Youth Ministry Rock Stars ??

I had a conversation with a buddy in Chicago yesterday that got me thinking about the ways we sometimes idolize people in youth ministry. I have to confess that I’ve been there and done that before, but now I just feel silly about it. I’ve been to plenty of conferences where I’ve seen people line up to gush over a certain speaker or artist…and I’m not talking about respect or simple admiration for the work that they’ve done, I’m talking about gushing the way you would imagine someone doing at a rock concert or movie premiere.

Why do we do that? Is it something to do with our own personal search for significance, or is it something else? Just because someone has written great books or works at a large church, it doesn’t make them any more or less like the rest of us. In a large sense, I’d say our idolatry is only a deficit to those people…it either fuels those already struggling with significance and ministry-related ego issues, or it embarrasses and takes away from the ministry and personality of those who are humbly serving. At any rate, let’s lose the rock star mentality in youth ministry.

Jr. High worship questions

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about worship with middle school students these past few days…and I wanted to post a question on here. I think I might send this out in email form to a few people as well. I am wondering what worship songs really connect with your middle school students and why? I’ve seen a few here and there that seem to resonate with students, and a lot of time it was centered around an emotional experience such as camp or missions trip. I’m wondering if anyone out there has seen students respond in a big way to a certain song or type of song, with no other external influences (no big ones anyway).

I’ve been really processing this as we are getting into the detail planning of our March and August events, and I’m just wondering about the song selections, styles and methods of worship. I hope to get some feedback on this, I’d really like to know what others think.

Thoughts on Youth Ministry

I had a great conversation with a senior in high school last week about our weekly youth program. I gave him Rob Bell’s “Velvet Elvis” to read and he inhaled it. Now he’s coming back and has some ideas to change our weekly youth gathering, and some ways to connect to our community and to other students. Here are a few of his initial thoughts. Let me know what you think.

• don’t call it “youth group”
• find a way to do skateboarding/rollerblading
• whole focus can’t be churchy
• maybe some secular songs, skits, worship, talking, community building… keep it student oriented
• not regimented, not “the same old thing” each week
• planned randomness
• food, food and food
• coffee
• really chilled environment
• intergenerational within the context of youth (middle school-college all in the same group), with maybe breakout groups by age
• really chilled, relaxed environment
• teaching should be relational and contemplative
• open teaching based on biblical principles…no “agenda” preaching
• have students in leadership…get LOTS of input.
• Wide variety of people, personalities and ages.
• Maybe try a different night than Wednesday nights (recommends Tuesday)
• Call it a “gathering” … a place where people can hang out and talk about God, life and whatever is on their heart
• Maybe plug people into small groups out of it that could meet anything throughout the week
• Have a really great student band doing some music
• Biggest thing is lots of input from students

Church Fun

This past Friday, after getting back from my mini-sabbatical, I spent the day driving around to Wichita area churches dropping off information about our youth worker training day coming up next month. The very first church I went to was a small Baptist church. I walked in and looked around for the offices, finally finding three guys sitting in a small room eating lunch. One guy jumped up and started talking to me, asking me a ton of questions right away. Who are you? Why are you doing this ministry? Why is this important? What will people get from this? Why should my youth pastor go to this? (Side Note: When he said “my” youth pastor, I said “oh, so you must be the senior pastor.” Which got a proud “Yes, yes I am” response)

When he got to the last question I told him about seeing Kurt (our main presenter) do training at a similar event in Kansas City a year ago, and how impressed I was with him. I told this pastor that it would be a great opportunity for his youth pastor to hang out with Kurt and other youth pastors and to learn and sharpen his skills. The pastor then gave me a smug look and said, “Well, I don’t know about all that. Around here we prefer to hang out with Jesus (pronounced gee-zus).” Frustrated, I looked at him and said something sarcastic that I wish I wouldn’t have said.

Not the best way to start the day.

Later I was at another church in town and walked in to find an empty front desk with a little bell on it. I rang the bell and then heard two female voices coming from around the corner. “Did you hear that? I thought you were going to lock the front door.” said the first. “I forgot, ugh…It’s after one, I don’t want to talk to anybody.” said the second. “I’ll take care of it, but then you lock the door. I don’t want to talk to anyone else either.” replied the first. Then the first woman walked around the corner, looked at me and smiled really big saying “Why hello! What can I do for you?” …as if I was in some magical bubble and couldn’t hear every single word they were saying behind the corner.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, church is like a box of chocolates… or something like that.

Middle School Shooting

It’s been a really strange week, with three different shootings happening in three different states. I was talking with a friend on Sunday about the Amish girls who were killed in their schoolhouse, and my heart just broke. Now it seems that there has been another shooting, but thankfully no one was hurt in this one. On Monday, in Joplin Missouri, a 13 year old seventh grade boy came into his school carrying an assault rifle. He was wearing a dark trench coat and a t-shirt as a mask, and aimed the gun at students before firing a shot into the ceiling, which thankfully jammed the gun. Officials are saying that it didn’t appear that he wanted to shoot anyone, but aside from that they’re not saying much else. You can read the whole article here.

Of course, anytime this happens, we see the usual flood of people bashing violent video games, music, TV and movies. While I think that there are some things our kids should definitely avoid, I continue to believe that we’re missing the real problem when we focus on those things. Youth today are isolated. They live isolated lives, where they use things like MySpace and Facebook to basically “raise” one another, instead of being raised by a community of loving adults. I don’t fault video games so much as I fault the abandonment of the family. And no, I’m not talking about family values…I’m talking about Mom and Dad, actively and meaningfully involved in their child’s life.

What does this mean for us? I think there’s a two-fold meaning here. First of all, as a parent, I think we need to make our children our top priority. We need to invest in them relationally in a way that isn’t happening with students right now. Our kids need to experience the love, grace and influence of Christ through our parental relationships with them. Second, as youth pastors and leaders, I think we need to make a strong focus on building authentic community with students. Our kids are raising themselves…and they’re struggling. We need to look at ways to encourage and support the families of our students, and to build community amongst our group without damaging or taking away from their time with their own family. Also, when I talk about building intentional community and building strong relationships, it’s vital to remember that we are building an intergenerational community. Don’t just build your youth group community with you and your students…build the community with the entire church. Recruit leaders from across the board. Program times of service and fellowship with the larger church. Don’t get so caught up in “youth ministry” that you miss God’s ministry. I believe that the saying “it takes a village to raise a child” has never held more truth than it does now…and we have a chance to help make it happen.

School shootings, rapes, drugs and violence… I still can’t believe all this is happening in middle schools. In Amarillo, Texas last week I saw posters for missing middle school girls at a gas station, and was reminded of the grim reality of human trafficking that is growing in the US. It’s truly a dark world, but we can take hope in knowing that Christ has overcome. In the meantime, let’s remember the old Chinese proverb “It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Where can you bring hope? How can you light a candle in your youth ministry or family? Just some thoughts from a guy who is absolutely in love with middle school students, and whose heart breaks every time one of them despairs the darkness.

Strange…

I’m sitting in a pretty quiet general session room with about four other people who are displaying at the DLC event. I’ve been sitting here quietly typing away on some emails (trying to catch up with my email…I’m about 2 weeks behind on some!). Anyway, the strange part is that I finally listened to the conversation that the others are having, and it’s about the lack of intergenerational ministry in churches.

Strange or prophetic? I don’t know. But I know that I’m taking off for a short sabbatical in a few weeks, and my goal is to finish up the skeleton for a book I’ve been working on, and this topic keeps getting pushed to the front of my heart and mind.

Anyway, I’m not smart enough to put all the pieces together…but we’ll see what happens!

Intergenerational Ministry

We hit a really good topic two posts ago, and I don’t want to let it die just yet.

We’re talking about intergenerational ministry, and how it doesn’t seem to be happening (at least not very well) in the majority of our churches here in America. I’m really interested to hear if anyone is experiencing positive intergenerational ministry in their church context, and if we have any international readers today, I’d love to hear if this is a problem in their context as well.

Not a lot of new content to add right now, I’m still turning some thoughts in my head…I just didn’t want this coversation to die just yet.