Youth Ministry after “Cool Church”: Sample Youth Teaching on Genesis 1 & 2

Posted in Youth Ministry by Matt Marino

Youth leaders always want to know what theory looks like in practice. Here is an example of one component of a youth group meeting: the teaching time…

Our church plant has a small youth group (usually about 25 students) with 6 very committed young adult volunteer leaders. They recently began a semester of working through the Old Testament.

For Genesis 1 and 2, instead of a sermon or video, the group was divided into two groups by gender. In one room the boy group read Genesis 1 together several times. In the other the girls read Genesis 2. Each group took notes and discussed what the text said and emphasized for the hearers. Then they outlined the chapter. The leaders gave guidance in the form of questions to take the students back to the text when they started reading into it. On a large poster board with colorful markers, each group drew a graphical/artistic representation of their chapter. Then they came back together and the students taught their chapter to the other group from their poster. Having students teaching one another engaged students in the learning process in a way that was wonderful. By the end, each group knew the contents of both chapters.

Then one of the leaders did a wrap-up to help students get the “big picture” and think theologically about their lives – a 7 minute mini-message on “Have you noticed that the first two verses of Genesis One say exactly the same thing your biology teacher taught you?” After reading Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, the leader gave a message that went like this:

Did you notice that both Christians, who think God is the author of life and truth, and scientists, who observe life, have the same version of what happened in the very beginning of the universe? Does that surprise you? More subtle though is the enormous difference between the two narratives. Science, not as a discipline but as an “ism” (called materialism) follows a very different narrative. BTW, We are not anti-science here, but materialism is a philosophy of life that what you see explains everything that is. When you know what materialism teaches you might choose to reject it. For the materialist, time and chance explain everything. For the Christian, the hand of a loving Creator is the ultimate explanation. For the materialist, because they believe only in time and chance, all of life is an accident. For the materialist, you might be “unique,” but you are a unique accident.

On the other hand, for the Christian, all of life is a gift. Life was made on purpose, with a high and holy purpose. So, in the Christian narrative, you matter. What you do matters. What you don’t do matters. Everyone around you matters to God too.

Think of the difference the narrative you believe about your life makes: Can you see how what you do with your life gets shaped by the narrative you believe about who you are? What choices do you make with your life when life has no purpose? (Discussion)

How does it change your choices if you are absolutely convinced that you and everyone else was created on purpose, with a purpose? (Discussion)

If the materialist story is true, nothing you do matters. You don’t matter. If the Christian story is true then everything you do either spreads our Creator’s beauty and redeeming love or shuts it down.

Which narrative do you see being played out around you? What might life look like if everyone you know, new God’s love for them in Christ? You see, both the Christian and the materialist see the same events, they just interpret them differently.

Which narrative would you rather follow with your life? Thinking about what you said in our said in our discussion, why is it important that your friends know “the hope that is within you”?

As a result of the teaching time students left with the ability to tell us what Genesis 1 & 2 actually says…and what it doesn’t say. They learned something about exegesis: letting the text, rather than other’s ideas of the text speak. And more, they left with a powerful doctrine of Creation and can tell you why that doctrine is important. They went to small groups and prayed passionately that God would help them stay clear on who they are and whose they are…and that they would have boldness to share with their friends the Good News of God’s love in Christ-because of how desperately their friends need a different narrative on which to base their life.

15Oct2012

Life After “Cool Church?” A New Vision for Youth Ministry, Part 2.

Posted in Youth Ministry by Matt Marino

If you have been following this conversation feel free to scroll down and begin reading at “What we could do instead?” In case you are just joining the conversation, this post begins with an introduction to the problem: The current “relevant” youth ministry model has led to the abandonment of the church by 20-somethings.

Twenty Five years ago Stuart Cummings-Bond predicted in a Youthworker Journal article (1989) that ghettoizing youth away from the rest of the church would have disastrous results. He called it “the one-eared Mickey Mouse.” Today we see the fruit of this model in the abandonment of the church by twenty-somethings. Will we do things differently for the next generation arriving to our programs? Or is it ok with us that young people leave the church when they leave our student ministries?

Churches continue to invest heavily in youth ministries that are parallel to and “cooler” than the adult church – The youth pastor’s vision of what the big church could become. This model gave us the youth service as a place of evangelism for the young and learning lab for the larger church. In this model, the larger church first opposes then ignores the “radical” things happening in the youth room. At least for a time. That time typically ends when we call a new pastor. Then the new pastor, invariably a former youth pastor who learned attractional ministry in the youth room, redesigns the main sanctuary and re-packages the worship model to resemble what he was doing in the youth group a decade earlier…only with a larger budget and fully-functioning coffee house. Has it occurred to you how remarkably similar your new sanctuary looks to your old youth room? Similar decor, similar music, similar technology, similar dress, identical message.

And we wonder why youth grow bored with the adult church, or perhaps worse, remain in church but as shallow and self-absorbed as they were when they arrived in youth group as 15-year-olds 15 years ago. As the Mormon bishop referenced in a previous post “We make givers. You make takers.” (https://thegospelside.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/mormon-bishop-to-the-mega-church-thank-you/)

Why did we do this? Because it built fast numbers. Segregationist youth ministry is pragmatism at its worst. We used to be able to say, “Well it is working. God is using it, so who are you to judge?” However, the data has piled up: Cummings-Bond was right. Segregationist student ministry is a short-term, non-solution that threatens the very future of the evangelical church movement.

What could we do instead?

Research tells us that by segregating students into homogenous age groupings we are emptying our churches. What if instead of giving students what we think they want, we gave them what they need: A praying, confessing, Scripturally faithful, Father trusting, Jesus following, Spirit surrendered, faith-practicing community that wants to help them get their hands dirty for God?

As Youth Ministers we are first and foremost practitioners. We usually want to start with “How-to.” However, it is important that we start with the philosophical change of directional we need to make. Here are four research-supported places we could start…

1. Change Our Questions: Move from “Is this effective?” and “What are the people at ____ Church doing?” to “Is this biblical?” and “Does this produce disciples who love God enough to make other disciples?”

2. Change Our Priorities (Steve Wright, Rethink, 2008) Do we want to build a youth ministry or youth ministers? As Detroit pastor Harvey Carey says, “Youth ministry should be youth who do ministry!” What would we have to change to have Kingdom priorities? Here are four priority shifts I think most of us need to make…

A. God: Shift from self-centered (God for you) to God-centered (“God. I. We. They”). God is our starting point. It is God who is Glorious and worthy of all praise. Salvation is at God’s initiation and at God’s Expense. We are welcomed into God’s family…the community through which God’s realm will be revealed. Our welcome of others comes from God’s welcome of us and should always result in a passion to serve a lost and hurting world. We start with God and move toward the world. Our calling from God drives us in mission rather than the world’s need.

B. Family: Shift from separation from parents -to- a partnership that equips parents. View parents as the primary spiritual influence on kids- because God does. (Deut. 6:6-9)

C. Church: Shift from…

Segregated ministries–to-championing the church. Youth participate in every aspect of the church. When “big church” meets, the youth are there.
Cultural relevance-to-Scriptural faithfulness.Why do we do what we do? If it is “because it works” rather than because it is Scripturally faithful, let it go.
Student ministry-to-student development. This is about relationships: A life on a life, 7 day a week program.
Excitement as dominant emotion-to-Wonder.

D. World: Shift from mission is something I do “for me” -to- “I am an unashamed proclaimer of God’s Kingdom in word and deed.”

3. Change the outcomes we work toward in our ministry: disciples that make disciples. “That we may present everyone complete in Christ.” (Col. 1:28)

Is our first motivation to create high numbers or highly committed disciples? A group must be large enough to be a group, but what would happen if we grew by being the deepest thing rather than the widest thing?

What does discipleship look like? Kenda Creasy-Dean, in Almost Christian, describes the characteristics of committed disciples. Highly committed students have:

A Creed they know and believe
A Testimony of God’s action in their lives
A Community they are supported by
A Mission t0 give their life to
A Hope for the future

Does your youth ministry program toward developing those characteristics in students?

4. Change our programs so that they build students toward our goals

Equip families.
Teach (parents, leaders, kids) the excitement of historic, life-changing faith in Christ.
Use games & humor purposefully. *By all means, enjoy yourself in church. I am not saying faith is not enjoyable, just that it isn’t entertainment.
Use the youth group experience to create environments where the energy is in the students experiencing God (vertical) and loving and challenging one-another (circularly) rather than toward the leadership on the platform (horizontally). After all, Even their teachers don’t spend the hour lecturing any more!

Next up: Principles & Core Values for the Ancient-Future Youth Ministry

17Sep2012

Questions about Confirmation

Posted in Liturgical Church, Youth Ministry by Matt Marino

What is Confirmation? “Baptism is God saying, ‘You are mine.’ Confirmation is our agreement back, ‘I am yours.’” In other words, Baptism signifies you are a Christian and Confirmation that you have chosen to be a disciple, and as such, are committed to your local parish.

Age of Confirmands?

Confirmation is a person’s adult faith decision, so older is better than younger.
Students experience their life so much differently after starting high school than before that they tend to discount their very real childhood faith experiences. Youth leaders will always help students to honor their previous concrete-operations faith decisions, but we are swimming against their experience of themselves.
They must be old enough to have experienced life’s challenges in order to have a faith experience that sustains them through those challenges.
Students must have the developmental maturity to make a lifelong adult decision…when thought of in those terms, 7^th grade is pushing it. Please start no earlier than that!

Goals?

To make sure students are evangelized not just catechized. Best practice: Begin Confirmation with summer camp! Our Chapel Rock junior high youth camp has a “What is a Christian, and will I be one?” message sequence. The camp program was specifically designed to be a Confirmation pre-retreat.
For kids to own, “This is my God (Christian), my tribe (Episcopalian/Anglican) and my family (parish).” Best practices:

-Connect old and young. “Adopt a granny/grandy/prayer-partner/buddy programs leave generations connected to one another in ways that give momentum to the entire church.

–Integrate kids into worship at every level possible…segregating in worship builds religious consumers.

–Make church family-friendly. Church exists for the glory of God and the building up of the body of Christ. (Eph. 4) The guiding principle is that those stronger and wiser in the faith serve the weaker and newer. Blend musical forms and instruments.

–Resource the parents to be Christian leaders in the home: Make Confirmation a parent program as well as a student one!

–Make sure the curriculum teaches “why” rather than simply “what.” We want students to understand how Anglican traditions, sacraments and liturgy deepens people’s walk with Christ. Confirmation should be evangelism that leads to a life of discipleship. Even the best curriculum needs translation into your context. Currently many are using Confirm Not Conform.

–Give them the tools to sustain a lifelong faith: walking with God, living a life shaped by faith, serving others, being able to deal with life’s challenges.

Planning Priorities?

Plan Confirmation as part of the larger “Roadmap of Faith” to take an un-churched person to mature faith: 1) Meet people, 2) Tell them about Jesus 3) Help them to grow, 4) Plug them in to church, 5) Train them to join us.

Plan your program around experiences: Start Confirmation with camp. End with a service trip. The parishes with the most retention when students become adults came from the our churches doing start/end programs.

Make Confirmation at least a school year in length.

Teach a positive message. Often we use language that intentionally differentiating us from other Christians. When students get to college we often lose them to evangelical and RC churches when our kids don’t know how to respond when asked, “Do you know Jesus?” (In Arizona, RC youth programs have adopted evangelical language.) When we start with the universal Christian message and emphasize: “We are like other Christians, but with the following distinctives that will bless you,” we teach our uniqueness without having students think we kept something from them when they get to college.

Create ownership. The local Catholic diocese is moving towards students having a drivers’ license before starting Confirmation. They put it on the student to drive themselves to the meetings to insure ownership. Find ways to create ownership in your Confirmation program.