Imagine a youth who is well behaved, polite and properly attired. Someone who listens and obeys their parents. Works as a volunteer at church and social organisations on the weekends. What would you call him or her?
An oddball. A freak. A nerd.
Can we just take a breath and a pause to reflect on what has happened to our perception of moral values and cultural mores? The absurdity of taking what looks to be a more biblical model for behaviour and saying that it is out of the norm? We sometimes need to step back and take a look in the mirror to see how warped we've become, because we have accepted the lowest common denominator of social behaviour, applied the weakest of standards to our youth, and deemed it okay; even worth developing
It is the equivalent of giving everyone an 'A' because we don't want to damage their precious self esteem.
I see this in many instances. When a youth event is Bible study, hardly anyone turns up. When it is a 'fun' event involving worship, food and what-not; the place is filled to the brim. The watchwords of this age are fun, good feelings and being happy. To which I say: Beware - these will not get you the Kingdom of God.
Look, I don't have just classical music on my iPod. Nor do I dress like someone out of 'Revenge of the Nerds'. What's on the outside doesn't always reflect the inside but it is folly to suppose that there is no connection between the two whatsoever. You are what you eat. You dress and behave the way you feel and think. Perhaps, we need to think about that a little and check the way we portray ourselves to the world.
I gauge it very simply. Whenever I drop my 89-year old grandmother at church on Sunday, hardly anyone ever bothers to open my car door to help her out. They just walk by caught in their own little world. So, really , there is nothing radical about our faith when this happens, nothing radical about our church and nothing radical about our people
To paraphrase a song, 'We are the World', and that is a sad indictment indeed according to biblical standards
Monday, June 29, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Really Radical Youth - Part 1
This is a follow up to my previous post on Radical Youth Ministry. Some questions were posed to me once when I mentioned the example of Mark Dever's youth ministry at his church. Primary among them was : " Is it really possible that these kind of youth exist?"
You see, the problem with youth these days is that we are prepared to accept the lowest common denominator from them in terms of behaviour and attitude. Adults have already inwardly typecasted them as rude, rebellious self-centered individuals with a short attention span. But, so as not to alienate them or make them worse; they obligingly pander to these characteristics by giving them at church the music they want to hear, the topics they think they can relate to and the latitude to dress in the manner that they choose to.
What poppycock.
It is not that I think the youth today do not display all those aforementioned characteristics. They do. I did, when I was young. At times, I stil do. But the answer does not lie in mere capitulation to the mores and ways of the world and admit defeat in the cultural wars. This does not mean locking citadel doors and bringing up the drawbridge over the moat as well. You can't effectively shut out the world, even if you were Amish. But you can engage it from a Christian perspective and win; especially if your base is Biblical
What do I mean? Let's take an example.
Now I can tell you to turn off the TV when hot chicks on MTV in skimpy outfits start prancing around in a Jay Z vid. But that doesn't really work. Nor will browbeating you with Christian alternatives. I've known people who started lusting after singers on the Christian Contemporary Music scene just because that's all they were able to see and listen to. It doesn't make it any holier or rightheous; it's just transference
The key is to apply good, solid biblical teaching on this issue. I would talk about a simple issue; why are those dancers on MTV dressed in hardly anything at all? You mean they can't dress in a full dress and dance? In fact, why do they have to dance like that? And furthermore, what are those lyrics about? Why is it always about ho's and bling? Pardon the street vernacular.
In short, a process of enquiry through the whole issue will reveal certain points.
1) You're being manipulated hook, line and sinker by media companies and a greedy system
2) The singer and dancers don't care two-hoots about your wellbeing or love you. They really don't. They just want you to buy their CD's
3) My weaknesses are being exploited. How do you feel about that?
All this comes about because the Word of God makes one think differently about how the world is viewed. It's not an amazing revelation. It's a Biblical one because somewhere along the line, the Word of God has been used for teaching, exhorting and guidance in it's proper context.
A youth who subscribes to that view is not going to be the same. His or her world will slowly turn upside down, and they will start on the path to be really radical. But more about that in part 2.
You see, the problem with youth these days is that we are prepared to accept the lowest common denominator from them in terms of behaviour and attitude. Adults have already inwardly typecasted them as rude, rebellious self-centered individuals with a short attention span. But, so as not to alienate them or make them worse; they obligingly pander to these characteristics by giving them at church the music they want to hear, the topics they think they can relate to and the latitude to dress in the manner that they choose to.
What poppycock.
It is not that I think the youth today do not display all those aforementioned characteristics. They do. I did, when I was young. At times, I stil do. But the answer does not lie in mere capitulation to the mores and ways of the world and admit defeat in the cultural wars. This does not mean locking citadel doors and bringing up the drawbridge over the moat as well. You can't effectively shut out the world, even if you were Amish. But you can engage it from a Christian perspective and win; especially if your base is Biblical
What do I mean? Let's take an example.
Now I can tell you to turn off the TV when hot chicks on MTV in skimpy outfits start prancing around in a Jay Z vid. But that doesn't really work. Nor will browbeating you with Christian alternatives. I've known people who started lusting after singers on the Christian Contemporary Music scene just because that's all they were able to see and listen to. It doesn't make it any holier or rightheous; it's just transference
The key is to apply good, solid biblical teaching on this issue. I would talk about a simple issue; why are those dancers on MTV dressed in hardly anything at all? You mean they can't dress in a full dress and dance? In fact, why do they have to dance like that? And furthermore, what are those lyrics about? Why is it always about ho's and bling? Pardon the street vernacular.
In short, a process of enquiry through the whole issue will reveal certain points.
1) You're being manipulated hook, line and sinker by media companies and a greedy system
2) The singer and dancers don't care two-hoots about your wellbeing or love you. They really don't. They just want you to buy their CD's
3) My weaknesses are being exploited. How do you feel about that?
All this comes about because the Word of God makes one think differently about how the world is viewed. It's not an amazing revelation. It's a Biblical one because somewhere along the line, the Word of God has been used for teaching, exhorting and guidance in it's proper context.
A youth who subscribes to that view is not going to be the same. His or her world will slowly turn upside down, and they will start on the path to be really radical. But more about that in part 2.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Really Radical Youth Ministry - another perspective
When a nationally renowned and respected youth worker in the U.S one day paid a visit to Mark Dever's Capitol Hill Baptist church youth program in Washington D.C. he was shocked. They were studying Wayne Grudem's "Systematic Theology" quietly and earnestly and discussing the subject of the atonement on the book of Romans
He admitted a little embarassedly that at his church, he had to rely on all the normal stereotypical elements to keep the youth interested in church; loud music, games, drama skits, exciting topical sermons etc. When he asked Pastor Dever about what special planning he instituted to get the youth to be like this, and what program he put in place - this was his response:
" I have 150 youth doing bible study on a Saturday afternoon and after that, we sing hymns written by people who have been dead for over a 100 years. And you ask me if I planned this? "
The ironic point here is that we have been conditioned to believe that the youth of today cannot take bible study, that the old techniques are passe. And we need a new approach, radical ideas and constantly changing techniques to keep them interested. Thus, a whole new industry based on keeping the youth in church has surfaced. And it is based on the premise that youth today have short attention spans, an incapacity to digest complex and tedious information and are inclined to the experential rather than the intellectual.
Mark Dever's approach takes the opposite approach, and it is a uniquely Calvinist one. God is sovereign. He does not need to pander to you, or study you. You need to study him. And worship him reverentially.
Thus, the program (if I may call it so), has the paramount aim of going back to the basic fundamentals of knowing God through his primary source; The Bible. All other stuff is then built on it. How different this is from the modern day church where it is the other way around. We design our activities first, then fit the Bible around it, or as an afterthought.
I admit that as a one time youth counsellor, I have been guilty of doing that. In an effort to keep the youth interested, I had committed the gross sin of putting God into the background, and then wondered why the program was ineffective. But there was this great fear that every counsellor felt, that if they did what Mark did, then the youth would find it boring, irrelevant and leave for another more fun church
In the end, I realised that if this was the case, then so be it. The Word says : "The heart is deceitful above all else, who can understand it". We have made the classic error of thinking that the heart is essentially not-too-bad, and that if we tweak it through some cool church programs; the youth will see that Jesus is the way to go.
Not so. The heart is deceitful. Mine, yours and that seemingly innocent kid in your youth group. All of us deserve God's wrath, and would surely get it if not for his amazing and salvific grace. That is the failure of modern programs. Man, or in this case, the youth is placed first, not God. I don't care these days if your youth assembly is growing by the multitudes or even if they are laughing and crying in the streets. If God is not primary, all is secondary and an illusion; no matter how real it seems
I don't know whether the youth worker went back to his church and instituted a program like that. More than likely, he would have been shouted down by the church board and deemed a heretic for curtailing their 'dynamic' youth ministry. I hope not but I am not too optimistic. Which is why I still pray for really radical youth ministry like Mark Dever's to have more followers, and more truly radical youth to follow
SDG
He admitted a little embarassedly that at his church, he had to rely on all the normal stereotypical elements to keep the youth interested in church; loud music, games, drama skits, exciting topical sermons etc. When he asked Pastor Dever about what special planning he instituted to get the youth to be like this, and what program he put in place - this was his response:
" I have 150 youth doing bible study on a Saturday afternoon and after that, we sing hymns written by people who have been dead for over a 100 years. And you ask me if I planned this? "
The ironic point here is that we have been conditioned to believe that the youth of today cannot take bible study, that the old techniques are passe. And we need a new approach, radical ideas and constantly changing techniques to keep them interested. Thus, a whole new industry based on keeping the youth in church has surfaced. And it is based on the premise that youth today have short attention spans, an incapacity to digest complex and tedious information and are inclined to the experential rather than the intellectual.
Mark Dever's approach takes the opposite approach, and it is a uniquely Calvinist one. God is sovereign. He does not need to pander to you, or study you. You need to study him. And worship him reverentially.
Thus, the program (if I may call it so), has the paramount aim of going back to the basic fundamentals of knowing God through his primary source; The Bible. All other stuff is then built on it. How different this is from the modern day church where it is the other way around. We design our activities first, then fit the Bible around it, or as an afterthought.
I admit that as a one time youth counsellor, I have been guilty of doing that. In an effort to keep the youth interested, I had committed the gross sin of putting God into the background, and then wondered why the program was ineffective. But there was this great fear that every counsellor felt, that if they did what Mark did, then the youth would find it boring, irrelevant and leave for another more fun church
In the end, I realised that if this was the case, then so be it. The Word says : "The heart is deceitful above all else, who can understand it". We have made the classic error of thinking that the heart is essentially not-too-bad, and that if we tweak it through some cool church programs; the youth will see that Jesus is the way to go.
Not so. The heart is deceitful. Mine, yours and that seemingly innocent kid in your youth group. All of us deserve God's wrath, and would surely get it if not for his amazing and salvific grace. That is the failure of modern programs. Man, or in this case, the youth is placed first, not God. I don't care these days if your youth assembly is growing by the multitudes or even if they are laughing and crying in the streets. If God is not primary, all is secondary and an illusion; no matter how real it seems
I don't know whether the youth worker went back to his church and instituted a program like that. More than likely, he would have been shouted down by the church board and deemed a heretic for curtailing their 'dynamic' youth ministry. I hope not but I am not too optimistic. Which is why I still pray for really radical youth ministry like Mark Dever's to have more followers, and more truly radical youth to follow
SDG
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Take a break before it really breaks
Imagine this. Maybe you've had a series of spritual highs in the past. Been to 50 church camps in a row, sang Hillsong till you dream the lyrics and read the Bible back to front - what, only 66 books?!? ). Along the way, you've told anyone and everyone about the gospel, your nickname is Hudson Taylor and your parents are already packing your bags to the seminary
But now you're frustrated. Your spiritual life seems to be stuck in neutral gear, your haven't opened your Bible in a while and prayer seems to be something said just to get it over and done with. What do you do?
Nothing. That's what
When I gave this advice to a friend of mine, I bet he thought I was the anti-Christ (Sinner! You want to stumble me!!! ) Surely I should have been exhorting him to pray more, sing harder, read more books, get more involved in church. Was I being a stumbling block?
No, I was trying to be a friend
Take it from someone who has been burntout and injured from sports in the past - the same thing can happen to your spiritual life. The only difference is whether you want to admit it or deny it. Many Christians refuse to confess that they are burnt out or have hit a plateau - they rather say that they are a little "tired" or just need to have more "faith".They see it as weakness if they have to admit otherwise
In sports, this overtraining and non-recognition that you have hit a plateau can have devastating and debilitating consequences. Lets say I am already tired, a little injured, weary and frustrated that I can't progress in my training. I urge myself on, pushing on, berating myself for being weak, shouting "ganbattei" all the way...until something snaps. Like an achilles tendon or a bone
And then suddenly, I am out for two years. Bitterness and woe sets in. Why? Not because I wasn't strong, it's because I wasn't smart. I was egoistical, thinking that I was invincible and super tough, only to find out that I was just a lump of clay. Broken clay now. It's all pride
It is much the same with our spritual growth. We sometimes hit a plateau. It's natural and is because we are flesh and blood. Push the rubber band that is your body, mind and spirit beyond the breaking point and be prepared to suffer the consequences
We live in a world that prizes fast paced spiritual growth, action and doing rather than being. Ironicaly, all this serves to place more faith in one's own ability rather than God. In other words, it's what the devil wants. All we want to do is "kar yow" (add oil) when you drive but do you know where you're going?
The most interesting thing about this is that when an injury occurs, it's usually not because it happened there and then. Usually, it was slowly occuring over a period of time, sort of like a small crack in a dam finally leading to it's collapse.
On the positive side, a time of rest where you go about living a Godly life (without being overtly Christian - I will write more about this one day) might be the tonic needed to heal you. It's much the same way that cross training prevents injuries by working other muscles that strenghthen the ones you use all the time. God is building you up behind the scenes, quietly.
You just don't see it but he is there. That is the essence of faith
But now you're frustrated. Your spiritual life seems to be stuck in neutral gear, your haven't opened your Bible in a while and prayer seems to be something said just to get it over and done with. What do you do?
Nothing. That's what
When I gave this advice to a friend of mine, I bet he thought I was the anti-Christ (Sinner! You want to stumble me!!! ) Surely I should have been exhorting him to pray more, sing harder, read more books, get more involved in church. Was I being a stumbling block?
No, I was trying to be a friend
Take it from someone who has been burntout and injured from sports in the past - the same thing can happen to your spiritual life. The only difference is whether you want to admit it or deny it. Many Christians refuse to confess that they are burnt out or have hit a plateau - they rather say that they are a little "tired" or just need to have more "faith".They see it as weakness if they have to admit otherwise
In sports, this overtraining and non-recognition that you have hit a plateau can have devastating and debilitating consequences. Lets say I am already tired, a little injured, weary and frustrated that I can't progress in my training. I urge myself on, pushing on, berating myself for being weak, shouting "ganbattei" all the way...until something snaps. Like an achilles tendon or a bone
And then suddenly, I am out for two years. Bitterness and woe sets in. Why? Not because I wasn't strong, it's because I wasn't smart. I was egoistical, thinking that I was invincible and super tough, only to find out that I was just a lump of clay. Broken clay now. It's all pride
It is much the same with our spritual growth. We sometimes hit a plateau. It's natural and is because we are flesh and blood. Push the rubber band that is your body, mind and spirit beyond the breaking point and be prepared to suffer the consequences
We live in a world that prizes fast paced spiritual growth, action and doing rather than being. Ironicaly, all this serves to place more faith in one's own ability rather than God. In other words, it's what the devil wants. All we want to do is "kar yow" (add oil) when you drive but do you know where you're going?
The most interesting thing about this is that when an injury occurs, it's usually not because it happened there and then. Usually, it was slowly occuring over a period of time, sort of like a small crack in a dam finally leading to it's collapse.
On the positive side, a time of rest where you go about living a Godly life (without being overtly Christian - I will write more about this one day) might be the tonic needed to heal you. It's much the same way that cross training prevents injuries by working other muscles that strenghthen the ones you use all the time. God is building you up behind the scenes, quietly.
You just don't see it but he is there. That is the essence of faith
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