archives
Archive for April, 2010
Experimenting With Jesus
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
Say it however you want—most middle schoolers are just experimenting with Jesus. We can call it experience driving the train of belief; we can call it belonging before believing—we can come up with numerous ways to describe it. The bottom line is, most middle schoolers have not arrived at many conclusions about God, the Bible, their own calling, etc. They are searching, discovering, re-discovering and test-driving.
This should come as no surprise to an astute early-adolescent observer. These same students are experimenting with everything—groups of friends, taste in music, the design of their Facebook page, sports, hobbies and clubs. They drift….
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Tags: Jr. High Ministry
Posted in Archive
Creating A Hunger To Serve
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
I’ll never forget the first service project I ever put together. I was so excited to create an opportunity for students to live out this part of the Christian walk. The church that hired me had about 20 students, and during my first few months, more and more students started showing up. Meetings were packed out and full of energy. However, the program lacked opportunities for the students to surrender themselves and step out in service. I was so pumped to complete the picture!
So I worked, planned and prepared. Then, on the day of the work project, I waited…alone. No….
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Tags: Sr. High Ministry
Posted in Archive
Responding To God…Forever
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
These days, “Worship” means this: we meet in a large room, very churchy in nature, wooden beams, banners, and organ pipes. A lot like a wooden ship that has been turned over and wooden benches put underneath it. If you didn’t grow up Lutheran like I did, it might look like a refurbished warehouse with people evenly dispersed throughout the room, all facing forward. Up front is an organized musical team singing the prepackaged worship songs.
I know there are variations on this. It can be an organ player and someone classically trained doing that arm wave thing as we….
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Tags: Experiential Worship
Posted in Column
Southern Soul Food
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
I was leading a group of 30 high school students and sponsors on our first spring break mission trip to South Carolina. This year was different. Over the years, our church has taken countless trips across the border to lead crusades, VBS programs, outdoor showings of the Jesus Film in Spanish and take in our fair share of fresh tacos. But my students needed something different.
Our youth ministry is comprised mostly of middle-class white kids. The majority of our senior high students have never been on a mission trip or even worshiped outside the walls of our church. They have….
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Tags: Multi Cultural
Posted in Archive
Doctrine as a Scripting Agent
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
My teens were able to tell me all sorts of ways that a person could live an abundant life as
portrayed by media (money, relaxing and shopping, lots of friends with the latest styles, etc.).
Then I asked them to describe what an abundant life lived in the way of Jesus would be like.
All I got back were blank stares.
After a little bit, I rephrased the question. “What does it mean to follow Jesus?” Then
came many Sunday school answers: believing in Jesus, forgiveness of sins, etc. So I decided
to ask another question: “What would it mean to be a follower of Lindsay….
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Posted in Archive
Revealed or Concealed?
Monday, April 19th, 2010
We know God has been revealed to us through Jesus Christ, but if we—mere
mortals—can truly know God, then can God truly be God Almighty? How can
we know God fully if God transcends us? If Moses—who communed with his
Maker as a friend—could only view God’s backside, how can we view God
fully? And how do we teach our students about praying, worshiping God and
living as a community under God without first struggling with how we get to
know God?
I find that whenever I get frustrated with my study of a particular doctrine
or don’t want to claim a particular point, I’m tempted to throw….
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Posted in Archive
Play as a Theological Value
Friday, April 9th, 2010
Theologically, the church has moved closer to the code of the Albino monk
than to the code of the child on the merry-go-round.
Pain has replaced play as a spiritual value, and spiritual misery has been
codified into our church practices. The “sinners” of the world are depicted as
laughing and partying on the road to hell while the church has mistakenly
taken the opposing position—frowning and suffering and beating itself on the
narrow way to the pearly gates.
The church no longer considers fun to be spiritual—and by default, we
have left fun to the world.
Youth ministries stand precariously in the balance, seeking to be relevant
to fun-loving….
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Posted in Archive