Virtually Paul

Bittersweet

This quote encapsulates some things that have been weighing on my mind recently about people my age. This kind of thing really worries me and I’ve been wondering how I can be an influence to the contrary.

“A person who is full tramples on honeycomb, but to a hungry person, any bitter thing is sweet.” Too many times young adults run around so starved for any kind of relationship that they choose any warm body to fill the void. They’ll take a “bitter” relationship just to have a relationship, rather than resting in the contentment God provides.

Read the whole article over at Threads

MegaChurch Got It Wrong?

Willow Creek Repents? @ChristianityToday

Young adults aren’t sticking with church

An article from USA Today summarising recent research into the protestant church fall-away rate, for young adults who participated in a church during their teenage years.

A must-have resource for every church pastor

Link to video:
Ra’ah: Annoyed with Church Part Two

More on Young Adult Ministry

15 Things to Know Before Launching a Young Adult Ministry - threads

Program vs Purpose

You’ll find a nice little rant from yet another frustrated youth ministry leader here:  Youth Ministry Forum

I found myself in a similar predicament last week, at least in terms of needing to rant about a youth ministry program!

I’m the “discipleship” coordinator for my church’s youth ministry.  The title, for the sake of accuracy, should perhaps be extended to “senior-high school discipleship groups” coordinator.  I have some problems with the idea that discipleship is a program that is coordinated by a single person - in reality that’s not the case at church anyway.  We have a bunch of really capable youth leaders, many of whom have disciple-maker qualities.

I don’t really need to rant about the structure stuff because the church has recognised that it’s a problem and just launched a more fluid “Youth Ministry Team” structure to be the driving force behind an entire youth ministry that is focused on growing individuals along their journey.  We’re literally just about to revamp the way everyone thinks about and approaches ministry with our youth.  But back to the discipleship stuff…
About a month ago, I started a group of guys in the 15-17 age range to meet up fortnightly as a group and chat about what I’d broadly describe as “faith stuff”.  It was a bit of a mammoth effort getting them all in the same place at the same time but they all seemed keen and ready to commit to the meeting time.

I’d even had the savvy idea (I thought so anyway) of pitching the group to the guys attending from the outset, as a tool or a help along the journey of discipleship, rather than a club within a club that was going to save them.  It’s a pity I didn’t listen to my own advice.
After the first meeting, one of the guys hadn’t show up, hadn’t contacted me to say they weren’t coming, then informed me a week later that they had just acquired a regular commitment that they wouldn’t be able to avoid - and now couldn’t come along to the group (which was a scheduling feat from my side of the fence).

It wasn’t until I stood back a bit from the whole idea a few days ago and actually thought about this young person and what I was trying to achieve, that I realised:  it actually doesn’t matter if this particular person doesn’t participate in this particular program.

Sure, I think the group will be an effective “program”.  I even think that the individual who isn’t attending would have contributed a lot to it, at the same time as getting a lot out of it.  But that’s not the point.  Yes, my program (notice the unintentional “my” I just wrote) will be effective.  At the same time, my goal here is not to enforce conformity to a particular idea - it’s to disciple.

There is more than one way to skin a cat - and it’s not always the way that you expect!

Starting the ideal church service

This afternoon, due to what must have been a glitch in the matrix, I found myself sitting in a meeting in an inner city suburb, joining a small group of people who were sitting around discussing how to start a new evening church gathering in a reasonably dilapidated old church building which houses a morning congregation of somewhere between 30-60 people.I’ve got an extremely impressively written document in front of me right now, which outlines the general idea. I don’t think I saw a single person under forty on the busy street between parking the car and walking into this church. It therefore comes as no surprise that “young professional people” are the group that the new service is intended to be serving.

The brief document then wanders through, in all its Times New Roman splendour, the creation of what first appeared to me, as an attempt to blueprint the ‘perfect’ church service. What I found most interesting was that I didn’t see the holes straight away.

• It connects with the culture by being relevant - specifically by being “contemporary” - while “unashamedly but sensitively” presenting Christianity.
• Building a “Christ-centred” community where people learn to love and support one another, can come as they are and be themselves.
• It will happen regularly and remove “unnecessary jargon and unhelpful church traditions” from the presentation of the service, which will also allow people the choice to remain as passive observers who are not “forced” to participate in worship.
• Explaining the Bible with life application and encouraging response.
• It will feature preaching, liturgical worship (written prayers), music and supper as organised by the service team.
• The service will be well-branded and then promoted “by advertising throughout the community”.
• The church building will be getting some minor cosmetic work done (ie. “the addition of colour and light”) in order to “help people to feel more comfortable”.

I watched the individuals sitting in this discussion and found it intriguing, watching as slowly but surely, at least 2 of the most vocal participants completely sidetracked the stated aims, inventing non-specific problems. At one point, almost in mid-sentence, one of them seemed to decide that it might be nice to cater for older people or young families as well. So for a cranky little auditor like me, some of it was pure pain. I could have participated in the discussion a bit, given that I’d been invited by a good friend but chose to hang back. There were also some capable individuals in the meeting who I’m sure will eventually work out where they want to go and get the rest to follow.

At this point I remain a skeptic (or was already a cynic). Some years ago, a very effective youth pastor told me that “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”. I raise the following points as questions.

• Can you, in all seriousness, present the Gospel inoffensively? Sure, you can offer nice little spaces for contemplation and let people dabble in spooky little Christian rituals to see what it’s like to eat small amounts of bread and grape juice. But does that really get you anywhere if they’re just sampling from the spirituality smorgasboard?
• People rarely feel free to be themselves. If they truly felt that they could come “as they are” to a church service, then they’d quite potentially already be attending another one. The institutional church has a reputation for actually really not thinking that people are OK “as they are”. And let’s face it, that’s kind of true. So that leaves people being subversively asked to change by the culture of the Christian community, without understanding why. Meanwhile, well meaning Christians actually don’t realise that their well-intentioned stated aim is actually a bit two-faced if you look at it from the outside.
• Spiritual attracts, theological bores. If you do any reading at all on spirituality in Australian culture, particularly the 20s age group, you’ll find that people are actually considering the more mystic elements to religion - the unexplainable movements of the Spirit of God - to be much more interesting than a lecture on their inherent sinfulness. It’s the postmodern mindset. If you use a word someone doesn’t understand, you may well find that the corresponding spiritual experience intrigues them enough for them to ask another question.
• Explaining the Bible with life application? If you’re trying to get people who live in Melbourne in 2007 to interact with the translation of a compliation of texts written over a period of thousands of years, chances are, you’ll have more luck if you take the person, in their context, to the Bible, rather than the other way around.
• Activities sensitive to the culture? Cafe latte drinking young professionals really want to come and sit in a run down old church building, do some responsive reading, listen to a sermon and eat some raisin toast?
• Walking the marketing tightrope. Events attract people wanting to be entertained. Communities attract people. It is exceedingly difficult to advertise the latter in our culture, which associates advertising with an invitation to consume. Advertising, by default, attracts consumption before community. You can try to spread the word… but don’t put some clip-art on an A5 piece of paper with one of these event names and call it advertising.
• Location sensitive to the culture? A service using traditional church building as a meeting place will undoubtedly come across almost all of its newcomers from personal invitations by people already attending. So if relationships are the key, why meet in the one building that everybody you’re trying to involve never come in to of their own accord?

Win the Men, Build the Church

A really well-made YouTube video on winning men to the church…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIrIKbCz3n4

Not Ordaining Men

I’m only linking this because I like that it’s stirring the pot…

MaggiDawn

A bit of New Hope for Essendon Bapts

I make no apologies for the horrible pun. The events of Sunday can still manage to bring a smile to my face.

After over 2 and a half years without a permanent senior pastor, Essendon Baptist has finally appointed someone to take on the role for the long haul. The congregation voted overwhelmingly to endorse Daniel Bullock, currently the Senior Associate Pastor at New Hope (Blackburn North) Baptist Church, to be our new senior pastor.

Before I had any idea about who was coming to pastor our church, I had a strong sense of God really gearing up to do something that would exceed my expectations. I’m really looking forward to meeting this guy. Having had some exposure to people outside of my church over the last 18 months who take ministry formation studies quite seriously, I’m pretty stoked that God’s called someone with Daniel’s educational background in Christian ministry to be our pastor. He also comes with glowing recommendations from the multitudes of Blackburn Northians that I know.

Welcome to Babylon, Daniel.