In what ways is hope essential to our theology?

Andy Root


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




 





Steve Argue


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Mike King


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Theology is complicated, but it needs to be communicated in a simple way. What has to be done in order for us to do that?

Brooklyn Lindsey


Studying God is intimidating. If it isn’t intimidating, then a study in humility might be a better use of our time—at least at first. Since God is ever present, perfectly loving, all creative, all knowing, all powerful, and sovereign in all things including love, grace, justice, and truth, it seems futile for us in our finite minds to even try.

But we must grapple with theological ideas. We must go to the depths to try to understand because the difference and reason for studying God in the first place is grounded in a relationship where God can and will reveal his character, story, and hope as we grow in relationship to him.

The source of our study is a living, God-breathed revelation of who God is and what God is about (the Holy Bible). So, while we’ll never nail down everything, we are able to know and understand more than we could ever ask or imagine if we would simply dive into the relationship and the Word with expectation and malleability.

With that said, to communicate the story of God—to study him and offer ways of understanding God to others—we ourselves have to be rooted in Scripture. Not only do we need to be rooted, but we need to be built up in it with openness to the Holy Spirit guiding us as we read and respond to it. No person, no matter how brilliant or enlightened, can study the one true living God without having a relationship with the one true living Word—which became human and made his dwelling with us (John 1:1).

When you look at the account of Jesus’ life on earth, you see theological lessons everywhere. I asked a local hero (our pastor) what he thought about communicating theology in a simple way, and he referred to Jesus constantly telling the stories of God by telling the people to “do this,” and when this happens because of who you are or because of who I am, then “do that.” Jesus gives us how-to stories as he lived among the people. It was in how he lived his life that he expressed who God was and is today.

We’ve got to teach the story of God by telling it—not just with our lips but also with our lives. We also have to be living with our eyes open to teaching moments and be prepared to record them, repeat them, and use them to teach with zeal as Jesus did.

Another method for studying God is to get people to learn the story by telling the story. When people get involved in the text and learn how to tell it on their own, they become involved in it, and that involvement leads to connecting points for them individually.

Dan Boone, a friend, pastor, and preaching professor told me, “Understand the issue from the depths. Write it down in academic language that would be acceptable to a solid theologian. Then translate it for an eighth grader, test it on an eighth grader, ask the eighth grader if there are any words or concepts that are confusing; then rewrite it and tell it from memory.”

In his book Preaching the Story that Shapes Us, he helps us understand how to exegete the group we are speaking to. “The biggest mistake we make with theological ideas is that we stop with getting it said and do not work equally hard on getting it heard. The message is in the ears, not on the lips.”

How will your listener hear the idea? How will it be received? What is it like to feel it being said? This is where we should spend our time after understanding the idea “at the depths” then translating it.

Our three-year-old is getting a lesson in theology every day, when we teach her the stories and words of the Bible, when we apply them to the little things in life that she can understand, and when we model to her a sensitivity to God’s voice and to the needs of others as we live it out in front of her. I think we can do this in all areas of life and ministry—teaching theology by living out the story and making connecting points for people to grab onto and learn on their own.

For me it’s about…
* Being rooted in God’s Word
* Remembering that the knowledge of God, a heart bent in faith, and the practice of our beliefs work together
* Translating the story of God in contextual ways
* Applying the Word of God each and every day to our own lives, until illustrating it and modeling it becomes first nature to us again….

God is not through with any of us yet, and it is in us and through us that Christ is being revealed. It’s exciting to think and know that each and every day we have an opportunity to become more like he is; to be transformed by the renewing of our minds; to understand who we were meant to be all along; and then to find ways to teach that to others along the way is our gift and responsibility.

Chris Folmsbee


The only way to make theology simple is to ignore it.

Theology is to be lived, not merely comprehended. Simple means easy, straightforward, effortless, etc. To make theology simple for others, in my opinion, is to teach a sleeping faith.

Concepts of God may be made understandable, but mere ideas of God are just that—static thinking. Theology is to be a dynamic activity that moves past a mental understanding and toward soulful expression. Theology is most effectively taught and learned in application, not simply in suggestion.

To make something simple is to make it minimal. Do we really want to reduce God to the smallest most reasonable reality? Or do we wish to explore and explain a big God who is more complicated than simple and more dynamic than static?

I’m tired of inviting people, and I’m tired of other people inviting people into a simple faith. I want to invite people into a complicated faith; a faith marked by density, doubt, and disorientation. That is a faith worth teaching and learning—not a faith made simple.

I realize that people need things brought to their level in order to understand. I have three children, ages 11, 7, and 5. They have a hard time wrapping their minds and hearts around theology, practical or otherwise. However, honestly, I don’t really want to help them develop a simple faith. I don’t want them developing a predictable and controllable faith; I want to invite them toward discovering a difficult faith that more closely resembles the realities of life—complexity and perplexity.

When I teach my children stories about God, I don’t make them seem easy by reducing them to their minimal concepts. Instead, I make them what they are—adventurous, demanding, and so big that their imaginations have to work to even remotely give them a chance at connecting.

This is why we have so many unconvincing Christians populating our churches. They don’t know a God other than the simple one they had passed on to them, in a clean, easy-as-pie, mild, smooth, simple-as-ABC kind of way. I hope my kids never say, “I get it” when it comes to God. When we say, “I get it,” what we are really saying is, “I’ve mastered it,” and that is not at all what a working theology is.

Too much time is spent trying to make theology simple, and not enough time is spent wondering. I’m ready for a shift in our approach to teaching. I’m ready for an approach that proves the vastness and fullness of God rather than the triviality in which God is usually taught. I’m ready to be invited and to invite others into a theological journey so filled with risk, danger, openness, and uncertainty that it elicits fear and inspires astonishment as opposed to being comfortable and relaxing. Frankly, I am done with the simple. God cannot be fathomed.

What is our infatuation with making things simple? We do this so people can worship a God they can understand? That seems like a very small view of God and also a small view of man. How about, instead of caring how to make theology simple, we care more about how we make theology what it really is—a deep, eternal, unfathomable abyss of wonder. Let’s face it, theology isn’t simple and can’t ever be simple unless we ignore it, which unfortunately is what a lot of people choose to do. Sadly, much of the church is asleep in its faith.

Scot McKnight


I have a friend who sent me a manuscript for review. He said he had written it for “laypeople.” He wanted to make some difficult philosophical and theological subject clear to laypeople. He tried. He tried hard, and he told stories, and I had to tell him what John Ortberg once told me about something I had tried to write for that every evasive audience, the “layperson”: Not even close.

Theology can be complex. The Trinity, which I consider so foundational to so many doctrines and ideas—like what love is or how fellowship is designed—is as complex as it gets. Great theologians have pondered Trinity with terms like person and have had to resort to great Latin or Greek terms to make things clear—like hypostasis or perichoresis. Indeed, it can get incredibly complex, and a theologian friend, LeRon Shults, sometimes speaks of things like “absolute futurity,” and most of us are left baffled and wondering what the in the world such an expression might mean. And many, because they are driven to a lack of understanding, resort to Who cares? or, It must not matter, or it would be clearer. I don’t think anyone questions the reality of the complexity of (this sentence structure! or) theology.

The issue is how to make great ideas clear so the ordinary person not only grasps them but can live them out.

I’ve done more than my share of thinking about this because so many people have asked me about it, and they’ve asked me because I have some success at doing this. The success I’ve had relates primarily to two people: my wife, Kris, who reads my stuff and tells me with straight-shooting language whether it’s clear and meaningful (and they are not the same thing); and John Ortberg, who simply told me that my stuff wasn’t close but that I needed to keep working. And he encouraged me so much that I kept working.

First, read those who do this well. Three names come to mind, and you may well think of others. Mortimer Adler, whatever you think of his Thomism or his theories of education, could write so clearly that many learned philosophy from him. C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, though dated in language and form and even ideas, is perhaps the single best piece of popular theology and apologetics written in the 20th century. And N.T. Wright is unquestionably the best writer on biblical subjects alive today.

Second, focus on the forest without the trees and only later bring in the trees. Get the big picture in mind and keep it in mind. Avoid building a case through the accumulation of details and then drawing a conclusion. One of my editors said to me that I needed to learn that lay folks don’t read a book unless they trust the author, so just believe they do and write what you think is true and forget trying to prove everything. I counseled a young author who was trying to make the jump from academic writing to lay folks with those words, and it made a huge difference for him. It is too easy to get trapped in the approach—methodical, abstract, accumulation of evidence—of scholarship and thinking that clear prose in that mode works for laypeople. It often doesn’t.

Third, let significance shape your writing. Until you know why your subject matters to ordinary people in their ordinary lives, you aren’t ready to write theology at a simple level. But once you do, everything can fall into place. I use The Jesus Creed as an example. I could have written a book on the Jewishness of Jesus, which quite frankly is interesting but doesn’t really “matter” to my mom or dad. Instead, I baptized the Jewishness of Jesus into the waters of significance: how to live the Christian life in accordance with how Jesus understood it. That turned the book from “history” to “significance.”

Fourth, learn what subject matters really matter. A friend of mine wrote an 800-page book “for the average reader.” He’s a very good academic writer. I told him that the “average” reader doesn’t want 800 pages on any theological topic. Any! The point here needs emphasis: Not only do we need to learn to let significance shape our writing, but we need to learn what length is needed for the layperson for what subject. The layperson isn’t (generally) interested in a 600-page (even if clearly written) book on the Pharisees. Strive for two pages. That’s about all that is needed.

Fifth, develop a pace that permits comprehension for more readers. The wildly successful The Purpose-Driven Life, by Rick Warren, had a trick: one simple idea in each chapter. One idea leading to another. That’s the secret. Scholars tend to have 10-15 ideas in a given chapter, and sometimes five quick points in one paragraph, each important and each needed but not drawn out enough for the average layperson to grasp what’s going on. It doesn’t matter how clear of a writer you are if your pace is too fast. Slow down. One idea per chapter. Save the other ideas for another day.

Finally, read your stuff aloud to someone, asking for feedback, until it all makes sense at the auditory level. I can’t emphasize this enough. Make the prose so clear that someone can sit and listen to you and enjoy what you are reading. Until that happens, you need to keep writing because it will otherwise be “not even close.”


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In what ways do you think youth ministry can improve on discussing theology?

Danny Kwon


After 16 years as the youth pastor at my church, I am now in the midst of an interesting phenomenon. I am both the youth pastor and parent of two students in the youth group. This has led to a most interesting outlook for me. For example, when it comes to how our youth ministry staff and volunteer considers what we want to teach through our small-group ministries, my approach has been considerably different. I have gone from thinking What do I want our students to learn? to What do I want my children to learn?

I suppose, then, that while all of us try to work with parents and consider families in our ministries, when your own children are part of your group, a different type of appreciation for the importance of this has come to light. For example, I get firsthand accounts of what my children have learned at Sunday school or midweek small group from their adult leaders.

Ultimately, this has led me to be convinced once again of the pedagogical importance of Sunday school and small-group ministries. Moreover, the significance of the content of what we teach still holds important value. This is not to lessen the importance of how we interpret what we learn.

I was part of a cohort with fellow .slant33 writer Steve Argue recently where he discussed the pedagogical importance of context in learning (finding meaning in what we learn) as well as the content of what we are taught. After spending intentional but random time with my boys and asking them about what they “learned at church,” I realized that the content of what my volunteers are teaching may need some reinforcement, at the very least. Hence, this is one area where I think discussing theology can improve in my ministry and perhaps in youth ministry in general.

An area in which our youth ministry had to reshape itself a few years was our emphasis on having a solid account of what are the theological foundations of our volunteers and to equip them accordingly. Sure, all of our volunteers go to the same church, listen to the same preacher, and have opportunities to go to the same Sunday school classes. However, the lenses through which they interpret these teachings may shape their theologies differently. We certainly need to help our volunteers focus on small-group strategies, how to ask the right questions, and how to love our students. Nevertheless, equipping them for the important and ultimate task of teaching students about God should not be neglected.

I myself have found in our volunteer staff meetings that we talk about forgotten students, disgruntled parents, how to make small groups more inviting. Yet the discussions on what the volunteers are teaching are often not emphasized enough. Hence, our staff and volunteers have taken great steps in recent years to take more time to understand our personal and deep-rooted theological convictions and how that manifests itself in how and what we teach our students. Similarly, equipping our volunteers theologically has been an important value in our ministry.

Ultimately, depending on a church’s theological traditions and what theological teachings a youth ministry may want to teach and convey to students, considering and discussing theology with one’s volunteers and having a unified understanding of it is important. So when a student asks perplexing or imaginative questions like what is your perspective on predestination, abortion, drinking, hell, or suicide, our volunteers would have a theological basis from which to discuss these questions. Similarly, this helps our volunteers to realize that one of our ultimate goals is to teach the content so the context—or finding personal meaning and value in what each student learns—would subsequently be an ongoing process for our students. However, if we did not emphasize the theological foundations first as a youth ministry (staff and volunteers), then this process could easily become an afterthought.

Discussing theology with our volunteers and staff has also played another significant role. In having a deeper understanding of who God is and how he functions, and applying personal meaning to it, our volunteers have become more joyful servants and in turn have a deeper love for our students. For example, one of the theological values we emphasize and discuss among our volunteers is that we believe God changes people. That means volunteers don’t change people. Therefore, being equipped with this truth, our volunteers are more apt to trust God and have more compassion on those students who don’t seem like they are changing. In other words, our volunteers can understand that God has his own timing to change students’ lives, and they need not become discouraged or frustrated when students are not changing “fast enough.” Ultimately, in valuing, embracing, and discussing even such simple theological truths such as this one, our volunteers become greater and more effective servants.


Helpful Resources for Students:





 





Dave Rahn


There are times when we could take great strides of improvement by not talking about theology in youth ministry. Of course, this possibility is itself a result of some theological reflection.

A number of years ago, while I was still a full-time professor, I noticed a disquieting gap in the preparation of our undergrad youth ministry students. They had taken required courses in systematic theology. Many had earned excellent grades in those courses. But I saw little evidence in my own classes that their exposure to theological knowledge resulted in any ability to think theologically about their youth ministry practices. Like too many youth ministers today, their answers to why they did what they did with young people ultimately defaulted to a vague positive assessment of their own personal experiences. They liked what they went through when they were in student ministry, and it seemed to work okay.

So the grandest suggestion I have for improving how we discuss theology in youth ministry is that we refrain from talking about anything in the abstract. If we fail to locate our conversations in the messy realities of our existence, then what we are doing is a theoretical exercise, one that may or may not bear any traceable or valuable fruit in our lives.

How fun to engage in some theological reflection about theological discussions! Notice how Paul coaches Timothy:

As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God’s work—which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm. (1 Timothy 1:3-7, NIV) Titus received a similar admonition (Titus 3:9-11). Clearly there are arenas of titillating conversation that should, as a matter of faithfulness to the Lord, be avoided. Why? Because they feed our egos, not the faith that subjugates our egos to the rule of Jesus. Knowledge is a Puff Daddy. It’s rendered useful if it can be linked to right living; otherwise, it is so much vapor in God’s values schema.

With all the caution cones I have tossed off my truck and onto the highway, I think I ought to confess that I teach an annual class that helps grad students think theologically in youth ministry. There is an entire world of possibilities when it comes to analyzing our youth ministry practices in the light of biblical truth. Take a quick spin through the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians to discover how many reflective bridges the apostle built between ministry activity and God’s Word. Far from not having anything to talk about, we who practice youth ministry ought to talk about the theological derivations, implications, and ramifications of everything we do. Here’s a sample, just to prime the pump:

• What role should parents play in your student ministry? What scriptural basis do you have for your position? Is that foundation applicable to all sorts of cases, or does it crumble when tested against the real-world realities of non-Christian or even abusive parents?

• Youth ministry is often known for its fun—have you worked out a theology of fun? What’s acceptable? What’s intolerable? What form of fun contributes to that which is most life giving and God honoring?

• Why do you meet as often or infrequently as you do? Are there any theological assumptions/commitments that are driving your meeting times, or are practical considerations your only real factor? And by the way, is there any theological warrant for challenging whether practical considerations should be the primary factor in our decision-making?

• How does your understanding of ecclesiology inform your youth ministry’s structure? Your student ministry’s connection with those who are older saints in the church? The way your young people engage their lost friends?

My greatest suggestion for theological discussions in youth ministry is that we talk more thoroughly and more candidly about all of our practices, seeking to discern biblical insights about them that can improve our faithfulness and please the Lord. I expect that such conversations can be as fruitful as the honesty and fidelity of our truth-searching allow.




Mike King


This is an extremely important question, not only for youth ministry and the spiritual formation of young people in our youth ministries; this is a critical question for the church and Christianity in North America.

The word theology combines two Greek words, theos (God) and logos (word, speech, or discourse). Theology, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “the study of God and God's relation to the world.” Many Christians think theology is something that only seminary students engage in and what theologians do for a living.

Theology helps us understand what the Bible means. Theology shapes what we believe about God, about ourselves, about life, about death, and about the future. Theology is crucial to understanding prayer, why we pray, and what happens when we pray. Theology helps us wrestle with issues like evil and why bad things happen to good people. Theology is vital to discover the meaning and purpose of our lives.

In reality, every human being is a theologian. Unfortunately, most people—including those who profess faith in Jesus Christ—are not very good theologians. The reason we are not developing good theologians is the church’s lack of intentionality to develop good theologians.

The North American posture toward life and the meaning of “the good life” is dominated by pragmatism. Pragmatism is largely an American philosophy that holds the belief that “the meaning of conceptions is to be sought in their practical bearings, that the function of thought is to guide action, and that truth is preeminently to be tested by the practical consequences of belief.”

Pragmatism has a significant influence on theology in our culture. Pragmatism as an orientation toward life and meaning subverts theology and tends to focus primarily on human action. If divine action is acknowledged, it is mostly a formulaic response to human action. It is challenging to question the success of the Joel Osteens, T.D. Jakeses, and Rick Warrens of the church world. How dare we not acknowledge their accomplishments? Certainly they must be evidence of God’s favor, right?

Most youth workers have been wrestling with the findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion, a research project directed by Christian Smith, professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, and Lisa Pearce, assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Smith uses the phrase moralistic therapeutic deism to describe the current religious mindset among young people today. Moralistic therapeutic deism is religious pragmatism writ large and is the result of very bad theology.

So what do we do to help young people become better theologians and engage in deeper theological reflection? We must become intentional about teaching young people to think theologically. We must create consistent opportunities for young people to participate in dialogue. We have to allow for dialectical tension. We must help young people embrace paradox. We must expose them to the great theological issues like election, sanctification, justification, atonement, sin, holiness, the nature of God, plus much more. We must deal with such questions as What does it mean to say God is triune, and why does it matter? If God is all powerful and good, why do bad things happen? Is the Bible from God or human beings, and is it inerrant, infallible, inspirational, or what? What really happened on the cross? and What does the resurrection of Jesus Christ mean for our future?

Theology helps us come to know what we think about God, and that shapes how we live. Theology will help young people form their identities and nurture their spirituality.

Most importantly, our theology should be Christocentric. Dietrich Bonhoeffer believed that theology begins in prayer and has Jesus Christ as the center of God’s revelation to human beings. Jesus Christ is God for us. Perhaps we should begin to improve our theological reflection in youth ministry by spending time answering slowly the three questions that form Bonhoeffer’s theology (as stated in Andy Root’s Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From A Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation).

1. Who is Jesus Christ?
2. Where is the living, active presence of Jesus Christ?
3. What then shall we do?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pragmatism


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Have Evangelicals lost their minds? (I.E., Is the greatest threat anti-intellectualism?)

Lilly Lewin


I am a practitioner. I like to apply my faith—live it out rather than talking it to death. My relationship with Jesus is practical and hands on. I’m about loving and relating to people. I like to use practical things to pray with, like seeing a car and using it as a reminder to pray for a friend who drives the same model or helping out a single-parent family.

As a teenager, I wasn’t one to question or need proof for my belief. I’d experienced God and his presence, and that was enough for me. I know that many people need more. They want the proofs and the facts to back up all they believe. But sometimes too much head knowledge can be rough on the practicality and the faith part of faith.

Too much of anything tends to be detrimental. When a person becomes extreme—either overly intellectual or extremely anti-intellectual—evangelical faith and evangelical witness suffer. We cannot share the love of Jesus if we are constantly battling over who is right and who is wrong or who is in and who is out. If our faith comes down to a list, then we’ve really missed the relational factor of the Savior.

If we overanalyze and overthink faith, we can come to believe that we can figure out life on our own. God becomes a nice idea rather than a unique Creator who longs to be in a relationship with his creation. And I’ve definitely met those who feel they have out-thought God and no longer need him, especially some teenagers of late. On the other hand, God has given us great minds to use and great intellects to achieve brilliant things. And we need scholars and teachers and those willing to dig deep in words and in the lab to discover new things.

Evangelicals have always been the practical ones. Until recently, evangelicals were the ones making sure the kingdom was about the people who aren’t here yet; helping people find Jesus and get to know him in a personal way. But lately the extreme side of evangelicals seem to have lost their minds. They’ve allowed fear to control their actions; like wanting to burn Qur'ans or allowing a television personality to become a spokesmodel for God.

The true threat to evangelicalism is fear. And instead of being about what we are for, many people are now focused on what they are afraid of. My Bible says, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” Doesn’t yours? This fear of others has meant that we’ve lost a lot of compassion for the “least of these.” And doing unto others seems to have gotten lost too. And we are afraid of anyone or anything that is different from what we’ve experienced.

Fear makes us do stupid things. We overreact; we shut down; we choose to believe the worst rather than the best about a person or situation. We close ourselves off from people who are different and choose hate over love. Fear can also cause us to lose relationship both with others and with God.

Also, our love of TV and technology has increased fear. 24/7 media allows us to be overly aware of all that is going on all over the world all the time. And rather than using this knowledge as an inspiration to pray, the 24/7 nature of the news causes too many of us to panic. Hearing things over and over again causes confusion and anxiety. And entertainment media can also blow information out of proportion. Some people begin to believe that the world is out of control and that they have to do whatever it takes to defend themselves, their family, their faith. Many have become defenders, fighters, rather than peacemakers. And here may be where brains get checked at the door; thus, we forget that God is in control no matter what the news or the newspapers say. And we forget that God isn’t scared and really doesn’t need to be defended.

An additional negative about media is its ability to define people and things. Many of us have acquiesced to the media’s definition of who/what an evangelical is. Sadly, the word evangelical now is a label that isn’t positive. An evangelical is seen as someone who has the tendency to be “ultra-conservative, right-wing, tea party, afraid, and anti-everything.” Evangelicals too often are known for what they are against and who they are attacking, not for loving people or loving each other, or serving others or even serving one another. Why have we allowed the media to define and label, and why have we allowed the extremists to get all the press? Hum…

I’d rather see us embrace the evangelicalism that Menno Simons professed almost 500 years ago. He said, "True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant. It clothes the naked, it feeds the hungry, it comforts the sorrowful, it shelters the destitute, it serves those that harm it, it binds up that which is wounded, it has become all things to all people."

What would happen if I really live this out? Live out the Sermon on the Mount. Live out Simons’s quote. Not just love the Bible, not just believe the gospel, not just know and understand doctrine but actually love one another, actually love my enemies. And actually serve the least of these. And as I/we do, I/we will have less and less time to complain, less and less time to be fearful, and less time to attack others who believe differently. And the media will have a very different label for evangelicals.

Jim Hampton


Those of us who teach in seminaries often hear the old joke in which someone says, “How are things going at the cemetery?” I’m sure most of the time it is good-natured ribbing, but I also think it is often an indication of what people really think about seminaries (and about critical thinking in general). As one person put it to me when he learned I was a seminary professor, “Seminary is the place pastors go to lose their faith.”

However, we need to come to grips with the idea that being a critical thinker and being spiritually healthy are not polar opposites. In fact, as Dallas Willard reminds us, “We need to understand that Jesus is a thinker, that this is not a dirty word but an essential work, and that his other attributes do not preclude thought, but only ensure that he is certainly the greatest thinker of the human race: ‘the most intelligent person who ever lived on earth.’ He constantly uses the power of logical insight to enable people to come to the truth about themselves and about God from the inside of their own heart and mind” (quoted in James Sire, Habits of the Mind, p. 181).

Willard is building on the idea of St. Anselm in the 11th century: fides quaerens intellectum. "Faith seeking understanding." Anselm was not saying, "I understand, therefore I believe" nor yet, "I believe, therefore I don't need to understand." Rather, what he wanted to convey is that “Because I believe, I hunger to understand.” Learning feeds faith, and faith drives for fuller knowledge.

The problem, of course, is that being a critical thinker means we will sometimes (often?) have to consider ideas that seem to call into question previously held beliefs. Things we were taught in Sunday school, learned from our parents, or even heard from the pulpit are suddenly brought into sharp contrast with new information we’ve received. The reality is that this can be an extremely painful experience. No one likes to be told that what they have always held to be true may in fact not be. However, know that it is nothing strange, unusual, different, or unique. We who teach see it all the time. It is not your heart drying up. It is God trying to wean you off milk and onto more solid food. It's God trying to get you away from Snickers and Diet Coke and onto vegetables, fruit, and fiber.

This is a moral and spiritual process that many people—especially students of theology—pass through and which Paul Ricouer has described in three stages: first naïvete; critical awareness; and second naïvete.

Stage one is naivete. We have a simple, direct faith. We tend to see world in black-and-white categories. How do you know what to believe? What is right? The "authorities" tell us. Knowledge is absolute and unchanging—it is possessed by the authorities. Anyone who disagrees with the authority must be wrong. No compromise or negotiation. People raised in such environments often grow up to be stage-1 thinkers—authoritarian, dogmatic. However, when authorities disagree with each other (no matter what the area), it is deeply unsettling. How do you know which one to believe/follow? As soon as we have to explain why we believe one over the other, we have moved from stage-1 thinking. Just as Adam and Eve couldn't return to the garden, back to blind and uncritical acceptance of authority once they had tasted the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so it is nearly impossible to return to stage 1 after realizing its oversimplifying inadequacies.

Stage two is critical awareness. That's when we start learning stuff. Greek, Hebrew, doctrine, philosophy, church history. We start realizing that not all devoted believers say things the way we do or think the way we do. We learn that much in the Bible isn't what we thought, that some important passages have major unresolved issues, many passages have two or three genuinely possible and mutually exclusive interpretations. The result is a pain like no other. We feel stripped of our faith, our certainty. And since that stripping happened through the acquisition of new knowledge, we blame all new knowledge. At this point, we feel we have lost our first love. In Christian education, we call this the liminal phase.

We can retreat back to the first naïvete and resist any further learning, focusing on techniques and skills of ministry (except, of course, the skills of exegesis and theological analysis). We can try to unscramble the egg and get it back into the shell. People responding this way deny that their response is one of fear.

We can become cynics, masters of Christian learning and language but detached from all of it; we see it all as metaphors, images, nothing as certain or normative. A lot of scholars end up here and assume you can't have a profound and certain faith if you “really know the score." Unlike the retreaters, people in this reaction talk about their disillusionment and disappointment. They make no bones about their cynicism and even come to enjoy shaking people up. But there is a third option.

Stage three is a movement forward. We learn enough to become, once again, humble and small in our own sight. We laugh both at our early, naïve egotism (Satan, the prince of darkness and father of lies, is personally after me, so I must be important!) and at our critical cynicism (I actually thought I was smart enough to overturn a consensus of Christian truth, teaching, and experience). We realize that both naïvete and cynicism are immature.

This stage is often called second naïvete. We recover our simplicity, our directness in faith, but we realize that our outlook, however true, is at best provisional, certainly partial, and that God has a life beyond us. We are fearless in learning but also fearless in our believing. Oddly enough, people who are authentically in the second naïvete typically decline to say so. They merely see themselves as pilgrims, knowing what they know, wanting to learn more, and wanting to please God; but they leave the ultimate issue in God's hands, confident that he is good on his word, even if we ourselves are not always sure of the best way to interpret his word. We don't shrink from faith, but we know that "we know in part.“

Charles Wesley, the great Methodist hymn writer and theologian, is famously said to have stated, “Unite the two so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety.” Wesley understood that to be a biblical Christian meant that one had to find ways to synthesize our critical thinking with our spirituality. As we learn to submit our intellect and our heart to God, only then we will discover what Jesus meant when he stated, “The truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

Scot McKnight


Mark Noll, the story goes, was irritated with the direction of American evangelicalism’s premier institution, Wheaton College, and opined publicly in a book-length rant, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. It was a good read because there is an undeniable anti-intellectualism among many evangelicals.

I see it in an utterly baffling observation like this: “What’s all this about the Trinity? I don’t see the word Trinity in my Bible.” Or I see it in American Christians who, in what can only be called a cocksure manner, utter strong words on behalf of the Tea Party or Republicans or Democrats but, when asked about the simplest of explanations of an economic theory, have absolutely no idea how the economy works. For some it’s as simple as an ATM: put in numbers, out comes money. An economic theory is at work and is perhaps the single most ignored factor in political discourse.

But my ire is most provoked when I hear such banalities from the lips of pastors and preachers who, though they are seeking to appeal to the populist audiences to which they minister, are propagating the sort of superficiality that erodes our faith and deprives the intelligent parishioners—and there are more than most care to recognize—of growth and exploration and, sometimes, of a faith substantive enough to survive the withering impact of intellectual questions.

But we need to be honest: The intellectual life is not for all; not all care about how Trinity and atonement connect; not all care to think theoretically about the design of the state in ancient Israel and how it was impacted by the New Testament expansion into a global movement and then to consider how that might be best lived out in our world. Nor do all care to explore the subtle and brilliantly attractive connections of faith and science. And not all that many want to explore Charles Taylor’s theories of modernity and secularism. Let’s admit that perhaps the majority don’t care about such things. There’s no more reason to make everyone into intellectuals than to make all of us baristas.

But some people are intellectuals, and it is the calling of the Jesus Creed to love God “with all our minds.” This means the church—every church so far as it is able—must muster resources and make possible the exploration of the mind of God, the mind of Christ, and the mind of the church when it comes to intellectual questions.

Here are a few intellectual questions of our day, and a church that doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of the questions and the integrity required to tackle them seriously is irresponsible and in need of repentance.

I think of the massive shift occurring among our young adults about how to think Christianly while embracing some form of evolution. Most of my students don’t even question evolution but have profound questions about how to think through theological topics and what the Bible says in light of their embrace of evolution.

I think of the serious thinking being done today on the relationship of the state and the church. There is an instinct for many simply to align with a political party, and often enough the instinct is barely informed. But there are many today who want to ponder how to think Christianly about state, about economy, and about the kingdom of God in our world—and how the kingdom impacts the former. James Davison Hunter’s recent book, How to Change the World, is one sophisticated probing, and many crave conversation about these topics—and often from the angle of a particular expertise: economists have things to say, business folks have perspective… I could go on.

And I think of historians who want to know what Jesus was like in his Jewish world and won’t stand for banal analogies; they want to know who wrote Isaiah and are unconvinced it is a simple one-guy-did-it-all approach, and they want to work that into their doctrine of Scripture.

And I think of many who are deeply aware of how context and history and heritage shape what we believe, and they are aware that the Reformation’s questions and answers, while profound and valuable, are not ours—and they have new questions that transcend those questions and those answers, and pastors who want to regurgitate Reformation theology and pretend that is enough simply don’t get the job done for them.

And I think those who are studying contemporary culture recognize it is post-Christian and know that old methods don’t connect well. They want to explore a missiology for a new day.

So what can we do? Let me make three suggestions:

First, pastors need to recognize, legitimate, and support the value of the intellectual life. This means, at times, exploring some intellectual themes in sermons and classes. Some in churches like to hear a reference to Aristophanes and Shakespeare and even Richard Rorty.

Second, churches need to provide a safe place for intellectuals in a church community to gather with others, think about serious topics, and ponder away at issues that may not find resolution or that may—and here’s the reality—lead to answers that aren’t as safe as many pastors might prefer. Truth will win, so let’s work at it and not be afraid.

Third, intellectuals in churches need to demand that their pastor respect the intellectual life and that their churches provide a forum for intellectual endeavors. There is no reason why churches can’t invite Francis Collins to speak or ask a professional archaeologist to speak about recent discoveries. Again, the fields are ripe for harvest. Who will see the fields?


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Theology.God Environments

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

Sarah Arthur


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Chris Folmsbee


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andy Root


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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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.


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Theology. Worship Gatherings

What are we missing in our worship gatherings?

Jim Hampton


Wow, where should I start?
Some would suggest that it is a spirit of freedom in worship, where worshipers are encouraged to respond to the promptings of the Spirit and worship the triune God in complete liberty. Others have countered that it is the loss of formal liturgy, that magnificent order of things which has guided the church for centuries, connecting today’s church to its history and tradition.

Some might suggest that it is the loss of truly corporate worship. They decry the fact that every age group is divided and long for a return to where young and old worship side by side, learning from and appreciating each other.

And still others have suggested that the one thing missing from our worship gathering is the loss of true community. Living in the suburbs and driving in to mega-churches has led, they believe, to a lack of truly knowing and thus meeting the needs of the others in our midst.

Could it possibly be that all the above are right? Possibly. Of course, what one believes is missing has everything to do with what one believes is important in worship.

When I consider worship, I always hearken back to Jesus’ words: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). It might help us to briefly explore what is meant by each of these, since I think they speak to this issue of what we consider to be missing.

With all your heart: In our culture, we tend to think of romantic images regarding the heart. However, in Jesus’ day, the heart referred not to emotions but to our will, the ability to make choices. This can also be referred to as volition.

With all your soul: This is where the wellspring of emotions was considered to be located.

With all your mind: The ability to remember and to make sense of things, perceiving their significance for our lives.

With all your strength: Obviously involving the physical body.

If you examine most churches, you’ll find that they tend to specialize in doing one of these items. Some are great at focusing on the intellect, offering really strong biblical preaching which pushes the worshipers to think seriously about God and his role in the world.

Some are great at helping us worship with our emotions, offering services that are full of elements (worship music, altar calls, preaching that tugs at the heart) that speak to our souls (emotions).

Still others do a phenomenal job of incorporating items that help the worshiper to worship with her whole body. Using experiences that incorporate multiple senses allows those present to worship with their whole bodies.

And still other worship gatherings focus on the volitional aspect, challenging congregants on a weekly basis to truly consider what God is asking of them as they relate to the world and then pushing them to engage in those activities.

And while each of these is good and needed, could it be that what is really missing from our churches is the ability to love God with all four of the required elements: our hearts, souls, minds, and strength? What would happen if churches understood the need, as the late theologian Robert Weber used to describe, for convergence, where all four of these issues come together in powerful ways?

It seems to me that if we were to find ways to involve all four elements, then our worship gatherings would be missing a lot less than they are now, regardless of what you consider to be missing. In fact, could it be that if we were truly faithful to Jesus’ command, that worship would no longer be seen as a gathering but as a way of life that is so powerful in its message to the world around us that others would be compelled by the power of our witness?


Dave Rahn


We’re missing options that can be led by non-professionals.
I tend to agree with those who’ve observed that though the Protestant Reformation theologically liberated the laity, we have yet to be functionally empowered. If anything, the proliferation of mega-churches has signaled we prefer high-quality experiences delivered by exceptionally gifted paid staff more than interdependent participation. We pay for the right to lean into worship as if we were arena skybox observers, should we so choose…our choice being the operative value.

This seems a far cry from a vision of worship where each person brings something from their gift set to share with others who are followers of Jesus. Quality is measured against the best entertainment production standards mankind has ever witnessed rather than the percentage of people who offer their best. Where’s the widow’s mite in this mix? How can everyone bring something for strengthening the church (1 Corinthians 14:26) when our gathering strategies involve thousands of people trying to move in and out of the sanctuary in 75-minute windows?

Here’s one way I make sense of how our values rank. What are we most urgent about protecting when it comes to worship? Very few of us tolerate amateur hour if we have options. The quality of the experience is more important than being part of a fellowship where people depend on our contributions. Such a value wanders dangerously from biblical priorities. In the name of programmatic excellence, we abandon the Ephesians 4 picture of God’s people being built up as active servants making a difference in our collective growth, maturity, unity, and love.

I think we’re missing opportunities to contribute where the stakes are high—where it matters whether we deliver. When our very attendance is optional as long as our dollars keep flowing, we’re not acting like body parts whose health affects the whole. Therein lies our current structural flaw. Our worship experiences are made to fit nicely within America’s consumer culture. Assumptions that guide our decisions are seldom challenged. We shop around until we find a church that fits our already established lifestyles, comforted by the microscopically flawed observation that our Lord didn’t tell everyone with money to sell everything to follow him. Surely our starting points are acceptable givens…and we’re terribly busy. Church needs to fit our overly burdened lives by making things easier for us.

Against this cultural current, I think we miss being in relationships of obligation with others who want to glorify God no matter what the cost. We’re being formed into soft spectators when we’re called to join Paul as ambassadors of Christ who do whatever it takes to make the one true God famous. And guess what? We will not get there as long as nametag relationships are acceptable.

For this journey, size matters. Perhaps we should re-norm the central weekly experiences of our church life together from large-group celebration and teaching to small-group sharing and worship. Resources available for such living room gatherings have never been more abundant than they are now. Small groups have the flexibility to practice disciplines together that require space, time, and loving transparency.

I am not disputing how exciting and valuable it is when thousands converge for worship and instruction. It enriches our vision when we see ourselves as the people of God, grandly assembled as confessors of Jesus. But—to parallel the pattern of Old Testament feasts—we have permission to celebrate this status less often than weekly.

We have not, however, been excused from doing life together under the obligation of the Great Commandment. The sense of urgency for this agenda is missing as we gather to worship.

Andy Root


This is a confession of a mind-wandering TV-holic: I find most of what we do in worship gatherings boring (see, I said it). I know your response: Well, when was worshiping God supposed to be entertaining? And why in the world would your boredom be the criteria for a good worship service?

I heard the story about a man who was really into Jesus, was passionate about Jesus, but confessed that he was bored stiff by worship at his church. The passionate follower of Jesus was asked if he would be willing to die for Jesus, if he believed enough that he would die for his beliefs. After thinking and pausing, he responded that he would, that he thought he would be willing die for his love of Jesus. The inquisitor then said, “You mean you’re willing to die for Jesus but not be bored for him?”

Snap (wait, is that now lame to say?). The point of the story is to show the inconsistency in this person’s commitment and to make a point that we shouldn’t make being entertained the criteria for good worship.

I guess I agree, but in a digitally saturated context, boredom and death are somewhat synonymous. What I mean is, in a culture like ours, we are used to being creators—creating things on our social networking sites, creating things by interacting with them. We create and interact to construct meaning. There was a time when the church’s job was simply to give people meaning, and the people in the pews simply swallowed the church’s pill. But this perspective no longer holds. The church is now not the only meaning-creating, pill-popping show in town (to push the analogy too far). In late modernity, meaning has become liquefied, allowing us to create, construct, and rework meaning for ourselves (of course, this has its risks and negatives).

The problem with 9 out of 10 worship gatherings isn’t that they’re necessarily boring; the problem is that they become boring because the worship gatherings don’t invite people to make meaning, to be involved in something meaningful in the worship gathering.

Now, you might say this is just cultural accommodation. Maybe. But theology and ministry have always been a dialogue with culture. But there is also a theological rationale. To confess God as trinity and the Spirit’s continued work calling us into the redemptive work of the Son and creating work of the Father is for us to ourselves participate with God in the process of creation, of wrestling with our humanity and with our God, to live into questions like, What is lifetime, and why do we live it? or Who is this God? What’s missing in worship gatherings is the opportunity to create meaning, to construct theological means.

But how do you do this without it falling into some kind of subjective chaos? In our little church, we are trying to make the prayers of the people the place were the whole congregation is invited to create meaning and do theological reflection. We create this meaning by engaging and seeking God in each other’s narratives of joy and suffering. So we invite anyone to come forward and share their prayers with the congregation, and together we pray. But they are not invited to simply provide a prayer request, like you would provide a list of the needed ingredients for a recipe. Rather, they are invited to share these prayer requests in narrative form. It is one thing to say, “I pray for people without jobs.” It is quite another to say, “I pray for people without jobs because my brother lost his job, and the hurt in his eyes hurts me, and his kids…I worry about his kids.”

In narrative shape, we all are pulled into constructing theological meaning, seeking the action of God next to the stories of suffering and joy. And in the end I think this is what our worship gatherings are missing: an understanding of where God is present and how God moves in our process of creating meaning together. (For more on this, see The Promise of Despair).



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Theology.Narrative Theology

What is narrative theology, and how does the narrative of God shape our lives today?

Sarah Arthur


In the beginning was story: God (the main character) created (plot) the heavens and the earth (setting). Out of that story and its unfolding, the people of God began to articulate various principles, precepts, ideas, and doctrines that summarized the nature of God and God’s purposes with humankind.

First, story; then, systematics. Welcome to narrative theology.

Theologians identify different ways of talking to and about God by making a distinction between “first-order” and “second-order” discourse. Worship is first-order discourse. Hearing or telling biblical narratives, saying prayers, singing liturgies or psalms, reciting creeds, celebrating sacraments—anything that is spoken or sung by the faith community in worship—this is first-order discourse. That’s because encountering the Word is the community’s primary mode and vocation.

By contrast, talking about or reflecting on the Word is second-order discourse. Doctrines, principles, statements of faith (not to be confused with creeds like the Nicene, which, in Kathleen Norris’s words, are “admirably compact forms of storytelling”), theological dissertations, shorthand vocabulary like soteriology and ecclesiology: these come second—not because they aren’t important but because, without the communal narrative at play in worship, doctrines have nothing to talk about. But we need second-order discourse to help us clarify the internal logic of the faith we claim. And occasionally that logic can be made intelligible to outsiders through apologetics.

Unfortunately, too often we boil Christianity down to second-order discourse. We give the impression that faith is a bunch of principles that intellectually must be affirmed rather than a person whose body and way of life must be embraced. Narrative theology is an attempt to reclaim first-order discourse (particularly the narratives of Scripture as enacted in the worshiping community), not only as a valid way of talking to/about God but as the first and most vital mode of faith. Even more, narrative theology claims that first-order encounters with the story of God actually shape our character over time, shape us to become more and more like the story’s main character, Jesus.

So what does any of this have to do with youth ministry? Well, it means that we can’t neglect to engage youth in first-order discourse. This takes place best within the faith community as it gathers for its main worship service, but elements of it can be present at youth events too. Worship, prayer, hearing or telling biblical narratives, testimony, creeds—all constitute a deep well that nurtures the human heart and imagination with meanings that may not be intellectually graspable. After all, the mentally handicapped kid in the front row can encounter Jesus while taking communion even if he can’t string together the words to tell you who Jesus is or what Jesus has done for us. The characters of the young are shaped by the story.

Alongside engaging youth in first-order discourse is the important task of second-order discourse. We can’t neglect to talk with youth about the Bible, about worship, about the key doctrines of faith as a way to help them articulate who God is and what God is up to. Unfortunately, it is far too easy to jump to second-order discourse—say, three points about the parable of the lost son—without letting youth really encounter the story, really pause and wonder about it, perhaps even hear it in the context of the other parables in Luke 15.

If we must extract three points from the parable, let’s at least refrain from saying, “What Jesus really means here is…” Really? We can say this better than he did? Rather, the story is what Jesus really means. The form of narrative carries the point and cannot be divorced from it. Any abstract theologizing about it is second-order stuff.

Keeping these two levels of discourse in creative tension is not easy. Part of the trick of being a youth minister who helps youth engage in first-order discourse involves (1) trusting the Holy Spirit to work through the main worship service of your church; and (2) trusting the Holy Spirit to speak through biblical narratives. No, really: If I hear one more youth worker say that we need to make the Bible “come alive” for our kids, I just might throw something.

Meanwhile, part of the trick of second-order discourse involves (1) doing your biblical and theological homework (no more half-baked, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants lessons that you planned at the stoplight on the way to church); and (2) letting youth do some of the talking.

Not easy. But worth it.




Chris Folmsbee


Narrative theology, like any other genre of theology, is a conversation about God. However, unlike most other conversations about God, narrative theology is a conversation about God in the setting of story.  

For some, narrative theology is often understood as a rejection of propositional truths. However, I think narrative theology is best understood as having the essential responsibility of informing our systematic theology. Resulting from our systematic theology, therefore, we understand consistent relationships of theology. These consistent relationships that form help us understand God more profoundly. So, in other words, a full-bodied narrative theology provides the basis for a healthy systematic theology.

If we begin with systematic theology to have conversations about God, which many people do, we neglect to discover God in the setting of story. When we neglect to discover God through the story—the Bible—we can overlook the context and meaning of the micro-stories found within the meta-story. A story without context and meaning is an incoherent, disjointed, and aimless story—a story without a plot. God certainly has a plot! God’s plot is to restore the world to its intended wholeness. When we have no overarching storyline or plot, we have a collection of stories about God, all of which can be abandoned outside the narrative of God.  

The narrative of God ought to shape our lives in many ways. Here are a just a few ways in which God’s story shapes or transforms our lives.

·    Conversion- The story of God and its redemptive message reveal God’s passionate pursuit to have a whole relationship with all of humanity. The redemptive message is one of grace, mercy, forgiveness, and hope. It is the story of God’s will, way, and work of providing salvation and justice through his Son, Jesus Christ, for all of humanity. God provides life transformation for all those who believe (in word and deed) in the gospel story.

·    Conformity- The story of God not only reveals God’s passionate pursuit of a whole relationship with all of humanity; it reveals the intended ways of God. God intends for his people to live lives that reflect the very nature of God. We conform to the intended ways of God when we embrace the image of God in which we’ve been created and live as exact representations of our loving God.

·    Community- The story of God reveals God’s passionate pursuit, intended ways, and his special people—the church. The story of God helps faith communities know what it means to be a blessed people who seek to bless others. Christian communities of faith are guided by the story of God and are held to a high responsibility of being of one heart and authentic fellowship.

·    Calling- The story of God reveals God’s passionate pursuit of humanity, his intended ways, his special people, and their calling. The story of God shapes the church as it carries out the work of God’s mission, which is to restore the world to its intended wholeness. The story of God provides the purpose of our communities, our conformity, and our conversion in order that the church might join in the restorative activity of God through holy living, embodied practice, and trusted guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Narrative theology is a conversation about God in the setting of a story. That very story is what shapes our lives. We know God in part through his story. As Christians, we know ourselves in whole (imago Dei) through his story of salvation, justice, peace, and hope.



           

Claire Smith


Let me tell you a story. It was a dark and cloudy day. The rain had stopped falling, but the skies remained gray, and the wind was chilly. Margaret looked outside and suddenly saw the first flowers of the season, pink and blue. She remembered God’s promise in Genesis 8:22: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.”

At its most basic level, narrative theology is doing theology through storytelling. A narrative is a story. People tell their faith stories as opposed to studying or discussing theology from an abstract, philosophical basis. Moreover, narrative theology recognizes that the Bible comprises people’s stories about God from which we learn about God. I began with a story that demonstrates a recognition of God powerfully at work in creation and nature. I suspect that you would have reacted differently if I had simply said, “God is at work in nature and creation” as opposed to, “Let me tell you a story” followed by one. Which grips you more? Which captures your imagination more? Which one leaves greater room for you to enter in and share? What did this true story say to you about God?

Stories are pretty basic to who we are. They have endured over time. They surround us and help to shape us, knowingly and unknowingly. Moreover, stories are basic to who we are as Christians. Where would we be without the witness/stories of God’s people of God at work in the world and their response to God as found in the Scriptures? A question for us, therefore, is how do we create space to tell our faith stories and learn more about how God has been and continues to be at work in the lives of God’s people? How do we enrich and encourage each other and our students through stories or testimonies? Importantly, how do we bring our stories into the light of God’s story in the Bible so that they are more than a collection of interesting stories?

We are all storytellers as we seek to understand and bring order to our world. However, we often create, tell, and repeat stories without thinking about them and what's behind them. As we make space for stories and narrative in our ministries, let us consider the view of the world they present. We need to pause and reflect. When we hear a story, what are we really hearing? When we tell a story, what are we really saying? In both cases, whose view are we getting and sharing, and whose are we not receiving and bringing to the light? Then, as we examine these stories that we hear and share, which often underlie our actions, how can we do so in light of God’s story? How does God’s story of outreaching love shape and alter our stories?

Sadly, I’m not always sure how and if the narrative of God really shapes our lives as God’s people today. At times, it seems as if we are more bent on shaping it than on being shaped by it. Part of this may be that we don’t really know and understand it. One of the challenges in lifting up narratives and stories is that we may stop at narrating what is happening to us and living out of our perspective and how we find God in our stories. However, may we continually in community read and understand God’s narrative as it is mediated through the many stories comprising the Bible, using the tools available to us. As we do this, if we could hold the stories of our day up to its light and see where we’re faithful and unfaithful, we may be shaped by God’s story, and that story may continue to be lived out and renewed in our day.


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Theology . Mission of God

What is the mission of God? And what is our role in that?


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Mike King


In his 2006 speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, Bono referred to a spiritual leader to whom he made constant requests for prayers and blessings on behalf of his works of justice around the world. Bono declared, “This wise man asked me to stop. He said, ‘Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing—because it’s already blessed.’”

So what is God doing? What is God’s mission? The term missio dei (mission of God) implies that God has a purposeful plan. Karl Barth emphasized the reality that God is at work, actio dei (the action of God). We often think of mission when we discuss the mission and activity of God, which, unfortunately, is so enmeshed in a Western mindset of saving the heathen. The script of ministry mixed with colonial ambitions has wreaked havoc throughout Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Middle East, and Asia.

The mission of God must be understood by the church to be much more than soteriological concerns of the church to get people saved. God’s mission is much broader than expansion of the church. No doubt, the church is called to participate directly in God’s mission and activity. However, the activity and mission of God extend beyond the life of the church. God’s mission doesn’t exist because of the church; the church exists because of God’s mission. God’s work in the world has many participants beyond the church. The church must do a better job of bearing witness to the reality that others are participating in God’s mission, even those participants who may not even be aware of their cooperation with God’s activity.

The mission of God also must be understood as an attribute of the triune God. The Western church theological focus has been on “sentness”—the Father sending the Son, the Father and Son sending the Holy Spirit, and the Father, Son, and Spirit sending the church. To grasp the beauty of our triune God in relation to the mission of God, we must recover the Eastern Church Trinitarian emphasis on God’s radical communality and the movement toward restoration and shalom. We are being invited to participate in God’s mission and activity through our triune God’s perichoretic activity of relational and complete restoration.

As followers of Jesus, we must see our roles within our church communities to participate fully and passionately in God’s overarching mission with the eschatological hope of the absolute reign of God and the restoration of all things.  When our future meets God’s eschatological reality, what will this new earth and new world be like? When God’s mission is complete, when God’s reign is on earth as it is in heaven, what will that look like? What is our hope?

To answer this, we must focus on Jesus Christ. The best way for us to understand the manifestation of missio dei is to see it Christo-centrically. Through God’s special revelation—Jesus Christ—we are restored and reconciled to God, to ourselves, to others, and to the entire creation. Not only are we redeemed through Jesus Christ’s salvific work but also all things—including all creation groaning for restoration—will be made new.

Through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s ultimate plan and purpose for his entire creation was made manifest and was accomplished in an already/not-yet reality. With Christ as the first fruit, we believe there will be resurrection. There will be healing and peace among people. There will be justice for all. No more hunger, suffering, and death. There will be a return of shalom.

We must broaden the vision of our young people to understand that they are being invited to cooperate with God’s mission. We are co-agents in God’s restorative work. We are Jesus’ followers engaged in God’s missional activity; we are his friends and co-laborers. This message is so much more compelling for young people to give their lives to. Focusing primarily on getting young people saved so they can go to heaven when they die is insufficient to ignite the imagination of this generation to order their lives in abandonment to God’s entire, encompassing, restorative mission.

We must engage in Christian formation of young people that leads to a more robust understanding of God’s overarching mission and activity throughout all creation. This understanding must involve a proper view of the church’s role within this mission as truly unique and special because God planned it that way. But they must also have the spiritual maturity to discern that God’s mission is greater than being bound exclusively within the scope of the church. We must know when to point to those outside the church and to activities outside the church (even in other religions) and bear witness to God’s mission and activity by proclaiming, “There it is.”


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Scot McKnight


The year was 369 AD, and the land was the eastern portion of what we now call Turkey. The church leader of the area was Basil, son of wealthy Christian parents and brother to two future saints, Gregory of Nyssa and Macrina, his sister. The problem was a brutal, enduring famine that was soon stretching humans to their limits. Parents went to bed wondering if it might not be wiser to sell some of their children in order to keep some of the others alive and then wondered if they could ever look the remaining children in their eyes following such a profound breach of trust.
    
What to do? was the question Basil, now bishop, was asking himself daily. Basil the Great answered that question by tapping into the answers he had absorbed so deeply to a different question: What is God doing in this world, and what does God want of us, his people? Answering that question enabled Basil to answer the more pressing question.

Basil, if you don’t know the story, began to sell off the acres and acres of land his parents had passed on to him, and when the needs became more pressing, he created the first-ever Christian community, called The New City and eventually known as Basiliad, a place for kingdom living. At the Basiliad, described as a koinobios, a “life in common,” lepers were nursed, the poor were provided for, the hungry were given food, and the Lord was worshiped and served.

Living with and for others was the only reasonable response to the breakouts of need Basil faced, but living with and for others was grounded for Basil in what he knew God was like and what God was doing in this world.

The mission of God shapes the mission of God’s people.

But Basil knew that God’s mission didn’t begin at creation. He knew it never began but always was. This great Cappadocian theologian was one of the architects plumbing the depths of how to understand God as three-in-one and one-in-three. The foundational term used then was the Greek word perichoresis, which describes the mutual indwelling and the mutual inter-penetration of the Father and the Son and the Spirit.

Let’s get this down to manageable levels now: perichoresis is the idea that the Father’s life was with the Son and the Spirit and that the Father’s life was for the Son and the Spirit; and the same is true of the Son and the Spirit. When all is said and done, the Trinity becomes an endless dance of love for the “others.”

The mission of God begins in the perichoresis of the Trinity.

It follows, then, for Basil, that he as leader and his people as followers of Christ were to dwell with those in need and to live for those in need; which they did, and none did it better, and none gave up more, and none sacrificed himself more willingly than this great leader of the church. Basil set the tone and the example, and the Basiliad has become a living testimony of what God’s people look like when they live out the mission of God in this world: they live with one another and for one another.

Perhaps it surprises some today, but it would not have surprised Basil that the final scene of the Bible describes God’s people as they are supposed to be. That scene is found in Revelation 21, where we discover that God’s people finally find themselves exactly where they are supposed to be and doing exactly what they are designed to do; and that place is a city, the New Jerusalem, and what they are doing is dwelling with God and for God and with one another and for one another.

This city, and I see no reason not to call it the City of God, descends from the heavens to the earth, showing us that life on the earth matters eternally and that what we do now will shape what we can do then. This city is God’s dwelling among his people, and this city is itself the new creation (21:5). This city is perfectly proportioned and made of the best of materials for the best of people because God wants his people to dwell in joy and peace and love. But what is perhaps most powerful is that the city has no temple because the temple is the Lamb, Jesus himself.

The mission of God is for you and me to be with God and to live for God and to be with one and another and to be for one another, and all of this we do with Jesus Christ in the center.  He is our temple, and he is our light.

           


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Dave Rahn


Living missionally is all the rage today. Makes me wonder if God is impressed that we are getting something so important finally dialed in. Without presuming to speak for the Lord, I do wonder why it’s taking us so long to calibrate what it means to live into the mission of God. This is not a new idea.

This mission of God is rooted in the creation story. We humanoids were designed to have our lives centered around the one true God, Creator of heaven and earth and all things in between. By being connected in proper relationship with God, we were made to enjoy him, serve him, interact with him, and love him forever. Among all of the other artistry created by the Lord, we are his masterpiece. He takes pleasure in our comfortable delight in him and that which he created for us to enjoy.

Imagine that there was a mission statement hung on some heavenly wall, before God moved on the great nothing to divide it into light and dark, heaven and earth, land and water, sun and moon. The ultimate division was between multitudes of wild creatures and man, made in God’s own image. The mission statement might read: That all who are made in my image might live in joyous union with me and in appreciative harmony with everyone and everything else I have created for their benefit. Or perhaps a pre-automobile bumper sticker: Love me and enjoy my loving provision forever.  

We can wordsmith this idea of the mission of God, but the ultimate picture is not unlike what Lawrence Richards wrote about when he used hyphenation as a means to express what it’s all about: faith-as-life. Our very life is hidden, discovered, and experienced when we are in right relationship with the Creator God. Every other relationship with everything else in creation has the potential to be life-enhancing when our Creator God is honored as Lord of every aspect of our existence.

But we could benefit from some contextualization. The overarching story of the Bible is that sin’s introduction to our existence in Genesis 3 tacks on an important addendum to the mission of God. We know longer naturally know this God who loves us and wants us to know him. Our individual and collective souls have been distorted by sin, inclining us to move away from our created purposes and to flail about in an illusory abyss of self-destruction. We are lost unless rescued by a loving God. We are hopelessly unable to comprehend the truth of our existence if the Lord does not save us from ceaselessly swapping ignorance with ourselves.

Our role in the mission of God today—and since the fall—has been to make the one true God known among the nations and to bear witness that in him alone can we find the life for which we were created. Our ability to tell that story well is directly proportionate to our ability to live fully into that story of redemption, reconciliation, and life.  

Along the way, we endlessly fight off every new contender for the allegiance of our hearts, setting them apart to be wholly given to the one true God. Every time we win large or small battles with idolatrous temptations, we declare over and over again to our fellow flawed humans that false gods fail. And if—by God’s grace and mercy—our lives and words are synched by integrity, we may be honored to play a role as assets in the mission of God.


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