I love it when theologically astute people comment on youth ministry issues. D.W. Congdon, Princeton M.Div. Student, has commented on the recent NY Times article about youth ministries using Halo 3 to attract a crowd. Good thoughts. A quote:
If a church wants to be relevant to teenage boys, there are plenty of other ways, including handing out pornography and offering beer-on-tap. You could throw in condoms and cigarettes and call it a night. But this raises an important questions: Why Halo 3? Why are exceedingly violent video games par for the course, but bare breasts on a piece of paper completely out of the question? One could easily argue that the video games are the more harmful of the two. All of this leads us back to the same basic problem with American Christianity: we are prudes about sex, but connoisseurs of violence.
Link.
[UPDATE:] As Robby points out, Ben Witherington is discussing this on his blog as well. He has two posts. Check them out here and here.
[UPDATE 2:] While I’m at it, Tim Schmoyer has a Halo 3 post as well.
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Thanks for the kind remarks.
way to go brother in arms. thats amazing. i just had a tiff with a youth minister the other day about the very same thing in that we use a worldly violent concept to draw people in to preach something CONTRARY to what we have brought them in with. your sarcasm is spot on and a very real dialog that needs to take place in ministry on several levels
the tools in which we say are a necesisty to draw kids in
why we use some forms of media as appropriate and others as not
and what these forms of outreach truly say about the church and the kingdom
matt thanks for posting this
Just thought I would let you know that Ben Witherington is discussing the same stuff on his blog…
Brit -
See? Sarcasm is totally prophetic speech. I rest my case.
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