lifeasmission
exploring the mystery of life and mission as one and the same
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Archive of "youth ministry" Category
A Quick Hop Back Into the World of Student Ministry
As a college student at Malone University, I majored in youth ministry. I did internships as a handful of different kinds of churches, the last of which actually led into a full-time role as a student pastor at a large church, overseeing separate junior, senior high, and college-age ministries.
When I was a grad student at Fuller Theological Seminary, I continued to serve in the world of high school student ministry as an interim director at yet another kind of church.
Later, after some time working in a seminary context, I launched into yet another pastoral position at a new church, this time working exclusively with college students and other young adults.
However, I haven’t really done much in the way of student ministry since the spring of 2009. So, after nearly a 3-year hiatus, I was excited when my college buddy, Scott, who’s been a long time youth pastor at The Chapel in North Canton, asked me to come back into town and help lead a retreat for his high school student leaders.
As you might expect, the topic of the retreat was leadership. There were to be three main sessions over the course of our time together Friday night and through the day on Saturday, plus a final sermon on Sunday morning.
The theme for Friday night was, “Leadership as Followership: Jesus’ Plan to Destroy Your Life.” Here, we focused our discussion around Matthew 20:17-28 and reflected on how Jesus’ role as a leader was located not so much in clever skills and abilities, but a central focus on following where and how God was leading him. We talked about how a relinquishing of our personal ambition and agenda is fundamental to receiving what it is that God might have for us. I also sought to pass on a discipleship framework for leaning how to get better and better at recognizing where and how God is at work and responding faithfully.
On Saturday morning our theme was, “Leadership as Discipline: It’s Always Easy… Until You Have To Do It.” We moved our attention to Matthew 26:36-46 and we spent some time talking about how, contrary to the aberrant Celebrity Culture that seems to mark contemporary Evangelicalism, Jesus-shaped leadership is anything but glamorous. Rather, a commitment to lead like Jesus did will nearly always take you to a place of utter desperation, disappointment, and dependence upon God. In terms of discipleship, we focused on what it might mean and look like to structure our lives around practices that intentionally root us in relationship with God, fellow believers, and others who are hurting and/or far from God.
The final session of the retreat on Saturday afternoon revolved around the notion of, “Leadership as Mission: Death as a Way of Life.” As we spent time working through Matthew 28:16-20, we discussed what actually drove Jesus as a missionary-leader, namely submission to the unique role he was to play in God’s mission in the world. We also reflected on Jesus’ commitment to equip and send others as opposed to keeping everything isolated to his direct (human) endeavor. This led naturally into presenting a process for discipling others toward maturity and mission.
On Sunday morning, in sharp defiance to the notion the Piperian notion that, “God has designed christianity to have a masculine feel to it,” Amy and I preached the sermon, “Leadership as Partnership: Embodying a New World Order,” as partners who together, as male and female, reflect the imago Dei! We spoke out of Acts 2 and Ephesians 4, calling attention to the primary role of the Holy Spirit in constituting a body of people who, against all worldly convention, seek to lead one another out of their unique giftedness in partnership for mission.
Seeing some family and friends was a highlight as always, but man, getting back around high school students for a while was a blast. I was super-appreciative of just how seriously they took our time together and how much creativity and passion they brought to the discussions.
Shame on youth pastors (Scott’s not one of them!), who sabotage their opportunity to shape a generation of students because they are so focused on growing a huge, cool youth group. Double shame on senior/lead pastors who, out of their own insecurity, put that kind of pressure on youth pastors to do it!
FYI: Fuller Youth Institute
I have posts coming on both my recent trip to Afghanistan as well as a follow up to the video on how McCain and Obama each answered Rick Warren’s question about evil. In the meantime, I wanted to draw your attention to some great work some friends have been doing. Kara Powell and Brad Griffin have been helping to lead Fuller’s Center for Youth and Family Ministry, which is now the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI). This is a tremendous research based resource for all those involved with or those who care about teenagers. I was lucky enough to have contributed two articles to their work, “A Theology of Culture for Your Ministry: Is “The World” Friend, Foe, or Something Else?” and “The Other Side of At-Risk: Freeing Youth From Suburban Oppression.” Anyway, they have completely revamped their site and you should go have a look.
Live Better
My brother clued me in to 2 good sites today.
This one will let you opt-out of a lot of the junk mail you receive and this one will send you free daily email tips for living more sustainably.
Why? Because stuff like this should make us really nervous about the enormity of our consumption (pretty fantastic art as well).
Enjoy!
Suburban Discontent/Suburban Oppression
My friend Todd Hiestand recently posted, A Holy (Suburban) Discontent. It is partly a review of Tim Keel’s, Intuitive Leadership, and partly a reflection on the trappings of the suburban life style – something I have been feeling all too painfully since moving back from LA.One of the most ironic parts of the post is that Todd quotes Tim’s in his telling of a story not very unlike my own. Tim reflects “on how he had an intense and authentic experience of spiritual community in college. Then, post-college he entered into the world of suburban America.” Tim says,“I was able to see a number of friends with whom I had live so intimately begin to lose their faith following college. That sounds dramatic, and I don’t mean it in the way you might initially read it: I don’t mean they lost the content of their belief system or became apostate doctrinally. I mean that upon leaving college and entering the world of twentieth-century suburban Christianity, they lost their way of life. They entered a way of life that was compartmentalized, disintegrated, individualistic, sub-cultured, ghettoized, programmed and purpose-driven.”This was as true for me as it has ever been for any of my friends. Having had the freedom to remove myself from this for a time, to study and reflect, has, I beleive, given me a unique perspective on just how subtle this sort of co-option can be. With Todd, I feel a discontent deep within – wanting the rhythm and course of my life to be determined by the power of the gospel and not the power of the culture in which I live. Todd offers a few good suggestions at the end of his post regarding some of the personal implications. My longing, however (not that Todd doesn’t have this longing, check out his church community, The Well), pushes this beyond this to the desire to align myself with a community which feels this discontent and stands convicted that they most embody an alternative lifestyle, to be an alternative community.
On a related note, an article I wrote for Fuller’s Center for Youth and Family Ministry, The Other Side of At-Risk: Freeing Youth from Suburban Oppression, was selected to appear in Fuller’s global publicaltion, Theology News & Notes. You can check it out here.
The Theology of Linkin Park
I don’t know a ton about Linkin Park, but they are a band whose name keeps coming up in various spheres of my life. I know my brother Adam is a fan and the other day my friend JR (that’s right, “there are 2 of them,” [SB]!) was showing me one of their videos on his oh so glorious new iphone. I provide the video for your viewing pleasure. And you can read the lyrics here.
I hardly know where to begin in terms of making spiritual and theological connections between the sentiment of this song and the message of the gospel.
A Theology Of Culture for Misintry
A new edition of Fuller’s Center for Youth and Family Ministry e-zine came out today and they chose to include an article I wrote, “A Theology of Culture for Your Ministry: Is “The World” Friend, Foe, or Something Else?” A big thanks to Brad Griffin, Kara Powell and others who helped in the editing process. It’s a much better article because of their help. I’ll be adding it to the goodies section on my blog soon (currently I have a cloud of all my delicious tags as well as some of the stuff I’ve written if you’re interested in either).
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