Linkworthy 8/6/10

By Matt · Comments (0)
Friday, August 6th, 2010

Youth Ministry

Church

Random

  • My favorite post of the week was The ethics of ice cream. Best part of the exchange: “One sample per customer.” Stirred by her apparent misunderstanding, I looked at her passionately, full in the face, appealing to her not so much as the gelato girl but as a fellow human being. “But don’t you see,” I said warmly, “it makes no sense to provide one sample! It’s just the same as providing no samples at all! I’m sure I would love many of these flavours – but at the moment, all I know is that I don’t like the melon. Really, if you could just let me try one more, just the caramelised fig…”
  • Doug Rushkoff thinks that not even the corporations will be able to turn a profit for very much longer
  • Cool video: Slow motion lightning strike
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Categories : Links

The Waning Adolescent Rite of Passage: Driving

By Matt · Comments (10)
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

After just reading Teen 2.0 last month, I read in this month’s edition of Car and Driver magazine that the Washington Post reports that only 30 percent of 16 year olds in 2008 received driver’s licenses, as opposed to 45 percent 20 years ago. Methinks the two are related.

I remember being so upset when I learned that my sixteenth birthday occurred on a Sunday because that meant I would have to wait one extra day before getting my license. I was peeved. Why did it matter to me so much? For one, I was (and still am) simply a car guy. There’s something about the confluence of engineering, design, style, do-it-yourself-ness, adrenaline, skill, leisure, performance, and camaraderie that occurs within the car and driving subculture that drew me in years ago and wouldn’t let me go. I admit that most teens likely don’t fall into this category.

But secondly, driving was a rite of passage. It marked a clear demarcation of increased independence. In those days there were no graduated licenses or restrictions once you passed your driving test at sixteen. We got a license, piled as many people as could fit in a car, and hit the road trying to time, to the minute, pulling into the driveway at night with our curfew. There was a load of independence and responsibility that was conferred instantly when we received a driver’s license. It seems like the kind of thing for which Dr. Epstein advocates.

Driving seems to be viewed as more of a practical necessity than a rite of passage, as evidenced by this young man’s comments in the Washington Post story. It’s almost as if teens don’t even want independence, they just want to get to their next athletic practice or student council meeting:

The senior at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring has a learner’s permit, but the required 60 hours of practice driving toward a driver’s license have taken a back seat to his Advanced Placement classes, the rowing team, the literary magazine and Web design projects. “It’s hard to spend all that time on driving when I can get places without it,” he said.

Conlon said this as his mother, Eva Sullivan Conlon, was driving him to the store to buy supplies for a school project; she ends up taking him places a few times a week.

The article suggests a few key reasons for this shift in the priority of driving in teens’ lives: increased academic and extracurricular loads and increasingly electronic relationships. Quite simply, it is difficult to find the time to take the courses, study the material, and get in the driving time necessary for acquiring a license on top of AP classes, club involvement, athletics, and fine arts. Add to that the fact that teens today are comfortable relating via Facebook and text messaging, and there is no imperative that teens get a license so they can meet up and hang out together. It’s easier, and common, to just meet up digitally.

I find all these trends troubling. Decreasing independence, increasing commitments to academic and extracurricular activities, and an increasingly digital and un-corporeal relationships seem like things that will have a long-term negative effect on our teens and our culture at large.

What shall we do about it? Car and Driver magazine is launching a Save the Manuals! (manual transmission) campaign. I don’t think it will be that simple, but I’m all for saving manual transmissions. No, there is something deeper going on here that is increasingly enslaving our teens to school and the digital world, and I’m not exactly sure what my role and the churches role should (could?) be in breaking this trend.

What is the church’s role in all of this? Isn’t it getting to the point when enough is enough?

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Categories : Youth Ministry
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August Archives

By Matt · Comments (1)
Monday, August 2nd, 2010

I realized there are a lot of good posts that have been buried for years, so every month I’m going to try to link to some of my person favorite posts written each month since 2005. Here’s the best from August:

  • Transforming Churches into Mission Centers: Rethinking Ordination, 2009. “If we are going to be a church free to move swiftly with the movement of the Spirit, a church that takes seriously the priesthood of all believers, a church rooted in local community, a church that believes that all are called by God and equipped for ministry, then the current structural handcuffs that go along with ordination, seminary, the call process, the sacraments, and the host of other issues related to ecclesiology must be removed.”
  • Emerging Church: Bridging the Academy & Church? 2007. “Is the emerging church the manifestation of the academy and the church coming together? Are the ivory towers finally being brought into our sanctuaries? It seems to me to be so. If it turns out to be true, I think there would be some pretty massive implications.”
  • We’re all Heretics, 2007. “To me, orthodoxy is an eschatological reality towards which we are all striving. In the end, we will finally be ‘orthodox’ and believe as we should. Until then, we are all just heretics.”
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Categories : Blogging
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Linkworthy – 7/30/10

By Matt · Comments (1)
Friday, July 30th, 2010

Youth Ministry

Church, Mission & Theology

Comments (1)
Categories : Links

Book Review: The Promise of Despair by Andrew Root

By Matt · Comments (0)
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Quite the title, isn’t it? Yes, The Promise of Despair: The Way of the Cross as the Way of the Church by Andrew Root has quite the suggestive title, but that is part of the point. This is a book about death, in both a literal and symbolic sense. Death is not limited to people physically dying, but is also present when we lose a job, are debilitated by illness, or a slave to addiction. Death lurks all around us. Root contends that the church usually tries to avoid death, but that a true church can only be found in the midst of death, by facing it and owning up to it because we worship a God who also can be found in death, facing it, and not turning and looking the other way: “Christian faith is a faith that has as its central event the cross, the reality of death” (xxvii).

In a way, this book is a kind of practical theodicy. It does not so much answer the question Why is there evil, pain and suffering in the world? as much as it tries to answer What does the church do about evil, pain and suffering in the world? For Root the source of pain and suffering is the “monster” of death, and he carries this personification of death as a monster throughout the whole book.

The book is divided into two parts. The first sets the groundwork regarding our current cultural situation, an environment where we must deal with things like the death of meaning, authority, and identity. Although postmodernism seems like a topic that is starting to become overhyped, Root gives one of the most succinct and philosophically robust accounts of the current postmodern landscape. The first part of the book functions well as a primer on postmodernism. Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Baudrillard, and Anthony Giddens are some of the philosophers who weigh heavily in these discussion.

On of the best chapters in the book, especially for youth ministry, is the final chapter in Part One that deals with the death of identity. In this chapter Root explains how identity used to be formed by work and love: what one did for a living and one’s family. Today, he says, identity is defined by consumption and intimacy. It is no longer what we do or produce that form us, but what we have and consume. Root defines intimacy as “feelings of closeness” (60) as opposed to love, which is a commitment. In youth ministry, where we are dealing with adolescents constructing their own identities, this chapter has much for us to ponder.

Part Two outlines the reasons why the church must face the reality of death and enter into it as a central practice. He draws from Luther’s theology of the cross, arguing that the God of the Bible is encountered in Jesus Christ on the cross: “The church is the community that seeks to live from the new order–not from life to death, but from death to life” (88). When the church faces death, the church faces reality. The church must be with people in death because we are a people who hope in a future when death will be no more; we are a people moving from death to life. This hope that the church can offer to those in the midst of death is not to be confused with optimism:

The problem with an optimistic church is that it spends all its energy on creating optimistic artificial light, seeking to pull people who know so well the darkness into faux light. An optimistic church seeks to cover the darkness. But the church of the cross seeks to make its life in what is, in darkness, hoping for the day when darkness is no longer covered but is overcome completely by the dawn of God’s future. (147)

It should be noted that Root is not speaking about death in the popular sense of “dying to self.” Instead, he is speaking more about passages like Galatians 6:2: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” In fact, he uses the word sacramental to suggest that God is particularly present in a special way, conveying his grace, when we encounter someone else in their despair. If this is the case, then the church should not shy away from ministering to those facing the monster of death in their lives.

Though this book is a weighty book simply because of the subject matter, it is a fairly concise and accessible book (160 pages or so). And while I think that Root might be a bit repetitive at times, this is such a unique book that there is no where else to go for a treatment of this subject. For Christians and church leaders trying to lead lives and churches where we deal with people’s lives in reality (and not in an idealized state), this book is a must-read.

For another review, see Jake Bouma’s review of the book in the American Theological Inquiry .

Disclaimer: This book was provided as a review copy free of charge from the publisher.

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Categories : Book Reviews, Theology
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Get a FREE Copy of Relationships Unfiltered by Andrew Root

By Matt · Comments (4)
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

[NOTE: THE FREE COPY OF THE BOOK IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. 230 BOOKS GOT MAILED OUT. BUT READ BELOW TO FIND OUT HOW TO GET 40% OFF THE BOOK]

Below is a message from Andrew Root, Associate Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary, and author of the books Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, Relationships Unfiltered, The Promise of Despair, and The Children of Divorce.

———————————————–

Hello Youth Ministry friends, I’m sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled blog reading, but I have broken transmission to offer you an opportunity.

I wanted to get before you the chance to get a free copy of my book Relationships Unfiltered. As the new school year approaches and you think about volunteer leader meetings and trainings I would like to suggest you take a look at Relationships Unfiltered. It’s written just for this setting with discussion questions and chapters filled with illustrations and stories–but also promises to get you and your team thinking theologically about your core practice this coming school year: forming relationships with young people.

Here’s what I can do: If you’ll email me (aroot@luthersem.edu) I’ll send you a free copy of the book so you can look it over and decide if it would be of help to you and your volunteers. If you’re interested in using it you can then go to Zondervan.com or Zondervan.com/ministry and type in the code 980752 in the “source code” box. Starting August 1 this will give you a 40% discount on as many books as you’d like.

And I’ll also offer this, if you do use the book with your team, I’m willing to do a select number of skype or ichat conversations with you and your team after getting through the book.

- Andrew Root

———————————————–

I bought a copy for all my small group leaders, so the 40% off offer is possibly a great way to save on a quality resource. If you do not have this book, you should at least take up the offer on the free book. I have posted my thoughts on the book in my post here and say:

In my mind, this is the book that every small group leader and mentor needs to read. I have said before, and this book confirms it, that although youth ministry is not easy, it is not complicated, either. In fact, it is fairly simple. It has to do with loving Jesus and loving teenagers. What Root does in this book is tell us what it looks like to love teenagers: focus on the who instead of the how. Root says that the first questions for youth leaders is not How do we get kids to church? or How can we influence kids to be better Christians, but the first questions should always begin with who: Who is this teenager in my small group? Who are the marginalized in our community? Who is Jesus Christ in the lives of these students? Root says that How? questions do not properly attend to the humanity of the individual and instead focus on method. Root argues persuasively against this by grounding his approach in the theology of the incarnation.

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Categories : Books, Youth Ministry
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The Best Podcast: Homebrewed Christianity

By Matt · Comments (6)
Monday, July 26th, 2010

If you are a theology nerd, like me, there is no better podcast out there right now than Homebrewed Christianity. It’s awesome for all the right reasons:

  • Killer Guests. Each week they interview a guest, usually someone who has recently released a book (but not always). Their past guests have included: Andrew Root, N.T. Wright (yes, I said that correctly), Richard Rohr, Harvey Cox, Philip Clayton, Walter Brueggemann, Terence Fretheim, John Cobb, John Dominic Crossan, John Caputo, and many more. And even the people you haven’t heard of that they dig up are usually spectacular.
  • Quality interviews. The interviews are usually above-average quality, asking insightful and interesting questions that don’t just allow the authors to rehash their books all over again.
  • It’s done by two average guys with a Skype account. This is one of the coolest things, in my opinion. Tripp Fuller is a youth minister and PhD student, and Chad Crawford works for a nonprofit organization. And yet they get these great scholars and theologians to do these interviews with them. It is a sign of the times–the little guys are outdoing the big organizations and corporations.
  • They realize they are two average guys with a Skype account and don’t take themselves too seriously. I love listening to the introductions of every episode because of the banter between Tripp and Chad. You get the feeling they would be cool to hang out with.

They are pretty big proponents of process theology and have a disproportionate number of process theologians on their show, but I think that’s okay. I’ve learned a lot about process theology by listening to their show that I haven’t heard elsewhere. Even if you don’t agree with it, you can learn about it.

So, if you don’t already listen to the show, I think you should. They have 81 episodes thus far, so there is plenty of material to get you started. Go listen to a few and I think you’ll be hooked.

Comments (6)
Categories : Theology

Linkworthy – 7/23/10

By Matt · Comments (0)
Friday, July 23rd, 2010

Youth Ministry

Theology, Church, & Mission

Comments (0)
Categories : Links

"Youth Group T-Shirts are Stupid"

By Matt · Comments (20)
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

For a while now, I’ve wanted to make a youth group t-shirt that said just that when we went to a big youth event where there would likely be a bunch of youth groups with their own t-shirts. I wonder if people would get it. But, alas, we haven’t ever made that kind of t-shirt, for two reasons:

  1. We don’t go to many big events like that.
  2. I avoid youth group t-shirts if at all possible.

In my five years of youth ministry, we have never had a youth group t-shirt of any sort. Every now and then someone will suggest that we need a t-shirt for this or that, and I take it under advisement and see if anyone feels strongly enough about it to bring it up again or take the steps to actually make it happen. So far, no one has.

Now, I don’t think you are evil or have a bad youth group if you have t-shirts for your ministry (because that would include about every youth group in the country, it seems). I have just personally made a commitment to avoid expending any of my energy of youth group t-shirts for a few reasons:

  • T-shirts are not important. You have to prioritize in ministry, right? “Keep the main thing the main thing,” they say. T-shirts do not fall into that category. The church has existed long enough without youth groups and churches having their own t-shirts.
  • “They’re just t-shirts; it’s not that big of a deal.” I had one of my good friends say that to me one time after we had a conversation about why I didn’t do t-shirts. His point was that there wasn’t harm in doing them and that they weren’t “that big of a deal.” I agree that they aren’t a big deal, which is why I choose to go without them.
  • T-shirts do not create identity. I’ve heard some people say t-shirts are a good way to provide cohesion and identity to a group. Maybe so, but that’s not the kind of identity I want to create in my group. First of all, if there is no other way we can think of to create identity within our ministries than to make a t-shirt, our time would be better spent trying to figure out a possible alternative. Second, we say that our identity is found in being children of God, so I try and put that into practice. You can’t teach a lesson on identity-in-Christ and then go and try to create identity-by-t-shirt.
  • Some people can’t imagine youth ministry without t-shirts. If that is the case, then you should probably go without t-shirts for a while. There’s more to ministry than t-shirts. It’s possible to do youth ministry without t-shirts. I promise.
  • I’ve made it this far. Part of the inspiration to keep going without a youth ministry shirt is that it’s already been five years without one. This wasn’t really a life goal that I had, but when I started thinking about it I realized that I’ve never had a shirt in any group I’ve worked with, and that seemed like a pretty significant streak. So now I’m trying to avoid them to keep my record going. Maybe a whole 30-year youth ministry career with no t-shirts? I bet it can be done.

Because of all the above, I really don’t care for t-shirts, so I’m not going to spend any of my time making them happen. If someone else thinks it is that important, someone else will take that project on. And if your group does the t-shirt thing, I don’t think less of you. But don’t tell me they are a necessity to ministry, because they just aren’t.

Has anyone else given up on youth group t-shirts? Or would there be a mutiny in your group if you didn’t have a t-shirt for your next mission trip?

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Categories : Youth Ministry
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Sophisticated Youth Ministry and a Theology of Mission Trips

By Matt · Comments (6)
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

A youth minister, a theologian, and a tech guru log onto Twitter…

So began a theological debate last week about mission trips carried on in 140 character increments amongst Andy Root, Adam McLane, and myself. It all started when Andy posted this little snippet of theological provocation:

the point of mission trips is to invite kids to witness in their feeble acts to the promise of God’s action to make all things new.

Adam’s response was:

Maybe in an idealistic world. But in the practical world of YM, there are many different reasons/justifications for missions.

And my contribution to the topic was:

I don’t think it’s idealistic. Our mission trip theme last year was (God’s coming) “shalom” and we talked about exactly that.

The way I read it, we were approaching mission trips from three different perspectives:

  • A theologian
  • A person who interacts with tons of different churches, youth ministers and youth groups
  • A person who primarily works and ministers within a specific local context

Adam wasn’t necessarily disagree with either Andy or myself, but saying that, for the most part, “most youth groups don’t think theologically about much.” He also said that “Most youth groups aren’t as sophisticated as yours. There are a lot of youth groups on trips.” That Adam used the word “sophisticated” to describe our youth ministry was quite surprising. I would expect that if anyone ever came to observe or research the way we do youth ministry at our church they would be significantly underwhelmed. To me our youth ministry isn’t sophisticated, at all. In fact, it’s pretty simple. No bells, no whistles, no lights, no fog machines, no in-house videos. That stuff sounds sophisticated to me. I don’t have the time or creative energy to mess with that stuff.

I do try to ground everything that we do theologically, but to me that isn’t sophisticated. Theology can’t be sophisticated because it permeates everything we do, whether we acknowledge it or not. So, whether a youth minister is a seminary grad who reads obscure theology journals on weekends or is a volunteer who has only been theologically trained through Sunday school classes the net result of our ministry is the same: theology–what we believe about God–is communicated through our practice. But we need to help people interpret our practice since we are “hermeneutical animals.”

That’s where theology comes in. Rather than going on a mission trip to “help people,” we are witnessing to the hope that the Christian community confesses in a God who will one way restore all things unto himself and make all things new and whole. Any group can go and help people. There’s nothing distinctly Christian in helping people; it’s just pragmatic. But a pragmatic approach falls short: people will be hungry again tomorrow, houses will continue to deteriorate and need further repair, another hurricane will come and do damage again. Practically speaking, mission trips make no sense because they are lessons in futility. The work is never finished, there is often more to do, and many times the people don’t deserve our help. However, the point is not to practically help, but it witness to our hope in God. So, even though drug addicts are laying in a bed of their own making, we still feed them because we too are unworthy of the grace given to us in Jesus Christ. And even though that house will need to be repainted again in another 20 years, we paint the house because we are witnessing to the day when God will make all things new and there will be no more pain, nor more decay, no more deterioration.

It’s really not that sophisticated. Christians believe in heaven and Christians believe in forgiveness by grace alone through faith, so I interpreted the practice of mission trips through those lenses. That’s all it means to do youth ministry with some sort of theological foundation. All we have to do is to interpret our practice through simple lenses like that in order to help our communities understand the point of why we do what we do. Left to themselves, they will interpret practice through the lens of cultural norms. Our job as leaders in the church must be to take those actions and reclaim them for the purpose of forming people in faith.

I think that Adam was right in saying that some people don’t think very theologically about youth ministry because it is too sophisticated. But why?

Is it really that sophisticated? Where have we gone wrong in our churches to make people think that they are incapable of thinking theologically (when in reality is is impossible to avoid)? Can theology be reclaimed by laypeople in churches? Can volunteers lead theologically robust mission experiences? How can we help them do that?

Comments (6)
Categories : Theology, Youth Ministry
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