Monday, June 16, 2008

Post-Evangelical Youth Ministry: Some Incomplete Thoughts

This is worth a second look.

 
 

Sent to you by cloudykid via Google Reader:

 
 

via internetmonk.com by iMonk on 6/7/08

BHT fellow Alex Arnold asks what a post-evangelical youth ministry looks like.

Post-evangelicalism is asking what the church itself looks like when it draws its identity, substance and focus from the larger, deeper, wider communion of the church catholic.

Nothing is more typical of evangelicalism in both its strengths and its weaknesses than youth ministry. Many of us would say that the existence of what can be called the post-evangelical impulse is, to some extent, the result of the triumph of youth ministry as the primary model in almost every quarter of evangelicalism.

It was youth ministry in evangelicalism that applied the double edged solvent of cultural relevance and results oriented pragmatism to the church's primary discipleship and evangelistic ministry. Those solvents were initially respectful of previous tradition and the multi-generational mission of the church, but as youth ministry took on more and more of an identity of its own, tradition and generational diversity became enemies to be slain.

The results have been immense success for youth ministry as a shaping influence in evangelicalism. But a growing segment of evangelicals began to see youth ministry as undermining evangelicalism itself in producing disciples who were committed to the message and mission of the churches that invested the most in youth ministry.

For a post-evangelical, the value of youth ministry as a missional calling of the church is obvious, but there are grave doubts about the continuation of what is, by any measurement, a movement that has been corrosive to much of the church's identity and connection to its own history.

The overall framework will be this: While remaining distinctively evangelical, a post-evangelical approach to the church will choose how NOT to identify with contemporary evangelicalism and where to identify with the both roots and renewal movements beyond the contemporary evangelical wilderness.

So while I cannot describe a post-evangelical youth ministry, I can suggest some aspects to what a post-evangelical Christian community might determine in regard to its missional ministry to its own young people.

1. It would be very open to the "Family centered" model that puts youth ministry firmly in the ministry of parents, and would utilize "youth ministers" only as a supplement and facilitation of that model.

2. It would never separate young people from the multi-generational nature of the church, but would instill in them an appreciation for the Christian tradition, and the compromises and gifts of the multi-generational model.

3. Age segregated Bible study would most likely be de-emphesized, if not eliminated as much as possible.

4. Mentoring and "AA" type community would be the focus of community life, with a conscious effort to work against the consumerist impulses of evangelical youth culture.

5. One important emphasis would be participation in broader community ministries and worship opportunities that would emphasize being part of the larger body of Christ, including all traditions.

6. Relationships and ministries with the church among the poor and the persecuted would replace the creation of envy of megachurch facilities and a menu of specialized large events.

7. A conscious effort to define discipleship in terms of teachable processes will bring about an investment of time and relationships in learning specific disciplines from particular people, and then passing those discipleship processes on to other young people.

8. The heart of post-evangelical youth ministry would be the church's own growth process into a community discovering the church as the movement Jesus started, imitating the best models of the past and connecting to other traditions.

9. This does not mean the elimination of "youth ministry," but it does mean that any specific ministry will find its definition and direction from the overall character of the community to which it belongs. Whatever activities, actions or processes occur, they will be evaluated by the whole community and not by separate standards derived from "youth ministry" as a self-defining parachurch movement.

Obviously there is lot more to be said, but this does get at some of my current thoughts. A very good question. Thanks for asking.


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 
Posted by at No comments:

More Than Words

Always good

 
 

Sent to you by cloudykid via Google Reader:

 
 


Christianity has a heavy presence in the United States. You can feel the weight of it like a quilted cloak draped over the people, bending their heads forward and pressing on their shoulders. The air is thick with Christian words. Bible phrases fill our literature and are baptized into our culture, peppering our speech with feeble reminders of a lost faith.

- She's the salt of the earth.

- He has the patience of Job.

- It's only a drop in the bucket.

The Christian Church in America is so symbiotically enmeshed with our culture that their hearts beat as one, and some people hardly know the difference between the two. The words of faith and religion have burrowed deep into the flesh of our language. They rise to the surface like shards of glass from a festering wound, reborn as oaths, obscenities, and vulgar expressions.

- Jesus Christ!

- God damn it!

- Oh my God!

Are the people who say these things praying?

When your holy names are born again into the rarified order of words used to express rage and anger, you know you're deep into the culture. Down in the cultural unconscious, right on the edge of the place where myths are born. And these quasi-religious phrases may well outlast the American Church. Words and phrases are notoriously long-lived, surviving for generations after all remembrance of their original meaning is gone.

And that would be fitting, since words will likely be our undoing. Much of American Christianity is all about words. Hollow words of theology that have all the depth and meaning of political slogans. Words delivered with a smile by ministers who dance behind their pulpits. Words that create false gods of hope and fear. Words that build up straw men and beat them down, while gently excusing the listeners from anything that remotely resembles radical living. Christianity has become a word factory, churning out half-baked ideas and spewing them across the bobbing heads of people who are looking for easy answers. The Church is Constantine reborn in our time. She mouths words of salvation and shakes her baptismal waters over the people who are marched beneath her arched weapons.

But good words must have good living beneath and behind them, or they will ultimately come to nothing. Words without living are just marketing, which has its place if you're selling hamburgers or shoes, but not if you're seeking the meaning of life.

I know about the danger of words, for I am a word man myself. I am a writer and a preacher, which means my words end up on paper and in the air, which means they hardly exist at all. Remember: even if my words touch your heart, having said them or written them gives me no special credits in heaven. My life is what matters, as is yours.

It should not have been this way, my brothers and sisters of nature, science, and the world. Christianity should have soared like a bird on the winds of real living. Christianity should have been a heavenly choice, a chosen path, the way of a pilgrim. You should have been warned of the difficulty of the Christian journey perhaps, but never lied to and never coerced. Those who seek to follow in the way of Christ should have taken up a rule of living like monks of old and never laid that rule on the shoulders of anyone who did not freely ask for it. Instead of demanding respect and threatening with fires of hell, we should have been the humble servants of all who crossed our paths.

I speak these words of criticism as a committed insider in the American Church. I speak them with love, but more importantly with great hope, for I always have been a dreamer. When it comes to the Church, you have to be able to see what she might have been and might still become. And strangely enough, you have to see this and believe in it, though you know the Church will never live up to it.

I have been discouraged by the Church many times. And I have even wondered if being a minister was the right choice for me. Thankfully, the Church as a whole is not my responsibility. I am a part of one small community, meeting in a little stone building in San Antonio. We have words to say, of course, various affirmations of faith and statements that we write. But our lives will either speak for us or not. And that is a bit scary, considering how imperfect we are. We try to represent the spirit of Christ. We try and often fail. Sometimes we love the people who come to us seeking solace, and sometimes we have failed to love them as well as we should. We stand before a fireplace on Sunday mornings, singing and speaking, sometimes making a mess of the words, not to mention the living that should stand behind them.

We are waiting to be redeemed. We are waiting for the gift of redemption. And while we are waiting we stand ready to bring whatever goodness we have into the world, as if we might prime some heavenly pump that might start some larger process and things might begin to become what they ought to have been.

rlp

.


 
 
 
 
Posted by at No comments:

How to Write in 140 Characters or Less

Am going to teach this for a diversion

 
 

Sent to you by cloudykid via Google Reader:

 
 

via Stepcase Lifehack by Dustin Wax on 6/13/08

How to Write in 140 Characters or Less

On Wednesday, I wrote a set of tips on writing (http://is.gd/wlJ). I had in mind business and similar situations where solid writing counts.

Joel, also of Lifehack, linked to the post on his blog (http://is.gd/wlU), saying I should do a guide to writing in 140 characters or less.

With Twitter fast becoming an important marketing tool - maybe THE important marketing tool (http://is.gd/wlZ) - there's something to that.

Being able to express yourself, clearly and forcefully, in less than the 140 characters allowed by Twitter (and SMS) is no small thing!

Being able to do it with style and panache, to present yourself in all your greatness, to make people want to know more, is harder still.

But worth it. If markets are conversations, you need to be where the conversations are happening. And Twitter is that place right now.

Sure, maybe Twitter's a fad. Maybe, like Friendster, it will collapse under its own coolness and people will move on. We're not there yet.

And even if (when?) it does pass, as fads eventually do, the 140-character message probably won't - it's too well-suited to mobile screens.

Writing Really, Really Short

If concision is the key to good writing, learning to write for Twitter should place you among the greats. Already great writing is emerging.

Hemingway, whose 6-word short story - "For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn" - is hailed as a clear ancestor to the form, would have loved it.

But how do you get there? How do you strip your expression down to its very roots in a way that's still meaningful, still worth reading?

Here are a few tips, from my participation on Twitter and what I know about writing overall. Short writing still needs to be good writing.

  • Every character counts, so use strong verbs and a minimum of adverbs - you just can't afford to say in two words what you can say in one.
  • Once again, avoid "university words". Almost every long word in English has a short, blunt word that means the same thing. Use it instead.
  • Forget about breaking your thoughts into two posts. You have no control over how your post will get read or whether they will stay together.
  • Write first, then rewrite. It's hard when you can feel that 140-character limit breathing down your neck. Spill it all out and then trim.
  • You can usually cut "that" and "which". "The toy train that my sister got for Christmas" can be "The toy train my sister got for Christmas."
  • Take your cue from Spanish (and Obama) and eliminate personal pronouns. "I am going to the Apple store" can be "Going to the Apple Store".
  • Write short sentences. They stand out more. You share a page with dozens of posts. Many short sentences looks like something worth reading.
  • Use punctuation! Many will tell you to rely on forceful words, not exclamation marks, but when words are limited, punctuation adds impact.
  • Be personal. Short posts are very conversational and almost intimate. That's something business doesn't do well, but on Twitter, it counts.
  • Get to the point. Say what you want me to do and why I should do it. You have no room to build anticipation - cut straight to the chase.

Lots of companies are paying attention to Twitter and the services emerging in its wake. Nobody knows quite what to do with it yet, though.

Which is fine. That just means there's plenty of room for creative people to do what they do best - come up with innovative ways to connect.

Get in there, follow some of the top Twitterers, and pay close attention to how they craft their posts. And remember a last couple things:

  • Humor works. 140 characters is well suited to the snarky jab, the aphorism, the epigram. Brevity is, after all, the soul of wit. And Tweets.
  • The best you can do in 140 characters is entice - leave the sale for longer copy. Get their attention and give them someplace good to go.

Do you have any other advice for tweeters and messaging mavens? Let us know in the comments - this is all new, I know I've missed something.

I'll admit, this post was hard to write! If you appreciate the effort, please digg it, Stumble it!, or bookmark it on del.icio.us. Or all 3!

Dustin M. Wax is a contributing editor and project manager at lifehack.org. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and women's studies in Las Vegas, NV. His personal site can be found at dwax.org.

Share This

Related Posts


 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 
Posted by at No comments:

Around the blogs from Inhabitatio Dei

check

 
 

Sent to you by cloudykid via Google Reader:

 
 

via Inhabitatio Dei by Halden on 6/13/08


There are quite a few notable posts around the sphere right now. 

  • David Congdon emerges from his seemingly interminable blog-slumber to give us some excellent overviews of the Envision '08 conference on evangelicals and political action. 
  • Eric also alerts us all to some information on some banal thing called the U2charist. 
  • Scott Stephens' new guest-post on the dangers of Obamania at F&T is quite provocative.  So provocative in fact that it seems to be drawing quite a bit of heat in the comments. 
  • Phil points us to Brevard Childs' new (posthumous) book on Paul which looks quite interesting indeed.
  • James gives a great discussion of theological integrity according to Rowan Williams.
  • Steve Holmes has a very provocative and helpful post on the Christian duty to find error attractive (also something of a Williamsish theme).
  • And finally, David Horstkoetter also seems to have procured a rather fascinating map of heaven, giving us clues about the life beyond.

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)