your notions of God, world, and self, which will be both scary and liberating. Journeyers risk. This is faith.

You know you’re on a journey when you recognize that your pursuit is embedded in God’s pursuit of you. Journey is more than a self-focused endeavor. It is situated in the understanding that God is continually pursuing us, showing us the reality of our world where God’s love, grace, and recapitulation of you, others, and the whole world are happening already. At times you may lose your bearings, but you are never lost. Journeyers are embraced. This is the gospel.

Journey on, friends. Hope to bump into you along the way.

Lilly Lewin


Because that’s what life is. Life is a journey, and so is our life in Jesus. Life isn’t stagnant, and as much as we try to stay the same, to stay stationary, “the road goes ever on and on.” And as leaders, we need to talk about this because we tend to want to stay put, and we tend not to like or appreciate change.

Everyone starts at the same place. We all need God, and we are created to be in relationship with God. Many of us don’t see that for a long time. Some of us take detours along the way and meander in the wilderness or camp out in the valley or put down roots in the suburbs and just STOP, not wanting to go on the next leg of the adventure.

Some of us carry way too much stuff. Some of it we collect on purpose, and some of it is really heavy baggage that gets heaped upon us. Yet it all is a part of the journey. And the question is… Will we allow the journey to change us and transform us? Or will we have to continue to wander about in the wilderness? (Yet even in the desert God is there and continues to provide for his kids.)

With the journey of faith in mind, I often begin confirmation class with a handout. On the page, I’ve drawn a path. The road winds around, and there is a river with a bridge out; there are potholes on the road; there are mountains and valleys; there is a bus stop beside the path and a castle/cross/kingdom pic drawn at the end of the winding road. I ask my students to consider where they are on their spiritual journeys as they start confirmation (or as they start the new school year, or even the New Year).

Some might not even feel they are on the path at all. Some might feel they are in a pothole or stuck in the mud somewhere. That’s okay. We need to talk about that and allow them to see that God is in the process and with us in the potholes and even sitting beside us on the bench at the bus stop, even if we don’t see him yet.

Father Edward Hayes says that we are all “homeward bound” hobos—on the road home to be with Jesus (Lenten Hobo Honeymoon). We are all in process, and we all sometimes get stuck, and most of us take breaks along the way. And it’s okay to take baby steps.

Journey is how God has built the human experience. It’s unknown and ever changing. Life forces us to go forward; it’s the nature of time—birth, life, death; it’s what we’ve been given.

When it comes to spiritual formation, I really appreciate the metaphor of the journey. It gives me great hope. I’m not done yet. Nothing is set in stone. There is a path, there is a way, there is a road through. Best of all, I’m not stuck if I don’t want to be. I can take a new road and know that it will ultimately be safe because the King is with me. And for me, this is exciting! My life in Jesus really is an adventure.

“Thinplace… A pilgrimage of discovery and creativity” is the tagline on my business cards. Thinplaces are the places where one feels closest to God; where heaven and earth seem to touch. And pilgrimage involves going on a journey together, seeing what God is up to, and getting out of our normal routines. We travel together in order to discover something about ourselves; we travel together to understand and discover what God is doing and has been doing in our world. That’s why I believe in going on pilgrimage personally and with students.

We need to see, and we need to help our students see, how journey is woven into the entirety of Scripture. The children of Israel were pilgrims heading for a strange land. They didn’t really know where they were going when they left for Egypt. They really weren’t sure that it was a good idea anyway. And they definitely had doubts about their leader. They took major detours, building golden calves and complaining about food and water.

And even before that, Abram and Sarai were pilgrims, leaving their comfort zones and traveling to a place God would tell them. They too got confused and sidetracked along the way, sometimes with drastic results. But throughout their journey they were seeking to follow God and attempting to hear his voice and doing their best to listen to him.

And Jesus didn’t invite his disciples to sit down and memorize a bunch of rules. He invited them to follow him, to go with him and learn along the way.

It’s important for us to remember and for our students to know and understand that God has taken all his children on journeys of discovery and creativity; that life in Jesus doesn’t allow us to remain the same. Jesus asks us to get out of our boats and follow him. And if we choose to leave our nets, our lives will definitely never be the same.

Chris Folmsbee


First, I think it may be the healthiest way to view spiritual formation—as though each of us is unfinished, always becoming. So we refer to it as a path or journey to remind us of where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. Not only does it remind us of ourselves, it reminds us of others who have also embarked on the path toward becoming more like Jesus.

Second, to refer to it as a journey or path implicitly suggests movement. We aren’t a static people; we are a pilgrim people in exile, awaiting our future residence with God. A path or journey denotes progress or development.

Third, a journey is unpredictable, isn’t it? When was the last voyage or expedition you took that didn’t have some twist or turn—unwanted, maybe—but nonetheless, an arbitrary happening. Our path to formation is like this. It possesses sometimes an immediate and abrupt change in plans. We are who we are becoming to respond to those changes in plans. Ever been delayed at an airport? Had a flat tire? Lost your passport or had it stolen? All of these things contribute to our journey.

Fourth, a path has undulations. It has smooth and rocky soil. Paths have steep ascents and declines. Paths can be leisurely traveled or require great amounts of exertion. Is not the spiritual journey of becoming like Jesus very similar?

Fifth, a path or journey represents a course of action—a purpose. Spiritual formation isn’t passive; it requires certain practices and disciplines. Formation doesn’t just happen. Change may operate this way (except from a vending machine), but (trans)formation demands that we take up our cross, not simply sit and look at it.

Finally, just as a journey or path can open to other routes or passageways, connecting us to people along the way, so can our formation open us up to new dimensions of our soul, connecting us to people and places we’ve yet to discover.


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

How would you describe the various forms or types of justice?

Mike King


The word justice and especially the phrase social justice have been in the media spotlight lately, thanks primarily to the culture wars and the attention-grabbing techniques of Glenn Beck. The issue of justice has been a focus of human beings since the beginning of recorded history. Often the issue of justice has forced Christians to determine where their primary allegiances lie—with God’s in-breaking kingdom or with political powers and national governments?

The prophet Micah declares in Micah 6:8, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Children of God are required to “do justice.”

One of the common phrases of children when they begin to interact with one another on playgrounds, neighborhoods, in social settings, schools, and especially among siblings is, “That’s not fair.”

“Studies at UCLA in 2008 have indicated that reactions to fairness are ‘wired’ into the brain... This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need.’ 1 The issue of justice is a very important part of youth ministry and spiritual formation.

There are many ways the issue of justice has been classified. For instance: legal justice, commutative justice, procedural justice, criminal justice, social justice, punitive justice, restorative justice, universal justice, distributive justice, retributive justice, personal justice, supernatural justice, poetic justice, etc.

Instead of defining all the various forms and types of justice, I will respond to the question by suggesting two primary ways the issue and types of justice will impact your youth ministry.

1) Community Environment. The spirituality of your faith community is greatly influenced by how you deal with many of the different types of justice issues at work in your context. Let’s take the issue of punitive vs. restorative justice as an example. If your culture believes that those within your faith community must be punished (as an example for all) if they violate the group’s values, disobey Scripture, and/or make a serious mistake and sin, then you may be willing to lose a member of the community in order to maintain the group’s ethos and rules. Misguided punitive justice often relies on shame to recover and maintain a sense of order. Punitive justice focuses on the supposed need of the community to punish offenders. I’ve seen many young people in youth ministries significantly wronged and humiliated by unjust punitive justice.

Restorative justice, on the other hand, seeks to repair the wrongs and damages done and works to restore both victims and offenders. Often, restorative justice takes more time and is more complicated to accomplish, but the results are more in line with restoration and God’s redemptive mission. Allowing your environment to be shaped by grace and restorative justice will go a long way toward nurturing a faith community that is a safe place for all. Attempting to make things right for all is hard work but is essential for fostering Christian community.

2) Christian Formation. If we are going to be youth workers who make disciples who become lifelong followers of Jesus Christ, we must help the young people in our faith communities grasp the overarching mission of God. It is not possible to fully cooperate with God’s mission of redemption and restoration without doing justice, as the prophet Micah states in the above verse. The prophet Isaiah weighs in on the mission of Messiah in Isaiah 42:1-4.

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth.”

Jesus Christ will fully establish justice in the earth. As Christ’s disciples, we are to follow Jesus in the movement toward a just world. One of the biggest problems we face in the Christian church today is our propensity to mostly talk about justice. We talk about justice but rarely do justice. And yes, I’m talking about us, I’m talking about you, but mostly, I’m talking about me.

Last week our Youthfront staff watched the movie Romero together as a part of our monthly formational practice. The movie is about the life of Oscar Romero, who was appointed archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, during a tumultuous time in the 1970s. Great injustices were happening throughout the country, and the poor were being exploited, raped, and murdered. Archbishop Romero was assassinated because he was willing to stand up against gross injustice. The movie portrays many different ways individuals who claim to be Christians react to what is going on around them. The issue of what it means to “do justice” was the focus of our staff discussion. The questions we wrestled with following this film are still provoking our imaginations and dominating our conversations.

As youth workers, we must search our hearts and explore what it means to live cruciform lives. As we read the gospels and see the life of Jesus, we see the reality of God’s in-breaking kingdom. Jesus Christ is doing a new thing, and it is this way of life that God is calling us to lean into. This is the way of life we invite young people to embrace. I believe it is a life that moves toward shalom and a world made right, a cause that young people might be willing to lay down their lives for.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice#cite_ref-4


 

Helpful Resources for Students:

Living Justice: Revolutionary Compassion in a Broken World

Steve Argue


Recently I was with a group of youth pastors and senior pastors reflecting on the topic, What is a question that can only be answered by the youth pastor and the senior pastor together? I’ve been pondering that conversation and came up with what I think is an important question: Who are the people we exclude?

The injustice of reaching out without welcoming in. Often in ministry conversations, there inevitably comes a point where the topic turns toward “outreach” or “reaching” someone. For deeply theological reasons (both redemptive and sometimes dangerous), many churches feel compelled to reach out toward someone, somewhere. What is often missed, however, is that if a faith community reaches out, there also must be a complimentary and equally high value of welcoming in.

Within the physical walls of churches, ministries have reached out to kids, students, and emerging adults, providing them with programs and pastors. These initiatives have often created a silo effect, where the groups reached end up entrapped and still unwelcome in other parts of the community. Consider the main service and the many looks they get when kids act like kids and students dress like students. Similarly, how many youth pastors have touted parents as the primary disciplers of their kids (inaccurately quoting Deuteronomy 6), while systematically excluding them from all youth ministry programming, except to ensure they pay for ever-rising mission trips? Reaching is valued. Welcoming is not.

In an odd sort of way, church programs designed for specific groups (especially young people) become ghettos of segregation, contradicting Jesus’ prayer for the people of God to be one. Something is wrong when adults want to populate their church with the next generation as long as they don’t touch anything and when youth pastors want parental support while excluding parents from their thinking, relationships, and programming.

Thus, the question remains for our faith communities, Whom do we exclude? Where are the lines drawn within one’s own church? And might the very structure, assumptions, and spirit of our faith communities be the walls that feign outreach but actually communicate, Keep out? When we reach out without welcoming in, we perpetuate the injustice of exclusion.

The injustice of preserving distance between your space and our space. Beyond local congregations, churches attempt to reach out to the poor, needy, and oppressed. I commend the good work done across the street and around the world. My only concern is that most of the people whom churches reach out to remain conveniently “out there.” When we reach out, we can be generous and compassionate on our terms, in our time frame, away from our place. How many of the poor, needy, and oppressed are actually welcome in our churches and homes? I know the issue is more complicated, but the simply perpetuated message of separation exists where: We will reach out to your space, but you are not welcome in our space.

Sadly, many churches are known more for what they are against, welcoming people as long as they’re “just like us.” Emerging adults often feel like strangers in their own home churches and are accused of leaving; single men and women are often overlooked because they don’t fit into a traditional family; and the marginalized of all kinds find sparse connection. Whom do we exclude?

Whether internal segregation or external separation, churches can have a welcoming problem that contradicts the nature and purposes of God. Throughout the biblical narrative, we see God as one who pursues and calls people, committing to be their God; who comes near through incarnation; who extends God’s love to all, engrafting outsiders, calling them “my people,” “my friends,” “my co-heirs,” and “my children.” We are a people who have been welcomed, empowered to welcome.

These are not easy issues to work through, but the level of difficulty cannot dictate the level of necessity. Faith communities’ inability to welcome the “other” typically has little to do with espoused theology and doctrine and has more to do with fear of the unknown, love of power, and resistance to change, fueling postures to keep the other “out there.” I’m not saying everyone in our faith communities is intentionally cruel, but many may be unaware of these injustices, blinded by their majority lenses. In either case, “reached” outsiders remain excluded and unwelcomed.

Senior pastors and youth pastors must work together to communicate a consistent posture of welcoming that will take more resolve, dedication, and sacrifice than any mission trip or outreach program. For it will call us to change us, more than them, to be we.

The reason I am a follower of Jesus is that someone welcomed me in. Yes, even me. This is the beautifully overwhelming, barrier-breaking, system-crushing grace that God offers to all. It’s a justice issue that must be owned by senior pastors and youth pastors together. It’s a justice issue that declares that, as we seek to change the world, our worlds may need the first changing.




Dave Rahn


Justice originates with a set of standards; a code; the law. The notion that there are various forms or types of justice implies that there may be different rules that apply to different contexts. This reminds me a bit of the construct of intelligence and research by Howard Gardner and others to make the case for multiple, domain-specific intelligences. Are we better served by looking at justice through categorical filters (e.g., economic, political, or racial) or by thinking of it as a holistic concept like that which is freighted by the Hebrew word shalom?

We live in a day when the social construction of knowledge is all the rage. Morality can be defined without the need to establish a first cause or authority. My own doctoral research was embedded in this wing of social science. The moral domain is defined by universal obligations that people agree are right or wrong regardless of circumstance, situations, or culture. The conventional domain acknowledges that there are some contexts where matters of right and wrong are of a different quality, rooted in legitimately acknowledged authority, and regulated by a source that can alter the standards at any time.

So it’s always wrong to hit other children so as to hurt them (moral), but it’s only wrong to chew gum in class if the teacher says it’s wrong. And Mrs. Snider, my paddle-wielding, second-grade teacher at William Carr Elementary, made it clear always that chomping was impermissible in her presence.

Please forgive my short detour into an area of obscure inquiry that I lived in 20 years ago while pursuing my PhD. I am convinced that the social forces interested in exploring a relativistic basis for knowledge have only accelerated in the last two decades. Years ago, the quest for truth was at the heart of all questions of morality and justice. Today’s discussions pursue such wisdom without any need to anchor it in notions of absolute truth that can be known, however imperfectly.

So I return to my original question about the question. How is it somehow better to divvy up justice into assigned analytical categories for improved practical use if that guidance is as weightless as anything that spins away from its gravitational orbit? Can you tell I’m concerned about self-referential justice, even that which is cloaked in community consensus as “self?”

I have only the desire to know and live more thoroughly according to justice as defined by the rule of God our King. Hundreds of detailed Torah regulations did not bring about this justice. The Ten Commandments also failed to usher God’s people into justly living communities. Even the great commandments, reduced to two huge summary pursuits that allow us to affix them to our bumper stickers, do not give us power to live justly. But when God graciously saved me and dispatched his Holy Spirit to live within me—well, I’ve got a fighting chance to actually make a difference.

And so I’m not interested in expanding my circle of concern unless I can keep my circle of influence from shrinking (thanks, Covey). I live in a small town that has a history of racial bigotry. I became part of a multi-ethnic church plant over five years ago, driving 35 minutes each way to participate in this fellowship. For me to love my black and brown brothers and sisters better—and to experience more love—my wife and I would probably need to relocate.

But we are not called to live in another community; we are called to live in this broken Indiana town and be salt and light. And so, for now, our Sunday church excursions fortify my resolve to live justly in our hometown. And, though it may seem like a woefully small and insignificant response, we have resolutely chosen to pay whatever the pump price is at the community’s ethnic-owned gas station so we can contribute to a welcoming atmosphere reflective of the shalom of God.

This little move is one that my blue-collar neighbors understand. It takes a page out of John’s epistle: We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother (1 John 4:19-21). It tips toward doing something where I live—that makes a difference now—rather than talk about injustices where I do not live.

I am drawn to justice in reality; actions I take because I am compelled to be faithful in my obedience to the Lord Jesus. All else is another type of hype, and I frankly fear being distracted from acting on what I know I should do by wondering about what else could be done. With Paul, I want to live up to what I’ve already attained (Philippians 3:16).


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

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.


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

Leadership. Teams

What are some critical things to remember when leading teams? 

Steve Argue


I can only speak from what I’ve discovered with my teams, and hopefully it will inspire something for you. These are in no particular order to these since I believe each, in some way, informs the others.

A team is more than its individuals. There’s a tremendous difference between a group of people who individually divide up their work to accomplish a task and a group that works together toward something more. The former can produce excellent yet disjointed tasks that remain looking like a wall full of sticky notes. The latter evokes a budding art form that surprises everyone as it takes on a life of its own. One of the hardest things to do is encourage teams to move through individualistic (often brilliant) patterns into the realm where efforts and personalities create something that no one can create on his own. This process takes time and is certainly less efficient, requiring leadership that protects the process.

Process is more important than product. I don’t mean to be extreme (maybe I do). I’ve experienced too many teams complete tasks only to end up more unhealthy, more burned out, and more at odds with each other than when they began. Somehow the process got the product done but killed everyone in the meantime. I believe attention to the process nurtures transformation more than an end product. It’s where the members make meaning of their experiences and are challenged to reframe success beyond end results.

Often, this is where dysfunction is confronted—even the “beneficial” dysfunctions like workaholism, self-promotion, isolationism, or guilt/fear motivations. There are goals within the goal that surface as people get closer to a project, to each other, and to oneself. Leadership creates space for each person to reflect on how he is making sense of the project’s multiple layers, resisting internal and external pressures to merely produce. The end results, then, are celebration and formation, not merely checking something off the list and reinforcing dysfunction in the name of “efficiency” or worse, “ministry.”

Words, writing, and language matter. I get grief from my peers and teams for being a document guy. I like to write things down so my teams get the full context of my ideas. It’s through documents that others can interact with my ideas, improving them, making them better so an idea moves from becoming mine to ours. My goal is that, when our teams talk about research, ministry philosophy, or theological concepts, we all have a clear sense of what we mean and where we’re going together. Words, writing, and language become pathways toward dialogue rather than one-way orders or defensive walls. This requires great trust in each other to put an idea (and ego!) out there to be critiqued and changed, hoping and believing that dialogue is always better than monologue.

Reading, thinking, and discourse are crucial. My team also gives me a hard time for perpetually sending them articles I think will help them think about their interests. My hope is that they remember they’re part of a bigger conversation that’s happening around us. What’s fun is that I’m now receiving articles from my teammates. Maybe it’s payback, or maybe our team is developing the discipline of keeping an eye on this broader landscape of the conversation. And here’s my most hopeful secret—I believe they have something to add to the conversation. Watch for their articles. They’re coming…

Delegating is stupid. Go ahead and quote Jethro’s advice to Moses, but don’t use this as a support for delegation. Delegation often becomes a buzzword for leaders passing off things they don’t like to do, which is not encouraging to team members. True delegation (if we must use that term) is more about a leader admitting limitation, trusting others, and nurturing others’ callings. It is a posture of trust, not a posture of power. When you “delegate,” may you not only delegate task but also the authority that goes with it. May the receiver of delegation know that a new responsibility has been given to him because he is believed in and his contribution will help the team and his own next steps of personal growth. Any other sort of delegation that is shortsighted or last minute is stupid. If you doubt this, when you ask your teammates to do something, do they look up (pick me!), or look down (please don’t pick me)?

Teams can “lead” themselves. A final thought is that leaders of teams have a role, but there is a greater corrective, and that is when a team leads itself; when quality is shared; when everyone is supportive; when help is asked for; when challenge is done in love; when there is laughter along the way; when each person is changing for the better. Then, something’s happening. The best thing a leader can often do is use her power to clear the way (time, resource, encouragement, etc.) to let things happen and allow the team to become just that—a team.

As I reflect on my list, one common theme I see is that my crucials are not quick fixes. Most are process-oriented postures that challenge me to commit to the long haul, to resist short-term success, to patiently nurture space for individual and group transformation. It’s the team that matters. Not me.

Jim Hampton


As one who has led teams now for more than 25 years, I wish I could say that every team I’ve led has been a resounding success story, but I’d be lying. What I can say is that the longer I do this, the better I become at it. In the case of leading teams, experience really has been the best teacher.

That said, let me offer two suggestions I have found particularly helpful in leading ministry teams. (My focus will be on leading the team itself, rather than recruiting the team. Slant 33 did a series of articles on recruiting previously that can be found here.

Take time to build relationships with the other members of the team. Some of us are so task oriented that we too often see team members as extra appendages of our bodies. Just give them a task to do and set them loose is our thinking.

However, that is a terribly misguided notion. We have to remember that the members of our team are people; people who crave relationships and who often work best in the context of community support and encouragement. When we fail to truly get to know others (their families and life situations, their passions, their walks with God, their talents and abilities, etc.), then we end up treating them as objects to fulfill our needs rather than seeing them as people made in the image of God who have valuable things to offer the team and the kingdom. Relationships should always precede tasks.

Building relationships with the other members of the team also allows you to build trust. The more you know about them, the more you can trust them. Similarly, the more they know about you, the more they can trust you. I discovered that when your team members know you are for them, they are much more willing to assume your decisions are for the best, even if they don’t always understand the why behind them. Without this type of trust, you can easily be misperceived in your decisions and direction. As a colleague of mine is fond of saying, “An action uninterpreted is an action misunderstood.” When we build this type of relationship with our team members, we become better at communicating the actions we are taking as a leader and explaining why we are taking them.

When I was a local church youth pastor, we did many things to encourage the building of relationships. We had monthly sponsor meetings, where the focus of the first 30-45 minutes was simply food and fellowship. I found that during this time, people would talk about what was going on in their lives. It became a wonderful time as people shared with each other, often taking time to stop and pray with and for each other.

We also tried to offer an annual sponsor retreat each fall. It was a lot of work to get enough volunteers to cover all the Sunday school classes, small groups, and other youth ministry positions that would normally be needed during a weekend. But I found it incredibly fruitful when we could gather all of our youth ministry workers and spend a weekend playing together, dreaming together, and planning for the upcoming year. As part of our worship times together, our adult workers learned that their community was the body of youth workers, and they learned to lean on each other the rest of the year.

Put people in positions to succeed, and then empower them to do so. Most of the volunteers I’ve had on my teams are professional people who are very talented in their jobs. They are given huge responsibilities at work and expected to handle the jobs flawlessly. And the vast majority of the time, they succeed.

Why is it, then, that when it comes to giving people responsibilities for ministry, we too often default either to not giving them any real responsibility, or giving them responsibilities but never any real authority to carry the tasks out, insisting that they run everything through us?

It’s important that we give real responsibility to people, but we also have to know their level of handling a task. (This can only happen through truly knowing the other person, as mentioned above.) It is demeaning to a well-trained person not to give her real authority to determine how to do something, even if she does it differently than you would. Similarly, it can feel oppressive to give someone a task he is not equipped to handle. All of us have had someone volunteer to take on a specific task of ministry only to fail. I’m convinced that most of the time, their failures are really our failures because we failed to make sure we had the right people for the right job.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins refers to this as getting the right people on the bus. For those of us in youth ministry, it means we first have to know what our real needs are then work hard to find people with the right mix of gifts who can succeed in the ministry areas to which we assign them.

When we lead teams by these principles, we develop a group of people who are willing to give everything to ensure the ministry succeeds. They do this because they believe in you as the leader and the vision you’ve cast. They do it because they find the community that is present to be vitally important in helping them live out their Christian faith. And they do it because they like to be successful, and the team allows them to do that.

Leading teams can be tough, but it can also be one of the most rewarding things you’ll ever do if you get the right people doing the right jobs and learning to build deep relationships one with the other.

Dave Rahn


In Em Griffin’s IVP book from some years ago, Getting Together: A Guide for Good Groups, he summarized as succinctly as I ever heard how research on group dynamics collects around three factors that predict success and satisfaction. Whenever I think of leading teams, I run through my version of this mental checklist.

Where are we going? Ensuring there is a clear and commonly shared purpose, vision, and direction for any team is one of the most important elements to leading. A team imposes expectation of time and commitment on its members. Ultimately, everyone decides whether the cause is worth an investment.

The worst teams I’ve been part of have either been fuzzy about their reason for existence or their focus has shifted. Sometimes the change of direction is intentional. That’s fair, but team members need to have the opportunity to reevaluate their commitment when that takes place. At other times, teams simply get distracted by all of the other collateral causes they encounter while working on their main purpose. When that happens, the sense of dissatisfaction sneaks up on us a bit more slowly until we awaken one day to the realization that we “didn’t sign up for this.”

New coaches often bring changes in philosophy and direction to the teams they lead. They talk about how their squad has or has not bought in to the vision of what is now going to be attempted together. This psychological ownership of direction is a dynamic factor for those of us who lead teams. It should never be assumed, and we can’t work too hard at making sure that our purposes are clear and everyone is on board.

How do I fit? Teams are beautiful things when they work well. Their interdependence, coordination, synchronicity, and synergy introduce potential for accomplishment that simply can’t be matched by a collection of individual efforts. One of the important predictors of a team’s success is the degree to which every member of the team knows how she contributes to the common goal.

Sometimes these roles are identified formally. Bill always takes notes at our meetings. Jarrod translates our work for distribution through social media outlets. Nina pays attention to the calendar and ensures that our next steps are clear. But other roles emerge from within the dynamics of a group experience. We look to Tim for problem-solving analysis, and Joel supplies the right blend of humor and curiosity to keep things energized. It doesn’t matter much whether our team roles are formal or informal. What does matter is that every member realizes that the part he plays is necessary—not optional—as we co-labor toward a shared vision. Team leaders earn their keep by making sure everyone knows where he fits and feels valued for her contribution.

Are we tight? This last factor predicting team success is a little more slippery to get hold of. It testifies to a group’s cohesion, its members’ belief in each other, and the great sense of camaraderie that’s experienced together. Often it’s as simple as really liking being a member of this team. This factor should not be underestimated. It’s the glue that holds some teams together when challenges are particularly daunting. When it is not present, people begin to feel like belonging is no big deal.

Church softball or bowling teams all across the country are successful without ever posting winning records because they have created a sense of “we-ness” that is compelling to all sorts of non-athletes. When team members simply want to be part of whatever we’re doing simply because we’re doing it together, we’ve probably got a group that benefits from some good stickiness.

Leaders help make this happen by paying attention to the little things that pop up spontaneously to cement the group together. Shared experiences that supply vivid and colorful memories are particularly effective means to bind us together. We can plan for space to make them happen, like we do when we take team retreats. But we can’t always predict what amazing moments will take place or when. Good leaders notice the sparks that have the chance to fuel a fire of cohesion and fan them well.


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

Culture. Consumeristic Church

Respond to this statement: The church has become consumeristic. 

Steve Argue


Youth Ministries need warning labels. I’m serious. And these warning labels shouldn’t be like the auctioneer speed-talking heard at the end of cholesterol-reducing commercials that promise that you can eat ribs and still lose weight, or the fine print on leasing the car of your dreams that you can’t afford. It should be right in the middle, in plain sight for everyone to see and understand that the gospel we’re attempting to live into will mess everyone up.

For parents… Warning: Sending your child to youth group has the potential of derailing your family’s priorities and will challenge you to articulate your own faith to your kids.

For youth workers… Warning: Serving in this ministry is essential for your own spiritual formation. You need these students as much as they need you. Doubt, insecurity, struggle, and pain will disorganize your neat life should you dare to enter in.

For students… Warning: If you participate in this youth group, we’ll show how far the rabbit hole goes.

We have a problem, however. Youth ministries need people to legitimize their existence. As a result, most of our recruiting toward students rides on sound bites of “fun.” Most of our communication with parents comes out of spin-doctor techniques that seek to impress parents in order to pay for our retreats and, let’s be honest, our salaries. Most of our recruiting for youth worker volunteers markets to support-a-child techniques, where “If you just give five hours a week to this child, he will worship you, leave her life of crime, and not end up in hell.” And if you think I’m exaggerating about any of these points, check out the product tables at most youth ministry conferences.

Now, I recognize that the issues I’m pointing out have, in some way, been perpetuated by my own ministry practices. So I’m calling all youth ministry types to own the problem with me. How have we, likely through good intentions, perpetuated a consumeristic culture within our churches and youth ministries?

Is it possible that ministry has conditioned students, parents, families, adults to church shop and use Priceline.com techniques to find the best returns on their giving dollars? Again, if you think this a generalization, simply look at the work of Christian Smith (Souls in Transition) or Tim Clydesdale (The First Year Out) and recognize that most religiously oriented young people who have gone through their adolescent years have adapted an American form of religion that is fueled by consumerism, self-fulfillment, and individualism. It’s a hard question to ask, but could this be the fruit of our labor?

The response to this question isn’t regressing to just preaching the Bible, or talking more about sin and hell. But it isn’t blindly repeating what we’re doing either. Rather, I’ve been inspired by the works of James Fowler and Sharon Daloz Parks to recognize that faith isn’t merely something we possess, get, acquire, gain/lose, or consume.

Faith is something we do. It is something that is dynamically changing as each person learns to navigate her/his connection with self, others, life, and God. It calls for all to be invited to participate within a community where everyone faiths together. One must make time. Value it above other things. Be willing to grow, even to change. All of these are the antithesis of consumerism.

Warning labels must also be placed all over the church too.

Podcasts… Warning: Thanks for listening to our messages, but it’s only part of the narrative our community proclaims. Only listening to this (without action on your part) will produce spiritual malnutrition.

Pews… Warning: If you sit here, you will likely be moved down one seat, across the world, or toward someone you don’t know or like.

As Annie Dillard puts it, “It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews” (An Expedition to the Pole).

Straw hats, flip flops, lattes, smart phones, retreat commercials, volunteer guilt trips, fun, convenient downloads. These are not bad things in and of themselves. But might they be symbolic for a consumer-laden faith we’re passing on? If so, what are we willing to do about it?

Maybe we have to reintroduce warning labels to stem consumeristic hegemony in our faith communities. Have more? Please share…









Lilly Lewin


Ya think? Our culture encourages us to buy, not to borrow. We are encouraged to buy our own rather than sharing something with others. We are encouraged to buy extra because we might run out.

We are trained to consider ourselves and our needs before the needs of others, unless the others happen to be on the other side of the world in a global crisis. Thus, we miss loving our neighbor next door or around the block, and we miss sharing our abundance or receiving the generosity of others.

How quickly we in church land get caught up in the mentality of the mall. We get caught up in spend and consume rather than the basics of the kingdom. Jesus invites us into a different kind of world, where the last shall be first and the least will be greatest. Jesus, and later Paul, invites us to get rid of the stuff that so easily weighs us down. Yet we’ve all seen it, and many of us have gotten sucked into the vortex of money=power=success, or bigger is better.

Bigger churches mean more givers and having bigger youth ministries. Bottoms in chairs equals success and might even get you a raise. In American church land we’ve been encouraged to consume—to find the best teaching, the best music, the best children’s ministry. As a youth pastor the first question I’m asked is, “How big is your group?” rather than, “How solid are your kids in serving the poor?” or, “How are your kids’ prayer lives?” We all know that’s not what God looks at. He doesn’t look at the outward appearance but at the heart. God’s kingdom invites us to give, serve, love, be thankful. And when we serve the least of these, we are actually serving him.

How did everything get to be about the Benjamins? How did church become about money, getting people to give more to the building fund, or even to missions, but not necessarily giving of themselves? We don’t want to actually get our hands dirty. Going downtown is too dangerous. These are excuses we’ve all heard.

In consumer land, we are successful if we have lots of stuff. And so it is in church. In church land we are honored for having more stuff, or if our church parking lots are filled with nice cars and SUVs. The people on the board tend to be the upwardly mobile and part of “the buck stops here” crowd. And just look at many of our church buildings. They have become bigger and better and filled with more choices, from Starbucks or fair-trade coffee and food courts, to WiFi and gyms; some churches are mini malls of activity. In consumer land, we’ve come to expect the best, so we expect our churches to be polished and to provide us with the coolest experiences possible. We expect world-class music, whether it’s from a choir or band. And shouldn’t our band sound at least as good as Crowder? Sadly, this all leads to performances rather than worship, but that’s another post.

We’ve created and become gourmet Christians. We choose churches based on our favorite flavors and our current appetites. We are used to choices in every other area, so when it comes to going to church, we can choose to worship on Saturday night at the mega church up the street because they have the best worship band; we can go to the fill-in-the-blank church on Sunday morning because their pastor is the best Bible teacher; and head off to the local Episcopal church on Sunday night to experience a Taizé or U2 Eucharist service. And we might add a small-group Bible study on Wednesday night because we need more food and fellowship.

As gourmets, we enjoy the flavors of the moment, but then we see only the great meal provided and miss out on the messiness of the preparation and cleanup that are the real life of a church community. As gourmets we don’t necessarily have to commit; we just consume.

Do we need more things? Do we need more to buy? Really? Why is it that selling everything and giving it to the poor seems like a nice idea but way too hard in 2010? Did Jesus really mean it? And as I pack to move, I sure have a lot of coats. What about that “have two coats, give one away” verse?

In consuming too much, we lose sight of being grateful and content with what we already have. We need more things to make us feel safe, current, relevant, and cool. I’m guilty. I like my iPhone a lot. I like to shop at the Gap over Goodwill. I wasn’t trained or encouraged to live simply. I battle having expensive taste with the knowledge that so many have very little. Compared to Warren Buffet, I’m nothing, but compared to 99.9% of the rest of the world, I’m a millionaire.

I admit that I need help. We all need help to get out of consumer land. Can we help ourselves and our church communities get into living in the kingdom? What if we thought smaller rather than bigger, better? What if we started with loving our neighbors next door and sharing our stuff with them—like the lawnmower or a ladder or even a vacuum cleaner? Could we borrow rather than buy the things we need? Especially items we only use once or twice a year? Could we adopt a family all year long, not just at Christmas? What if we started a thankful list, writing down things we’re grateful for and at the end of the week take time to read them all out loud, either on our own or as a family?

What if we encouraged each other to stay in the homes we have, rather than upgrading to larger ones, in order to help someone else who doesn’t have a home or who needs help with home improvements and cannot afford them? We can all spend less, serve more, and be grateful for what we do have, even the small things, and even if it’s not as great as the guys next door.

Brooklyn Lindsey


There seems to be a lot being said on the consumeristic nature of the church. I read a lot about being less consumeristic, both as an individual and as a church. I hear the more recent call of David Platt, Shane Claiborne, Zach Hunter, and others. I can’t shake the life and message that Mother Teresa gave to us. They all say in different words that our love for God should be manifested in how we respond to the “other” in our lives. Then there’s Jesus, the most compelling voice for us to turn away from the tendency to be consumerist and to love sacrificially.

But I work in a church, and I attend churches every week (including my own) where our goal is to provide comfort. It’s not included in our mission and vision, but it’s inherent in our conversations. We don’t want parking to be bothersome. We can’t have too many bodies in the hallway. We need to call the paper we hold a worship folder (not a bulletin). Our series need to appeal to our audience. The website should have a certain level of immediacy and up-to-date graphic design.

We do these things so people can be connected to the hope found in Christ—and I’d say that most of these things are good. At the same time, we tend a culture where if someone isn’t happy, they simply find a church that makes them happy. I struggle with this. I have struggled in churches, and I’ve left them. I am the consumer culture, and I’m a pastor.

I have more questions than answers. I don’t know how to have meaningful conversations about this, conversations that yield change. I would say that I love to speak justice language, as long as it means I can still have an iPhone, iPod, and YouVersion Bible. As long as we can still have passion-like worship services, AC, and coffee in the foyer. This is me being honest.

Can you tell I’m confused?

My husband and I did our internships in a large Nazarene church in Campinas, Brazil. It was an experience I’ll never forget. Over a thousand people gathered each Sunday. It was a large building with good pastors and good people helping out. But the thing that spoke to me most was how they shared the gospel without a parking lot. They didn’t purchase surrounding buildings to be able to tear them down and create space for cars. They simply expected that the church—if it’s truly the church—would find a way to worship regardless of the amount of land they could acquire. It spoke to this heart, just beginning in ministry, and I’ve wrestled with it ever since.

Nearly three years ago, Pastor Craig Groeschel posted a blog in a series on the future of the church, titled More Missional, Less Consumeristic.

He states, You might ask, “What is a Consumer-Christian?” In our church, it is the person who “church shops” for a church that meets his needs. Church is all about them. When the church doesn’t work for them anymore, they shop for another one.

He later goes on to share what the church will be like (or should be like): The future church will be made up of believers who:
• Are sick of living in material comfort while millions starve to death.
• Make money to give more than to consume.
• Believe in the power of prayer and fasting.
• Are willing to suffer for the cause of Christ.
• Will be engaged in missions both locally and internationally.
• See it as their role to lead people to Christ.
• See it as their role to help people in need.

I read things like this knowing that other cases are being made every day to be a kingdom church, not a “me” church.

I want to respond to this “future church” and say with my whole heart that I am a part of it. It’s just taking me some time to figure out how that can happen.

There isn’t much closure for me here. This sacrificial and others-minded life grows up as we walk with Christ, and it infuses purpose in the here and now, even if my current here and now seems a little bit far from the future I hope for. But isn’t that the very essence of our walk with Christ?

Christians should be known for their ability to become. We should be known for the ability to assess our situation in the light of Christ and respond.

Maybe not having an answer is a good answer as long as we are obeying the call of Christ that’s spoken through the Word of God, reinforced in the light of tradition, shared in the body of Christ as we celebrate and pray and reason together with the intellect that God has given to us all. And there’s even room for God to come in and speak to us unexpectedly, to illuminate our understanding with his Holy Spirit. Wow, thank God for the help we have!

The church is consumeristic. But we are also forgiven, growing, becoming, and being sent every day to change and respond to God in our world. Little steps are good steps. Big steps are good steps. Responding to Christ with total abandonment is good. Regardless of where we are, God is there with us, helping us and giving us peace when we don’t have answers.

Lord, I cry out to you as a young pastor who knows little of what you want for the church. My prayer is that you would help us be a church that loves, that will continue to serve those who are far from you as well as those who walk close to you. Help us grow in our knowledge of who you are so we can better understand who we are. Forgive us when our consumer hearts consume us. Replace those desires with your desires and we’ll respond in your strength. Help us think of others in our language, in the use of our time, in our planning, in our spending, and in our giving. We want to be transformed.

Suggested Reading: Freedom of Simplicity (Richard Foster)


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

Theology.Community and Salvation

What are some of the connections between community and salvation?

Steve Argue


Some of the connections between salvation and community that youth ministry workers might consider reflecting upon are:

What Does Connecting Me to We Mean? (Communal identity) It is no surprise that adolescents are naturally self-focused due to psychological, developmental, and socio-cultural forces. It’s also no surprise that young people typically mirror their cultures. From a western perspective, autonomy and individuality are strived for and celebrated. While having benefits, these cultural values can warp one’s need for interdependence—a necessity in development and the prayer of Jesus (John 17). Somehow, individuals must rediscover faith communities as essential, not optional.

Robert Webber (Ancient-Future Faith) reminds us of scriptural metaphors that define faith communities: the body of Christ as interdependent, tangibly expressing the very heart and healing of God together in our world. Salvation is found in our dependence upon God and each other, living out the very nature and purposes of God in ways that bless the whole world.

The people of God as the ones who, though different, find a unifying center in God revealed through Jesus Christ. Salvation is God giving us a new identity.

The fellowship of faith, where faith is practiced and grown as a verb, dynamically changing and growing as the community journeys together.

The new creation, where we celebrate renewal and resurrection in our lives. We gather as messed-up people, speaking hope and renewal to each other because of resurrection. Salvation is our message to each other that there is hope for you and me.

Kenda Creasy Dean (Practicing Passion) reminds us that adolescents have a tremendous amount of passion and seek to situate it in something equally as amazing. Salvation for adolescents, then, is showing them that the embodied, unifying, dynamic, hopeful faith community called the church is a place that is big enough for all their passion. This is good news for adolescents—salvation clarified and inspired by a community acting within the wonderfully complex, mysterious, multi-layered aspects of God’s saving grace. This is space big enough for adolescents to call home.

How Do We Connect the Narrative to Us? (Communal Discourse) The community acts as an interpreting community for young people, where questions can be asked and more questions can be offered. It is the place where faith language, symbol, and practice happen in the rhythms of life. Self-interpretation has its limitations, especially for young people who are seeking to discover and define their identities. Older people need space and skill to tell good stories from their own journeys (cf. Stanley Hauerwas, Growing Old in Christ), and young people need space to hear these stories, reflecting on their own.

Salvation, then, means inviting all into the narrative; finding connection in the midst of our diverse backgrounds and stories. It is what makes the church beautiful. It means not only young people understanding the narrative passed onto them but previous generations encouraging (and learning from) the next generation who continue the story with new language, ritual, and symbol. This may challenge some of our church/youth ministry assumptions about what participation with the whole community means and how we carry God’s narrative of redemption forward.

How Do We Embrace Suffering as Ours? (Communal Burden Bearing) Last month we had a worship service that created space for people to come and be prayed for. I listened to a wide range of stories that included both joy and tragedy. These are the stories that any faith community inherits. Faith communities that welcome young people open themselves up to their lives, embodying the good news.

More strongly, churches that commit to youth ministries must recognize that this move is not a step toward outsourcing youth issues. It is a portal to let all youth beauty, pain, drama, joy, expression, and messiness in. This is good news for everyone and one more picture of God putting the world back together.

Given limited space, these are some of my connecting points. What would you add?

Lilly Lewin


I just got back from a two-week pilgrimage with students, following the path of the Celtic missionaries who brought the gospel to Scotland and Northern England. Since we—the participants on the trip—all came from different places, we began to grow into community as we traveled together in a small van over winding roads (including some stops for vomiting along the way!). We lived together, sharing space and bathrooms very different from ours at home. We tasted new food and learned to cook new food and learned about different styles of leadership and communication. Then we repented when we really screwed it up.

Visiting places of incredible beauty, like the Isles of Iona and Lindisfarne, is a powerful way to encounter God. But laughing hysterically over jokes, burping, and finger puppets during evening prayer are also powerful and productive ways to engage God’s Spirit. By the end of the two weeks, we each had engaged God on our own, through what we learned from the saints of old and through each other along the way.

The Celtic missionaries—monks, abbots, and abbesses—were all about community. Their process was to move into the neighborhood and get to know the locals, learning the language of the people. While the monks on the continent were about separating from society, the Celtic monks believed in making themselves part of the local community and moving into its center. They didn’t throw out the art, music, and customs of the locals but helped them learn to see God and engage God through these things. The Celtic monasteries were places of hospitality, welcoming all who came to call. You were invited to eat with, learn with, and work alongside the Christian community.

In the Celtic monastery, one had a “soul friend,” who came alongside the seeker to help her learn to engage God and listen to her story. Today, more than ever, we need to be people of hospitality who are moving into the neighborhoods, learning the languages of our cultures, and helping others to see Jesus as we live and work and serve outside the church walls. We need to be and to help our students become people who listen to the hearts of others and go places where Jesus would go—among the outcasts and the poor and those outside the confines of the church walls.

Also, it’s important for us to find a community where we can safely share our stories and our hearts. We need other safe people to process the events and happenings in our lives. Each night along the pilgrimage we shared our experiences of the presence of God that day. And we also shared our frustrations when we didn’t feel connected to God at all. We had to learn to listen to each other and deal with stuff that came up in order to function on the road as a whole. People in a loving, kingdom community really do help us to connect our story to God’s story. As we listen to how others are experiencing life with Jesus, we learn and grow ourselves. We are never too old or too experienced to need this kind of community in our lives.

So to answer the question directly, the Celtic monks of old showed that how we live together reflects God’s love to those in the community and those who might be interested in joining us on the journey. In our two weeks, we had the opportunity to learn to love, share, serve, encourage, and say we are sorry. The people we hang out with really do impact how we live and act. That’s why we need to be a part of loving communities (which may or may not be churches. We all know many churches that aren’t loving or safe!) to help us live our faith.

Learning to live out our lives in the way of Jesus and following Jesus in a 24/7 way takes practice and encouragement. Salvation is caught, not just taught. Jesus didn’t have his followers memorize a bunch of rules or laws. The Jewish disciples already had enough of these. Instead, Jesus poured his life into the Twelve. They learned by doing; by practicing healing, casting out demons, praying and teaching and serving others. They went out in groups and in pairs and came back and processed together what they’d learned and experienced, the good and the bad. They practiced living out the kingdom of God, not just hearing about it. This was salvation; to do the kingdom as total beginners among friends. Jesus was comfortable with these untrained beginners doing the kingdom. And their friends didn’t have to be seminary professors to tag along.

In 2010, like in the 600s, people need to see the kingdom of God in action. They need to experience the people of God moving into their lives, loving and serving. As God’s people love and serve and share and listen and go the extra mile (doing their best in living out that “Sermon on the Mount” thing), then others will want to be part of the community and discover the gift of salvation.

Scot McKnight


Roman Catholics are taught that outside the church, there is no salvation. In Latin: extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Even if the official teaching of the Catholic church has nuanced this of late, the expression rankles even the most sympathetic of Protestants and evangelicals. For many, this line gives too much credit to the church. We’d rather it say, “Outside Christ there is no salvation.”

I would agree. We need the emphasis to be on Christ, but… Have you ever given much attention to the interconnectedness, the intimate union, of the Father and the Son in the New Testament? Or that this same union is extended to the church so we can say that Christ and the church are one?

Notice these words of Jesus: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). It gets deeper for Jesus: “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (14:11). This unpacks, even if we can’t comprehend it, the earlier statement of Jesus: “The Father and I are one” (10:30). We get it: Jesus and the Father are a sacred unity.

But Jesus extends this in the most amazing of ways when he extends the union of Christ and the Father to his church—both amongst church people and the church people with Christ! He prays “that [his people] may be one, as we are one” (17:11, 22). He defines this in the next verse: “I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one” (verse 23).

Two facts then: Jesus is one with the Father, and we are one with Jesus Christ.

The apostle Paul carries on this second fact we learned from Jesus, and he says this in a way that brings all the glory to Christ. Paul overtly asserts two difficult-to-put-together ideas: We are “in Christ,” and Christ is “in us.” And Paul says “in Christ” there is “redemption” and “death to sin” and “eternal life” (Romans 3:24; 6:11, 23). In fact, if you chase down the “in Christ” references in Paul’s letters, you will discover all kinds of benefits: grace, wisdom, victory, new creation, etc.

If we put this all into one bundle, we get this: Christ and the church interpenetrate each other so much we can say they indwell one another. Now to our point: If we are one with Christ as Christ is with the Father, and if salvation comes in union with Christ, then the church mediates that salvation as the visible and spiritual and verbal presence of Christ on earth. But it does so under two restrictions: First, it mediates and heralds salvation only in union with Christ. Second, it does so most effectively only when it is one.

Jesus told his disciples, in the most famous sermon ever, the Sermon on the Mount, they were both the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-16). There are good reasons to think Jesus may have meant they were salt to the Jews (the word for earth is eretz, or “the land of Israel”) and light to the Gentiles, for Jesus shifts from “earth” to “world” and draws on the great theme of Isaiah that the people of Israel, in the last days, would be a light to the Gentiles.

In these two words, salt and light—one evoking the idea of preservation and flavor through penetration and the other enlightening the world through the good news of the gospel—we see how we are to mediate and herald Christ in the world. But we only do this as disciples of Jesus. We don’t do this through our own ideas or our own talent. As disciples of Jesus we get to be salt and light.

But Jesus knows this happens most effectively when the disciples are genuinely one. The words of Jesus both haunt and excite:

I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23, emphasis added)

We can debate institutional vs. organic vs. missional vs. theological unity until we die, and we surely will, but the point is this: When we are one, as the Father and Son are one, we will be most effective in embodying and heralding Jesus himself to the world.

The church is called to embody and herald Jesus Christ to the world. The church, when it is one, embodies and heralds the love of the Father for the Son. And that same church, when it is one, reveals the truth of the claim that Jesus is who we say he is.


Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

Evangelism.Proclamation

In what ways can youth ministry improve in the area of proclamation (kerygma)?

Steve Argue


Let me begin by admitting that I am inspired by youth workers I know who are committed to proclaiming the gospel to students, pursuing them with their investments of time, relationship, sacrifice, and love. Their actions embody the perpetual hope that consistently announces good news that God is near, that God loves eternally, and that God is calling each person toward her or his created identity. I continually hope youth workers know that their thinking, planning, joys, heartaches, and sleepless nights proclaim our future hope in the here and now.

As with any discipline, there is always room for improvement as youth ministry relentlessly pursues clarity and authenticity in its proclamation. In this spirit, I urge youth workers to reflect on the following…

Proclamation is revealed through a compelling narrative, not bumper stickers. Proclamation sound bites, sadly, still cloud youth ministry’s proclamation with disjointed, undeveloped, dogmatic phrases that only perpetuate confusion and misunderstanding. For example, saying, “Jesus died for your sins” to an American teenager (or parent) will likely mean little unless one understands the significance of creation, fall, blood sacrifice, or resurrection.

Youth ministry must erase bumper-sticker proclamation from its discourse and methods, recognizing that announcing the mystery of the gospel requires a broader understanding of the biblical narrative that unfolds through teaching, dialogue, and faithful journeying in relationship. This narrative must be faithfully proclaimed within the whole community of faith as it is told and retold through the beautiful rhythms of the church calendar and intentional liturgy.

Proclamation devoid of the narrative, apart from a community that lives into the narrative, remains a sound bite. Let’s clarify proclamation with narrative, within community.

Proclamation needs congruency in words and actions…and in youth workers. Let’s sidestep the debate over whether word or action comes first in proclamation. Both are needed and, more importantly, both need to be congruent. Further, students’ experiences of love, grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, discipleship, prayer, etc., need an interpreting faith community that encourages them to make meaning of what they are understanding and experiencing.

Interpretation through a faith community is expressed through various forms—explanation, teaching, worship, modeling, ritual, and symbol all embody proclamation. When this happens, the proclaimed message of Jesus rings with congruency, resisting bodiless platitudes, random acts, and hypocritical expectations (which adolescents can smell a mile away).

For this readership, let’s keep in mind that a congruent proclamation within a congruent community requires congruent youth pastors, youth workers, and youth ministries. Reflect on your personal and ministry congruency and commit to keeping words and theory and actions and experiences within close proximity so that students catch the connection.

Proclamation invites liberation, not suppression. One of the challenges I often see with youth workers is that they get stuck believing that there is only one way to proclaim the gospel and only one way to respond to it. I believe this perspective (even though often driven by good intentions) suppresses adolescents’ faith formation. When one’s own cultural and personal experiences are uncritically fused with a narrow theology, it leaves little room for one to accept the responses and journeys of others that may be different from one’s own. The result often ends with those in positions of power (adult youth workers) prescribing both message and response.

This truncated proclamation celebrates “faithfulness” by rewarding behaviorism and conformity while suppressing critical thinking. Adolescents, then, are taught that their thinking, questioning, creative expression, and varied responses to good news beyond the narrow bandwidth prescribed by authority figures are off limits. Some research shows that adolescents are smart enough to play the game, making adults/authority figures happy by offering the right answers while working out their real issues on their own, in other places, with other peers, in other ways. Proclamation invites adolescents into safe space, liberating them to hear and respond to the good news of Jesus. It doesn’t drive them away to work things out on their own.

This challenges youth workers to embrace the beauty and mystery of what they’re proclaiming and stretches them to welcome to multiple responses and journeys (based on culture, development, etc.). It may challenge even youth workers’ own understanding of good news.

Better proclamation isn’t louder. It’s bigger, closer, and wider. Let this define youth ministry’s ongoing proclamation.

Mike King


The word kerygma is a transliteration of a Greek word that describes preaching and/or the content of preaching or proclaiming. In the first century, kerygma meant the proclamation by a herald who had an important announcement. The emerging church described in the book of Acts embraced this cultural tool.

In the New Testament framework, the kerygma is an announcement of divine action by God. It was in the context of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection that the kerygma received its mandate. The disciples discovered an empty tomb and later interacted with the resurrected Jesus Christ. They could not help but proclaim far and wide that Jesus Christ, who was born miraculously, lived sinlessly, proclaimed the kingdom of heaven was at hand, died sacrificially, arose from the dead victorious, and ascended into the heavens, is Lord.

In the simplest terms, our proclamation is “Jesus Christ is Lord.” In the fullest sense of proclaiming the good news, we declare that God is at work to redeem and restore the whole creation. There are many evangelicals who have unfortunately drawn the battle lines with a definition of proclamation that narrowly focuses on a particular view of atonement.

Youth ministry must move away from a proclamation ensnared by formulaic and one-dimensional soteriology. A kerygma that focuses solely on You’re a sinner who is going to hell but Jesus died for you so you can go to heaven if you ask Jesus into your heart is deficient in heralding the scope of truth contained in the great good news.

Our efforts to preach and proclaim the great good news seem warped when we start out with the emphasis that people are sinful and need to get saved so they can go to heaven when they die. Let’s herald the good news that starts with the reality that all human beings were created imago Dei (in the image of God). Let’s connect the imago Dei in our fellow human beings with the overarching story of God at work in the world. We should not start the story in Genesis 3 with the fall of humanity. We’ll get there soon enough. I meet few human beings who deny that they are broken.

For youth ministry to properly proclaim the great good news, we must embrace a high Christology. We must look to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God’s proclamation of good news. Also, I think it is critical that we embrace the whole of the Christ event—not just birth, crucifixion, and resurrection but also the words and teachings of Jesus.

I believe it is the responsibility of the church and of God’s people to always be on the lookout for demonstrations of God’s in-breaking kingdom, even when these acts come from outside the church and from non-Christians. When we see people and institutions cooperating with God, our proclamation should be to point it out and declare, “There it is!”

Jim Hampton


As a professor who routinely grades sermons of current and future youth pastors and a consultant who hears a lot of youth pastors speak, this is an issue I’ve had a lot of time to consider. Therefore, I offer the following two suggestions for improvement:

1) Preach the whole narrative of Scripture. Why is it that most people only seem to preach from the New Testament? In one of my classes, I ask students to think about the last 10 youth sermons they’ve heard and to identify whether the sermons came from the Old or New Testament. On average, they indicate that 80% of the sermons were from the New Testament.

We sometimes seem to forget that we are the people of the book…the whole book. How can one make sense of Jesus the Messiah, who chooses peace over violence, without first understanding the suffering servant of Isaiah? How can we help our teenagers grasp the importance of the Passover meal without first comprehending the Passover account as found in Exodus? In short, the Old Testament is as much a part of our history as the New is. And in a culture where adolescents seem to learn best by narrative, the Old Testament is replete with narratives, both small and large, that are part of our identity as the people of God.

Given that most young people have trouble connecting the dots between the biblical stories, perhaps the best thing we can do is to take our students through Scripture from beginning to end to give them a sense of the whole story. What if you were to devote a year to preaching through the Bible? For instance, one could show God’s salvation history by choosing 52 representative stories or themes from Genesis through Revelation that illustrate God’s mercy extended to his people. This would not only help students see how the stories connect but give them the big picture of God’s work throughout Scripture.

2) Learn to properly exegete your audience. As a seminary professor, I often hear sermons that are biblically and theologically solid yet never connect with their intended audience largely because the speakers never thought to consider whom they were speaking to and what the congregations’ needs were.

Look closely at the story of your youth group. What kid of worlds do they live in? Do you know their needs, fears, and desires? Do you understand them developmentally, culturally, and spiritually? This is sociological analysis, and it is vitally important if we want students to be able to apply what we are saying.

Homiletics professor David Buttrick says that one of the most important things that should occur in any sermon is an understanding of the blocks (cultural, social, denominational, religious, etc.) a congregation might have that keep it from hearing what you are saying. Ask yourself, What thought patterns or prejudices exist in the minds of these students that could prevent them from receiving this message? Then work to address those concerns in the sermon.

As a side note, one of the problems with preaching someone else’s sermons is that the person who originally wrote the sermon doesn’t know your youth group. He or she may understand adolescents and youth culture, but they don’t know your particular group of students. They don’t know about the young girl who confessed to you last week that she was pregnant or the boy whose parents are getting a divorce. They don’t understand the unique context (geographically, culturally, denominationally, etc.) that is part of your group’s identity. Therefore, it is impossible for that sermon to truly connect with your group since you haven’t done the hard work of exegeting your group and addressing their congregational blocks.

3) Allow the sermon to shape you before you expect it to shape others. Authenticity is a buzzword these days when it comes to preaching, and with good reason. Our students need to know not only that can we explain the text but that we are living the text in our own lives before we ask them to do so. Are you willing to spend equal amounts of time both in sermon preparation and in what Tim Keel calls heart meditation—that deep, intimate conversation with God where our very souls are shaped by the text?

Jesus himself did more than just teach and tell others what to do. Instead, he caused them to hunger for the righteousness they needed by demonstrating in his own life a vital relationship with the Father. He modeled an attitude and devotion that spurred others to imitation. As preachers, we must take care that the character and examples of our lives are consistent with the messages we speak.

Preaching to adolescents may be one of the hardest things we do. Yet if we are willing to do the hard work of biblical and cultural exegesis, thereby opening ourselves to God’s transformation, preaching to youth can become a vitally important aspect of discipleship.


Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

1


Slant Topics

Search by tag

Sarah Arthur Hope Time Adam Walker Cleaveland Environment Transition D.Scott Miller Lisa Sharon Harper Imago Dei Empowerment Consumeristic Church Encouragement High School Solitude Justice Failure Cultural Context Karina Veas Scot McKnight Jim Hampton Vulnerability Giving Culture Social Media Community Michelle Lang Joel Daniel Harris Parents Friendship God's Story Ian Macdonald Oversharing student leaders Gospel Media Narrative Theology Scripture Leadership Josh Griffin Recruiting Volunteers Family Oriented Kerygma Danny Kwon Paul Martin Journey Tiffianie Shanks Books Resources Theology of Play Sex Church Response Michael Novelli Planning Middle School Holy Spirit Mike King D. Scott Miller Interns Archie Honrado Chris Folmsbee Evidence Awareness Methods Difficult Friends Jason McPherson Rest Beauty of God Prayer Boundaries Formation Love Mission of God Community Developement Future Church Improvement Steve Argue Proclamation Marko Marriage Kara Powell Adam McLane Church Environments intergenerational ministry Faith Short-Term Missions Teaching Tradition Mission Statement Dating God is dead Jeremy Zach Youth Ministry Discussion Theology Lilly Lewin Research Programming Brian Berry Children Worship Gatherings Mark Oestreicher Internships Spiritual Formation Cliche Kurt Rietema Claire Smith Anti-Intellectualism Academia Albert Tate Calendars God Environments Communion Young Leaders Ministry Mistakes Ministry Context Dave Rahn Evangelism Lars Rood Apologetics Tash McGill Cross-Cultural Teams Leading Change Salvation Moving On Andy Root Just Acts Kevin Farmer Brooklyn Lindsey Expectations Eric Iverson

Slant Archive

Sorted by Month


Featured Slants


See all the Slants...

Latest Posts

  1. How do you pray for your ministry? Barefoot Training 06-Feb-2012
  2. What's the difference between teaching middle schoolers and high schoolers about dating and sexuality? Barefoot Training 30-Jan-2012
  3. How do your mission statement and programming inform each other? Barefoot Training 23-Jan-2012
  4. In a strong denominational setting, how do you support your denomination? Barefoot Training 16-Jan-2012
  5. There is lots of talk about intergenerational ministry these days. What does that mean, and how are you pursuing it? Barefoot Training 09-Jan-2012
  6. How can a young youth worker gain credibility in his or her church? Barefoot Training 20-Dec-2011
  7. How do you identify and initiate student leaders? Barefoot Training 12-Dec-2011

  • UN
  • Bounce
  • Reverb
  • CMPC