We invite you to bring your team to Nashville, TN on Thursday, March 1st, 2012 to join Youth Ministry Leaders from all over the Southeast who will gather at Lipscomb University to learn, train and think about “The Three Stories of Youth Ministry.”

I want to personally invite you to this year’s “3 Stories of Youth Ministry” event we are offering here at Lipscomb.  This year’s conference is going to be a TREMENDOUS opportunity for you and your team to really dive into the story of God.

Teaching THE Story of God–Michael Novelli, author of Shaped by the Story & Enter the Story, has developed an engaging, imaginative, interactive and creative way to involve your students WITH and IN The Story of God.  Michael will take you through how and why to teach the Bible narratively and leave you with a fascinating way to teach your students the larger story of God’s redemptive work through Jesus.

MY Story with God--Rachel Held Evans, author of Evolving in Monkeytown will take us through the importance of our own stories and they way we read and interpret scripture.  She will delve into that how and why our own story affects what we choose to see and not see when we approach Scripture.  How might our family, our upbringing, our own experiences could what we want to know as truth and what we think is truth?

OUR Story with God--David Hutchens, author of A Slice of Trust, will guide us through the culture and climate that is created by our ministry’s history and values.  David is an expert in helping organizations determine their corporate story and he will help guide your team to look at how your vision, values and identity affect your ministry as well as get you on the way to articulating a bigger and better story for your ministry and church.

“People are better persuaded by the reasons they themselves discover than by those which have come into the mind of others.”

–Blaise Pascal

I came across this quote during a class on mediation I am taking this semester.  The goal of mediation it to help two parties who are in conflict come to a decision or solution on their own terms as opposed to having a third party make the decision for them.  In other words, a mediator is there to help them discover information rather the tell them what they need to know.  This got me thinking about how youth ministers and parents can become more of trail guides for teens and less of indoctrinators?

Again, this is an integral part of the adolescent process where students need to know that their choices matter.  Discovery for a teen gives them and their lives meaning.  You have heard the old adage, “You can lead a horse to water . . . but you can’t make them drink.”  As we work with teens we do need to give them tools and opportunities to discover for themselves.  Truth be told, I much prefer to tell teens what I think they need to hear rather than give them the freedom to discover truth for themselves . . . after all aren’t I the expert?(sarcasm)

I think this concept has several applications in the way we might do ministry:

• Let students have substantive opportunities to learn Truth for themselves:  ALL of the best research out there* that is asking why young adults leave church or what keeps teens in the faith point to the fact of whether or not they had a safe environment to express doubt.  Do our ministries provide sanctuary where teens are allowed to express doubt and differing opinions on faith, God’s existence, sex, social justice, poverty, homosexuality, and other dangerous topics?  Another way of asking this question is to answer, “What are the topics that are ‘off limits’ in our church?”–Let’s talk about those. . . not to be controversial, but to give voice to those issues that are probably on the hearts and minds of our young people.
• Do students leave our teaching with more Answers or more Questions?  I believe a good education gives you the tools to ask more and better questions rather than simply delivering the answer.  ”The Bible says is, I believe it, That settles it.”  Is an attitude we may need to depart from in order to give our students the space and ability to ask difficult questions of faith, religion, the Biblical text, and more.  What kinds of tools are we giving our students that allow them to investigate and journey in their faith that will guide them to answers as opposed to spoon-feeding them with answers?
• Can we say “I don’t know”?  Is our own faith as leaders big enough to have the confidence to appropriately express our own doubts and still allow God to reign?  Do we have to have an answer for everyquestion that comes up or can we simply say, “I don’t know.”  I am not professing allegiance to a blind, uninformed faith.  Rather, I think being able to say, “I don’t have every answer, but I am still searching” is far more authentic and communicates Truth better than a weakly formed, proof-texted apologetic.  Look at Paul’s own struggles with doubt in Romans 7.  Surely, if Paul is wrestling with these issues at the end of his ministry, surely we have the freedom (or necessity) to have our own doubts?

Those are just a few ideas…any others?  I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments section…

*For more see Sticky Faith by Kara Powell, Soul Searching by Christian Smith, You Lost Me by Dave Kinnaman.

So true.

When I think of the traditional, One-Eared Mickey Mouse approach to youth ministry, I fear that we have squelched the ever important voice of teens and sent the message to them that says, “Your ideas and your input are not that important.”  In what arenas in our faith communities does the WHOLE CHURCH have the opportunity for students to have responsibility, provide input into programming, share their ideas on faith, give feedback, or to simply have their voices heard?  Most of what I have seen have delegated that kind of input, responsibility and feedback solely to the youth ministry.  Based on who I see utilized in our corporate assemblies and committees, I fear we have sent a message that says, “We’ll listen to you once you are married, have a job and have a child.”

This is good news!  Students WANT responsibility!  They WANT their voices heard!  They WANT to participate!  They know that faith and God are vital and important and sacred and they want to contribute to the work of the Kingdom of God!  They have heard and seen what God can do and want to share in that.

How might we pass the baton of responsibility over to our teens?  What might be some baby steps that we take to train, equip and then UTILIZE teens in the larger conversation of faith in our churches?

Here are a few ideas to get the discussion kickstarted:

• Have students contribute to all aspects of worship from worship team to reading scripture to leading communion thoughts. (Not every time, and not just on “youth sunday” but regularly to develop a culture that students are a part of THIS body and THE Body of Christ).
• Have students part of any or all committees as appropriate.  Let them have a voice in some of the important church decisions that are made.  You never know, students may provide insight or a perspective on an issue, a building plan, a mission committee, etc. that no one else can provide.
• Release students to lead and serve.  I used to fight against students being a part of other ministries in church like Children’s Ministry, Worship Team, etc. because I was selfish and wanted them in MY ministry.  I realized that I had to release them to let God work through them in the areas where they were being called.  I had to really let go and let other ministreis benefit and learn from them.
• Preach.   What if we gave students who have a word or something insightful to share a brief sermonette as part of worship?  You don’t have to give up the entire sermon over to a teen, just 2-3 minutes from them might be the most powerful meesage some hear that day.
• Testimony.  One of the best things we would do when we had “Youth Sunday” was to let students share what God had been doing in their lives.  This proved to be extremely powerful and encouraging to the whole congregation.  Sooooo . . . Why not do this regularly as part of worship where the congregation hears a brief testimony from youth, senior saints, young marrieds, old singles, etc

* Nichols, Sharon Lynn., and Thomas L. Good. “9 A Small-Wins Approach.” America’s Teenagers–myths and Realities: Media Images, Schooling, and the Social Costs of Careless Indifference. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004. 268.

“Fewer kids say they like to read. A new report from People for Education — using data from the provincial Education Quality and Accountability Office — says the percentage of Grade 3 students who report they “like to read” has declined from 76% in 1998/99, to 50% in 2010/11.

In Grade 6, the percentage of students who say they “like to read” has declined from 65% in 1998/99 to 50% in 2010/11.”

Granted you may want to file this under the “Duh” column and blame TV, the Internet and Online Gaming as the cause to kids not wanting to read. But let us look at the glass as half full.  There are teens who LIKE to read!  These statistics show that HALF of our kids still LIKE TO READ!  So I want to ask the question, “Does the way we do ministry encourage or discourage reading?”

Think about this:

• How often or how much does our teaching with teens depend on people to be IN the text as opposed to talking ABOUT the text?
• Do our ministries have a cultural expectation for teens to bring their Bibles, to be in the Word, to look at a text, etc. in our youth ministries?  I have heard kids say, “I don’t bring my Bible because we don’t use them.”
• Is your teaching more topical and less textual?  In other words, when was the last time you taught through a book of the Bible?  I have found that most topical teaching uses the text as a launching pad for the day’s topic.  A textual study requires you to stay in the text and deep in the word.
• Does the reading up on PowerPoint contribute to your students NOT bringing their Bibles?  After all, why should I poen my Bible when it’s going to be up on the screen?
• I have heard language like, “Today we are going to look at a story from Acts, you don’t have to open your Bibles” which was then followed by a poor retelling.  Does this send a message to teens that says “the text is not that important?”
• Do we use more references and clips from movies than the Bible?
• What does the rise of digital texts (Kindle, iPhone Bibles, tablets) mean for people’s reading of the text?  Are we reading the Bible more or less?  There is some room for great research here.

I confess that I was one of the first to use PowerPoint but have begun to regret that usage.  I know it is helpful for visitors and guests, but how might we enable/encourage/expect people to use their text?

My rant here is how might we ENABLE our students to be more readers?  How do we engage them with the text?  How to help help them DIVE into the word instead of away from the word?

Think of all the contemplative, visual learners and those who learn best by reading.  How might we teach to them and give them the opportunity to savor the text and taste it like “honey on their lips?”

Here are a few things we might consider:

• Bible Text 101:  Lets go back to Elementary school and educate ALL our students on those things we all take for granted:  the difference between OT and NT, what the different numbers mean, the difference between red and black words,  and the Books of the Bible.  Let us get ALL our students familiar with the text so their love for the text is an easier road to travel.  (Better yet, let students who know this teach others!)  Maybe kids don’t read the Bible because they can’t find their way around it.  We can’t assume anymore that just because a kids comes to church they know their way around the Bible.
• Simply saying, “Let’s open our Bibles to  . . . “ to encourage a culture of reading the text.
• Read the text out loud as a group.  After all, much of this was written to be read out loud.  CAVEAT:  Let prepare to read it BEFOREHAND so we do not do mediocre readings of scripture and we bring the text alive as we read it.  Nothing kills the life of the text faster than a poor public reading of it.
• Let students participate in a Lectio Divina during class where you give them extended time to spend time in just one passage of the text and THEN teach and talk about it.
• Silent Readings:  Have students read the text silently in their bibles.  I know, silence is painful for some, but think of the students who LOVE silence. . . give them the gift of a few minutes to read in silence and absorb the word.
• Program in Quiet Time:  Everytime I had retreat, camp, mission trip, etc. we would write daily time guides for quiet reading and reflection on scripture where we gave students guides they were welcome to follow for a daily devotion.  Whenever we did evaluations, this always ranked the HIGHEST!  Kids like to read and like quiet time!  How great!

I am not advocating Biblioidolatry where the Bible takes precedence over gospel.  I do want to see us foster a faith that is informed by the actual text and not what we think the text is saying through our poor recollections and cloudy remembrances of passages.

Remember:  There are teens who LOVE to read!  These statistics show that HALF of our kids LIKE TO READ!  This is still Good News!  Let us foster that love.

For example, one of the reasons the Barna research shows why young adults are leaving church is that faith communities are OVERPROTECTIVE.  One student notes that churches “demonize everything outside the church.”  The problem with this is that our teens are called to live IN this world.  There’s plenty in culture that points to God, if we’re we have the courage to look at it.  Many use lyrics from bands, movie clips, and references to sport in teaching.  This ought to help our students develop discernment rather than separation, and enjoyment rather than fear.  Didn’t Paul even quote the philosophers of his age that had pointed to Truth in some of their teachings?  I hear young people simply saying, “TRUST US.”  They are saying, Give us some credit to recognize what is good and what isn’t. Trust that you have done a good enough job raising us.” Another way of saying this is perhaps we need to let our young people become “free range Christians.”

Second, young people are saying what is being offered in our faith communities, youth groups, churches is simply TOO SHALLOW.  Early in my youth ministry I grew more and more frustrated and youth curriculum that dealt very little with the text and have an abundance of games, ice breakers and time wasters.  What I hear young people saying in this area is that they want DEPTH.  They KNOW the church has something powerful, true and deep to offer and they WANT it!  They want to dive into the depths of scripture and not just play silly games on Sunday morning.  This is GOOD NEWS!  Young people want depth & authenticity over façades & shallowness.

Third, they see faith communities as ANTISCIENCE.  We often forget that today’s young person is a digital native.  They never knew of a world without cell phones, the internet, video games, and most things digital.  Many of our faith communities have often looked to the Bible as a science text and placed upon the text claims it never makes for itself.  Rather than using the Bible to attack science, creation, physics, etc., perhaps we can even LEARN FROM THEM as to how to look at science through the lens of faith.

Fourth, they see the church as REPRESSIVE.  I was raised Catholic and went to church all through high school.  I switched to a Restoration Mvmt church when I was 18.  I don’t remember ANY sermons, Bible classes, or lessons on sex, sexuality or anything in that arena in a church setting.  However, we read in Genesis 2 that God commands Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply.”  We condemn people when they have premarital sex or extramarital sex.  But isn’t it ironic that we don’t teach them God original intent for sex beyond, “Don’t do it out of marriage.”  What I hear students saying is “Teach me what God’s designe for sex and sexuality is!”  I believe that young people are begging for this teaching because the sex messages they are being inundated with through the media and the halls of school doesn’t ring as truth and they want to know the Truth about sex and sexuality.  This is GOOD NEWS!

Fifth, they are leaving because they see the church as EXCLUSIVE.  They read about Jesus being welcoming to the lepers, tax collectors, Samaritan woman, prostitutes, etc. and then watch and listen the way some of our communities talk about or treat people of a different political belief, denomination, socio-ethnic background, etc.  I hear that students want to SHARE GOSPEL with those Jesus would want to share it with.

Lastly, they leave because the church communities they are a part of are DOUBTLESS.  In other words, they are so sure of their faith there is no room for doubt.  Study after study has confirmed that if a young person has a space where they are free to present doubt and allow themselves to ask questions of doubt, then their chances for staying in faith rise significantly.  In those churches where they are not free to explore doubt this kills their desire to stay in that community.  Today’s teens live in such a complex and complicated world that doubt is perhaps a daily occurrence.  There are so many situations where teens must have a place to be free to ask, “Is God real?”  When I look at Romans 7, I see Paul wrestling with doubt for everyone in the Roman church to see.  I hear young people saying, they want a real, authentic, forged, smelted, tested and tried faith.  A faith that is small/big enough to ask the difficult questions.  They are striving towards a faith than can ENDURE.

So let us see the cup as half full as we hear these reasons why young people are leaving organized faith communities.  Let us not think they are all going to hell in a hand basket.  Perhaps many of them continue to live out their faith absent from traditional faith communities.  But let us also use these as a wake up call for our faith communities that have played it too safe or presented a gospel that is too small.

1.  Teenagers gain a significant amount of affirmation from Facebook.  Imagine every notification badge or “Like” or comment on a wall as a way a teen hears, “I care about you” or “You are important to me.”  The same is true about every text message.  It is a digital hug or high five from a friend.  This feeds and nourishes the soul.  This infographic shows that teens on average go on to Facebook 6 times a day to get that affirmation.  The question remains as to whether or not it is enough . . .

2.  Teens find significance and empowerment online.  This is a spiritual quest as well.  As they post to Facebook Your Tube and Twitter, they instantly become participants in something larger than themselves.  As you look at the pie graphs about sharing links and commenting, this is what that behavior is all about.  This is spiritual at its core as it is vocational . . . when they comment and share links, teens are creating something bigger than themselves.   This is vital to a teen’s struggle through adolescence where one of the main questions they must answer is “Do I and my choices matter?”  Participating online helps them achieve some of this significance.

3.  Facebook is the new “Cheers.”  Remember the theme song for the old 80′s sitcom, “Cheers” that preached, “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.”  Here is a space for a teen who feels all alone, isolated and lonely to find others who knows what it is like to be them.  When I was growing up in the 70s-80s, if there wasn’t anyone else like me at my school, I was stuck.  Facebook and tech lets me be connected to others who are like me.  It may actually help squelch that loneliness in many teens.

4.  Technology is NOT evil.  We can make is a scapegoat for bad grades, poor performance, etc. but we cannot.  As this research shows, you can’t use it to correlate between time spent online and bad grades for most students.  Our use of tech may or may not be healthy, productive or even good.  For example, when a teen slams a peer on Facebook or Twitter, then technology’s virtues or vices becomes all about how we use it.  So we might not want to throw Facebook out with the bathwater, but we may want to help teens keep some sort of daily and weekly Tech Sabbaths. 

My experience in the Churches of Christ has shown that we have traditionally spent more time with Paul and Jesus (in that order) than we have with the Gospels, the Prophets, Genesis, Revelation, well this list goes on and on. Tony Campolo makes the observation that for many evangelicals, we look at Jesus through the lens of Paul.  When we do this, our vision is skewed and tainted with legalism as we see Jesus through the ethical codes and legislation of Pauline writing.  He suggests that Catholics look at Paul through the lens of Jesus.  When we do this, then the ethical codes of Paul are given a much better context to accept those teachings.  Campolo had a good Catholic friend of his observe that when you look at Jesus through the lens of Paul you get televangelists, when you look Paul through the lens of Jesus you get Mother Teresa.  While this may not be completely accurate and even a bit unfair, there is a valid point worth considering.

I want to propose that our canon within the canon has resulted in a more legalistic view of Jesus than is possibly warranted or even accurate.  When we spend soooo much time looking at Paul’s ethical codes for holy living WITHOUT the context of JEsus, Jesus’s life, Jesus’s teachings, and JEsus’s character, it is far too easy to condense the christian life to a list of rules and regulations and faith becomes formulaic (See The Prayer of Jabez craze from a few years back).

For example, I have sat through far more classes and sermons on Colossians 3 that detail the list of rules for holy living than I have the Christ hymn in Colossians 1 that gives us the lens to understand.  If I am honest, I have look at teens far more with the lens of Colossians 3 and measured a student’s spiritual growth based on whether or not they they were students of “Anger, sexual immorality, lust, greed. etc.” then to really look deeper and see if they exhibited the character and qualities of Jesus as described in Col 1.

I have been struggling a lot with performance-based faith lately.  Donald Miller suggests that the two words that kill the human soul the fastest are: “Ought To.”I reflect on those externals that I used to subject my youth group students to . . . externals like:

• attendance-how often are they at youth group and not “forsaking the assembly
• quite time devotion-how often are kids diving in the word and journaling.
• participation-are they at everything we are doing in youth group?
•  bringing their Bibles-You know that “good Christians” bring their Bible to church
• sacrificing a game to attend a retreat-this is almost the mark of martyrdom.

Don’t misunderstand me.  These things are not bad things.  However, when we use them as measuring sticks for faith and devotion, we are probably measuring the wrong things.  When we put these things up are the measuring sticks for faith, we put artificial hoops up for our students to jump through.

I would rather we find ways to see Jesus living IN and THROUGH our students.  How might we see Jesus living in our students?  Challenging our students?  I think the only way we can do this is to SPEND TIME getting to KNOW our students.  Sitting down with them over coffee. Listening to them articulate their faith, talking about Jesus, hearing their perspective on faith.

In order for us to know what to look for and listen for, we must spend more time in the Gospels AND the prophets AND the rest of the Canon of Scripture.  But let’s at least spend some time in our Sunday morning curriculum or small group times looking just at Jesus.  Luther sought for sola fide.  Perhaps we can strive for sola Jesus . . . at least for just a season this year.

NEXT EPISODE:  Dr. Kenda Dean talks about her latest book, Almost Christian, and what the findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion has to do with youth ministry.

Lee Camp-Who Is My Enemy

I found that term “marketing” particularly captivating as it rang hauntingly true.  In the adolescent world, it does seem like there is fierce competition for another’s attention.  Students in their quest for identity send themselves down a path to doing/wearing/trying almost anything just to get noticed.  Some parents shared stories of photo after photo they have seen on Facebook of scantily clad girls that are up there for all the world to see.  Others commiserated over the different wardrobe battles they have to endure in order to get out of the mall without needing stitches.

On the other end of the gender aisle, Dads worry about the ease at which pornography is accessible for their sons and what that kind of marketing is doing to their boys perception of reality, personhood, and truth.  We aren’t even going near the age at which so many of the guys I talk to have seen performance enhancing drugs and steroids in the locker room in an attempt to get noticed on the field.

It seems like every where a teen turns there are so many gimmicks that students resort to in order to try to “market” themselves and stand out in a crowd.

So what is a parent, coach, youth worker, teacher, to do?

Than answer is almost too simple . . . notice them NOW.

SEE the teens around you and say “Hi.” Trust me, they are there, you jsut maight not have seen them.

Don’t just notice kids who ACHIEVE (QBs, STraight A Students, Cheerleader, Soloists, Starting Forward, etc.) . . . notice the introvert in the corner and sit with them.

Don’t just hang out with the “pretty kids” . . . didn’t we get our fill of that kind of behavior in high school?

Find those kids who ARE trying to hide because they just do not know how to market themselves or got too tired trying to play that marketing game . . . and give them the time of day.

Talk WITH teens, not just TO them.  Learn who they are, What makes them tick? What did they do last weekend? What’s their favorite band on their iPod? Ask them what movie you should get off Netflix and Why?

Tell them some stories from your life because, believe it or not, they want to know you too!  (more on that in future blogs)

Praise a kid just for EXISTING not for performance . . . Jesus did that kind of thing all the time, didn’t he?

WARNING:  This WILL be awkward at moments!  You will blow it from time to time.  But I guarantee that it WILL make a difference.  The results most certainly will not be immediate, but they will be eternal.

This is how we begin to be the hands and feet of Jesus and start to bring down the Madison Ave lie factory that have told our young people they aren’t good enough to the point they have felt the need to start these mini-marketing campaigns of their own.

We invite you to bring your team to Nashville, TN on Thursday, March 1st, 2012 to join Youth Ministry Leaders from all over the Southeast who will gather at Lipscomb University to learn, train and think about “The Three Stories of Youth Ministry.”

One of our featured speakers will be Michael Novelli, author of “Shaped By The Story.”  Michael will teach and train your team through HOW to teach the Bible narratively in a way that will ENGAGE your students with the Story of God.  He will give you dozens of practical ideas that will help your students not only LEARN the Story of God, but be able to EXPERIENCE it, KNOW it, TELL it and SEE THEMSELVES in it.

After ten years in youth ministry, Michael Novelli felt like he had tried everything to help his students connect with the Bible. Then, a missionary introduced him to a unique, ancient way to engage people with the Bible through story. Michael learned the art of “Storying,” a sequential telling of Bible stories followed by a time of creative retelling and in-depth dialogue. God used this process to completely transform his youth group as they found themselves experiencing God in a whole new way. For several years Michael has been developing narratives and training to help others discover the art of “Storying,” a dialogical approach to Bible learning.

CLICK HERE for more info and to register your team now.