Virtually Paul

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!

Junior Camp Ahoy!

Seeing as Carris put in such a top research effort for her pirate post, I thought I’d use my new found burst of energy as I recover from being sick, to give my blog design a bit more of a pirate feel.

I’m leading on a kids camp this summer. The theme is “The Quest for Treasure Island”… What’s in the box with the locks? I’m co-directing the camp with two good friends, in Warren and Tash. There’s also Janelle, Carris, Bec and a bunch of other people that we’ve roped in from church and other places to be leaders.

The point of the camp is basically to form relationships with the kids, aged from Grade 4 to Year 7 and invest in them. We spend a bit of time on the camp talking about Bible stories and how those things can apply to our lives today… at the end of the day though, it’s up to the kids to make up their own minds about what they want to think and believe. I think that’s an incredibly healthy attitude… and it’s one of the reasons why in my high school days I got so much out of the teen camps that the same organisation runs. Mostly though, it’s fun, games and quality time.

I really enjoy spending time with kids. They have such an uncomplicated view of the world. I wish I’d gone on camps like this one when I was their age. I think I would have really liked them… so I’m really glad I can offer the privilege to my slightly smaller friends. I don’t think they’d appreciate being called ‘little’.

The blog theme will probably stay around until after camp, unless I get sick of it.
Camp runs from January 6-11, 2007, although I’ll be getting there a bit later because of my groomsman responsibilities in Nathan’s wedding.

My Attitude Problem

I’m currently working on an essay about “attitudes of young people towards the institutional church” and so far my head is awash with vague grabs at all of the ideas and issues.

So I figured I’d starting blogging on the subject and see where my thoughts take me.  Feel free to chuck me some comments for inspiration.  The essay topic seems to call for a pretty straight-forward approach.  Firstly, define young people in terms of their cultural setting and the needs that arise in them as a result of it.  Secondly, define the institutional church.  Somewhere in the gap between the two, you’d expect that I’d uncover the ‘attitudes’ that exist.  I think I’m going to need to touch on a number of issues to cover the topic properly.

Issue 1:  Societal Changes
There has been a shift in society and often it doesn’t seem like the church has caught up.  Maybe that’s just my attitude to the institutional church though.  The statistical studies I’ve been reading have talked a lot about the increasing number of ‘non-traditional family structures’.  More young people today than ever before live in home environments with single parents or step-parents.  So, how does that influence them?

Issue 2: Postmodernism
It’s a fancy word.  My understanding of what it means is this:
The ‘modern’ era was characterised by a collective belief in science and technology to solve all of the problems of humankind.  Something was valid if it could be explained.  Something could be accepted if there was cold, hard scientific evidence.  In amongst that, allegiance to an institution of some kind was a valued quality.  It all worked rather well for a generation of baby boomers in the suburban churches of the 1970s.

Enter the postmodern era.  These days, scientific rationalism isn’t irrelevant… but it isn’t the answer to everything either.  In the postmodern world, truth isn’t about proof.  Truth is about what works.  “Right” and “Wrong” are seen as relative labels.  Loyalty to an institution during bad times, makes you a sap who should have the backbone to improve their situation.  No one wants to listen to moral pronouncements of right and wrong from the church, from their parents, or from anywhere else.  Science doesn’t have all of the answers and spirituality is once again on the rise.  But in the postmodern era, what works for someone is ‘their truth’.  If you want to have your own religious beliefs, fine… but don’t push their moral framework on to those around you.

Issue 3: What’s the church?
The word ‘church’ has been misappropriated to so many different things, even just in the last 50 years, that its meaning within popular culture has been diluted into an array of stereotypes that range in their connotations, from confusing expressions of ancient religious liturgical practice, to a fundamentalist Christianist lobby group that attempts to influence Government policy for conservative ends.  Even within the ranks of those who regularly participate in the church, I’m not sure how many of them could tell you what it actually is.  If you asked ten different people what the church exists to do, you’d easily get answers that emphasised any number of different things:  community, evangelism, family values, charity, prayer.

Issue 4: Spirituality
Lots of people are interested in spirituality.  It’s just that not many of them want to ask the church about it because they think they already know what the church is going to say.

Cars, Trains and Server Problems

Well, my valued readers, I’m writing this to you on a train into the city and I’m not very impressed. My car decided that it didn’t like the hot day so I pulled in to the mechanic up the road from work who seems to think that my radiator is 50 percent blocked. I’ve pretty much already decided to bite the bullet and trade it in for something else. Not The best timing given my looming study deadlines and the sermon that I’m preaching in less than 3 weeks, but having a car with a working exterior driver’s door handle would probably be really nice and convenient now that I think about it.

Of course, on the one day that I am without a vehicle, the server at work decided to drop a RAID disk, leaving me running the database repair tool on the email database until 7pm before I could leave the office knowing that all of the happy staff will be able to open Outlook in the morning without having their routines disrupted by an uncooperative error message. Business professionals without email access are not unlike 16 year old girls that don’t have any battery left on their hot pink flip phone. They tend to panic that someone cool might be trying to contact them and would gladly trade a 6 month subscription to Dolly/The Fin. Review to have everything working again. Luckily, they pay me and I fix it. It’s somewhat of a symbiotic relationship.

*switches to outbound Broadmeadows train*

It did mean that I’ll arrive late for the church meeting that’s on tonight with no dinner, having missed the pre-meeting prayer time that I was originally supposed to be organising until I passed it off to Heath at the last minute. The meeting should be interesting. It’s been advertised as a ‘Church Family Forum’ (also known as a Baptist Opinions Convention). The headline topic is what to do about our lack of a Youth Pastor while we still don’t have a Senior Pastor. Suffice it to say that I’ll be intrigued to hear the ideas from across the group.

I could really go for a steak sandwich about now. At least I’ll be able to get a lift home from church from one of my housemates.

Link of the Week: How to resolve conflict in youth ministry