Discussing Relationships Unfiltered – Chapter 1

With this post we begin an online discussion of "Relationships Unfiltered (by Andrew Root).  We start with questions flowing out of chapter one.  We encourage you to post your answers to the following questions as comments (click on "comments" below - note that you must first register with blogger).

1. In your own words, what is relational youth/camp ministry?

2. In the camp ministry setting, what is the point of the relationships we have with young people? How do we know when these relationships are successful?

3. Influence and leverage are words we commonly use in business relationships and partnerships. Can these approaches in relationships be an issue, especially in a ministry setting? If so, how?

4. Can you recall a time in your life when a mentor, coach, teacher or pastor stepped into your personal world and was there for you by sharing in your dreams, joys, pains and fears? If you are willing, please share your story.

Ministering with Jesus in post-Christian, post-modern urban settings

One of the challenges we face as Christians on mission with Jesus, is to join the Father, Son and Spirit in the ministry they are doing within our cities - places that rapidly are becoming both post-Christian and post-modern. For ideas on joining Jesus in this urban ministry, click here to download the November issue of GC2 equipper.

2010 GenMin camps and events

We have now posted the 2010 dates for GenMin camps, family events and mission trips (view the list by clicking here).

I'm thrilled to note the addition of another mission trip to the GenMin camp & event family - the mission organization is called Great Commission Trips. In 2010 they are offering a short-term mission trip to the Bahamas. Check it out by clicking here.

The emerging (postmodern) church

GenMin seeks to help churches bring together the various age groups to be what we truly are in Christ - one family. Doing this is no small challenge. As noted in the last post it means ministering cross-generationally. But, increasingly, it also means ministering cross-culturally - reaching across the cultural divide between modernity (which is waning) to post-modernity (which is ascending).  It also means reaching across the divide between a culture dominated by Christendom (the institutional church as a dominant cultural influence) and the emerging culture where institutional Christianity has little influence.

A book that discusses these challenges (and suggests the way forward) is Emerging Churches (creating Christian community in postmodern cultures) by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger. For video interviews with both authors click here. To download a paper (in Word) from Gibbs that summarizes the main points of the book click here.

I'd appreciate your comments concerning our calling as churches to minister cross-culturally and cross-generationally.

More about the demise of age-segmentation in churches

We have written several times in this blog about the growing trend in churches to integrate the different age segments as one family within the church. Experience tells us that the radical age segregation of the past has not yielded the hoped-for fruit.

Now there is a strong trend toward age group integration.

Christianity Today has a new article on this issue. It's an interviews with Kara Powell (pictured above right), executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI). FYI is (in my opinion) doing some of the best work in investigating this issue and suggesting meaningful approaches for the journey forward.

Read the full article by clicking here.

Interview with Ted Johnston

Click here for an interview with GenMin director Ted Johnston concerning the trinitarian theology that under-girds Generations Ministries and the ongoing discussion in this blog.

A Church in the Intergenerational HOV Lane

Fuller Youth Institute has a helpful blog post (click here to view) that takes a candid look at a local church that has engaged itself in intergenerational ministry. The blogger, David Fraze, interviews the senior pastor, Dr. Tod Bolsinger, at San Clemente Presbyterian Church about the church's intergenerational iniatives and how that has radically reframed their youth ministry as well as their church-wide programming. Dr. Bolsinger talks about how the notion of intergenerational ministry begins with the understanding of the Trinity and how that relationship flows into an atmosphere and reality of community. As Dr. Bolsinger states, "Once you recognize the essence of God is community, believers relating to one another in community makes perfect sense. The incarnation of the triune God is the people of God, the body of Christ relating with one another in the Spirit of Christ."

Wrestling with the generation gap

John Ortberg (pictured left) has written a helpful article titled "The Gap" - it discusses the challenges churches face in embracing and then connecting together all the generations to form one church family. Click here to read the article at ChristianityToday.com. I like Ortberg's points about intergenerational worship and older adults mentoring younger adults and teens.

Preparing teens for college

Do you have a teen at home or in youth group who enters college this fall? What will you do to help them prepare? A helpful Bible Study is provided by Threads (it's free!). Click here to download "Freshmen Re-orientation."

Interview with Andrew Root

Check out the You're Included interview with Dr. Andrew Root (shown right). Dr. Root is assistant professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. He discusses trinitarian youth ministry concepts from his book, "Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry"  - I recommended this excellent book in a post on The Surprising God blog.

This coming Spring (2010), Greg Williams and I will be team teaching an online class through Grace Communion Seminary (GCS) - the class is titled "Trinitarian Youth Ministry." We will be using Root's book as a primary text. If you're interested in taking the class, watch for future details on this blog and on the GCS website.

A trinitarian view of human sexuality

A key issue in cross-generational, family-oriented ministries is human sexuality. I have found the work of Chistopher West to be of great value. He writes and lectures about this important, and often confusing subject from a trinitarian theological perspective. I find what he shares to be thoroughly biblical.

You will find helpful resources posted on West's website (click here) including a wonderful audio presentation titled "Theology of the Body" (go to the download page by clicking here).

A New Generation Demands New Categories for Theology and Ministry

Lily Allen is a mostly unknown name in the United States, but in the UK she is ubiquitous. Her picture is plastered all over the daily papers, her pop songs blare from the radio, and gossip of her escapades fill the tabloids. Lily Allen is one the UK’s great paparazzi magnets because she is one of the UK’s most captivating celebrities. And the glow of her fame will soon be as white hot here as it is in the UK (just last month she sold out two shows in LA, her new album It’s Not Me, It’s You sits at 54 on the billboard charts, and the first single just appeared on VH1’s top twenty countdown).

Lily Allen’s celebrity is not only built on her talented song writing and vocal ability but also on her fast living and party girl antics. Lily Allen is the empowered twenty-year-old woman who is business savvy (using social networking like MySpace and Twitter to launch her career), and deep in her lyrical pop songs, and yet is nevertheless obsessed with fame, drinking, and easy sex.

Lily Allen represents the new world of a new generation; a generation that refuses to so easily be categorized, a generation that believes that smart and sexy are not competing realities, responsible and yet hedonistic not complete opposites. Lily Allen represents in her music and celebrity the categorical shifts that are occurring in our culture, she represents escape from old categorical dichotomies as the location for constructing meaning and identity.

By this I don’t mean the overstatement that this pop star somehow represents a radically different ideological or epistemological cultural shift. Rather, I mean something more slight, less dramatic. What I mean is that the categories in which we have often done theology and church have simply changed. Or to say it better, the categories people use to organize and make meaning in their lives are no longer the categories we have used to construct theology and do ministry.

To read more of Andrew Root's article, click here

Connecting with postmoderns

A challenge faced by all churches is how to connect with postmoderns. Dr. David Wells, professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, addressed this topic in a lecture at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Wells noted that postmoderns are typically disenchanted by progress, suspicious of objective reason, and longing for community in a fragmented, shallow world. In this world they feel "dislodged," and thus seek what they sense they are missing - authentic community.

Then come modern, information-based, program-driven churches trying to connect with postmoderns by extending information (in modern or even postmodern packaging) and programs (with all the "bells and whistles"). But these things, no matter how well presented, are no substitute for real community.

Most postmoderns (and some moderns) aren't buying it. It isn't satisfying the inner hunger they are experiencing. They often see our modernistic approaches (no matter how well intentioned and beautifully executed) as inauthentic (not real) - more about church - as - program (institution) than church - as - community.

So what do we do? I suggest that we first acknowledge that Jesus already holds them close - already includes them in his community (communion) with the Father -Son -Spirit. This is what is "real" - this is the "truth of all truths," defined by the person of Jesus, who is God in union with all humanity (modern and postmodern; Christian and non-Christian). So we start by aligning our inner being - our core convictions - with this truth.

Then we align our doing with this truth. Or, said better, we seek to join Jesus in his on-going relationship (that's what he's doing) with postmoderns (and we should do the same with moderns). Our ministry to them is to be "place-sharers" - sharing with Jesus the "place" (relationship) that he already has with them.

What does that place-sharing look like? For one, I think it looks like helping groups of post-moderns celebrate the community they have (whether they know that Jesus is part of it or not). This "helping" doesn't mean insisting that they join our community. Rather, we help them form their own. Perhaps we provide a space; perhaps we provide financial support or food. Perhaps we just hang out and ask how we can be of help. We seek to support, to nurture and to facilitate the contiuninig formation of their community with Jesus.

This is a posture of humility, of respect, of seeking to help - not dominate. It's the way and ethos of Jesus - the God who is "with" us and "for" us. Who did not insist that we come to him, but came to us, and became one of us (and remains human with us forever).

So these are some principles. What will they look like as they are lived out in your setting? There is no "one-size-fits-all" program for you to implement. Rather, there is a dynamic, flexible (and sometimes "wild") journey with Jesus as he reaches across cultural and generational (and all other) divides.

I pray that your journey is fully with Jesus. Remember, he is with you!

Confessions of a youth minister

Bigger is always better, or so I thought. For nine years I served as the lead youth minister in a metro Atlanta area church. We called ourselves REACH and our mission was to touch as many young lives as possible in the name of Jesus. It was great fun and we had activity-laden ministry that attracted many friends and family of teens in our youth ministry. We grew quickly from having four youngsters at my first Sunday School class to consistently having 40-50 teeangers at the Wednesday night group session to having over 100 kids at our popular activities. I would proclaim the power and name of Jesus, fire the kids up, invite them into a transformative relationship with their Savior, and ask them to bring their friends to the next gathering or event. It was an exciting time, and for someone who has a full-time career in sales and strives to be a "gatherer," I celebrated the growth in numbers as a great success.

Bigger is always better, or so I thought.

So what was the issue...isn't bigger better? Is having ministry stewardship over a growing number of people something to get excited about - absolutely. Is is reasonable to celebrate having more people in the seats for our church services, camps and youth activities - of course it is. So where was the issue? The issue for me was this - we were an activity-centered ministry instead of a presence-centered ministry. I was great at showing wiz-bang videos, organizing fun group games and getting people involved with what we were doing. Not bad, but there is something better.

Whether your church, youth ministry or camp is large or small in numbers, I have come to believe that truly effective ministry can only be done by helping others see the presence of Jesus, by way of the Spirit, in their lives. That happens through life-on-life, moment-by-moment experiences that we share with young people. It's about relationship. I was a youth minister of influence...trying to leverage my personality and ability to gather people to win them for Christ. Now I want to be a youth minister of relationship...helping young people to experience the relationship and the power of the presence of Jesus already in their lives. As Andrew Root writes in his book Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, "Relational Youth ministry is about suffering with adolescents. It’s about sharing in their place with empathy, sympathy, and commonality…We must reach out to their (teens) humanity even if it means the suffering of our own humanity, for this is the way of the cross…We have offered them trips to Disneyland, silly games and cool youth rooms, not companionship in their darkest nights, their scariest of hells.” Amen.

I still play silly games and like cool youth rooms and get excited about a large crowd. However, now I have come to see that every person in that cool youth room is a cherished child of the Living God - not to be won over, but to be loved. No agenda. No strings attached.

Opening the church to young adults

Why do many young adults leave the church, and what will it take to bring them back? These questions are examined in Essential Church? by Thom and Sam Ranier. To read an excerpt, click here.

The book is based on a study of one-thousand "church dropouts" who were interviewed about why they left. Their answers have less to do with "losing their religion" and more about their desire for community that isn't made stale by simply maintaining the status quo.

The book offers four ways churches can make their worship community an essential part of these young people's lives again:

• Simplify - develop a clear structure and process for making disciples
• Deepen - provide strong biblical teaching and preaching
• Expect - let members know the need for commitment to the congregation
• Multiply - emphasize evangelism, outward focus, and starting new churches

I appreciate the insights of this book, and would add concerning its conclusions that what I think we are seeing in these young adults is two things:

1. A rejection of "Churchianity." By that I mean thy no longer see church attendance as a social advantage or imperative.
2. A longing for community. I believe this longling comes from an (often unknowing) experience of the union they have with God in Jesus, who unites all humanity to the "community" of the Father, Son and Spirit. This union is the basis of the "image of God" (imago Dei) that all humans bear (an image often distorted by sin). The church has the opportunity to make such community visible and accessible by being a loving community that is centered on Jesus and has doors wide open to include young people in their cultural setting. I hope we will do so.