Previous Posts:
• Introductory thoughts
• Part 1

1. What Deep and Wide Youth Ministry is Not (pages 3-4)

It is not just another approach to youth ministry

I found it interesting that the thesis tries to convince us that “Deep and Wide Youth Ministry is not a gimmick or a method” (3) and then goes on to use words like “X-factor” (gimmick) and argues the necessity of this particular approach to ministry (method). Okay, it’s not a “method” in the strictest sense of describing exactly what needs to be happening in your ministry, but DWYM is talked about as if it is a non-negotiable way to envision doing ministry. Maybe it isn’t a model, but it is an orienting paradigm for doing ministry (on the summary on page one it describes itself as a “model”). When it says it’s not just “another” approach, I get the feeling they are saying it is the approach.

It is not a simple approach to youth ministry

DWYM portrays itself as cutting “across the grain of the entrenched youth ministry philosophy” found in most churches, but I’m not so sure. Most youth ministers I talk to have moved well past the fun and games model of ministry and are trying to pursue something deeper. When most Christian colleges are offering bachelors degrees in youth ministry and many seminaries are offering masters and doctorates in youth ministry fields, we have moved past thinking of youth ministry as an entertainment-heavy endeavor.

In fact, I wonder if youth ministries that consider themselves to be doing a good job at evangelism might be the ones that are heavily-oriented towards entertainment models of ministry. That seems very plausible, but it’s really just conjecture.

At the very least, D2S is trying to articulate that doing youth ministry isn’t easy or simple. They didn’t just give the seven steps to DWYM and put their guarantee on the results, which I am thankful for.

It is not optional

I agree that following the Great Commission is not be optional, but that does not mean that DWYM is a non-negotiable. As I stated before, there are some foundational problems with the DWYM approach. I’m all for the Great Commission, but Jesus gave us the Great Commission, the rest of scripture, and himself, not DWYM.

More thoughts on DWYM to follow tomorrow, much of which I like!

Previous Posts:
• Introductory thoughts

Before I begin, I would like to applaud Dare 2 Share (D2S) for making their Deep and Wide Youth Ministry Thesis available for free rather than turning it into a book or a training tour that you have to pay to get access to (and if they do decide to do either of those things, that’s fine as long as we can still have access to the free stuff). If there is anything in the world that should be open-source, it should be things related to Christian ministry. I hope youth ministers, churches, and other Christian organizations will follow this path and make their insights free to all.

If you really want to follow along with me, you should download and read the whole document. It’s only 34 pages long and divided into five sections. Spend about 10 minutes a day for the next five days reading a section and you will have it read. Without any further ado, here we go.

Page 2: Deep and Wide Youth Ministry Introduction

After giving a summary of the Thesis on page one, page two gives a one-page basis for the creation of this Deep and Wide approach to ministry (a prolegomena of sorts). The paper starts out by describing youth ministries has having a “false dichotomy” between evangelism and discipleship. In this point, we are in agreement. As I began to learn in Dr. Castleman’s class years ago there is no such thing as “discipleship and evangelism,” but there is only “discipleshipandevangelism.” The two are not separable; there is no dichotomy. To be an evangelizer, one must be a disciple; to be a disciple, one must also be an evangelizer. I see discipleship and evangelism as existing together in a continuous loop that feeds one another. Without both, the loop does not exist.

Once stated that there is a false dichotomy between discipleship and evangelism, the Thesis states that the way to keep discipleship and evangelism in “balance” is through the “Deep and Wide youth ministry model” (1). To me, words like balance reinforce the false dichotomy that the Thesis says it is trying to combat. To keep something in balance is to say that there are two things independent of one another (i.e. they are dichotomous) that have to be held in equality. If discipleship and evangelism do suffer from a false dichotomy, then they cannot be held in balance because they are not separate entities, but they are inseparable parts of the same whole. To take away one is to take away the other.

Moving on, the basis for the Thesis comes from the words of Jesus in the Great Commission, which gives me a moment of pause (but not because I am against the Great Commission!). To build an entire philosophy of ministry upon a single verse of scripture is something that just rubs me the wrong way. Of course, there is plenty more scripture found in the rest of the document to support other points, but Matthew 28:19 becomes foundational for ministry. As someone who is skeptical of reductionism and foundationalism, I have a hard time reducing the corpus of scripture to a single verse upon which everything in our communal life builds. Ministry is built upon a person, who is the Head of the Body, not an irreducible principle.

Bells started going off in my head when I read the opening statement in the next paragraph:

Effective youth ministries move teens deeper and wider in a concerted and strategic way.

I’m not convinced that it is our goal in ministry is to be effective. I’ve asserted before that youth ministry’s obsession with being successful could be the very thing that has led to its inability to produce lifelong faith in the lives of students. It has been my contention that our goal in ministry is not to be effective, but to be faithful. When considering methods that are “concerted and strategic,” I looked to the ministry of Jesus. While he was doubtlessly concerted (“take up your cross and follow me”), I’m not convinced he had anything remotely resembling a strategy for his ministry other than to do the will of the Father (For a humorous take on Jesus and strategy, see this post at the Faith and Theology blog. Warning: it contains some profanity). Such ministry “strategy” is rooted in cultural notions of efficiency, success, and results. I do believe in helping to move teenagers “past apathy or mere casual interest into a deep spiritual passion for the things of God,” but I’m not sure how strategic that process can be.

I will say more about the “X-factor” later.

As you can see, I share the goals and motivations of D2S to help erase the false dichotomy between discipleship and evangelism and to see people move from apathy to passion. These things we agree on. My contention with their approach seems to lie in epistemology as much as anything. As someone who rejects foundationalism (apart from the person of Jesus Christ), I find it hard to swallow any approach to ministry that tries to build upon an irreducible principle or direction.

Lastly, I’m pretty sure that our definitions of discipleship and evangelism are a bit different. On page 3 evangelism is defined as “sharing gospel truth with those that don’t know Jesus.” Again, my contention is that there is no such thing as a dichotomy between discipleship and evangelism. Thus, I take the stance that at all times we are evangelizing, the only question is what is it that we are evangelizing? I prefer to describe biblical evangelism as sharing the person of Jesus Christ, not the truth about Jesus Christ. Our goal is to be at all times to be sharers of Jesus. This includes verbally, communally, personally, and actively.

Tomorrow we will move on to the next part of the DWYM Thesis.

For some reason I took a keen interest in Tim Schmoyer’s post last week regarding the fairly new document produced by Dare 2 Share (D2S) called the “Deep and Wide Youth Ministry Thesis.” I thought I would post my thoughts on the document, but I was hesitant to make the posts for a few reasons:

• Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of D2S, for various reasons. So, I was worried that I would be unnecessarily harsh and negative no matter what the document says.
• I’m afraid that people who read my critique will think I am questioning the intentions of the good people at D2S. I seldom question people’s motives, unless they are just explicit con-artists. D2S is full of people trying to do the best they can for the kingdom. I applaud their motives. But, as I’ve posted before, I don’t believe that motivations mean a whole lot.
• My own “success” in youth ministry has been quite limited according to popular definitions of youth ministry success, so what right do I have to critique a hugely successful organization like D2S? On the other hand, I believe that our definitions of success in youth ministry are terribly culturally-conditioned. So, no, I don’t have a youth group that is growing exponentially, aggressively getting rid of hunger in Dallas, or making progress towards racial reconciliation in our diverse community. But I also think that my own success in ministry (if there even is such a thing) will not be able to be judged until about 15-20 years down the road, so who knows how well I’m doing right now.

Because of that last bullet point, I decided that I’m going to make a series of posts over the next few days examining the Deep and Wide Thesis. I believe that the “little guy” like me should have the freedom to critique a large and (widely accepted as) successful organization like D2S.

Over the next few days, you will be able to see how I do some of my thinking in youth ministry. More specifically, I hope to show what it means to think theologically through youth ministry methods, strategies, and models. Please understand that I do come from a different place theologically than the people at D2S, so there will be some obvious conflicts simply because of that. But in providing my thoughts, I hope to show how it is possible to evaluate a popular (maybe even “hyped-up”) style of ministry that seems like a non-negotiable mandate for how to approach youth ministry.

The first post comes tomorrow morning.

I’ve been tagged to post my top ten favorite movies.  Since I’m not a big movie buff, the following list will be something more along the lines of “first ten movies than come to mind,” which might, by the sheer power of the subconscious, also be my top ten favorite movies.

• Top Gun
• Smokey and the Bandit (The first.  Two and three were horrible.)
• Ghostbusters
• Juno
• The Patriot
• The Bourne trilogy
• Hotel Rwanda
• O Brother, Where Art Thou
• Batman
• Mean Girls (No, I’m not kidding.  The insight into teen culture is sheer brilliance.)

Wow, that’s an interesting list.  Don’t judge me.

Up next I tag my usual crew: Noah, Sadie, Brit, Rusty (who probably won’t make a post, but that’s okay), and Jake.

I remember reading this, along with a few other provocative quotes, in February over at Inhabitatio Dei. Leave it to Stanley Hauerwas to stir the pot:

“How many of you worship in a church that recognizes ‘Mother’s Day’? I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt.”

And, before you accuse Hauerwas of being an anti-grace, works-righteousness heretic, realize that the quote needs to be taken in context. You can disagree, but I don’t think he is spouting easily dismissable heresy.

…over at the Youth Ministry Hilarity! blog. He makes some really great points. A quote:

You complain that our kids are too tired, but then you make them stay after school for HOURS of extracurricular practice! They lack concentration, so you lengthen their school year. You make them work at camps from 9:00 to 5:00 IN THE SUMMERTIME! I have teenagers in my church youth group who seem to be able to do NOTHING other than school! Does this produce well-rounded citizens? Why do we think that ALL their time needs to be occupied? Why can we not let them dream anymore? (They don’t have time to dream!) What ever happened to lazy summers?

Link.

(HT: Rethinking Youth Ministry, who suggests the possibility of a mass letter-writing campaign to try and actually do something.)

Got a packet of advertisements in the mail at church yesterday. Two stood out:

1. On the outside of the packet there was a teaser from a sign company: “The first step in growth? A quality church sign.” Then, on the real advertisement inside, it said: “This is the sign that reached the family and brought them to church.” [Next to a picture of nice, white family with an SUV and quite large 2-story house in the background]. “Make the drive-by congregation of today the members of tomorrow.” At least the signs are vandal- and graffiti-resistant.
2. Another one was an advertisement for custom-made folders you can hand out to visitors containing basic information on your church: “Church leaders agree: [XXXXXXXXX] Visitor Packets are the #1 choice for welcoming and enfolding new people. The reasons are clear: Unparalleled quality. Unequalled designs. Unmatched excellence.” I’m not even exactly sure what it means to “enfold” someone.

I made a potentially time-consuming discovery the other day: TED.com. It’s pretty much one big happy convergence of brilliance. The ecclesiolgy pointed at in the video below makes it one of my favorites. Go to the site and enjoy. In the meantime, I’ll be trying to figure out how to get my hands on a video iPod so I can watch all these videos wherever I am.

[Booo, this theme doesn’t like embedding videos. I’m either going to have to try to figure out what is wrong or switch to a new theme. Here’s the link to the video I was talking about.]

I must have really been living under a rock for the past few months. I didn’t even know he was working on a book, and I read on another blog that he just released another book. The man is a machine. I wonder what controversy he’ll stir up this time.

More thoughts have been spurred by reading the opening essay by Kevin Vanhoozer in the book he recently edited: Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends. If you are familiar with Vanhoozer, you will know that the orienting metaphor he uses in his thought comes from speech-act theory which declares that when we speak, there are three things at work: locution, illocution, and perlocution. In the essay, he is concerned with paying attention to these three layers when interpreting cultural texts. He explains the words like this:

First, a cultural text, like written discourse, has a locutionary dimension and employs either language or some other signifying medium (e.g., art, television, film, music, products, social practices). Second, cultural discourse raises the same questions about its illocutionary act as does written or oral discourse, namely what is a cultural text doing in saying/showing/signing such and such? Third, cultural discourse achieves certain effects (e.g., cultivation, spiritual formation) by saying/showing/signing. (45)

The CliffsNotes version:

• locution: the medium and what is being said
• illocution: what the “text” is doing
• perlocution: the effects of what is being said

Think of the common prohibition to yell “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater. Such a prohibition is not based on the locution of the act, because it is not criminal to speak, or even to generally yell in a crowded movie theater. I could talk to my wife about the campfire we had at youth group and not worry about being given a citation. The problem with yelling “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater is its illocutionary and perlocutionary effect: the desire to bring about and subsequent bringing about of needless mass chaos, hysteria, injury, trampling, etc.

If you think about it, many laws operate in the these arenas. But at times, Christians have been known to only worry about the locutionary aspects of cultural texts to determine if they are appropriate or not. See this quote by Vanhoozer:

To be sure, Christians should not rush to judgment on the basis of superficial criteria. It is not enough to simply know that there are “bad words” in a film, for this takes us only as far as locutions. Of much greater importance are the illocutions and perlocutions: what is the cultural text doing with these bad words and what effects does it bring about by using them in just this way? (53)

Where Vanhoozer does not go with his argument is to point out that context matters greatly when dealing with perlocutions. I can yell “Fire!” almost anywhere without repercussion. But because of the context of a crowded movie theater, performing that same act produces a completely different (and criminal) perlocutionary effect.

The point I would like to make is that a perlocution of a text upon an individual greatly changes with the development of the individual. Thus, lots of “bad words” in the ears of a small child will likely result in that child repeating those words with a degree of harmless innocence. Take that same exposure to “bad words” to an upper elementary child and they will likely repeat the words but often with malicious and prideful (”I cuss therefore I am cool”) intent. A teenager has oftentimes moved past the prideful dimension of cussing, but is still likely to use the words derogatorily in an attempt to gain social capital. Married adults secure in themselves often simply use those same words because that is the only way they know how to talk. So, the exposure to certain words has different perlocutions depending upon the development of a person. That is why a 24 year old like myself can watch and see certain things that we don’t want a 5 year old to see; it really is a completely different scenario.

This also shows the logic behind the idea that we shape things and then our things shape us. The cell phone is invented (locution) in order to ease communication between people and to make a profit (illocutions), but the inventors of the cell phone have absolutely no control over the perlocution. The perlocution (one of which is making people work-a-holics) is determined after the “text” of the cell phone has achieved widespread acceptance. Most ads work this same way. They all have the same basic illocution. What are ads doing? They are trying to make you want their product. But there are ripple effects of the perlocution of that ad and the culmination of thousands of ads that drastically shapes our culture. They shape identity, define worth, cause people to go into debt, and so on.

I enjoyed Vanhoozer’s essay immensely, as it provided some sound ground for evaluating things in culture. We do need to get beyond the locutionary dimension of cultural texts and really ask what the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects are of commonly accepted cultural texts like advertising, education, text-messaging, and more. And we must do all this, especially people working with children and teenagers, with the understanding that similar texts can have vastly different effects upon individuals (and communities for that matter) based on their context and development.

(PS - I know the title on this post is obscenely long, elitist, and high-snootin’, but I’m doing a little experiment to see how well I get ranked in search engines for these obscure words.)