“I do have an issue with this kind of image of perfection that a movie can put across. You want to say to people ‘Stop! Stop! It’s not real. We’ve been in makeup for 2½ hours. We don’t really look like that.’ I mean, I’m living proof that we don’t really look like that.”

- Actress Kate Winslet, Time, December 4, 2006, p. 103.

To see videos of what Kate Winslet means, see here first and here second.

(ht to CYPU’s 12/6/06 e-update)

[tags]Kate Winslet, distorted beauty[/tags]

Research by eMarketer.com shows that all the hype over MySpace is quickly dying as teenagers and young adults favor Facebook as the #1 visited website among 17-25 year olds.

Back in March I blogged about why I stay away from MySpace and even today I still do not have a MySpace account. However, I’ve used Facebook for quite some time now. Here’s why:

• Most of the advertisements on Facebook are not sexually stimulating.
• The layout is organized, uncluttered and gives a sense of uniformity to every user.
• Privacy and security controls are excellent and very customizable.
• I love the variety of groups and the potential they create for interaction.

Personally, I’m glad to see the shift moving from MySpace to Facebook. Facebook seems like a much cleaner and safer environment. And now that Facebook registration is open to the general public, there’s really no advantage to stick with MySpace except that it has many more registered users. Give it some time, though, and the Facebook phenomenon will soon catch up.

If you’re a Facebook user, feel free to add me as a friend. Or, join the Youth Specialties group I created.

(ht to Shift Conference Blog)

[tags]Facebook, MySpace[/tags]

What do you see as some of the main issues youth ministry is struggling with today?

As the church faces cultural issues, youth, I think, deal with these even harder, because they’re younger, more impressionable, and still searching for their version of right and wrong. Example(s): Homosexuality, Abortion, offensive Speech, Materialism, etc. How do we convey to students what God wants, but more importantly, how do we present that God, who flies in the face of popular culture like an unwanted relative, actually is the right and better choice than pop culture?

My divine paradox: The idea of God as entertainment is purely repulsive to me. However, when we present God, we have this illusion that we must be entertaining. (That’s not to say that genuine passion can’t exist within the parameters of entertainment.) So we’re entertaining with smoke, lights, sound, huge facilities, almost a rock concert because there’s this “new” God that students seem to be wanting. They crave a deepness with something they can’t see, yet almost everything that they can see, let’s them down. Walking the line of entertainment, passion for God, and genuine relationship with the same is an incredibly difficult and almost symphonic line to orchestrate.

What do you see as some of the main issues youth ministry is responding to effectively?

I think youth ministry gives hurting students that place they can feel safe. Regardless of whether or not they find (much less seek) God, they find someone who loves them and cares for them, in a safe place. The American family is no longer the constant place of emotional safety. Mom and Dad have been defining themselves by the success of their careers, not their success as parents. Thankfully, I saw an ABC report [a couple weeks ago] that says this may be shifting from the former towards the latter.

Evan Mattei is a youth pastor in the Dallas, TX area. Visit his blog at http://youthguyevan.blogspot.com/.

[Read previous authors and posts in this series, "Issues in youth ministry."]

The youth worker who got me hooked on youth ministry back in high school is now a missionary to students in China. Yesterday I got his monthly newsletter, which contains the following paragraph:

“Our #1 challenge in this culture [is] the availability of new believers for discipleship, and then involving them in a local church. Kids’ lives revolve around prep for the college entrance exam. Only 2% ‘pass.’ The other 98% feel their future is lost. Some commit suicide over the results. So, there are no sports teams, marching bands, cheer leading squads, or drama clubs. It’s all academics, pure and simple, 7am-5pm, with extra weekend classes. Kids fear spending their time in any other way but studying.”

Wow. I don’t think I can even imagine students who fear doing anything else but studying. That’s crazy! It seems to me that most American teenagers generally seem to be kinda apathetic toward education (as described by one of my youth group students). Most students I know would skip school in a heart-beat if given the chance. I don’t think apathy should be students’ response to education, but neither should fear.

If school, for whatever reasons, seems to generate a sense of apathy toward education, why do we adopt this model in Christian education and call it “Sunday school?” Certainly we don’t want to replicate the same “school attitude” in our churches. Even preaching and teaching can sometimes feel like a classroom lecture in a fancy auditorium. If people mentally check out during classroom time in school, maybe the church should find or develop a more effective model for our weekly programming. I want to see students studying scripture as fervently as Chinese students study academics, but with a holy and reverent fear, not an insecure fear.

Our current approach to Christian education can’t possibly be the best we can do.

The Catalyst Blog summarized “Spirituality for 20-somethings” and, being 26 years old myself, it seems to fit me pretty well.

• They don’t like attending traditional worship.
• They shy away from labels.
• They identify with no specific religion or, if Christian, call themselves non-denominational.
• They demonstrate overwhelming belief in God.
• They show interest in how spiritual matters relate to their lives and their world.
• Many reject dogma and large institutions, instead preferring personal and convenient ways to find answers.
• They send prayer e-mail, look for love online, join smaller ministry groups.
• They fuel an industry of spiritually inspired books, movies and music.

I can identify with pretty much everything on that list, except I wouldn’t say that I don’t like attending traditional worship because sometimes I do. Rather, I would say I usually prefer modern formats of worship, but still have an appreciation for traditional styles.

I love it when people ask me questions about youth ministry! They usually turn into ideas for blog posts. One such example came today from Jason Curlee:

What is the state of America’s youth?
Students are searching for a place where they belong, feel safe, are understood, cared for and loved unconditionally. They’ll even do whatever is necessary in order to gain that approval, which is why we see students wearing one mask at school, another at church and yet another on the athletic field, for example. They’ll conform to the pressures around them in order to feel like they fit in and are accepted. Youth ministry today needs to respond to this by creating an environment of safety, unconditional love, acceptance and a sense of belonging. So when I look at the state of students today, the only way I can see us effectively responding to this is by creating a place where genuine and authentic relationships are key and biblical community is intentional.

I graduated from PBU with a degree in youth ministry and filled up all my electives with counseling classes, but I think if I had to do it over again I’d reverse that and focus on counseling instead. Even though it was only four years ago, a lot of what I learned about youth ministry is out of date. Youth culture and thus youth ministry are constantly changing. I mean, there was no [tag]MySpace[/tag] generation even four years ago. But the counseling part of ministry I use over and over again almost every day. Even this morning I spent some time talking with a girl fresh out of high school who has a history of abuse and struggles with cutting and suicidal thoughts.

No matter what position someone holds in ministry — whether it be in music, youth, children, adults, administrative, whatever — as long as you’re working with real people, counseling is a very necessary skill. I’m not even a counselor but I talk with parents and students all the time and, after earning a little bit of trust, issues always come up.

I’m looking forward to [tag]Youth Specialties[/tag]‘ theCORE this year because apparently it’s supposed to deal with part of this issue by training youth leaders to work with hurting kids. Even though I was the administrative director for Teenhopeline.com and may have more experience than some, I still wish I had a lot more training than I currently do. We all need it. And the people we talk to probably appreciate it when we have it, too.

MORNING GENERAL SESSION, BY ROLLIE MARTINSON
I wasn’t quite sure what this guy’s point was and, judging by the number of people that left during his talk, I’m not sure too many other people did either. What I took from it, though, is that homes are always creating values and beliefs in the lives of our students. We may spend a lot of time telling kids something at church, like God loves them, but when they go home all they hear is, “You’re worthless!” Our messages are often overshadowed by what they hear at home because the home is spending more time instilling a different set of values and beliefs, whether intentionally or not.

LEADING CHANGE IN YOUR YOUTH MINISTRY, BY MARK OESTREICHER
I really enjoyed Marko’s seminar because most of it came from personal stories of failure and mistakes. He wasn’t afraid to say, “Here’s how I messed up big-time and here’s what I learned from it.” It was kinda refreshing in a way to know that I’m not the only youth pastor that makes mistakes and learns the hard way. I just hope I can avoid some mistakes in the future by learning from people like him.

Last week I thought to myself, “If I could back up two and a half years and start everything over again at my youth ministry, what would I do differently?” Two things come to mind that I would change if I could start over. First, I’d make outreach a priority rather than letting students become comfortable with their own little group. Second, I’d be more intentional about making sure communication was clear and complete between students, parents, volunteers and church leadership. I can’t go back and change them, but following Marko’s example I can learn for the future and start to make the necessary changes now.

One thing Marko’s learning about leadership right now is that people are more comfortable with change when they know and see that we’re around and available to their lives. This doesn’t mean scheduling time to meet with someone — this means normal, unscheduled time spent together.

There are plenty of things in my youth group that need to change. Marko mentioned that change works best when it’s a continual cycle that people are used to. When people start to feel comfortable and settle into a routine, change becomes more difficult and needs to be approached differently. This is true because there is a major weakness of our youth ministry that I’m trying hard to change, but it feels like little ground is being made because I let it go too long. Everyone feels too “stable” and I know now that I need to address these things before they become the norm.

Marko left us with a practical process for future-dreaming and evaluating ministry that they use for Youth Specialties. It has 5 steps and should be done thoroughly with a team of people.

1. Dream up a long list of “Imagine if…” statements. Dream way bigger than what you actually want to do.

2. What are the things we clearly value in this ministry? Which old values do we want to hold on to and what new ones do we want to adopt?

3. What characteristics define who your ministry is? Give your ministry a name and think of it as a living human. What characteristics does your ministry posses? What is the ministry like? Where do we want this ministry to move?

4. Identify the “sacred cows.” What are some road-blocks to changing these things? Most sacred cows are unspoken in our ministries. There are three levels to the sacred cows: red light = this will never change, it’s non-negotiable; yellow light = this might be changeable, but changing it will be costly; green light = this cow is easy to slaughter.

Marko gave us some time to start discussing these things with our church group, so Dana, Jessica and myself did so. Here’s a couple items from our “Imagine if…” list:
– Imagine if every student brought a friend to church on the same day.
– Imagine if students were more concerned for others than themselves.
– Imagine if students had a passion to worship God genuinely and publicly.
– Imagine if students had a burden for unsaved people and were missional-minded.
– Imagine if all the youth group students were unified together.

After attending Marko’s session I think I feel a little more confident to tackle some of these issues and do my best to make change take place.

EVENING GENERAL SESSION, DONALD MILLER
Donald Miller, the author of Blue Like Jazz, wasn’t a very dynamic kinda guy as I anticipated he would be, but after I got over the fact that he’s pretty introverted and soft-spoken, man, that guy is loaded with insights!

Donald Miller really challenged me to be more intentional about building relationships with unsaved people and leading them to Christ. Unfortunately, I am pretty wrapped up in a Christian bubble. The most contact I have with unbelievers is when I get online to play Guild Wars with about 10 other guys. It’s a double-standard for me to encourage students to get to know unbelievers at their school and invite them to Christ if I’m not doing the same.

Donald said two things clearly. First, the church needs to change. How we “do church” must be taken back to scripture and evaluated. Unfortunately, the only thing scripture tells us about how to “do church” is how to pick elders for it, that’s it. We have a blank slate on pretty much everything else concerning “doing church.” The example we have is bunch of people sitting around a table as a family breaking bread and drinking wine together. If the church should be like a family, then it’s going to be pretty small, messy, hard and it’s going to take time.

Second, Christians are taught to stay inside the Christian culture in order to stay safe and avoid people who disagree with us. In Acts, though, the apostles went so far out into culture that they were killed for it! Donald used the traditional passage of Paul in Athens in Acts 17 to point out that Paul discussed the gospel to the people of Athens in their meeting place. Then he went to the streets and talked with anyone who came along and the people loved him!

Darwin’s influence on the church is the survival of the fittest — if they don’t agree with you, starve them out. But Paul does the opposite. He seeks them out and intentionally builds relationships with them. Because of this, he’s invited to speak more and, in this meeting, he opens with a complement, “I see that you are deeply spiritual.” He looks at them and thinks, “What do we have in common?” People have 99% of everything on common, so build relationships on these things.

Paul was also involved in their culture by memorizing poetry. Some say that this was Paul’s strategy, but Donald Miller thinks it was because Paul actually liked these people. He enjoyed them and invested time into what they were all about.

The personal application is clear.

[tags]National Youth Workers Convention, NYWC, Youth Specialties, Rollie Martinson, Donald Miller, Mark Oestreicher, church[/tags]

Man, it’s only the first day and I’ve already taken 8 pages of notes! I think this will be the only night I try to type ‘em all up in a some kind of logical sense. Whew!

Shifting from a youth ministry to a group of youth missionaries, by Dan Kimball
Despite the fact that Dan was functioning on only a couple hours of sleep from the night before, he presented this seminar very well. He addressed a big question many of us have thought before, “Why do teenagers get so passionate and excited about serving God and being evangelistic on Mexico mission trips (and other trips like that), but when they are back home fall into more of a routine and neutral passion about evangelism?”

His answer was basically this: We need to intentionally view our town as a mission field and model a lifestyle that actively seeks to reach others for Christ.

In Matthew 4:17-20 Jesus calls the disciples to follow Him and be fishers of people. Their primary role is the worship God, their secondary roll is to reach people. Acts 1:8 carries this same message. When we start reading the Bible through a missional lens, the whole book is missional, too.

Evangelism in Christian sub-culture becomes events and concerts. My personal observation is that Christians attend Christian outreach events more than non-Christians. What’s supposed to be an event for reaching the lost becomes entertainment for those already saved. Even though outreach events may reach some, I’ve seen relational outreach be much more effective. The success rate of relational evangelism seems to be so much higher than that of big events that I sometimes wonder why we still bother with them. Relational evangelism is just so much easier, too!

Unfortunately, the longer we’re Christians the more we stop socializing and hanging out with non-Christian friends, so by the time we reach a ripe old age and have grown to be mature in our faith, the only people who see it are other believers.

Dan said he thinks the reason teens drop out of church after high school is because they’re bored with the “bunny slope” (short-term missions) and they don’t know that the black diamond slope even exists (our life is on a mission). If they lived like they’re on a mission in a mission field their prayer lives would increase, their spirituality would be strengthened and their knowledge of scripture would abound. Our kids have skis but they need to put them on an go down the hill!

Some ideas and questions in creating guilt-free and non-awkward missionaries
1. Do an experiment of presenting your local town as a mission field. Give demographic stats, the perks, the struggles, what previous missionaries have tried there and what it will cost them (free!), but present it initially as if it were a village somewhere.

2. Personally re-think our role. Are we “youth group leaders” or “leaders of youth missionaries?” Do we see ourselves as youth leaders or just hang out with church kids? We need to intentionally go to the unsaved community and use our teens to reach them.

3. Write missionary letters or missionary journals as an exercise. Send newsletters and mission updates and prayer support letters just like we would for any short-term missions trip.

4. Teach and train youth to better understand how to think about critical key issues in our culture, such as the trustworthiness of scripture and other apologetics.

BOTTOM LINE FOR ME: Relational ministry is the most effective form of evangelism, which obviously indicates it must be an ongoing visible lifestyle, not a calendar event.

General Session #1: Buster Soaries
Normal faith is not what we need — it’s inadequate. We need to pray for astonishing faith if we want to see what God has in store for us.

In Matthew 8:5-10 the Centurion had faith that God could heal his servant from a distance. Whenever God is revealed, something happens!

How did the Centurion know Jesus could heal from a distance It had never been done before. Jesus touched other sick people or was in the presence in some way. The Centurion’s faith was so astonishing. He believed God could do what He’s never done before. God specializes in things that have never happened before, not reruns.

BOTTOM LINE FOR ME: Faith involves risk. When I ask the Lord to interact with my life I then need to trust Him with it. God wants to do things through me that He’s never done before and He needs me to take my hands off!

The importance of theology in youth ministry (or any ministry in a church), by Dan Kimball
Dan’s main roll in this seminar was to raise a lot of questions about why we do what we do in church. Most of it is not based on scripture but rather has just passed down through tradition. Whether we like it or not, the way we do church communicates a lot about our theology and values. A lot of his questions and conclusions are some of the exact same ones I’ve been wrestling with personally and blogging about the past several months. Some people may read my skepticism about the current model for this thing we call church and be immediately label me a heretic, so it was refreshing for me to sit in Dan’s seminar and hear all my same questions being asked by someone who’s more well-known and respected than me.

The modern church has fallen into a subtle trap that has caused some people to re-think what church is supposed to look like. Dan said it goes through several phases.

Phase 1: First we re-think our methodology. How are ministry methods supposed to change as culture changed? Rethinking methods usually begins with changing the worship gathering, as I kinda thought through in a blog post earlier this week. Why do we do what we do?

Phase 2: We then re-think the youth ministry, realizing that it is not in isolation and culture and theology is beyond an age group. Discipleship is not something limited to just certain age groups.

Phase 3: Next we rethink our ecclesiology. What is church? (It’s not a building or a place. It’s not some place we go. WE are the church, I am a part of it.) Our theology about church is indicated in many ways, including how we set up a room. Pews separate the speaker from the audience, raising him to some “more important” status of the church. Pews also make the church service a performance with spectators. It doesn’t teach community as we stare at that backs of people’s heads. Our ecclesiology is also indicated by what we teach about worship. We don’t go to church to worship (as I also blogged about two weeks ago), as if what takes place at church is something different than what should take place at home. We also equate worship with singing and thereby ignore many other forms of worship in services.

This leads to start rethinking spiritual formation, evangelism, community, preaching, church “membership,” and the roll of a “pastor.” What is a pastor? What’s a youth pastor? In scripture “pastor” is a spiritual gift, but we’ve turned it into a title.

Phase 4: No we start rethinking our theology (without losing truth). This means changes are more than just contemporary music and adding some candles. More questions are bound to come up and thus we MUST know what we believe and why. Students need to know the Bible, its origin, inspiration, how to handle difficult passages and how to understand it holistically. They also need a theology of human sexuality, marriage, homosexuality and divorce. Furthermore, they need to understand the church, the roll of women, what “church” is, the roll of the Holy Spirit and more.

Phase 5: We start being the church rather than going to church.

BOTTOM LINE FOR ME: Dan Kimball: “Getting the latest youth ministry fad materials lasts for only minutes, but theology will last students their lifetime.” I also walked away feeling more confident about my critical questions concerning church and that I need to continue exploring scripture’s intent and how that plays out for us today.

General Session #2: Mike Pilavachi
Jesus didn’t try to entertain anyone into the kingdom. He just had them hang out with Him through daily life and He taught them along the way. He had the disciples feed the 5,000 from 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes. Jesus likes to perform miracles through His disciples. The disciples finally cast out a demon and they were excited. Jesus said, “Rejoice not that demons flee, but that your names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” Jesus taught them as they went.

BOTTOM LINE FOR ME: It confirms the importance for relational ministry and teaching through real-life situations.

[tags]Evangelism, Dan Kimball, Youth Specialties, National Youth Workers Convention, NYWC, Outreach, Mike Pilavachi, Buster Soaries, church, missions[/tags]

It’s obvious that way too many people attend church every Sunday and never connect with a word that’s said. I could walk into an average church on any Sunday morning and find numerous people dozing off, daydreaming or privately thinking about unrelated matters. My question is this: how much responsibility should those leading the service feel when attempting to hold the audience’s attention? Is it because [tag]church service[/tag]s have become irrelevant and boring or is it because these individuals aren’t personally connecting with God during the week so Sunday is no different? Is it because our means of worship and communication in church services are really that ineffective or is it because people don’t worship on their own time thus making a church worship service just a meaningless act? It probably involves some of both, but at this moment I’m more apt to lean toward the latter.

Even so, I’m not willing to dismiss the fact that church services could probably stand to be re-evaluated for effectiveness. The [tag]Purpose Driven[/tag] [tag]ministry philosophy[/tag] is big on evaluating, scrapping and tweaking programs that aren’t effectively accomplishing their purpose. There’s probably a lot we could change in our services to make them more effective. I wonder what a church service would look like if we stripped away everything that’s not in scripture and honored God’s Word more than tradition and people’s opinions.

The Sunday morning format has generally been the same in every church I’ve attended since I was born. It starts with music followed by a quick welcome, more music, announcements, special music, tithing, sermon, closing song, see ya next week. And almost every service is geared around the sermon topic, the focal point of the worship service. The approach to each of these elements has generally been the same, too. Now, at 26 years old, I’m still kinda young, but our world has changed considerably even in my short lifespan. Why is the church still the same?

Seth Godwin, marketing expert and author of the best seller Permission Marketing, said this in his blog last Sunday and I think it has big implications for preaching:

What’s the point of talking to a group?…

I’m serious. We spend a lot of time in presentations, or at the United Nations, or sending our kids to school. We have orientation sessions and keynote speeches and long-winded oratory on the floor the Senate. Why?…

Here’s my point: In our scan and skip world, in a world where technology makes it obvious that we can treat different people differently, how can we possibly justify teaching via a speech?

Speech is both linear and unpaceable. You can’t skip around and you can’t speed it up. When the speaker covers something you know, you are bored. When he quickly covers something you don’t understand, you are lost.

If you teach – teach anything – I think you need to start by acknowledging that there’s a need to sell your ideas emotionally. So you need to use whatever tools are available to you–an evocative powerpoint image, say, or a truly impassioned speech.

If it’s worth teaching, it’s worth teaching well. If it’s worth investing the time of 30 or 230 or 3330 people, then it’s worth investing the effort to actually figure out how to get the message across. School is broken. Legislative politics are broken. Linear is broken. YouTube and Bloglines, on the other hand, are new platforms, platforms that enable the education of millions of people every day, quickly and for free.

I’m not at all thinking that preaching should be done away with, just that it needs to be evaluated and modified for maximum effectiveness in today’s society. Right now an average church sermon at an average church often feels like sitting through a lecture at school except without accountability to report its contents on a pending exam.

Dennis Poulette reminded me of a quote from The Youth Worker’s Guide to Helping Teenagers in Crisis,

Most listeners process information in the range of 300 to 500 words per minute (the rate generally declines with age). But most people speak at a rate of 100 to 200 words per minute, which means there’s serious excess capacity on the listening side of the transaction. And with excess capacity comes the tendency to daydream, fret, plan, doodle, and – if we’re not careful – lose track of what the other person is saying. (page 62)

It seems to me that the [tag]modern church[/tag] (and youth group) needs to find new effective ways of communicating the truth of God’s Word to those attending the services. How can we change our presentations to be less linear, to keep up with the rate that people process information, utilize new platforms and “emotionally sell” our message while, the same time, not lose anyone in the process?

Of course, this does nothing to to force people to seek God during on a personal level during the week, but given the state of our ever-changing culture I’m sure there’s still a lot that can be improved about our church services that might encourage such spiritual development.