Message To St. Michael, Van Nuys

Hello, all!

Today, I had the privilege and honor of giving a “homilette” at St. Michael Church in Van Nuys, and I figured that it might not hurt to share it with you all! I would be remiss (and likely plagiarizing) not to thank Kenda Creasy Dean for some of the finer points of the homily. Her books, Almost Christian and Practicing Passion, are constant sources of inspiration for me.

So without further ado:

Listen to the message!

In Christ,
Christian

Thinking Theologically About Youth Ministry: Jesus Is A Person! Pt. 2

In my last post, I began to discuss some thoughts surrounding the Personhood of Jesus Christ and the implications this has for youth ministry. Obviously, this conversation is one that could reach into eternity, but I don’t know that such a conversation would necessarily bear much fruit; at some point, we need to get our hands dirty and just do ministry. But I hope that these little reflections and considerations do, in some way, bear much fruit for you in your approach to youth ministry. These thoughts have shaped my own ministry, and I trust that the Lord is doing with my work whatever pleases him. So without further ado, let’s return to the discussion of Jesus’ Personhood!

Jesus as Person means that He is active in the world and can be acted upon. I understand that such language as saying that “God can be acted upon” almost makes it sound like He is some force in nature or some pagan deity that is compelled by good actions or well-pleasing sacrifice. This is not what I mean, but rather I mean that His heart is one that is moved by the sufferings of his people. God is not a distant God that is unaffected by the anguish in the lives of humans. His heart is soft, and our pain affects Him in a way that causes Him to do something about it; this is what I mean that God can be acted upon.

In the Old Testament, God is actively involved in the world and the story of his people, even from the very beginning. The book of Genesis begins with God creating the world. He speaks, and things pop up where things were not before. He speaks light into existence; He speaks creepy-crawlies into the world; He speaks all the birds into their being, sending them forth to fly around the world in joy. It is through His Word that almost everything is made. The one exception to this rule is, of course, humanity. It is regarding humanity that God first takes counsel within Godself before acting: “Let Us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen 1:26). God then acts: “God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7).

From the beginning of God’s relationship with humanity, we see that God is intimatelyinvolved. It is through God’s Mouth-to-nostril act that the first man comes to be. God is active from the beginning of our relationship with Him. Moreover, after the fall, God walks through the Garden, looking for Adam and Eve: “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). Interestingly enough, this is the only time we ever see God walking in the Garden. Many of us have re-written the story in our minds to involve a God who “walks with Adam” in the Garden, but that simply isn’t in the Scriptures. (Seriously. Check.)

This is a myth. It never happens. Never…never.

It is only after they fall that God comes to walk with them. After the consequences of humanity’s action are pronounced, God does something strangely tender (albeit gruesome). He kills an animal and “made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins, and clothed them” (Gen. 3:21). Even in the fall, the very thing that supposedly earns us God’s ill favor, He is seen to be providing for His people.

But God can also be acted upon, for His heart is not far from hearts of His people. In Exodus, the Israelites (the ones who “struggle with God,” Gen. 32:28) are in captivity in Egypt and being forced to build for Pharaoh a testament to Pharaoh’s greatness, and as one can imagine, they aren’t too happy about it, so they begin to complain and cry out to God. But God does not remain distant. Instead, He goes to an unlikely fellow, Moses, an elderly shepherd with a stutter who has been exiled from Egypt for murder. When God in the Burning Bush encounters Moses, the Lord says to him, “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians…” (Ex. 3:7,8). God’s own interest in his people is such that He hears their cry and sees their affliction, and it is this cry and affliction that moves God to act. God has revealed His own heart in this action; His heart is for His people, and He will respond to their cry.

It is eventually this same heart, the heart moved by the afflictions of His people, that moves Him to become human in the Person of Jesus Christ, in Whom He actively reaches into the lives of people. Jesus’ earthly ministry is marked by copious amounts of healing, raising people from the dead, and (most joyfully) turning water into wine because someone didn’t plan for so many people. This Jesus Christ, Himself the Incarnate Word of God, is the same Word that speaks the world into existence from non-existence, and it is He who looks broken, dying humanity in the face and responds with compassion. The cries of the blind Bartimaeus reach His ears (Mk. 10:46-52), and He acts, and in this way, He reveals that His heart is one that does not remain unaffected by human travail. Moreover, people try to silence Bartimaeus, suggesting that the Master does not have time for him, but it is this that causes Bartimaeus to cry out all the more loudly until the Word of God takes pity on him. Jesus hears the cries of His people and is moved by them.

All of this of course, isn’t even to mention His reaction to the death of His friend, Lazarus, which is contained in the shortest, yet most poignant verse of the New Testament: “Jesus wept” (Jn. 11:35). Jesus faces the anguish of the separation caused by death, and this time it is not only as the Lord who watches His people perish, but as a Friend who has lost his friend to the grave. Jesus, Who reveals Himself to be fairly fond of humanity, in this moment shows us that He is not above being heartbroken by the hopelessness of the human condition. We are destined for death, and it makes Him cry. This is our Jesus, the Almighty King, the Good Shepherd – He looks at death and weeps.

Jesus truly weeps for Lazarus that day, but He also weeps for all of dying, broken humanity. His heart breaks over the suffering child whose father dies suddenly. He weeps for the parents of a drug addict, and He mourns the pain of the drug addict herself. This is our Jesus; He is the one that looks at our broken little hearts and reveals to us His own broken heart.

Okay, Christian, I get it. Jesus moves in the world and His heart breaks over us, but so what? Doesn’t that mean that we should stop doing stuff that breaks His heart? Doesn’t that mean we should try to keep kids from doing drugs or engaging in behaviors that lead them right into the place that makes Jesus cry?

Whoo. Your questions are truly incisive.

Often, we think that our ministries must be about helping young people engage in lives that don’t make the Baby Jesus cry. We attempt to engage our youth in retreats and seminars that teach them the virtues of sexual purity (which, by the way, goes far beyond waiting for marriage and not looking at pornography), but very rarely do we ever, like Jesus, look into the crypts of their broken little hearts that long to be loved with a Love that is stronger than death. Even more rarely do we weep over what we behold in them. Even less rarely do we, like Jesus, bravely enter those crypts of the heart and bring to life the dead that are buried there. But since, again, it is important to remember that all ministry is incarnational – that is, revealing something about the God we profess to follow – we need to think about what God’s Personhood, which is active and acted upon, means for us.

Too often I hear people talk about the need to “keep kids in the Church.” I am so tired of hearing this phrase that I just about want to puke. But what is it about this phrase that is so upsetting? Is it that I don’t want young people to find a life in the beauty of the Church? Is it that I think they’re going to be okay without living the Sacramental and ascetic life of the Church? No. It’s not this. I want these things for our young, but the question at hand is whether their simple attendance at Church means that their broken hearts are actually mended in the process. I fear that these young people are not being rightly ministered to and that these young people’s needs largely go unmet because they largely go unknown.

I spoke recently with a young man who is in the process of wandering from the Church, and he stated that he knew that the people of his church community loved him and would do for him anything they could if they knew something was wrong. Sweet, right? Yes, but he was also fairly certain that these same people (the ones who would do anything for him) didn’t care enough to find out whether there was anything wrong. I wish I could have told him that he was incorrect, but I couldn’t. This sad reality had better cause us to do some serious reflection and ask, “What does this convey about the God we claim to follow?” The obvious answer is this: He isn’t interested in your broken heart, young man, and He isn’t going to come looking for you.

But what we see in Jesus, the one who calls Himself the Good Shepherd, is that He does care. He does go to “the lost sheep of Israel;” He does leave the 99 to go looking for the one; He does ask where Lazarus is buried so that He might bring him back to life. When we throw our hands up in the air as our Church hemorrhages youth, we reflect a God who does the same. But the truth about this God is that His Character is such that He goes looking for those that have willfully disobeyed Him. It isn’t until Adam and Eve “go missing” that God walks through the Garden to find them. In the icon of the Resurrection, we see that God fearlessly enters the places of death in order that He might take humanity by the hand and lead them into life.

When our ministries are geared toward “keeping kids in the Church,” we reflect a God who stays away from the Cross and instead bids the two thieves to pull themselves off, suggesting that it would be best if they had just stopped stealing and kept themselves off the cross! But this isn’t what Jesus does. He goes to the Cross with them; He descends into Hell, and there He continues his Genesis 3 quest of looking for those that have been lost.

This is happening in Hell, just remember that.

Our youth ministries fail because we sit back while young people leave. We scratch our heads and begin wondering what kind of program will respond to this problem or how we can sponsor appealing events that will get these kids back to Church. But does the Good Shepherd stay with the 99 and yell at the one, “Hey, you stupid sheep! Come back! You’re going to die out there. Come back! I’ve got pizza!” No! Of course he doesn’t! He risks (indeed, gives) His own life going after that stupid sheep and thereby bringing it home.

The question that we need to ask ourselves is not, “How do we get kids more involved in Church?” but rather, “How do we, the Church, get involved with these kids?” Instead of standing in the nave with crossed arms, pejoratively asking, “Where the hell have you been?” we, like the God of Genesis, better decide that it’s time to start walking through the Garden looking for these lost souls, generously asking, “Where are you that I might come and meet you there?”

Believe it or not!

Like Jesus, we need to be not afraid of facing the horror of death. We need to be not afraid to allow our hearts to break as we stare into the pits of human frailty and ask, “Where are you, child?” We need to remember that it is only by searching the depths and respective hells of these young people’s hearts that they can be offered a hand that leads them to life. Too often, we are uncomfortable at the thought of looking broken kids in the face, mostly because this brings us face-to-face with the brokenness in our own lives that we so frequently try to avoid. Such sad truth has caused me to think that the person who says, “You really have a gift for working with teenagers! They’re difficult, disrespectful, and disinterested,” really means the following: “Wow. You sure are brave to go traipsing through the crappiness of the human heart. I would do it, but adolescents annoy me, and I don’t want to face the fact that I’m less patient and kind than I usually like to think or act.” (Lord, have mercy on this person, for I am he!) When we see young people’s crap, they show us our own, and that really sucks, but such is the call in our ministry to the young.

For Jesus, to stare at Lazarus’ grave was not only to see human destiny but also to see His own. He knew that He was headed for the grave, and this is truly a grief-worthy realization. This realization, however, moved Him to tears and caused Him to act. Yet our responses are usually completely different. When we stay in the Church, beckoning youth to return instead of going into the world and looking for those we have lost, we do not convey a Jesus who crosses time and space to find them. Rather, we convey a false who Jesus who demands that boys and girls come to Church in their Sunday best and refrain from having sex during the other 6 days of the week. We want kids to get “cleaned up” before they come to us (or the Church), rather than reflecting a God who descends into the crap to meet them there. Woe to us if this is the message that our young people receive! Woe to us if it is this message that keeps them from the Church! Woe to us, for it would be better for us to have millstones tied around our necks!

Instead, we ought to be brave and know that when we meet young people (who will act like young people), they are bringing us face-to-face with the human condition, and this ought to cause us to weep, both for them and for ourselves. Our hearts must be moved and broken by their own broken hearts, and it is from this broken heart, which ultimately reflects the Lord’s broken heart, that we will have compassion and go looking for them. If our goal is just to “keep kids in the Church” (which, by the way, is a really crappy motivation for ministry), then we are going to be sorely disappointed, and we are short-circuiting and misrepresenting what it is that God does in the world: God goes looking for the lost. God’s heart is moved by the cries of his people. God descends into death in order to take by their feeble hands those who have died. This is our God: not the one who asks, “Where have you been?” but the one who asks, “Where are you?”

What are we so scared about? As ministers whose action reflect God’s own action, we need to reconsider our approach to “keeping kids in the Church.” We must consider an approach that goes after them and doesn’t give up on them. Ever. Yes, it is going to be painful. Yes, it is going to be annoying. But yes, this is exactly what Jesus does, and we are those who have been called to follow Him. And where does He go? Straight into the pit of human existence, moved by and acting within the darkness to allow not even one to escape His loving presence. Let us follow Him there, to the places of human brokenness, otherwise we are going to keep seeing kids leave the Church, and won’t that be really crappy?

Staring into the human condition is never fun. Teenagers bug us because they are nothing but expressions of the human condition.

P.S. Don’t you think that what this girl really needs is just to go to more Church?

 

Thinking Theologically About Youth Ministry: Jesus is a Person! Pt. 1

In my last post, I spoke a lot about the difference between motivations and intentions for doing youth ministry, or perhaps more accurately, a lot of motivations and intentions not to do ministry. Given that I spent a lot of time focusing on what were probably terribly theoretical concepts (a God that faces the void with young people, et al), and as a few readers pointed out, I didn’t really write too much about what this means or where to begin in understanding our own participation in God’s action in the world. This post is (hopefully) going to offer some better insight into how we actually ought to begin ministering to our young. Since I can think of no better beginning point for such a dialogue, I figured I’d begin with the Alpha Himself and discuss preliminarily the importance of understanding Jesus as Person.

Say what we will about Protestants, but when it comes to the idea of a “personal relationship with Jesus,” they really do have us Orthodox beat on that point. I was talking with Mary, a young woman who had grown up in the Orthodox Faith, and she was telling me about her experience in the Church. For Mary, the Jesus Christ of her youth was more or less the Judge who is coming in the last days in order to dish out rewards for a life well-lived or punishment for a life squandered. The implication: you best mind your P’s and Q’s, otherwise…well…you know.

Moreover, Mary’s understanding of the Church itself was that it was largely a cultural or ritualized version of aesthetic enjoyment. She wanted to invite her friends to church with her, but she was uneasy at the thought of it, fearing that her friends wouldn’t understand why-this or why-that given that she herself didn’t understand why-this or why-that. She believed the Church’s actions to be “perfunctory” (her word. She is quite brilliant.), lending no real credence or clarity to the purpose of the Church in the world or greater understanding to who God actually is. The practices of the Church, in her mind, were of the utmost importance and God became a God who was primarily concerned with making sure that people performed the Liturgy correctly and fasted strictly, and if they didn’t…well…you know.

For Mary, the big issue at hand is not that she had an understanding of the fact that God is coming into the world to judge all humanity; it is not that she understood the Church’s Liturgy to be the singularly defining action of the Church in the world. These things are true, but the problem for Mary was that (until recently, thank God) these understandings had been divorced from the basic Christian truth that God is personal.

Here’s what I mean.

To understand that God is personal is not to say that each of us is able to take God in his or her hands and make of Him whatever each wishes. This may be where the Protestants (some, not all) get it wrong. What ends up being verbalized as a “personal” relationship is often an individualized relationship with God. When I am free to perceive God however I wish, then I have begun to form Him in my own image (usually after my own likeness) and He ceases to be God; instead, I have become the creator of this god, which actually is a hollow attempt to make myself God, all while supposedly allowing me to remain a faithful disciple of the one Lord Jesus Christ. This is wrong.

Instead, to understand God as personal is to understand that God is Person (as opposed to substance or essence (more to come on this)), and He reveals this to us most concretely in the Person of Jesus Christ. If we remove this core understanding of God as a Triune Community of Three Persons existing together in Love, then everything within the Christian faith falls apart, and God becomes only a Judge who will reward some and punish others, and the Church simply becomes a social club for people who are gathered together to perform some time-honored rite that strangely brings the earthly into contact with the heavenly. All of this is true (in some ways), but such an understanding that becomes the primary Christian narrative is rooted in what simply amounts to bad theology. This is why it is important – no, essential, imperative, a matter of life-and-death that we begin to think theologically about Jesus as Person and from this make our own movements into youth ministry. So let’s start talking about what it means for Jesus to be Person.

God, in Jesus Christ, reveals that He is a distinct Other. One of the coolest things that happens in Jesus Christ’s Incarnation is that for 33 years, humans could (didn’t, but could have) concretely point to a human body and say, “There is God.” (God!) The only way that these humans could have done such is by understanding that Jesus was (and remains) a person distinct from themselves. They could only say that Jesus was Jesus because they knew He was somehow other than themselves; I can only know that there is a “You” when there is a “Me.” I know your body is different from mine because I see where my body ends and yours begins. The same is true for Jesus, then and now.

In order for Jesus to be met, He has to be located somewhere, and in His own humanity, God reveals to humanity that He is a distinct Person and must be approached as such. This means that with the same respect and care that we share for other human persons, we must approach Jesus. We don’t go up to strangers and make up stories about them and who they are, but rather, we seek to know other humans on their own terms, understanding and accepting that they are distinct and other from us. We give them room to be themselves; Jesus demands the same respect, and He truly desires that we know Him on His terms, the result of which is eternal life (John 17:3).

But, Christian, what are the implications of this for youth ministry?

Good question. Since all of ministry must be incarnational (embodied), we need to begin to respect and approach each adolescent as a distinct other. We must continually be seeking to know each individual on their own terms. We cannot make up stories about what each young person needs, thinks, or hopes for. We cannot make assumptions about each young person; we need to know them truly. The question that Jesus asks his disciples (Who do you say that I am?) must inform our approach to young people. “Who is this young person before me? What does she like? What does he fear? What does she hope for? What does he find funny?” These questions and their answers respectively respect and concretize each young person’s otherness and individuality. It is in their individuality that Jesus calls them, and we must meet this individual that Jesus calls. As we do this, our own otherness to them becomes a testimony to the otherness of God. When we become interested in the otherness and distinctness of young people, we bear witness a God who is interested in them and meets them Person-to-person. It is in this Person-to-person encounter, then, that we learn more about the significance of Christ’s own Personhood.

Jesus as Person means that He is capable of interaction and encounter. One of the problems that occurs in the minds of young people when we pray things like “Heavenly King,…who art everywhere present and fillest all things” is that young people begin to imagine that God is substance through which they move rather than a Person (or Three…) in Whom “they move, live, and have their being.” To paraphrase Andrew Root (read his books), if God is everywhere, then this is essentially saying He is nowhere, for if God is to be perceived as everywhere (in this substance mindset), then He ceases to be a person that can be encountered. In order to know the light, I have to have had an experience of the dark. The reason I knew I was hanging out with Mary today is because before I was hanging out with her, I wasn’t hanging out with her. I encountered Mary in such a way that is borne out of my not encountering her. In order to feel her presence, I needed to have felt her absence.

The same is true with Jesus, I think. While He may never be absent from us in the same way that Mary was absent from me or light from darkness, He often remains hidden. Jesus as human-divine Person reveals to us that God has a clear location in which one can meet him. St. Paul knew the Lord when He met him on the road to Damascus, “Who are you, Lord?” (Acts 9:5a). It is only after this that the Lord responds, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5b). Because Paul had known the hiddenness of God, he was able to recognize God when he actually encountered Him. In this, Paul interacts with the Lord in the midst of the encounter. Since Jesus is Person, He can be met. He can be talked to, and He can talk back: “I am Jesus.” For Paul, the Lord’s hiddenness was a necessary pre-condition in order to allow for Jesus to knock some sense into him, and it is in this encounter that Paul’s conversion occurs. Had Paul believed the Lord simply to be a vague substance that was hovering over and around him all the time, then Paul would not have recognized the Person of Jesus when His Light blinded him. This is crucial for us to remember in youth ministry.

But, Christian, don’t I want kids to know that God is always with them? Don’t I want them to know that He is always watching over them?

Wow. You really do ask good questions. Of course we want young people to know that God always loves and cares for them, indeed, that He is always with them. The question at hand becomes about precisely how we go about doing this. It is out of His own hiddenness that Jesus reveals Himself to St. Paul; for young people, this is going to be the same. As those who minister to the young, we often want to promise them the joy of the Kingdom and the presence of God without fully exploring with them the places that God seems to be hidden, but to offer them a God who is not hidden, is to offer them a God that cannot be met.

When youth ask, “Why does God let bad things happen?” there are very few answers that seem to be satisfactory, especially considering that this question usually amounts to something like: “Where was God when my dad died? Where was God when my sister got raped? Where was God on 9/11?” All of these are heavy questions, and they are ones that we who do youth ministry usually like to dance around. We may offer answers like, “God just wanted to take your dad home. God allowed this to happen to your sister to make her stronger. 9/11 shows us that God has enemies and one day, they will cease to be!” All these answers are totally unsatisfying to the teenager in pain. For them, God is hidden and obscured by the total absurdity of suffering in this world; and understandably so! But the problem that arises when we offer that “God has a plan in the midst of this crap. God is trying to make you stronger” is that we convey that we are unwilling to enter into the scariness of life that these young people face. Moreover, this reflects, to them, a God who is completely uninterested in the scariness of life that these young people face.

In the Cross, we see a mangled, disfigured, dehumanized Jesus. In this broken human dangling from the Tree, however, also exists the hiddenness of God. Yes, we see crucified humanity on the Cross, but we also see (or, rather, don’t see) the Crucified God. Jesus on the Cross is the fullness of God’s Self-revelation, but when we look at the Cross, all we see is a bloody peasant from the ghetto-town of old. God is present in the one place that He most clearly appears not to be.

When we skirt the darkness and run from the absurdity of pain, we also miss an opportunity to encounter the God who is hidden in the crucified humanity of Jesus. If we truly believe that God is “everywhere present and fillest all things,” then this means that we can bravely look at the clear brokenness of life and assert that God, though hidden, is present. We rightly state that God has a plan, but the plan is not to make them stronger; the plan is to reconcile these young people to Himself in their own weakness. If we, however, are unwilling to enter the weakness, the hiddenness of God, and stare it down with them, then we are showing young people that God is also unwilling to enter the weakness and hiddenness. And this is a tragedy, because in the Cross, we see that God is most fully present in His own hiddenness in the midst of human weakness, which is most clearly exemplified by the Crucified Christ.

If we are going to convey to these young people that God can be encountered, then this means we need to embrace the hiddenness with them. We need to explore their questions. We need to explore their doubts. We need to make room for their pain. We need to go looking for God in the places where He most apparently is not. If He’s everywhere, as we assert, then He also is there. If He is there, then why don’t we go looking for Him bravely? The questions of God’s purpose for allowing bad things to happen are important, but we misstep when we suggest that God’s purpose is one that will “be for the best.” Suffering is not for the best! It sucks! But the good news is that we have a God who is present in the midst of His own hiddenness in the human Person of Christ, and it is in His own suffering on the Cross that He comes close to our suffering. This is the purpose of our suffering: to meet Christ upon the Cross.

Youth workers need to release need to have answers to the darkness and the hiddenness of God. Instead, through relationship and asking these hard questions along with young people – “Yeah. You’re right. Life is crappy; where is God in all this?” – youth workers must be prepared to face these scary places of reality. Offering simple platitudes of “God will work it out” or “God is testing you to make you stronger” will not satisfy young minds or hearts. All this will do is shut them up until they leave the Church, having not been offered a God who faces reality with them because they have had youth workers who are unable to face reality with them.

Youth workers, in all that we do, reflect who God is for these young people. Jesus shows us that He is not afraid of human grotesqueness, disease, deformity, or death by going to the Cross, and He also shows us that where all that can be seen is destruction and despair, God is working behind the scenes to enact salvation and reconciliation. We just have to have the eyes to see and the ears to hear this. Youth workers, with Christly courage, must be prepared to enter the darkness with young people so that the Light of Christ can knock them around a bit, ultimately to the point of their conversion.

Mary was not offered a Jesus who could be encountered. She was offered a Jesus that she needed to keep happy by being on her best behavior. She was offered a faith that had come down to liturgical accuracy, rather than a faith that was to empower her to face reality bravely and go looking for God in the places that, by all evidence, He appears not to be. If Mary had been in relationship with an adult who was with, for, and committed to her personally in the midst of her confusion and despair, then she would have had a category for a God who is with, for, and committed to her personally in the midst of her confusion and despair.

It is essential that we see our own relationships with young people as completely reflective and instructive of the nature of this Jesus to whom we commend ourselves, one another, and our whole life. By being there for them, we reflect a God who is there for them. By looking bravely for God in the places of His hiddenness, we reflect a God who is not afraid to go with them into the places of darkness and despair, and when we do this, I am convinced that we, too, along with the young people, will be shocked to find the Lord knocking us off our own high horses of moralistic and liturgical piety. Lord, grant that this would happen.

Christ Himself bravely enters the darkness of death to take humanity by the hand and lead them to life. Would that we had the same courage.

Image sources: http://m.zimbio.com/Wallpaper/articles/aO-ah_mx7vm/quotes+about+jesus
http://www.dst-corp.com/james/PaintingsOfJesus/NoJS.htm

http://christianbackgrounds.info/7-word-of-cross/
http://catholicphoenix.com/2011/04/21/“the-passion-of-the-christ”-an-aid-to-meditation-on-the-sorrowful-mysteries-of-the-rosary-part-v/
http://josephpatterson.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/resurrection.jpg

Why Are You Doing Ministry?

I recently read Taking Theology To Youth Ministry by Andrew Root. I can’t recommend this book highly enough, and this entire post is greatly inspired and informed by his book. Again, I recommend it whole-heartedly. While all of his theology might not be the fulness of Orthodox Christianity, I think he does hit home on some very valuable points for those of us who are engaged in ministry to the young. One of the most powerful points in his book is that we who minister need to take a good hard look at our motivations behind ministry. Often, he states, youth ministry is well-intentioned, but that which truly motivates us compromises our intent. So the question for us that stands is simple: why are we doing ministry?

In this light, it becomes important for us to consider the differences between intentions and motivations. Our ministries are almost always undertaken with only the best intentions. We want to see kids become real followers of Jesus; we want to see kids become active and faithful Christian adult members of the Church; we want to spare them the misery of life without the Lord. All of these are good intentions, but often what motivates us is different and driven by other things.

We want them to be good Christians because we’re afraid of the choices that they might make apart from the Lord: drugs, alcohol, or (God forbid) premarital sex. We want them to be faithful members of the Church because we get scared about what it would be like if they rejected Orthodoxy and instead became non-denominational Protestants. Don’t get me wrong; these are things that we ought not want to happen, but as long as these are the things that motivate our ministries, we actually may not be doing ministry.

I’m not suggesting that our ministries should not be geared toward passing on certain moral and ecumenical convictions; this should happen. It is rather the manner in which we go about doing ministry and the theological quality of what we pass on to our young that ought to lead to understandings of morality and ecumenical convictions. Ministry, is after all, not about what we do in the lives of people, but it is about what the Lord does in the lives of people through us. We buy into a great error if we believe that our programs and curriculum (human action) are going to have lasting effect on the formation of the hearts of the Church’s young; we are deluded into the age-old sin of trusting our own convictions about what is good if we do this, and we trust human wisdom to pass on these truths.

Again, I’m not saying that abstaining from premarital sex is not good – it is – but if we are offering this basic Christian moral action in a vacuum (often citing different Scripture verses (proof-texting) or throwing statistics at kids (which they don’t care about because statistics, after all, don’t apply to them)), then we are failing to avail youth to the reality of God’s presence in their lives and His desire for them to trust Him with the various moral and ecumenical crises they face. Moreover, these crises that they face are often not simply issues of morality and ecumenicism; they are issues that confront their very being and the meaning of their being.

So all this begs the question, “What is ministry?” If we can articulate a satisfactory answer to this burning question, then perhaps we’ll see where ministry to the young might begin to fit in the greater scheme of the Church’s Mission in the world. Before this, however, I think it is important that we first understand the basis of the Church’s ministry, which is, namely, the Ministry of God to the world. If our ministries are disconnected from His Ministry, then what we are doing is not ministry at all; it is empty human action that exists for no other reason than to make us feel good about what we are doing for the kids, and while encouraging kids not to have sex may be a good thing, we need to ask whether this is the thing that God would have us do.

God’s Ministry in the world can be summed up in one word: Reconciliation. For St. Irenaeus, this was called recapitulation, but the gist is essentially the same. In the beginning, God created humanity, and humanity chose life apart from God and God’s gifts. To choose existence apart from God is to choose death. After all, what can life be without the Breath of Life flowing in and out of that which is? For humanity to choose life apart from God sent humanity into a spiral toward nothingness and non-being; St. Athanasius agrees with this, by the way, saying that “sin is non-being.” It is a willful return to the void from which God spoke the world into being.

To choose existence apart from God is to choose the nihilo (nothingness) from which God brought all that is. But God, in His mercy, becomes a human being and descends into those very places of nothingness that face our own humanity every day, thereby reconciling those places of darkness, nothingness, and death to Himself in His humanity. God is, after all, a God who brings something out of nothing, possibility out of impossibility, and now new life out of death. This is the Ministry of God: to work in places of nothingness and to make them into something by His Word, Who is Jesus Christ Himself.

If our ministries do not reflect a God who works alongside human nothingness to fill them with His own presence, then we are not doing ministry, for no ministry stands apart from God’s Ministry. To choose action apart from God’s action in the world is to choose the void, even if that action seems to be good. After all, the tree from which Adam and Eve ate in the beginning is the tree of the knowledge of both evil and good. The problem is that we choose “goodness” apart from God’s goodness. Talking about drugs, alcohol, and sex, making kids into people who know all about the ecumenical councils and sacramental theology of the Church, and teaching kids how important it is to feed the hungry and reach the poor are all good things, but if they take place apart from God’s action in the world (His Ministry), then they are not ministry; they are death.

This is why we should – no, why we must – check our motivations for being involved in ministry. If our motivation is to participate in the various ways that God works possibility against the impossibility of our life apart from him, then this can be said to be ministry. If we are looking for God’s action up against the various places of nothingness that manifest in the lives of young people, then this can be said to be youth ministry. If our work is geared toward teaching kids about the academic-esque theology of the Church so that they can defend their faith, then we are doing something wrong. If we are teaching them about how bad it is to cheat on tests or to do drugs, then we are missing the point of God’s action in Jesus Christ on the Cross.

Up against the threat of nothingness and death, the temporary solace and illusory promise of fidelity and life meaning that comes from premarital sex and other illicit deeds will continue to win if young people perceive they follow a God who wants them to be good boys and girls rather than a God who works new life out of their experiences of death. If their perception of God is not a God who faces the void of existence with these young people, then they will keep choosing deeds that stave off the anxiety of returning to the void from which God brought forth all which is. If we, however, see ministry as participating in God’s own action to bring forth something out of nothing, if we see God in the midst of the void by His death on the Cross, then we offer young people a life with a God who is with them and for them in the scariest depths of their existence.

It’s time for us to check our motivations. Are we doing youth ministry because we want kids to be “good?” Are we doing ministry because we want them to be Orthodox for the rest of their lives? Or are we doing ministry because we believe in and follow a God who went to the Cross to fill all of human longing, despair, and nothingness with His own presence and because we want young people also to know this God who works new life out of death? Is the God we present one that wants things from kids (good behavior, service, and worship) or one that wants things for them (eternal life, participation in His Ministry, and participation in His own Community of Love)?

So let’s get real. Why are we doing ministry?

The World Below is on Ancient Faith Radio!

Hello, all!

Exciting news! “The World Below” seminar is on Ancient Faith Radio! Please give it a listen if you get a chance! Here’s the link: The World Below – Ancient Faith Radio.

The seminar took place on June 30, and the speakers included myself, Fr. Patrick O’Grady, and David Paddison. Give the seminar a listen, and then join the conversation by commenting on this post!

In Christ,
Christian

5 Reasons To Say Yes To Relational Ministry

Having explored 5 Reasons To Say No To Program-Driven Ministry, I think it is only fitting to offer an alternative. I’m now going to offer five reasons to approach ministry as a more relational endeavor than a programmatic one.

1. Relational ministry is personal. One of the great things about a relationship between two people is that the relationship can only be experienced by the two involved. It is a unique, beautiful, and organic expression of Christ’s love for us. When I was 16 and developed a relationship with my high school English teacher, I was blessed because in the smallness of our relationship, I experienced his raw, broken humanity, and he experienced mine. We got to know each other well, and our relationship took on a life of its own, and that life was and continues to be experienced only by me and him. That reality has left an indelible mark on my understanding of God’s love for humanity. While God’s love for humanity is universally true, it is specifically experienced. This is what we attest to in our relationships with others.

2. Relational ministry is a ministry for everyone. The great thing about relational ministry is that the only credential you need is a birth certificate. If you are a human person, then you are capable of engaging in relational ministry. By opening your humanity and experience to another person and by allowing them to open their humanity and experience to you, relational ministry occurs. Since everyone is capable of entering into relationships and meeting Christ within that context, we become less reliant on a single person (like a charismatic, connectable youth director, for example) to “keep our young people in the Church.” With everyone bearing the load of this ministry, that brings me to my next point.

3. Relational ministry is sustainable. Since relational ministry is the work of the entire Church, then this frees the youth director to think of ways in which she can facilitate relationships between young people and adults. Instead of running around, desperately trying to make connections with young people herself, the youth director can bring other adults into the ministry and not be so prone to burnout. If all people in a congregation embrace their roles as relational ministers, then youth ministry can be sustained indefinitely. The youth director, like any other adult in the congregation, is then able to invest in journeying closely alongside 3 or 4 young people. This might beg the question, though, of why a church should have a youth director at all. My thought is that the youth director should know enough about the young people in the church and enough about the adults in the church to be a functional relational ministry “matchmaker.” In this way, every young person is taken care of, and the ministry of such a congregation will not only thrive, but it will last.

4. Relational ministry is eternal. When I say it will last, I mean that it will last eternally. Unlike programs, relationships do not have to end upon graduation. While many do (and this is clearly the non-eternal part of relationships), I think we do injustice to relationships when we fail to understand that when we open our humanity to one another, we meet Christ concretely within the context of that relationship. In Orthodoxy, we confess, “Christ is in our midst,” but we fail to act as though we believe this when we concentrate our efforts on developing programs, curricula, and other things by which we well-meaningly intend to convince our young people about the Faith of the Fathers. As we enter into relationship with one another, however, we transcend the temporal nature of this world and touch the eternal hands of Christ in our midst. Relationships are a mystery for this reason, for in entering into them, we enter somehow into the eternal mystery of the person of Jesus Christ (“Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” Mt. 18:20)

5. Relational ministry trains minds. If program-driven ministry is highly programmer-oriented, then relational ministry is highly other-oriented. If we step away from program-driven ministry and enter into relational ministry, we make room for young people to struggle openly with their questions, doubts, concerns, fears, and desires. In doing so, we can discuss these things with our young people and challenge their thinking much more effectively. Rather than simply conveying the message of “Get with the program,” we offer a sort of training ground for young people to learn how to dialogue about their Faith in a way that is constructive and non-threatening. Within the intimate context of relationship, these young people will develop the capacity to think critically and clearly when they are later faced with something that, in their youth, they simply had been told not to do. We need to be focused not on simply instructing our young people about what is and what isn’t Christian-y, and we must focus more on training young people to begin thinking Christianly. Relational ministry allows this to happen.

Don’t get me wrong. I certainly think that programs have their place. I would say that programs and relational ministry can be compared to baseball stadiums and baseball games. The baseball stadium is a place that has been set aside to give room for the baseball game to occur. So with programs, we must remember that they are the place in which relational ministry ought to occur. When we wonder why our young people are leaving the baseball stadiums, however, the answer isn’t simply to build more baseball stadiums. The answer is to offer them games. It is, after all, the game that is compelling, and not the stadium (although, some stadiums are much more appealing than others). But let’s not get confused and focus on the stadiums of our programs; instead, let’s get more intentional about entering into the beautiful, eternal, small game of relationship.

Baseball: An American Tradition
Relationship: A Christian Reality

Image sources: http://www.harpyness.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Law-of-Friendship.jpg

5 Reasons To Say No To Program-Driven Ministry

It is no great secret that I am duly adverse to program-driven ministry. I think I have made this abundantly clear in my post, Moving Toward Relational Ministry. While I do not think that programs are evil or will lead to the death of the Church, I do think that they are useless unless they act as platforms for young people and adults to engage one another in life-sharing relationships that are open and available to the presence of Christ within them. Programs have their place, to be sure, but I will use this post primarily to speak to some of the problems inherent in program-driven ministry.

1. Programs are impersonal. Programs by their very nature take away the human element. They are based in producing a system by which personal qualities are removed from the playing field. The idea of a program is such that any clever or well-trained individual might step in and lead the program. They do not need to have a gift or talent, and while such a gifted individual might make the program more fun, personal charisma has little to do with the success of any given program. Those for whom the program is designed are expected to show up, have the program do its work on them, and to leave edified. Programs take out the spark of spontaneity that is so natural to the rest of our human lives. Because of this impersonal element, programs demand harsh metrics of success.

2. Programs demand quantifiable success. A program is only as useful as the end-product it creates. If a public school, for example, is not successful in producing good students, then its funding from the state will be cut. If we are to hold to this standard in the Church, however, it isn’t a far stretch to look at Jesus and suggest that his “program” was a failure since Judas was a “church dropout.” Ministry, while hoping for the best, simply cannot demand such metrics of success.

3. Programs become primarily concerned with self-perpetuation. While most programs are started to help participants, they eventually become about keeping themselves alive. For example, one could look at the standardization of American education and suggest that it is a good thing. In some ways it is as it aims to raise everyone to a certain standard. Unfortunately, when reaching that standard becomes the goal, then eventually all that matters is the standard and the needs of the young people it served take a back seat to the school trying to preserve itself by teaching how to take a test. Instead of finding ways to educate each student to the best of his or her ability, we suggest that the test and the program are the key to success, even though all signs point to their failure. We can do the same thing in the Church, suggesting that a program we have come to love does not contribute to the problem of church dropout. Instead of thinking creatively how this program can be retooled, changed, or (if need be) discarded, we end up inventing new programs that do not solve the issue at hand. We simply have kept the programs alive.

4. Programs are temporary. Programs come to an end, and they thus do not echo the eternal nature of the relationship-based Trinity. Of course, we are not eternal beings apart from the Divine Life that is given to us, but the things that impact us the most resemble some part of this Divine Life. Programs may be successful at keeping young people in attendance to church or church functions, but once our young people graduate high school and these programs, they leave. This is not because our program has not done the job, but it is because it did exactly what it was supposed to; it filled a temporary gap. When we treat programs as if they are the answer, we fail to see that the Trinity is not a program; the Trinity is a community. The Trinity is relationship. Programs come to an end, and they must. If we continue to treat them like they are the answer to church dropout, then we’re in for more young people leaving the Church.

5. Programs do not teach critical thinking. “Get with the program.” It’s not too hard to imagine a well-intentioned adult saying this to a young person, but ultimately, what does it convey? “You cannot think for yourself. Trust the program. Get with it, and simply follow along like everyone else.” In our programs, we instill in our young people the virtues of going with the flow, keeping the status quo, and not thinking outside the box in order for them to belong to our program. The problem is that we are not tailoring the Christian Faith to help young people see where the Faith intersects with their lives. When they go away to college having learned the value of “getting with the program” in order to belong, then I don’t think we can be surprised when “getting with the program (or fraternity)” involves binge drinking, sleeping in on Sundays, and sleeping around.

“Getting With The Program” College-Style.
It isn’t binge-drinking if it’s a tournament. Right?

In my next post, I will explore five reasons to say, “YES!” to relational youth ministry. Be excited. Be very excited.

Image sources: http://image.stock-images-men.com/em_w/02/77/90/640-02779083w.jpg

A Seminar For Parents, Youth Workers, Pastors, and Teens

Greetings, all!

His Eminence, Archbishop JOSEPH, has given his blessing for a seminar for parents, youth workers, pastors, and teens.

The seminar is titled, “The World Below: Engaging the Hearts and Minds of Today’s Teens.” In it, Fr. Patrick O’Grady of St. Peter Church in Pomona, David Paddison (psychology student and youth worker extraordinaire) of St. Luke Church in Garden Grove, and myself will be addressing these questions:

• What does the world of young adults look like today?
• How did it come to be like this?
• Why are so many young adults leaving the Church?
• And how are we to respond?

I have a great deal of confidence that this gathering will be useful to all those who wish to attend as we will be discussing the real world that teens face and will be laying out a vision for an Orthodox Christian approach to youth ministry.

All jurisdictions are welcome to attend, and I highly encourage people of all ages to attend as the youth of our Church are not simply a group to which only a select few are called to minister. It is the job of the Church to care for her youth, and we will begin to discuss exactly what that looks like and how it can be done. It should be great.

If you wish to print out the event flier, you can access it HERE. Please spread the word about this event, and do all that you can to attend!

In Christ,
Christian

Flier image source: http://www.simpleinsomniacures.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Multiple-Factors-Hurt-Teen-Sleep.jpg

Top 10 Things Every Adult Should Know About Teens

I came across this list in Missional Youth Ministry by Brian Kirk and Jacob Thorne. The only thing I took issue with was the last on their list, so I have eliminated it, and replaced it with my own! Enjoy!

“1. Teens are people, too. Resist calling them kids (unless you mean it as a term of endearment) or talking about them as if they aren’t in the room.

2. Teens need time. It takes teenagers some time to think about what they want to say, particularly during discussions. Resist the temptation to jump in with the right answer and don’t feel you have to fill every moment of silence with talking.

3. Teens like adults. Despite what you may remember from your younger days, teens do enjoy the companionship of adults. They just aren’t always sure if we like them back, so they can seem standoffish at times. The truth is many teenagers are at a point in their lives when they’re trying to put a little distance between themselves and their parents. So they often seek other caring adults to serve as mentors and role models.

4. Teens have a lot to teach us. In many ways that ’80’s film The Breakfast Club got it right: Young people are unique individuals with unique talents, gifts, attitudes, and perspectives. It would be a mistake to lump them all together as one homogenous group.

5. Teens’ body clocks are different than ours. Most teens need 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night, yet they often get much less than that. Most teens aren’t at their peak until late morning, and many of them are night owls. That means they have a ton of energy in the evenings and can be hyped up just when you’re settling down. Keep in mind that they aren’t being hyper to bug you. They’re just experiencing the high point of their day.

6. Teens are passionate. The first part of the teenage brain to fully develop is the emotional center. That means teens can have high highs and low lows all in one day. They’re sensitive to the pain of others and can be very passionate about the things they believe in.

7. Teens want to own their experiences. When teens talk about their struggles, we adults are tempted to say things like, “Oh, I went through the same thing at your age,” or “I had the same problems and I survived that just fine,” or “Here’s how I handled that problem.” In many ways the experiences of teens today are quite different from when we were young. Their struggles are real and they want them to be taken seriously, not dismissed with an “I survived that and you will, too.” Oftentimes the best approach with young people isn’t offering advice but just listening.

8. Teens are fun to be around. Adults may think that hanging with adolescents will make them feel old, but it’s just the opposite. Teens offer a perspective on life and the world that’s refreshingly honest, hopeful, and new. That sense of hope and possibility can be contagious.

9. Teens can be a great source of frustration. Yes, teenagers are great. But let’s be realistic: They can be incredibly frustrating to work with…unless you are willing to be flexible, can take a little good-natured ribbing and criticism (have I mentioned the girl who always tells me when my tie doesn’t match my suit?), and remember that they still have a lot of growing up to do. This leads to the final item on this list.”

10. Teens are young adults. This means exactly what it sounds like. Teens are not children. They are navigating the world of adults relationships in newly adult bodies, and they are still trying to make the transition fully out of childhood. This means that they may still have childish habits to release, moments where they don’t understand the complexities of friendship, and they may forget to honor their commitments and responsibilities. They are new to the adult life, and with that comes inexperience. We can thus “expect them to act like young people who are still growing, adjusting, stumbling, and trying to figure it out,” but they don’t have to do it alone.

Comment below!

Check out this bunch of non-threatening and happy teens. Don’t be scared of them; they clearly like reading the Bible…well, at least one of them does.

(Material Source: Missional Youth Ministry, by Brian Kirk and Jacob Thorne. Publisher: Zondervan, 2011. Pgs. 98-100.)

Image sources: http://www.bucketlistidea.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/bucket-list-ideas-for-teenagers-2.jpg

10 Characteristics Of A Healthy Youth Ministry by Kenda Creasy Dean

Hello, all!

Kenda Creasy Dean is a professor of Youth, Church, and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary (see her bio here). Her research and works have been very insightful in my thinking about youth work. I’m currently reading her book, Almost Christian, which has proven to be very helpful in understanding the various things that face the American Church today. Though I haven’t finished it yet, I do not hesitate to recommend it highly.

Below is some text taken from her website. It is a post titled, “What Are the Top 10 Characteristics of a Healthy Youth Ministry?” It should offer a great insight to a good approach to youth ministry. Let me know your thoughts below!

In Christ,
Christian

What Are the Top 10 Characteristics of a Healthy Youth Ministry?
By Kenda Creasy Dean

10.  Safe space.

We live in what sociologist Ulrich Beck calls “a culture of risk.”  There are lots of dimensions to that, but what it boils down to is a loss of certainty (I would say confidence) that were once provided by traditions and institutions.  The upshot is a current of anxiety running through our culture that we mask with consumerism (“retail therapy”), attention to self-presentation (working out, body art, etc.),  an overabundance of activities (“extracurriculars keep kids out of trouble”), and countless other practices designed to keep anxiety at bay.

Young people need safe spaces in their lives where they can “be” themselves instead of trying to “prove” themselves.  Safe space can means time, relationships, or physical space where young people have the emotional, relational, physical, and spiritual freedom to explore, to risk, and to fail in a safety net of love–real love, not the Hallmark stuff.  Safe spaces give youth the experience of being really “seen” and known as God sees and knows them, as beloved brothers and sisters of Christ.

(It goes without saying that “safe space” in youth ministry assumes a system of protection for sexual misconduct is in place.)

9.    A culture of permission and creativity.

A safe space yields permission–permission to take risks, to move outside comfort zones, to initiate and to lead.  Healthy youth ministry creates a culture of permission where young people can follow Christ where they sense they are being led, where adults are guides but not programmers, permission givers rather than gate keepers, trail guides rather than tour operators.

Creativity requires freedom–which safe space and permission provide.  Young people need practice in multiple “faith languages” – words and actions, art and prayer.  Increasingly, the language of the arts is becoming a “spiritual language” for young people (especially emerging adults).  Healthy youth ministries recognize that young people live in a participatory culture, where they create cultural content as well as consume it.  Treating youth primarily as consumers (of worship, programming, mission) fails to recognize that they are created in God-the-Creator’s image, and also makes church seem unwelcoming and archaic.

8.    A culture of theological awareness.

Youth ministry ought to help youth see their lives the way God sees them–which means becoming aware of theological categories like grace, forgiveness, redemption, sin, hope.  One of the findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion is that churches are not helping very much on this front.  The result is that kids growing up in churches frame their lives in pretty much the same was as anybody else–which makes it tough to buck cultural norms that run contrary to the gospel.  Healthy youth ministry creates a culture of theological awareness, teaching young people how to imagine themselves as participants in God’s story.

7.    Integration into worship and congregational life at every level — while maintaining significant peer groups of faith

Teenagers need people to reflect back to them who they are;  this “mirroring” is basic to the process of identity formation, and for the church to be absent from this process is a lethal sin of omission.  Only in the church do young people begin to see themselves through the eyes of people who try to see them as God sees them:  beloved, blessed, called. Interaction with Christian peers is part of this process, but adults are significant mirrors as well.

Christ calls teenagers, like the rest of us, to follow him–which makes youth as integral to the Body of Christ as anybody else.  Separating youth out from the larger congregation is both theologically irresponsible, and a pragmatic mistake.  Segmenting youth exclusively into “youth activities” leads young people to associate church with their peer groups–making “graduation” into the intergenerational faith community extremely difficult .

6.    A community of belonging that is authentic, fun, and passionate about living as Christians in the world.

Truth is, it doesn’t really matter if the community of Christians in which youth participate is a youth group, a choir, a drama troupe, a Bible study, a parachurch organization or even the congregation as a whole (though the larger the congregation gets, the less likely people are to experience it as a community of belonging apart from small groups of fidelity, intimacy, and prayer).  The point is that teenagers need to feel like the church is a place they belong, and not just attend–and belonging means they participate with joy alongside others who are living in the same direction.

5.    A team of adult youth leaders who are actively growing together in faith and who embody the quality of community with one another and missional attitude that we want our kids to have.

You can’t lead where you don’t go.  Adults need to unpack their own baggage so we don’t accidentally bring it into our relationships with youth–and we need to model the kind of spiritual investment in ourselves, in one another, and in the world, partly because it’s a faithful way to live, and partly because youth need examples of what communities that support each other in living as Christians in the world looks like.

4.      A supportive congregation where people actively seek God and that talk about God as the subject of sentences.

Let me unpack this one.  First, I’m convinced by the 2003 Exemplary Youth Ministry study  that congregations where young people reliably develop mature faith “talk about God as the subject of sentences.”  Two things are important in that phrase:  1) People talk about God, which means God is a lively concern in these congregations;  and 2)  God is the subject of sentences, which mean when people talk about God, they are saying that God does things.  God is an actor in their lives, in the life of the congregation;  God is doing things through them;  God is alive and present and in their midst.  And, they talk to God as well as about God.  You can probably think of churhces where God is about as inert as the couch in the church parlor. But congregations that help young people have vital, lively faith talk about God as the subject of their sentences.  God happens to them and through them.

Talking about God as an actor in the world is an indicator that people in a church are actively seeking God, and that they believe God makes a difference.  That’s Step #1 in becoming a supportive congregation for youth ministry.  But I’m equally convinced by Mark DeVries’ thesis inSustainable Youth Ministry that congregations that impact young lives deeply invest in the infrastructure and leadership (lay and clergy) that make it happen.

This is not in lieu of investing directly in teenagers; people in congregations need to know young people by name, and welcome them “as they are” (even kids who don’t fit the congregational norm, and who look, sound, and smell differently from the kids we imagined).  Supportive congregations give young people given concrete evidence that they are known (“Hey, how did it go with that teacher who was giving you trouble?”), and challenge them to grow beyond who they already are, and into the person God has created them to become (“You can’t smoke weed here. I care about you too much to let you hurt yourself.”)  They give youth opportunities to grow in their faith and to live into their vocations, naming teenagers’ God-given gifts and inviting them to use those gifts on behalf Christ in the church and in the world.

Third, a supportive congregation is one where the whole community invests–visibly–in growing in faith together, and where teenagers witness the fruits of this investment as people takes risks on behalf of others in Christ’s name.

3.    A senior pastor who is crazy about young people.

See #4, above – all these things are true for people who lead congregations as well.  The senior pastor or head of staff, in many ways, embodies the congregation’s “brand.” If a congregation supports youth ministry, it will be clear because the head of staff talks about young people (positively) in public, includes them in leadership, embraces the faith development of parents, knows youth and their leaders by name, and makes himself/herself available to young people for spiritual conversations.  The senior pastor is youth ministry’s head cheerleader:  Go, team.

2.    Lots and lots of parents who are growing in, and living out, their love of God and neighbor (and who are aware that this matters to their kids).

You’ve heard it before:  parents are the most important youth ministers young people ever have.  No variable in the National Study of Youth and Religion is more important in young people’s faith identities, or in their ability to sustain those faith identities between high school and emerging adulthood, than parents who are religiously active while their kids are teenagers.  And if young people don’t have parents who are investing in faith, then churches need to be places where kids can find adults who are investing in faith, and who are willing to  “spiritually adopt” these teenagers so they can eavesdrop on what it looks like to be an adult follower of Jesus Christ.

1.    Jesus. (Read below)

I know, I know:  the “right” answer in church is always “Jesus.”  And of course, Christians understand God as three-in-one, so Jesus is not the only person of the Trinity who matters in youth ministry, so please don’t misunderstand me as reducing God to the Incarnation.

But Christians understand God as Triune through Jesus, whose life, death, and resurrection reveals who God is and who we are in relationship to God.  Doing youth ministry without God is like doing dinner without food:  you can come to the table, but there’s nothing to eat…so why bother?