Quoting Cwirla Quoting Internet Monk On Youth

Pastor William Cwirla has a short post over at his blog entitled Youth where he points to Michael Spenser:

Michael "internet Monk" Spencer is always a provocative read. As an Evangelical pilgrim in a "post-Evangelical wilderness," Spencer provides a unique perspective on the state of Christianity from the Protestant side of things.

In a recent post, Spencer does some critical reflection on his 35 years in youth ministry. His thoughts are worth pondering, especially considering Spencer's street cred and the fact that so much of what is called "youth ministry" is influenced by Baptist-Evangelicalism. Spencer's antidote to the maladies of youth ministry: Build meaningful and maturing relationships to Jesus Christ and to the Church. Here are some vintage IM quotes:

"We’ve been told that we can use any tool to make church interesting, so youth workers like myself were allowed to run a program of fun, trips, food, sports, recreation, etc. in order to keep young people hanging around for whatever the church was doing. We now know that those young people simply insisted that the church become like their youth group and, ta da- there is today’s evangelicalism. Oh…and there’s a bunch of our kids, never coming back to church again because they eqaute it with juvenile, shallow entertainment."

"The shift from getting 120 kids to a concert to getting 12 kids to pray every morning is huge, and most churches won’t put up with it."

"Let me be clear that families- where there are Christian families- are obviously crucial. But Jesus isn’t creating a community of families. He’s recreating the family around him."

You can read the rest here.

The last two years of involvement in my congregation’s youth program sometimes had me wanting to beat my head against a brick wall. There was more than one meeting where I, as well as the person was working most closely with, would have to actually defend our congregation's youth program being built around Bible studies and the fellowship that followed and not playing basketball all night or paintball after emoting for thirty minutes about how we “feel” about guns in schools and the like. Yes, someone really suggested we do a talk about guns in schools and then go play with guns, no joke!

Pastor Cwirla’s second Spenser quote “The shift from getting 120 kids to a concert to getting 12 kids to pray every morning is huge, and most churches won’t put up with it.” is the one I most identify with. In the two years I served on the Board of Youth I personally had to deal the erroneous idea that successful youth work is measured in how many recess events can be counted with almost every meeting I attended. From our monthly council meetings to special voter meetings called to figure out how we can best staff our parish it sometimes seemed an uphill battle defending a youth program that had at its core a gathering around God’s Holy Word. There was even one meeting where we were asked why we don’t do things with the kids during the summer months when in actuality we were meeting more often than any other group in the congregation. Heck, I had to defend the kids actually liking to play Apples to Apples: Bible Edition to someone who insisted that kids couldn’t possible enjoy a board game much less one with the word Bible in it. Uphill battles all.

This is a long term battle that will need to be fought for sometime to come. I see this fight as a mostly generational one with those who grew up in the 60’s and 70’s and learned, wrongly, that successful youth work can be measured by how many activities we can schedule to keep kids occupied and busy apart from any in depth study of Scripture. This is nothing more than pietistic church growth principles applied to youth groups. Should we really expect that the same church growth methods that haven’t grown the Church one iota to help our youth programs?

Internet Monk hits a bull’s-eye on this one and it is certainly worth the read.

Today’s Quote Of The Day

So, I was in my Sunday school class for the high school youth this past weekend and here’s how the conversation went down:

Youth #1: Mr. Gillespie, are we going to have Bible study tonight?

Me: Well, as I’m not the chair or even on the Board of Youth (our terms only go for two years although as anybody who reads this blog knows I’ve been very active with teaching the ragamuffins for going on eight years now and plan on continuing to do so) this year so it’s not up to me when or whether our, eh, your Sunday night Bible studies are run or even continued.

Youth #1: They had better keep doing them, we love ‘em!

And next came today’s quote of the day from our declared atheist who always attends our Sunday night study;

DA: Yeah, they better continue it or I’ll teach it myself!

For just a moment the room was dead quite as the teacher was grinning ear to ear barely able to contain himself.

Thoughts On The LCMS Youth Gathering

This week in Orlando, FL, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod will be holding it’s 2007 National Youth Gathering.

In the interest of full disclosure, my congregation has elected to not participate in this year’s national LCMS youth gathering. We as a congregation have decided that attending the Higher Things yearly events are a better way for the kids to enjoy fellowship with others their own age in a setting that focuses on Christ and His gifts.

That difference between the LCMS and last year’s Higher Things event held in Colorado was best expressed by a student of mine who said “you know, the gathering (Higher Things) was really cool. But I like the big one (LCMS national gathering) better because the one in Colorado reminds me too much of church. The big one had rock bands that played contemporary music that I just don’t hear in church. We get enough of that kind of stuff on Sundays.”

Ain’t that cool? A teenager who can actually see the difference between what is clearly church and that which has to be explained or passed off as church. In an effort to attract more people and make the message seem more relevant, the national gathering has structured and presented itself so as to seem not like church. I know there are many who will disagree me on this point but I would say just look at what my student said. Saying we all love Jesus isn’t enough no matter how much we do. Saying will have always fallen short and are need a Savior who is nailed to a tree because we are so sinful should be the message. If the message can’t heard by a teenager, then why bother with the message at all? If the message resembles a self help we all love one another therapy session, we should just purchase TVs for the youth room and make ‘em watch Oprah for a week straight.

The point really hit home when I got around to reading my Jesus First newsletter which felt it necessary to defend the national gathering as something edifying. The defense is basically how uplifting and emotional the national event is. But what the defense lacks is a focus on Word and Sacrament as the focus. If Jesus First is for it…

I would encourage everyone to strongly consider attending the Higher Things conferences as well as looking at the self titled Higher Things quarterly magazine which is better written and more Christ focused than the synod’s official publications.

Elected!

There were two things that made for a good weekend. The first, which I’ve already posted about, was Valerie coming home. (Did I mention we missed her? Oh yeah, I did but it bears repeating, her aunt and I really missed her!) The other thing…the other thing…I was elected to the Board of Youth Ministry. I will serve as co-chair with a friend, whom I also consider part of my extended family, serving as the chair.

What makes this so funny for me right now, is that within the last month, I was told that I wasn’t capable of understanding children because I don’t have any little raggamuffins of my own. (Oh, that’s a whole other post, isn’t it?)

I had four people come up to me before the voters meeting and tell me how excited they were that I agreed to serve. “What these kids need is a little discipline as well as someone who understands them” is what one woman told me. The other three echoed the first’s point of view.

The first thing I had to remind each of them is that I’m only serving as co chair this year. Just because I can take charge and lead, doesn’t mean I will. To automatically think that, just because I’m fifteen years older than the chair, I'm going to be running the show is really doing the chair a gross injustice.

The punch line of all of this is that none of the people who talked to me before the voters meeting have children in our youth group! Yep, that one is going keep me going for a while.