What Are We Teaching Our Youth? Part 3

Pastor Jonathon Fisk from Worldview Everlasting looks at some of the weird goings on at the national youth gathering like liturgical dancing and a prayer walking class that was taught as part of a breakout session in his video titled “I'm Just Very Confused - Part 2: Authorized Take-Over Deum”

Part 1 can be viewed here

What Are We Teaching Our Youth? Part 2

Pastor Jonathon Fisk from Worldview Everlasting continues his look at the national youth gathering in his video titled "I'm Just Very Confused - Part 1: Simulized Adrenali-Fide"

What Are We Teaching Our Youth?

Here’s another great video from Pastor Jonathon Fisk. Pastor Fisk is a favorite blogger of mine no matter what medium he’s using over at Worldview Everlasting.

This video looks at what went on at the last nation youth gathering, an event which congregations from all over the country sent their youth to. So what are these national gatherings teaching? Pastor Fisk gives us a hint in the embedded video.

The Quote of The Week From A Friend On Facebook

Today’s quote of the week is from one of my friends on Facebook commenting on the recent revelation that an air traffic controller let his children direct airplanes from the JFK tower:

_______ is marveling at how everyone gets worked up over a kid repeating ground control instructions when even the pilots got a kick out of it, while no one gets upset over the notion of a youth-lead worship service.

What a brilliant observation! Think my friend and I are being too harsh? I don’t, not at all.

Well, you see, I have some personal experience with “youth-lead worship.” One of the last “worship” experiences I participated in, before leaving the faith for fifteen excruciatingly long years of atheism, had the youth of my congregation running the entire service dressed up as clowns while late sixties rock and roll (selected by me) blared in the sanctuary. With the hope of being seen as relevant and cool; the youth group I was a part of was allowed to take the holy things of God and profane them for all to see.

Boy did we pat ourselves on the back that day. Looking back, it is one of the most shameful things I’ve ever done and as sinful as I am… that's saying a lot.

That singular event is one of the primary reasons I cringe every time someone explains that we need to stop looking so much like church to reach the so called unchurched. The less we look like church the easier it is to look like a bunch of kids in clown suits.

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.

Relevant Youth Ministry, Not!

I just saw a link to this hilarious video over at Steadfast Lutherans pointing out a great video posted over at Rev. Paul McCain’s Cyberbrethren and had to pass it on for everyone's enjoyment.

For the record, this is not how youth ministry is done at my congregation. If I ever tried to be this “relevant,” our kids would rightly run me off the property.

Skiing With Youth

I can’t even begin to explain the warm fuzzy feelings I got taking some of our youth group skiing this weekend. We were invited by our sister church, in the next town over, to join their group and enjoy freshly fallen artificial snow up in the mountains.

What a blessing it was to see our two groups interact and enjoy this first shared fellowship event. Two great groups of great kids having fun on the slopes and, thankfully, we all returned in good health. I’m always so proud of the kids of our group and it’s clear that our sister church has great reason to boast of theirs. 

It is my hope that we will be able to continue pairing up with our brothers and sisters just over yonder and build upon this occasion and foster even more camaraderie between the two groups. I’m only chairing the board of youth for five more months but I’m gonna do my best to see that those who we share a common confession with will be made to feel as welcome at our functions as we were at theirs.

I often teach in my Sunday school class that we in the Church, the body of Christ, are a family. The warm fuzzy feelings I got this past weekend was being able to see that family work and play together as one even though we’d never met before Friday. 

Today's Quote Of The Day

Today’s quote of the day was blurted out during a presentation I was giving to parents of our youth who are interested in attending one of the two Higher Things gatherings this summer.

One of the parents asked me what was the difference between the national youth gatherings and Higher Things. Some of the answers to the question were;

“The wine that is distributed for the Lord’s Supper will not be passed down the isles in Styrofoam cups with instructions to take a swig” (this was not made by a parent but someone who frequently chaperoned the events. I don’t know which year that was done but boy howdy it certainly left an impression)

“Beach balls being thrown around during the Divine Service, (our worship service) will not be tolerated” This was contributed because one of our kids, for the longest time, talked of such shenanigans as being one of the “coolest” things about the national events with the Christian rock band playing their top forty hits during the service placing a close second.

All good quotes to be sure and any other time, each would be worthy of the quote of the day! But it wasn’t their day. The quote of the day followed my explaining that the event would be run and officiated by LCMS pastors using our hymnal without goofy liturgies written to be “hip with the kids”. The quote of the day:

“Yeah, which means we won’t be line dancing the Lord’s Prayer!”

Yeah, definitely quote of the day.

The Killing Joke

Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

When talking about our youth group’s Sunday night Bible studies and why it’s important to hold them, a parent says to me; “We have been unable (despite many efforts) to get sustained adult interest in evening bible studies at this congregation. Why should the kids be different than their parents?”

In other words should, the parent asks, (ok, breathe deep… exhale) should we even hold Bible studies since most of the adults simply don’t want attend one themselves.

Yes we should, period.

And the reasons we should is so that not only do these kids can see that church is where we go as a community of believers and that theology and Scripture is fun to study, but to put it bluntly, we don’t want your kids picking up your bad habits that lead their happy selves to think that “church stuff” is only done one hour a week on the way to Sunday brunch at Applebee’s.

Gathering together to discuss theology and Scripture and hearing Jesus speak to us through His called servants is fun. The real question the parent needs to ask is why the adults don’t want to gather for a Sunday night or midweek Bible study and not the other way around.

I don’t know of any parent who thinks that if their kids don’t like school they should just stay home and play with their Xbox. Of course the parent is going to demand the kid go to school, as they should. Shouldn’t God’s Word and churchly stuff be placed at least as high on the list as the local school system?

Arguing that the kids probably don’t want to go to a Bible study on a Sunday night so therefore it’s a waste of time to even offer it may have been said half jokingly, but it just wasn’t funny.

“Every Time I Start My Truck, A Polar Bear Dies”

Before our youth group’s Sunday night Bible study we got talking about all things automotive. I found that some things will never change and teenagers will always have a fascination with cars that go too fast and that are way too expensive.

Our only girl attending the study made the statement that she hates driving. If she did drive she explained, she would drive a Prius and not anything like the Buick Roadmaster with wood panel siding like dear ole dad. She’s very concerned about the environment.

Upon hearing this, another student of mine made the comment “Every time I start my truck, a polar bear dies.” He explained his thirty year old jeep gets six miles a gallon. Ouch!

After talking about cars for a bit we discussed the perpetual virginity of Mary, a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and why the cult of saints is popular in the evangelism of Africa.

Following our usual meal of pizza, we played Apples to Apples: Bible Edition and I learned that the Helmet of Salvation is not always a wild card as had been previously assumed.

There are some people in my congregation that think it is the elected members of the Board of Youth that generate the enthusiasm that I see at our Sunday night studies. This is simply not the case. The folks that think that could not be more wrong and as many times as I try to explain it to them, I don’t think they will ever get it. I wish everybody could see the results of, to borrow a little Higher Things lingo, youth that dare to be Lutheran.

Meet The Peepsmaster

After our Sunday night study on Calvinism and it’s tenets, arguably the biggest influence on Americanized Christianity, we took a break and the kids ate what else? Why, pizza of course of course. Then came the games!

Then began our peeps themed Olympics with cool sports competitions like “Chubby Bunny”, the peep flick, and the highlight of night, peeps jousting in the microwave. Yes the microwave!

We even had an adult entry into the jousting event with what can only be described as the “Peep of Doom”. While said peep didn’t live up to its much-heralded reputation, fun ensued and was had by all.

And the winner of all three events was, drum roll please, Ben: this year's Peepsmaster extraordinaire. Congratulations Ben on your hard fought victory, we salute you fine sir!

Calvinism and Peeps, oh yeah!

Compliment Of The Year For 2007

And the compliment of year for 2007 goes to…..Will! Will is a student in my Sunday school class as well as an active participant for our congregation’s youth group.

So what was his compliment? “Mr. G., when we first came here I didn’t really think I’d like to go to Sunday school class. Most of the other ones that I’d been to treated us like we were stupid or something. You never talk down to us and that’s cool. We get enough of that in school and other places.”

Thank you Will! I’ve always taught you guys the way I do because I know you guys are not idiots. You guys also have the advantage of understanding that Christianity didn’t begin the day you were born and that’s something many an adult has a great deal of difficulty with.

Sometimes we adult types think the world evolves around us (something you guys are often accused of) and are burdened with notions of how we want things to work. Too often we adult types talk big about having the faith of a child but then fall back on philosophy 101 to make defense of theological positions instead of Scripture.

So at the end of the day, this adult could not receive no higher compliment than a thank you for not treating you like you’re stupid.

The picture in this post is Will posing, while playing pizza crust Jenga, for a picture that he knew would be posted here. Not only is Will exceptional bright, he’s clearly showing what a good sport he is.

But What Do They Do For Fun?

I was chatting with a family member the other day and I was asked how things are going with the youth group. I answered that we are doing pretty darned good and now have a core group that is four times what we’ve had in previous years.

The person that I share responsibilities with and I caught a little flack for wanting to do a Bible study twice a month. We were told, by people that should have known better, that kids don’t want to come back to church every other Sunday evening. We were told that their lives are already so busy that all they will want to do on Sunday evenings is sit at home and watch the Simpsons. We were told that the kids would never attend more than once a month no matter how many times a month we scheduled studies. One individual even went so far as to insinuate that we shouldn’t be wasting our time, after all they don’t care, so we should we bother?

But we stuck to our guns, went ahead and scheduled studies twice a month and now we have a core group that is as big as our congregation has ever had. This is in spite of the fact that we no longer have paid staff to act as cruise directors for youth. Anyhoo, back to the topic…

Said family member then asked, “What do you do on Sunday nights?” Well, I responded, we are expanding on some of the topics that we cover in my class during Sunday school. For the last few weeks we’ve been talking about early church heretics like Arius and all historical goodness leading up to the first ecumenical council held in Nicaea in 325. Ain’t that cool I asked. I swear I thought I lost the call because of the long silence. Finally, family member chimed in with “Uh, I guess, but what do they do for fun?”

Well, we do do things that many would acknowledge as “fun stuff” like playing Apples to Apples, ping-pong tournaments, and retreats to the beach or the mountains. But from the start of our regime we wanted the core of our gathering together to be centered around Scripture. This means that we show our youth that not only is theology, doctrine, and church history efficacious but all three are fun too.

I guess that if we thought all things theological were boring, we couldn’t do what we do and still keep ‘em coming back for more. But theology is fun, as is church history. We are not afraid to feed them real in-depth material that would have many of those life long Lutherans who know everything scratching their heads. And because we don’t treat them like they are six year olds, they are having fun.

So, we will always play board games, ping-pong, or foosball. But for serious fun, theology can not be beat.

P.S. for a great book on some early church history I recommend Leo Donald Davis’ s The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787) Their History and Theology. A great read even if it does get a little after the Council of Chalcedon held in 451. Davis writes in such a way that enables the reader to clearly understand how Christ’s Church has always been under attack. Again, a great read.

Another Great Weekend

Yep, I had another great weekend with the youth last weekend. We finished our study on the canon and discussed how all of Scripture points to Christ and His work on the cross. Our discussion was really part two of our look at Revelation and what the old Lutherans as well as the church fathers thought of the Antilegomena texts. It’s funny how engaged teenagers can get over the most complicated theological issues when you don’t treat them like they are idiots, really.

Anyways, we finished up by discussing how some groups have develop entire theological doctrines around the book of Revelation that are in direct conflict with the Gospels and the very words of Christ.

So how should we read Revelation? Well, carefully and always through the Christological lens. There certainly those who think that all good theology comes from Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, but for some strange reason I just like Matthew or Luke or John. I guess I’m funny like that.

So we concluded our study by saying that we would all be better off if we paid closer attention to the Torah, the Gospels, and the Psalms instead of focusing all our energies on figuring out if George Bush or Dick Cheney hold the position of Anti-Christ (Just kidding folks, Fred Rogers passed away years ago).

Too often we all think we’ve outgrown the Gospels and we hunger for something more substantial. When we get to that point, we need to worry less about dragons and rebuilt temples and reread the reason our Lord was nailed to the cursed tree because of our sin.

We concluded by assembling ice cream awesomeness. The last picture is of Betty and her rendition of a Living Creature from Ezekiel drawn on the back of a pizza box.

A Great Weekend!

Wow. I only had about five hours with the missus this past weekend. Because of a meeting that I didn’t actually receive an invite for until five days before it was scheduled, (even though the meeting had been planned well over three weeks before) my Saturday was ruined.

Sunday’s Divine Service as well a pretty well attended Sunday school class took up the morning of my remaining “day off.” I didn’t leave the kirch as my drive home, with the cost of gas being what it is, would have dipped further into my wallet as well as leaving me stuck in my truck for another hour and a half. I already spend too much time in said truck so I just hung around.

But hanging around allowed me to wash my truck which has been the blunt of many a pigeon jokes at work. The extra free time gave me a chance to exercise my artistic side and work on a requested desert scene. I then laid out the basic groundwork for a “little country church in snow covered mountains” scene that my missus has asked for. Yep, that turned out to be a productive day. But does productivity equal a great weekend?

Nope. I would have been just as content catching up on some reading while telling the wife to keep it down as her favorite football team can't hear her if they are, quite literally, a thousand miles away, no matter how loud she yells at the TV screen.

What made it a great weekend was the Sunday evening Bible study with our youth group. There are few things more awe-inspiring than seeing a group of teenagers actually becoming engaged in an argument on the canonicity of the book of Revelation. (Uh, just so we all are clear, Revelation is in the canon. If you don’t believe me, just look in the table of contents it’s there, really.) To see them excited about something other than Gamespheres or Xcubes was the really a treat. And watching them all have fun and not minding playing Apples to Apples even though we had purchased the “Bible” edition was too cool.

Our youth group participation had fallen in recent years for a variety of reasons. It’s not always easy getting them to “give up” their weekends. As a congregation we have to compete with every sports activity ever conceived, parents that think that church activities are just one more thing, as well as our ongoing battle with a society where absolutes are considered small minded and should be discouraged. It has been and will always be an uphill battle going against our culture.

But slowly and surely the youth are starting to come back and give the group another try. Very, very cool. By offering a consistent gathering where the Bible is the core of our study followed by great food and games that don’t treat the kids like they’re idiots, they are returning. And they are having fun to boot!

And finishing the evening by dropping in over at LongEyeMoose’s place for a twelve year old single malt, well, that was just icing on the cake.