7 Things for a Better Children and Youth Ministry - 6 - Isolation vs. Incorporation

When its comes to children and youth a good question to ask is who are you doing this for? If you are doing it so YOU can have more young people in YOUR church, that is not a good motivation because you are doing for yourself. If you’re doing it because you have something to share with a young person or someway you wish to serve young people then you’re in with a chance.

It is important for us not to view children and youth as a separate thing to the rest of the church, a group that perhaps will eventually join real church on Sunday Morning.

When children go to Sunday school or a after school kids club group they are going to church. They are meeting with other Xns and growing in faith.

7 Things for a Better Children and Youth Ministry - 5 - Success vs. Faithfulness

There are many different ways which we gauge the success of any ministry. That might be numbers or how much fun people are having or it might be how many youth leaders come from the group or how many are acting on social justice or how many are reading Bible.

After three years Jesus certainly hadn’t achieved these things. The best hope was on Peter the only one who hadn’t run away scared when Jesus was arrested and he was denying that he even knew Jesus.

God calls us not to be successful but to be faithful.

To be faithful in loving others as God has loved us and faithful in sharing with them the love that God has for them.
God calls us to be Faithful not successful.

For me the best measure of a Youth Group is to ask “are you sharing your life and the gospel with them?” (1 Thess 2:8) or to put it another way “are you loving them the way God has loved you and sharing God’s love for them?”

7 Things for a Better Children and Youth Ministry - 4 - Entertainment vs. Faith Development

Imagine your child goes off to Piano lessons he say he loves it. A year later you ask him to play something. He plays a really simple / bad rendition of “twinkle twinkle little star”, a rendition as if he had about 2 weeks worth of lessons not a years worth. You go along watch the kids lessons and discover that they spend the first 55 minutes playing games and the last 5 minutes playing piano. You confront the teacher, and she says “This is how we get the kids in! They wouldn’t come otherwise!”

What would you say?

This is often how we approach children and youth ministry. Entertainment usually has more of an instant appeal than faith development and we often get stuck with a trickle down idea. Where we get the kids in with entertainment and then sneak in a bit of the gospel.

What usually happens is young people interested in being serious leave, socially adept young people leave & hang out with their friends and find entertainment else where. If you're lucky, you’re left with socially inept young people coming just for games fun and food and that’s it.

As nice as it may seem to have 40 young people running around a church hall it will be far more fruitful in the long term to have a group of just four doing faith development.

The reality is Churches are not great entertainers nor should we try to be. Of course this doesn’t mean that it can’t be enjoyable just not entertaining for the sake of being entertaining.

You Tube Round Up

Here's a couple of amusing you tube videos I've come accross recently.

1.Jesus meets the Terminator: A nice reminder of the non-violent nature of Jesus

2. What if Starbucks marketd like a church: I'm not a fan of the idea of a church "marketing" itself, and the picture painted in clip is very much a caricature. None the less it's anice reminder of how horrfying it can be to consider walking through a church door.

7 Things for a Better Children and Youth Ministry - 3 - Program vs. Relationship

So if relationships are the key to ministry why would we even bother running a program. Why don’t we hang out with young people like we do all our other friends?

Well simply because that doesn’t happen naturally for most of us. The reason we have programs is so that we can have a place where we can develop relationships a place where we can share ourselves and the gospel with Young people.

It is important to remember that relationships change and grow as they develop therefore the programs we run will need to grow and change as well.

No matter how well a program has been running if the people that program was designed to serve now have different needs then that program will need to change.

it is really important never to run a program at the expense of relationships, no matter how great that program once was.

My New Messiah: Nadia Bolz-Weber

Well maybe not but if you're like me you're probably used to hearing the same voices talk about Xy and you probably think you've at least of heard of all the good Xn speakers and thinkers in the world. Most of them male and evangelical. So for me to stumble across the heavily tatooed, ex stand up comic, Lutheran Minister Nadia Bolz-Weber, care of the Praxis Podcast, was a revelation. She is both insightful and freakin' funny. The audio at Salvation on the Small Screen? Reading by author Nadia Bolz-Weber is a great introduction to her.

She blogs at Sarcastic Lutheran and is the minister at the House For All church where you can go to a Bring Your Own Brain Bible study.

I love the third line on the poster.

7 Things for a Better Children and Youth Ministry - 2 - Age vs. Relationship

It is no secret that in typical mainline church there is a large percentage of people over 50 and a very small percentage of those between 20 and 30.

It is true that people in the 20-30 age group can make great children and youth leaders, they might even have an inkling about the clothes and music young people listen too.

Although we might think the 20-30s are cool and in touch with young people ask any 22 year old children and youth leader and they will wish that they had the wisdom and maturity of someone over 50.

In my experience once you’re more than 5 years older than a young person it is impossible to convince them that you’re cool in any way what so ever. And, even if they do think you are cool there is no way they are going to say Chris is cool Chris goes to church therefore church is cool.

Ministry happens through relationship. The best children and youth leaders are without exception those who have a genuine interest in and care for those whom they are ministering to.

I once ran a youth group that had a small handful of leaders it included Joan who was a very daggy 50 something who was always intently interested in what the kids were doing and how they were going and, Alesha a girl who was in her late teens and so cool that it was hard to believe she was a Xn. However, she was always keener to catch up and talk to the other leaders a couple who were her good friends.

Pretty early on in the life of the group they both had to leave. Who do you think the kids always ask about?

In fact 6 months later they were still asking about Joan even though she had been with the group for a few months

My Beautiful Wife

Last night I got to go to a great wedding. At the reception one of the women at our table spilt some dessert on her dress. Embarrassed and ashamed she felt stupid for what she had done. My wife not only reassured her that it didn't matter that she had stained her dress but put her finger on her own dessert and stained her own dress. The woman laughed and exclaimed "I love you!" ,she was no longer worried. My wife is beautiful.

7 Things for a Better Children and Youth Ministry - 1 - Numbers vs. Ratio

One of the greatest downfalls of any Children or Youth Ministry is a fixation on numbers. Get any 2 youth ministers together and the first thing that they usually ask is “how many at your youth group”?

We usually end up at meetings about children and youth Ministry because we feel we don’t have enough young people and we are desperate to get more.

The ministries we admire are the ones with lots of kids, we want to know how they do it and hope we can repeat it in our own church.

In 1 Thessalonians 2:8 Paul says “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”

The essence of youth ministry is relationship.

Jesus worked fulltime for three years and ended up with just 12 followers one of whom had him killed and a handful of women.

Any children and youth leader who had worked full time for three years with this would probably be seen as doing a pretty poor job.

So why did what Jesus do work? Because he had a relationship with those remaining disciples and they followed in his footsteps. He shared his life and the gospel with them and then they did this with others.

I would swap 100 young people at a church social group for just four young people who were interested in developing their faith and after 5 years (the length of high-school) were keen to do the same thing with other young people. It sounds pretty small but if those 4 young people after five years met with another 4 people for 5 years etc... after 50 years there would be 1,048,576 people in the church.

All with just a ratio of 1:4

So if you have 2 leaders then you'd have just 8 people in the group.

One Take Tuesdays - God's Gonna Cut You Down

It's a little late, in fact this is actually a One Take Friday track to be exact. None the less here it is. A traditional song Moby made famous (I think). I stole the idea of making a proper song from the great Johnny Cash. Again it's all a bit sloppy but we're only two weeks in so hopefully I'll be getting better soon. You can download the song from the link below.

God's Gonna Cut You Down

Orthoistoria: Right Story

In my struggle to define my self as neither Liberal nor Evangelical I’ve decide to invent a new word. Orthoistoria.

Orthodoxy is right belief which is often the big concern of evangelical types.

Orthopraxis is right practice which is often the big concern of liberal types.

Me, I think my thing is Orthoistoria, right story.

The bible doesn’t give us a clearly spelt out set of practices or a clearly spelt out set of beliefs like a prayer book or doctrinal set of beliefs might. It does give us a story of God’s interaction with humanity and from this we derive our beliefs and practices many of which will change as our understanding and context changes. The thing that stay’s the same is the story. Which is what is at the heart of what we want to share. A story, which like any story, has many layers and many ways that people connect and relate to. Beliefs and practices can often divide but story can unite.

Just a thought.

Critical Child Rearing Mistake No. 11 - The Wiggles

Plenty of parents have introduced their kids to The Wiggles. My mistake hasn't been The Wiggles per-se but that The Wiggles like to cover songs by other bands. An example is their cover Split Enz "Six Months in a Leaky Boat". Now everytime I want to sit back, relax to Split Enz's greatest hits my daughter will yell out "Wiggles! Dance?"

Watchmen and Trying to Solve the World’s Problems

Recently a friend and I went to see the Watchmen and have a coffee where we planned to solve the world problems (that’s kind of what we always talk about doing).

Reviews for the Watchmen seem to be either 1 star and below or 4 stars and above. I can see why the film splits people. It looks and sounds amazing and is very faithful to the original text, which has rave reviews itself. However the watchmen universe is a hard one to get your head around and immerse yourself in.

The film ends with an event that galvanizes enemies together to achieve a common goal. Over coffee my friend and I wondered why is it that we can't get along or work together without some galvanizing event. Why is it we are full of compassion for people who are homeless because of the recent bushfires in Australia but probably don’t think twice about people homeless in our own city. Or why is it that when you go on a camp or similar that a disparate group of people can get along like best friends yet when you take away the camp yet when they leave that camp they'll get on as badly as everyone else. It’s as if we are able to put differences aside in some circumstances but prepared to come to blows over them in others. Why aren’t global warming and poverty similar galvanizing events that make us forget our petty differences?

7 Things for a Better Children and Youth Ministry - Outline

Nearly 5 years ago now I worked as a Children and Youth ministry Consultant for a Mainline church (think generally lots of older people not so many younger people). The job involved hanging out with a church for about 5 weeks and rethink how they can do children and youth ministry in their context. My friend Derek and I worked pretty hard on the process so rather than let our hard work sit on my hard drive I thought I’d post what we did here.

The process looked something like this…

1. Visioning day 1 (large group of concerned people) – Looking at what it means to do Children and Youth Ministry and to generate collect ideas about children and youth ministry.

2. Drafting mission statement (C&Y team) – then presented at church, this statemnent was related to the church vision statement and was really a way of distilling what the church was on about and wanting to do. Usefull when others might say "we need to get the sunday school back to where it was 10 years ago" we could say no what we want to do is (insert mission statement).

3. Visioning day 2 (large group of concerned people) – look at common ideas/themes, finalise a mission statement, explore possible programs or review current programs, and their ability to meet the new mission statement.

4. Draft Action plan – presented to church with mission statement for comment.

5. Finalise action plan (C&Y team)

6. Discuss training and resources to carry out action plan.

Easy huh?

Well one of the keys to get people thinking differently about Children and Youth Ministry was to look at 7 myths of Children and Youth Ministry. They were titled…

1. Numbers vs. Ratio

2. Age vs. Relationship

3. Program vs. Relationship

4. Entertainment vs. Faith Development

5. Success vs. Faithfulness

6. Isolation vs. Incorporation

7. Preconception vs. Reflection

I'll go through each of these myths over the next month or so.

One Take Tuesdays - Jesus Gonna Be Here

I've always wanted to record an album but never really had the time to get around and do it. I've also always wanted to "get it just right". So, rather than wait till I'm 80 and have the time and equipment etc... I've decided to record one song in one take every Tuesday night. To start the ball rolling I've recorded "Jesus Gonna Be Here" by Tom Waits. It's by no means perfect and I suspect that many of the songs I'll re-record and re-record until I get the "one take" I like, the guitar solo in this song is particularly sloppy, and some of the singing... anyway, hopefully by the end of the year I'll have a dozen songs or so that I like. So think of it as kind of like eavsdropping on a band rehersal. You can download the song from the link below if you like.

Jesus Gonna Be Here

Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile

My wife bought the book "Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile" on a whim, I'm glad she did and that she has such great intuition. The book traces the biblical story from Genesis to Revelation taking a "New Exodus" reading of the text. The book works through the pattern of oppression, liberation and exile in the biblical narrative. I really enjoyed the book because it was full of "ah-ha / groan" moments. "Ah-ha" because I discovered something new and "Groan" because it had been staring me in the face for years.

I did get a bit frustrated at times as I felt the authors didn't completely follow through on their "New Exodus" convictions. For example on page 88 they briefly describe Jesus death as absorbing violence, sadly they don't go on to expand this into atonement narrative, but by next page are penal substitution style talking about the price paid etc... I coming more to think of atonement as like a multi faceted diamond. We need many theories to see the whole diamond if we just stick to penal substitution it's like looking at a plate of glass.

They also give a "biblical definition of sin" which seems come from left field. When they talked about violence, oppression and sin. It left me thinking is what is sin if not, violence and oppression.

I also wish that as they compared the Roman empire to the American empire that they would have talked about how that changed the way they lived too.

None the less, overall these are small criticisms. If you know of any one who wonders what Xy has to do with helping the poor. Or, thinks that helping the poor is not central to the gospel but just an aside for those who feel called, I cannot think of any book that would be a better place to start.As I said before I enjoyed the book because of the conclusions I came to and that I think is a testament to authors ability to retell the biblical narrative in such a powerful way.

I can certainly see this being one of those books that I lend out to lots and lots of people. Christians and Non-Christians. For me there is not much more of a higher compliment for a book than that.

Oh and I'd like to change the title to "Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church under Solomon" I'm not sure why it's the "church in exile" after reading the book it sounded more to me like the church under Solomon perhaps moving into exile. And I don't know if we're moving in to persecution as much as irrelevance.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Next time you think you hear someone say "reduce, reuse, recycle" listen carefully to see if "reduce" is actually there. The last couple of times I have heard a corporate entity use "reduce, reuse, recycle" they've replaced "reduce" with "renew" or some other synonym for "reuse" or "recycle". Why? because "reduce" means "buy less stuff" which no corporate entity wants to tell you to do. What's more if you "reduce" there's no need to ''reuse or recycle". ''Reduce" is surely the most important as it is about the way we live. "Reuse" and "recycle" are just about what we do with our junk. I'm all for buying less and living with less.

I Want To Build An Earthship

Last week I watched the film Garbage Warrior. The story of Michael Reynolds, an architect who builds self sufficient homes made out of garbage. The houses are made out of tiyes, bottles & cans. all the power is solar and wind, all the water is collected, recycled including grey water through a vegetable growing green house at front of the house. with angled glass at the sun facing side of the house and a huge thermal mass in the back of the house.

I want to build one.

Apart from the obvious difficulty of building your own house finding a council that will let you build a house out of tyres that is not connected to any services will be all but impossible.

Below are a couple of clips to get you acquainted with Earthship buildings.

Evangelical or Liberal or...

Yesterday I was invited to attend a breakfast for evangelical pastors. most mainline denominations seem to be split between an evangelical / liberal divide. personally I tend to recoil from aligning myself with either camp. I'll usually joke that I'm liberal enough for evangelicals to disown me and evangelical enough for liberals to disown me be. The thing that both camps seem to do is interpret the biblical story through their theology rather than let their theology be formed by the biblical story. I realise this is some what of an over simplification, but in the same way that when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail, when you have a fixed theological view there is plenty of scripture to support that view. The "are you liberal or evangelical?" question just makes me nervous.