Lost generation
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Class I taught at Emmanual Bible College in Guelph, October 2010.
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Lost generation
- 1. My Story
- 4. Youth Ministry Why does it exist? What is its purpose? What has worked? What hasn’t worked? What is working?
- 6. To treat adolescents as a separate species instead of as less experienced members of our own was one of the twentieth century’s largest category errors. Teenagers, obviously, are people too, and youth ministry is as much about being the church as it is about working with adolescents.
- 8. YOUTH CULTURE HAS DONE THREE THINGS:
- 9. YOUTH CULTURE HAS DONE THREE THINGS: 1) Youth Culture began to play out on two levels.
- 10. YOUTH CULTURE HAS DONE THREE THINGS: 1) Youth Culture began to play out on two levels. 2) Non-public face of youth culture went underground.
- 11. YOUTH CULTURE HAS DONE THREE THINGS: 1) Youth Culture began to play out on two levels. 2) Non-public face of youth culture went underground. 3) Youth Culture has splintered.
- 13. Too often those in the church look at reaching the world, not as disciple-makers, but simply as sperm donors. We want to do our part in conception but aren’t sure that we want to be part of someone’s upbringing. Conception is often done out of selfish motivation, or by accident, not long term planning.
- 14. Too often those in the church look at reaching the world, not as disciple-makers, but simply as sperm donors. We want to do our part in conception but aren’t sure that we want to be part of someone’s upbringing. Conception is often done out of selfish motivation, or by accident, not long term planning. So much effort has been put on conception, which we call evangelism.
- 16. If teenagers consider Christianity inconsequential - if young people find the church worthy of “benign whatever-ism” and no more - then maybe the issue is simply that the emperor has no clothes, and young people are telling churches that we are not who we say we are.
- 18. Like good missionaries youth workers need to become contextual specialists. Party planners, programming experts, youth preaching obsessors, growth and measurement gurus, and lowest common denominator systems are no longer needed.
- 19. Like good missionaries youth workers need to become contextual specialists. Party planners, programming experts, youth preaching obsessors, growth and measurement gurus, and lowest common denominator systems are no longer needed. What’s needed are cultural anthropologists with relational passion.
- 20. Psalm 78
- 21. Psalm 78 1 O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. 2 I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old- 3 what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us. 4 We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done. 5 He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children, 6 so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. 7 Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.
- 22. Does Gender Matter in Youth Ministry?
- 23. Does Gender Matter in Youth Ministry? When do you become an adult? When do you become a woman? When do you become a man?
- 24. But girls still want to know, What does it mean to be a woman? Boys still want to know, What does it mean to be a man? We don't tell them. As a result, the marketplace fills the vacuum, providing "the ready-made masculine and the ready-made feminine" which are caricatures of the real thing; but young people don't recognize them as caricatures, because they have received no guidance. The result is a growing proportion of girls who are anxious, depressed, and tired; girls who can tell you a great deal about what they do but not so much about who they are. Likewise, we find a growing proportion of boys who are disengaged not only from school but from the real world. Those boys are comfortable in the virtual world, where they play their online video games, and/ or surf the net for photographs of girls.
- 26. Are We Medicating a Disorder or Treating Boyhood as a Disease?
- 27. Kenntnis: knowledge of a person or a place based on actual experience. Wissenschaft: to know about something.
- 28. Who I am with youth, and not what I do with them, is what they will remember twenty years from now. Who I am with youth ultimately determines wether my ministry points to Jesus Christ or something else.
Editor's Notes
- In the 1960 World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, New York outscored the Bucs 55-27 in a seven-game set. The Bronx Bombers won three games by scores of 16-3, 10-0, and 12-0. But, the Pirates won the close ones (6-4, 3-2, 5-2), capped by a thrilling 10-9 victory in Game 7 when Bill Mazeroski homered to end the Series.\nDespite the Yankees' downfall, Richardson was voted the Series MVP with a performance that included a .367 average, eight runs scored, and 12 runs batted in. Six of his ribbies came during the first inning of Game 3, when he collected a two-run single and socked a grand slam in a 10-0 drubbing of Pittsburgh.\n
- My story of youth ministry:\n- Georgetown (youth & Christian Service Brigade)\n- Trip to Ireland\n- Sherdian College\n- Year Off\n- Liberty University (undergrad, then seminary) Worked at two churches (Swift Creek Baptist Church-Richmond, & Thomas Road Baptist Church-Lynchburg)\n- Orangeville Baptist\n- The Peoples Church Toronto\n- Youth Unlimited GTA\n
- Before questions: Matthew 28:18-20\n\nThis has led me to ask many questions about youth ministry. Here’s just a few:\n\nDiscussion Groups: Why are students leaving the church?\n
- One eared Mickey Mouse (draw the diagram on a board).\n
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- Were any of you mentored? Tell us about that.\n\nWe have held crusades, events, and concerts, pushed for decisions and so forth with no commitment. We are guilty of looking for instant results with no commitment. We have become casual daters but we are definitely not looking for a long term relationship. In fact many of our “outreach” events are really selfishly motivated. They are just another opportunity for us to be in the limelight.\n\n “I could only begin to tell you how many sermons I have heard challenging me to do something with my faith. Most of them were actually quite motivating and God worked through them. I have been told through the teaching of the Word of God to do many things. Yet I have had few people model it for me.”\n\n
- Were any of you mentored? Tell us about that.\n\nWe have held crusades, events, and concerts, pushed for decisions and so forth with no commitment. We are guilty of looking for instant results with no commitment. We have become casual daters but we are definitely not looking for a long term relationship. In fact many of our “outreach” events are really selfishly motivated. They are just another opportunity for us to be in the limelight.\n\n “I could only begin to tell you how many sermons I have heard challenging me to do something with my faith. Most of them were actually quite motivating and God worked through them. I have been told through the teaching of the Word of God to do many things. Yet I have had few people model it for me.”\n\n
- If we fail to bear God’s life altering, world-changing, fear-shattering good news (which, after all, is the reason the church exists in the first place) - if desire for God and devotion to our fellow human beings is replaced by a loveless shell of religiosity - then young people unable to find consequential Christianity in the church absolutely should default to something safer.\n\nIn Fact, that is exactly what they are doing.\n
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- How many of you have Family Stories?\n- One of my family stories...\n- What’s one of your family stories?\n
- Does gender matter in youth ministry?\n\nGender statistics show that only 40% of church attenders are male. WHY?\n
- Discussion Groups: How do we commemorate the transition to adulthood in the church?\n
- The concept as a general theory of socialization was first formally enunciated by Arnold van Gennep in his book of that name, to denote rituals marking the transitional phase between childhood and full inclusion into a tribe or social group. Gennep's work exercised a deep impact on anthropological thought.\nRites of passage have 3 phases - separation, transition, and re-incorporation, as van Gennep described. 'I propose to call the rites of separation from a previous world, preliminal rites, those executed during the transitional stage liminal (or threshold) rites, and the ceremonies of incorporation into the new world postliminal rites’.\nIn the first phase, people withdraw from their current status and prepare to move from one place or status to another. 'The first phase (of separation) comprises symbolic behaviour signifying the detachment of the individual or group...from an earlier fixed point in the social structure'. There is often a detachment or ‘cutting away’ from the former self in this phase, which is signified in symbolic actions and rituals. For example, the cutting of the hair for a person who has just joined the army. He or she is 'cutting away' the former self - the civilian.\nThe transition (liminal) phase is the period between states, during which one has left one place or state but hasn't yet entered or joined the next. 'The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae ("threshhold people") are necessarily anbiguous'.\n'In the third phase (reaggregation or reincorporation) the passage is consummated by the ritual subject'. Having completed the rite and assumed their 'new' identity, one re-enters society with one's new status. Re-incorporation is characterized by elaborate rituals and ceremonies, like debutant balls and college graduation, and by new ties signs: thus 'in rites of incorporation there is widespread use of the "sacred bond", the "sacred cord", the knot, and of analogous forms such as the belt, the ring, the bracelet and the crown'\nLiminality and Rites of Passage\nIn his work The Rites of Passage, van Gennep said 'I propose to call the rites of separation from a previous world, preliminal rites, those executed during the transitional stage liminal (or threshold) rites, and the ceremonies of incorporation into the new world postliminal rites. Turner confirmed his nomenclature for 'the three phases of passage from one culturally defined state or status to another...preliminal, liminal, and postliminal'.\nAn anthropological ritual, especially a rite of passage, involves some change to the participants, especially their social status.; and in 'the first phase (of separation) comprises symbolic behaviour signifying the detachment of the individual...from an earlier fixed point in the social structure. Their status thus becomes liminal.\n'The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae ("threshold people") are necessarily ambiguous'. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation, but also the possibility of new perspectives. Indeed, 'if liminality is regarded as a time and place of withdrawal from normal modes of social action, it can be seen as potentially a period of scrutinization of the central values and axioms of the culture in which it occurs' - one where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behaviour are undone.\nPeople, places, or things may not complete a transition (or a transition between two states may not be fully possible), with those who remain in an in between state becoming permanently liminal; the alternative is an 'acceptance or forgiveness...of structure in a movement of return from a liminal situation' - one sealed by the postliminal rites of incorporation.\n'According to Turner, all liminality must eventually dissolve, for it is a state of great intensity that cannot exist very long without some sort of structure to stabilize it...either the individual returns to the surrounding social structure...or else liminal communities develop their own internal social structure, a condition Turner calls "normative communitas"'.\nCommunitas\nDuring the liminal stage, normally accepted differences between the participants, such as social class, are often de-emphasized or ignored. A social structure of communitas forms: one based on common humanity and equality rather than recognized hierarchy. '"Communitas"...has positive values associated with it; good fellowship, spontaneity, warm contact...unhierarchised, undifferentiated social relations'. For example, during a pilgrimage, members of an upper class and members of a lower class might mix and converse as equals, when in normal life they would rarely converse at all or their conversation might be limited to giving or receiving orders. 'Such collapsing of classes and occupations in the new community...a full-scale "Communitas" of equal beings' may be of longer or short-lived duration.\n'Following Victor Turner in The Ritual Process', one may see such communitas as the product of 'anti-structure...Anti-structure is anti- "structure", ideological rejection of the idea of structure itself. However anthropologists are currently in debate over whether the liminal stage of rituals has an absence of structure (anti-structure) or "hyper-structure", or whether both are possible.\nIn general, 'the undifferentiated presents itself as preliminary to (re-)differentiation'; in the meantime, however, the darker side of liminality may produce alongside communitas 'undifferentiated monsters'-'the unsavoury agonistic side of the community..."the dark mirror of what humanity is"' - as 'the dissolution of differences encourages the proliferation of the double bind'.\n
- Globe and Mail: Monday, Oct 18/10\nFailing Boys - Six Part Series\nMore than two million were written specifically for children under 17 – a leap of 43 per cent since 2005 – and at least 75 per cent of them were for young males – a ratio some see as evidence that society is making a malady of boyhood itself.\n“What if we were drugging girls at the same rate?” asks Jon Bradley, education professor at McGill University. “What if [the majority] of these prescriptions were being written for girls? There'd be a march.”\nHave we lost creativity in the church?\n
- In English, the verb “to know” can have two very different meanings, reflecting two different kinds of knowledge. Consider these two sentences:\n- I know Nathan\n- I know paediatrics.\n\nIn biblical Hebrew, the word “know” refers primarily to experiential learning. When we read that “Cain knew his wife,” it means that he had “carnal knowledge” of her: they had sex. In English, we read about “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” but the Hebrew might be better translated as “the tree of the experience of good and evil.” Adam and Eve are forbidden to eat from that tree. They are forbidden the experience evil.\n\nStory: To see without your eyes.\n\nWhat gender predominantly teaches sunday school in church.\n
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