I found it interesting that, while many of our students went to see the musical and enjoyed it as a play, they had almost zero understanding of the backstory of the Wizard of Oz. Because the musical was produced so well, anyone would enjoy it. But only those with a firm understanding of the original story would enjoy the depth and complexity and wit of the musical. 

         When I think of trying to communicate the gospel to our students, I often reflect on some conversations I had with my students about the play Wicked. The more I try to be clever, artistic and rely on inference to communicate the spiritual realities found in Scripture, the more I find that my students are lost. 

Our students have fewer and fewer touch points with biblical stories and Judeo-Christian ethics and morals and therefore need fresh stories that point clearly to Scripture in order to make the gospel more understandable to this increasingly post-Christian generation. 

         I once heard a story about some missionaries who entered an area where the gospel had never been preached. The local people raised and sacrificed pigs as part of their worship practice. The missionaries were excited to see that the idea of sacrifice was already part of their culture. But while “Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” is a meaningful statement for those who understand the backstory of Scripture, sacrifice, Passover and the atonement, it’s meaningless in a culture that sacrifices pigs and has no understanding or knowledge of goats or lambs. In a bold and scandalous move, these missionaries chose to use the unclean animal, the pig, as the foundation to point this culture toward Jesus. The translation became a culturally significant, “Behold, Jesus, the Pig of God.”

         As our cultural context becomes increasingly post Christian, we too must become cross-cultural missionaries and find relevant translations and applications to help our students understand the spiritual realities presented in Scripture. Tripp Fuller’s article might be one of the best representations of this need. His article “Zombies Are Among Us” offers a relevant paradigm in which to communicate the spiritual realities of sin and death.

Zombies make sense to students, and Tripp was able to engage his group in deep conversation as they drew parallel after parallel of how we are like zombies. Tripp’s article was so compelling that I tried with my students.  And sure enough, the conversation was rich and meaningful, and it allowed all of us to wrestle with the impact and consequences of sin and the solution God has provided for it through Jesus.

Those of us who continue to work with students are finding that we can’t simply rely on classical biblical illustrations and stories to communicate biblical truth. We must continually seek those thin places in our culture where we can point to the spiritual truths we find in Scripture so Jesus Christ can truly be good news to this new generation. 

Since our students have little biblical background to draw on, we need to have many different stories and strategies to communicate the gospel.  The apostle Paul is amazing at this. In one context he uses the entire history of Israel (Acts 13:13-39); in another he performs a miracle (Acts 19:11); in still another he uses a secular poet to point to the things of God (Acts 17:22-24).

         The truth is, simply talking about zombies to gain street cred or as a clever hook is a cheap way to approach ministry. Being culturally relevant is far more than having a faux hawk and knowing who Miike Snow is. It means we understand culture well enough to find those places where pop culture reveals a deeper spiritual reality and allows students an engaging way to enter the gospel story. 

         Karl Barth said, “We must hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” While it may be true that no one reads newspapers anymore, the principle still holds true. We must be firmly planted in Scripture and in culture so we can present the gospel always. 

When we use stories that matter and make sense in the lives of our students, they have a much better chance of connecting the dots to see how the greater gospel story matters and makes sense to them in their real lives.  Whether it is zombies, the Avengers, Harry Potter, Coldplay or even Justin Bieber, your students have stories that engage them and shape them. It is on us to seek out and use these hooks to help them understand and participate in the gospel. 

         So, where are the thin places in culture where you can find common ground with culture and Scripture so students can engage Scripture in a way that is meaningful to them?  

I started reading more about this peacemaking group and was interested in partnering with them. I was impressed by the practicality of their theology and the fact that their love for Christ permeates everything they do. They are not reactionary with their faith but seek to partner with God in bringing about the redemption of all of creation.

I invited some parents and teens for discussion to get their feedback on what it could look like to partner with this ministry and was completely surprised by the responses I received. Immediately, the teens understood the vision of the peacemaking group as offering a way forward, of bringing hope and life to people around the world through the lived-out love of Jesus Christ. Their imaginations were engaged; the adrenaline was flowing. But the parents refused to listen to the wisdom and faith of the teens. They said:

“We need to make sure we’re the strongest nation to keep us safe from ‘them.’ Nuclear weapons are a part of life, and we should be thankful that we live in the country with the best military.”

“Those people ‘over there’ are nothing like us. They don’t think like us. They don’t look like us. They are scary.”

“I don’t understand this obsession with peacemaking. We know things will get worse before the last days of Jesus, and we just need to wait for him to take us away from all of this.”

My spirit sighed, and I did not push the envelope any further. It was apparent to me that the fearful theology of these parents had been informed more by popular Christian fiction than by reading the red-lettered words of Jesus.

Jon Huckins understands the limitations of this kind of theology and its implications for the next-generation followers of Jesus. He notes, “Rather than immersing myself in the living narratives, I had been content with a theology and narrative that had been formed for me.” Instead of wrestling with the testimony of the Scriptures to the Living Word, who still speaks peace into our violent tendencies, Huckins chose the comfortable theology that promoted the Western way of life as the new promised land. This theology was passed on to his students.

Huckins shares the beautiful and eye-opening conversation with his friend Milad and how his theology was challenged.

“Rather than seeing my role as a guide to help my students navigate the global village in light of the good news of the kingdom, I subconsciously understood my role as the guide to the inner workings of students rooted only in the narrative worldview of the West.”

Thankfully, Milad challenged Huckins’ Western-based theology and replaced it with a global-kingdom consciousness. He understood the importance of continuing to grow and wrestle through one’s convictions and theology as well as passing that on to the next generation.

I wish I’d had access to Huckins’ article a few years ago. I would have asked the youth and parents to read it before we entered into our discussion on the power of peacemaking and our call to follow Jesus into the world on a mission of peace. Huckins writes that he had formerly “missed out on the opportunity to invite my students into a way of life that acknowledged Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as representative of a new kingdom that doesn’t demand division but unity and doesn’t rule with military might but calls its inhabitants to live the cruciform life—the way of the cross—for the sake of others.”

This is the essential call of youth ministry: to invite students to live into the fullness of the new covenant of Jesus—loving God and neighbors—wherever our feet may go. We are a people of the cross, who understand that sacrifice and love are the weapons God uses to bring his kingdom come.

As youth ministers, it is imperative that we constantly push the boundaries of the worldviews of our students. It is natural for teens to be self-centered and somewhat apprehensive of those who look different than we do. But Jesus came and destroyed all barriers that kept us from communion with God and real fellowship with one another; a fellowship that crosses ethnicities and geographic boundaries to live out the love of Jesus—loving my neighbor as I want to be loved.

For the last several years, I have invited guest speakers to come and worship with my youth, to share their stories and experiences of life in the goodness of the kingdom of Jesus around the world. We’ve heard stories of missionaries from Brazil and Guatemala and St. Louis. We were inspired by a world traveler who resided in Ireland and journeyed extensively through Europe. We heard the horrors of human trafficking as well as the amazing power of the Spirit to bring healing. We’ve had a couple of artists come and invite us to get our hands messy in creating works of art with God. We have been asking ourselves the very question that Huckins’ wrote: “What can we learn about the kingdom from people who follow Jesus in ways and contexts that differ from our own?”

My favorite part of Huckins’ article, however, is his description of Milad’s passion. “He and his wife run a nonprofit for Palestinian kids in the West Bank that promotes peace and reconciliation through the arts.” As we engage the imaginations of our students, challenging them and daring them to live out the radical call of Jesus to extend love to the end of the world, we will witness the Spirit breathing new dreams and new visions into them, finding ways to grow this mustard-seed kingdom on earth.

We should always be suspicious of any theologies that come easily and comfortably, that seem to promote one nationality above another. We should strive to wrestle with the words of Jesus and the testimony of Scripture, inviting our students to join us in asking the question, How do these words affect my neighbors around the world?

And we should pray for every church in America to find its own Milad.

I quickly filled the calendar with lock-ins, game nights, outings to the movies, road trips, bowling and pizza parties. Whatever it took to keep the teens happy and entertained, I was more than willing to do. Join them for a sledding party on a school snow day? Sure. Dress up in some crazy costume for a Halloween party? No problem. Though I’m loath to admit it, my younger self perfectly fit Benjer McVeigh‘s image of the youth minister as clown.

I think I finally realized this distinction one Sunday as we hosted a whole series of messy group games in the church parking lot. There was no spiritual content to this event. It was simply a way to attract a lot of teens. It worked. I knew that on Monday morning I was going to be able to give a great report to my senior minister about what a successful youth program I was running (because, of course, it really was all about me, after all).

One particular game involved having teens chug-a-lug as much soda as they could out of plastic tubing connected to large soda bottles held over their heads. In my naiveté, I failed to realize that I was really teaching the teens a tamer version of a college drinking game. Two youth volunteered and began chugging away. One teen simply allowed the soda to pour out of her mouth and all over her clothes, to the great amusement of her peers. But the boy insisted on trying to actually drink the entire two liters. Thirty seconds later he turned green and proceeded to regurgitate all of the soda, and his lunch, onto the church parking lot. As I drove home that night, I paused to consider what exactly I was trying to accomplish with this ministry. Was attracting large numbers of youth with entertaining activities really what God was calling me to do?

I wonder how many of us working with youth in the church can tell personal stories just like this? How many of us accepted youth ministry positions perhaps fully ready to program activities but lacking, as Benjer puts it, “the skills and follow through that define the difference between being a youth leader and a pastoral leader.” Benjer argues that a helpful and biblical way to think of the pastoral leader is that of “shepherd.” In the role of shepherd, we place nurture of individuals, not programming, as our highest priority, and “we do what it takes to care for those who simply need to know that Jesus still loves them and that his church still cares about them.” I find this shepherd metaphor helpful, yet I also wonder how many youth ministers can really afford to focus the bulk of their time on nurture rather than programming activities.

To be clear, I’m in complete agreement with Benjer that care for the youth, volunteers and families in our ministries is a top priority. The gospels are ripe with examples of Jesus listening to, healing and simply spending time with people in need. I can’t think of any stories where he’s too busy to hang with the poor because he’s planning the next lock-in or weekend ski retreat for the disciples. But Jesus didn’t have to answer to a senior pastor, a church board or parents who might wonder why the youth group is decreasing in size due to the lack of attractional events and big trips.

I wonder how some church personnel committees might react to a youth worker who proclaims that caring for youth is more important than calendaring for youth. It can be harsh reality in the church that sometimes we are forced to choose between following our call as ministers and meeting the expectations others place on us as employees of the church. And yet, Benjer argues that fidelity to our call to ministry would demand that we first and foremost listen not to our own ambitions (or perhaps the will of the church board) but rather to the leading of God and the Holy Spirit.

I was expecting that somewhere in his argument Benjer might suggest that one of the most effective ways to follow the Spirit’s leading and to develop a more mature sense of our roles as shepherds of youth (rather than clowns sent to entertain) is through the process of becoming licensed or ordained ministers. As more and more churches decrease in size and shrink their budgets, I suspect that the number of salaried youth leaders or youth directors willing to settle for playing the role of clown will decrease as well. Churches simply will not be able to afford paying someone to play this role.

Instead, we will likely see more seminary-trained associate ministers who will lead a variety of ministries in the church in addition to the youth ministry. Or perhaps the movement will be away from professional ministers having much of anything at all to do with the nurture of youth, and the responsibility will fall primarily to lay leaders. If this is the case, I wonder how the church will help these volunteer leaders see ministry as “serving others by helping them discover and use their gifts to serve teenagers and for the glory of God.”

Will churches allow more youth leaders to journey, as Benjer suggests, “out of the big top and into the lives of students who desperately need to know Jesus?” Will churches be willing to develop ministries that focus more on nurturing the faith and gifts of youth rather than on developing high-profile programs? That remains to be seen, but the future of youth leadership and youth ministry may actually hang in the balance.

Their candid responses were not surprising: “Am I supposed to say Dear God, or is it Holy Lord, or Dear Jesus?” “What if I get it wrong? And what was I supposed to pray for again?” “Is it Ay-men or Ah-men?” “I’m not good at this; I don’t know those inspirational pastor-y words.”

That said, the students did fully acknowledge the benefits of out-loud prayer. For many, it was good to hear requests from one another and to join as a community over common petitions and praises. But, by and large, they felt self-conscious and admitted that they were not aware of being in the presence of God in the moment. Yet isn’t a connection with God exactly what we seek after for the students to whom we minister? It struck me in that moment that something wasn’t quite working.

If connecting students with God is what we’re after, shouldn’t we be forming them through practices that contribute to that goal? Learning to take ourselves out of the center of prayer takes practice. Even Jesus speaks to the problem before giving us the Lord’s Prayer. He warns his followers in Matthew 6:5-8 about the temptation to put ourselves first in prayer, be it through showy eloquence or babbling words. The challenge we face as youth workers is simply this: How do we train young people to live out this teaching in everyday practice?

Phileena Heuertz, author of “Becoming a Contemplative Activist,” suggests that prayer and, more specifically, contemplative prayer is “a practice of letting go of our egos and surrendering to the presence of God.” As I digest her thoughts on the intersection of social activism and the practice of contemplative prayer, I can’t help but wonder, what role can contemplative prayer have in my youth ministry? Even if our lives don’t confront the direct issues of global injustice on a daily basis, I suggest that contemplative prayer has a valuable place in the world of youth ministry. As Heuertz explores the practice through the social activism lens, I recognize that it is a discipline that is also applicable to the context of young people. I believe contemplative practices are not beyond our youth and can actually help inform their approach to authentic encounters with God through various models of prayer.

In my experience, guiding students in a time of contemplative prayer has proved successful. Rather than beginning with a large chunk of mandated silence, we have walked young people through different forms of breath prayers. Providing a simple structure for reading the Scriptures using Lectio Divina exercises has been notably helpful for youth. Additionally, through the repetition and framing of a contemplative time, students have offered a steady stream of testimonies about feeling God in a new way, authentically meaning what they say in prayer and allowing space for listening as well.

Practicing the Practice

As I reflect on the past several years, I’m amazed at how many different types of prayers we’ve employed. The arsenal of prayer forms for youth group has often included looking for volunteers, popcorn style, pray silently to yourself and everybody’s favorite, pray for the person on your left (eeek! what was his name again?). Rather than just adding contemplative prayer to the youth-group-prayer Rolodex, we need to consider how we can use its intentionality to inform the ways we lead students in all types of prayer. In order to do that effectively, we must frame contemplation as an invitation for encountering God, recognize its challenges and model it ourselves.

Heuertz suggests that we all operate out of our neediness and that contemplation brings about self-awareness. I would emphasize, however, that the practice of contemplative prayer should focus on the invitation to encounter God rather than the expectation of an experience that we might get out of it. As we introduce this discipline to our young people, we need to highlight the freedom found in the quiet spaces so they might encounter God. It should be set up in a way that during the prayer our youth aren’t thinking, What is supposed to be happening? I must not be doing this right.

Stillness is not always the easiest thing for youth to embrace. One of the most valuable things my mentor in youth ministry taught me was how to eliminate (or at least cut down on) distractions in a room before youth group. We would walk into what I thought was a well-prepared empty room, and her eyes would scan the perimeter and zero in on numerous distraction hazards. A random string hanging from a ceiling tile that had the potential to become a Tarzan rope, a music stand cart hastily stashed in the corner that was sure to turn into a stitches-inducing race car and so on. Eliminating distractions from a room is far easier than eliminating distractions from our minds, but just as I learned the skill of room preparation through practice, we can learn (and teach our youth) to prepare their minds and hearts for stillness.

         If we truly believe there is value for our students to think and pray in contemplative ways, we must participate in these practices as well. As I’ve considered Heuertz’s reflections on contemplation, I’ve been wondering how we as youth workers can surrender our own egos as we pray with, before and for our youth. As I consider the times I pray in front of young people, I question where those “inspirational, pastor-y” words sneak in, what my real motivation is for using them and maybe even why I’m praying in the first place. In praying for students, retreats, mission trips and weekly programs, am I babbling for the sake of words instead of bringing those things before God in a way that I can truly encounter him? Are there other ways our own contemplative practices can inform the ways we teach, model and participate with our youth?

Contemplative prayer is a practice that is not without its challenges, but as Heuertz suggests, it can make us “more receptive to the gifts and ordeals that come [our] way, rooted in a deep well of faith and love.” Perhaps youth ministry is exactly the right place to consider adopting the discipline of contemplation.

The question that has followed (and challenged, haunted and encouraged) evangelical Christianity into a globalized world is simple: Is the good news actually good news? That is, is the good news actually news that the world would deem good?

I once heard a pastor preaching about the good news. He referenced the needy in his community and said, “They don’t need socks; they need Jesus.” Essentially, this pastor’s answer to cold-footed community members was, “No, the good news is not actually good news for you, at least not today. Jesus wants to save you from your sins, but someone else will have to save you from frostbite.”

Tom Lynch’s story of his own transformation with the work of the International Justice Mission (IJM) gives a very different answer to this question: The good news is actually good news. Good news to a slave cannot simply be about freedom in the afterlife; it must also include freedom and justice right now, today. Tom describes his own conversion experience to this deeper understanding of the good news like this:

It was my turn to accept the invitation [to take action], but my question was, How? …[The IJM speaker] shared the how, yet it still felt so distant. I realized, in the same way one has to decide to follow Christ, that I needed to decide for myself how I would get more involved.

As Tom points out in his article, faith requires action. It’s not simply hope; it’s also evidence. The action our faith requires is to tangibly join God’s mission of bringing love and justice to everyone everywhere.

Globalization not only means that we are connected to billions of others through technology, policy and goods; it means that when Jesus invites us to love our neighbor, he’s not simply talking about the person who lives on the same street as we do. Our neighbors are all those with whom we are connected, especially those who are oppressed, victims of injustice and on the underside of power.

As youth workers, how do we help young people to see this reality, and how do we invite them to do something about it? Their world is inundated with consumerist values. They don’t know anything other than a globalized world. They have been conditioned not to bat an eye at the fact that their t-shirts were made in Bangledesh; their jeans were made in Honduras; the metal in their smartphones was mined in Africa; and the tomatoes on their burgers were grown in Mexico. The mindset they know as normal opposes the mindset Jesus teaches us to have and the mindset Tom describes the International Justice Mission as embodying.

What I love about Tom’s story is that it invites the reader to consider a whole-person sort of engagement in God’s mission to bring justice to the world. IJM doesn’t offer mission trips or curricula that allow adults or students to simply scratch their missional itches by doing something that makes them think they’ve made a difference, patting themselves on the back and then going back to their typical consumerist lifestyles. IJM engages God in prayer and in action, and they are serious about it.

Consider the typical mission trip: A group of Americans spends thousands of dollars to fly to a foreign, often exotic, place. They build homes, clean up parks, distribute food or perform Vacation Bible Schools.  They medicate and vaccinate themselves to go. They take all safety precautions. They purchase new work clothes. They take pictures. They drink bottled water. They undoubtedly spend a day at the beach. Then they go home.

We youth workers allow and often encourage them to feel as if they have made a difference. But have they? Is it possible that we are further reinforcing their consumerist practices and hubristic identities? Do we point out that the money spent on airfare could possibly have been better used in the local economy to repair infrastructure or provide microfinance loans? Do we explain how building homes for free could have put a local builder out of business, creating more poverty and not less? This, of course, is not the case on every mission trip, but the point highlights Tom’s argument—that we are called to actually make a difference, not just to feel good about ourselves.

Consider another typical missions project: the simultaneous consume-and-give business model. It’s a model that seeks to capitalize on young people’s desire to both consume and to give, often offering a cool product with the promise to give goods or money to the needy. The most popular is Toms Shoes, a company that promises to donate a pair of shoes to a needy child every time we buy a pair for ourselves. It’s not just shoes. It’s t-shirts and sunglasses and watches and hats and bracelets and any other product young people are interested in. The morality and effectiveness of the model is a complex discussion, but what is simple is the value we display when we invite our students to engage in this type of activity: I don’t have to feel guilty for consuming whatever I want because I’m also changing the world.

Tom’s story of IJM challenges us all to live and act differently. It’s not a plea to give money or an article written to try to recruit volunteers. It’s a story of transformation that has happened to many of us. It’s a whole-life transformation and reorientation.

My transformation came a few years ago when I realized I was telling students they should change the world, but I was never sure if the experiences I provided for them or the practical steps I offered would actually change the world for the better of for the worse. I began to see that the forces at work in poverty, relief, development and politics were complicated and difficult to navigate without training. Now I’m on the home stretch of a social work degree that I’m earning for the express purpose of helping Christians engage the great causes of our day with effectiveness. I believe that the good news is actually, here and now, supposed to be good news, and I want to do everything I can to announce and bring it to everyone.

Tom’s article is not just Tom inviting us into this way of life; it’s Jesus saying, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s James saying, “If any of you sees a brother or sister is without clothes or daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what good is that?”

My shoes were made in Vietnam—by a real person with a real story, real struggles and real joy. And that person is loved by God. And that person is my neighbor.

Ideas for furthering the conversation with your students:

Put a pushpin on a map to represent the country of origin for every piece of clothing your group is wearing.

Challenge your students to read the Good Samaritan story (Luke 10) every day for a week, writing a new answer to the question, Who is my neighbor? each day.

Challenge your students to keep a journal of where all their food and clothes come from for a week. Ask them to make up a name and a story for one person in another country who produced their clothes or grew their food.

For more on mission trips, serving and effectiveness, read David Livermore’s Serving with Eyes Wide Open, Ruby Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty or Steve Corbett’s When Helping Hurts.

My time with Elizabeth was not heroic in any way. In fact, it often felt like I was out of place. We rarely talked about God because she wouldn’t let us go there. But Santos affirms my ministry as he proposes that, “one of the greatest gifts I could give young people was the opportunity to tell their stories.” This was certainly true for my relationship with Elizabeth. But it is also true that, if I wanted to hear her faith story, I had to be patient. I had to wait until the night she died.

Does Santos prescribe patience in creating storytellers? I’m not sure. In his article he suggests:

Our faith stories are filled with holy moments—those places and times during our lives when it is as if God reaches down from the heavens, breaks through the atmosphere and makes a personal connection with us as individuals.

He seems less interested in listening to a faith narrative than he is in coaxing out the Cliff’s Notes, which leads to the question, What kind of storytellers do we hope to create?

The most popular stories of today are built around “moments.” In her smash hit, The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins preys on our emotions as she runs us through the dramatic world of Panem. The storyline is thin, but the feverish pace is addictive. What do we do to our young people if we insist that they tell their faith stories with this model in the background? What do we tell those who don’t feel like the Katniss Everdeen, Collins’ stunning hero, of the faith?

Great stories weren’t always written this way. Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, for instance, is a chore to plow through. Yet, when it comes to Dickens, a reader’s patience pays off. Pip, Dickens’ young hero, exposes us to a story filled with deep characters, odd language, charming twists of fate and unsettling tragedy. Come to think of it, Pip’s tale is quite like the story of a contemporary teenager.

The Dickensian approach to storytelling sets priority on depth of character over spiking plot line. If we take this approach in cultivating the faith stories of our youth, we will make time to appreciate their depth, allow space for new language and listen when their faith feels untidy.

If we cut corners, they will just tell us what we want to hear. Our young people want to please us. If we insist on our language, our timeline and our “moments,” they will develop a less than authentic story to meet our needs.

Santos’ primary thesis, that a role of the youth worker “is to provide opportunities for young people to see themselves as storytellers through their own faith stories” is best lived out as the youth worker invests not in the episodic but in the everyday. As Andrew Root suggests:

The incarnation is not about influence but accompaniment. It is not about getting us right but bearing what is wrong with us, so that we might find that we are only right in the embrace of a God who loves so much to be with us![1]

We engage our young people in faithful storytelling and, in turn, faithful living when we are willing to set aside our hopes for a holy moment and listen to stories that require our patience.

After four years of steady visitation, I was called to Elizabeth’s house on the night she died. They say that it’s normal to have a burst of energy just before you die, and this was true with Elizabeth.

Even with the oxygen mask covering her face, she was talking, and the first thing she said to me was, “I need to be right with God.”

“Lizzie,” I said. “Don’t carry that. You were always right with God.”

Her mother invited me to sit beside her.

“Nothing will separate you from the love of God,” I told her. “God loves you now and will love you always.”

She opened her eyes and looked at me and around the room and, in a sentence, gave her faith story. “God has given me hope and answers. I know I am going to go to heaven.”

Elizabeth then went around the room and said her goodbyes. When she was done, we held hands, prayed and offered the Lord’s Prayer. Then she went. She went with a peace I cannot hope to describe. That was a holy moment. Maybe the holiest I have ever experienced.

That’s the thing about holiness. It is sublime, for sure. Once you’ve experienced it, you’re not a hundred percent sure you really want to experience it again. Moving in and out of stories of holiness is life giving and dangerous at the same time. As we invite our young people into this foray, we will be wise to take it slowly.

Start where Santos starts. He says, “The first step in learning the power of becoming a storyteller is acknowledging that there is a story worth telling.” Can we accept that this first step might take longer than we are prepared to wait? For some, it will take a lifetime. Are we willing to wait that long?

On the other hand, the crucifixion was at other times discussed in detail, each bloody drop directed at me. My sin put him there, my faults caused this to happen. Even if I were the only person in the world, Jesus would still have come to die just for me. I felt perhaps God had overreacted to call for such drastic measures. Surely I didn’t mean to murder Jesus—or anybody, for that matter—just by sneaking a Ding Dong out of the cupboard when my mom had forbidden it. To add to the confusion, after charging me with second-degree murder, I was told how thankful I ought to be over the bloodshed my sin caused. I was to love this murderous act, sing songs about it, pray every night because of it. Without it, I couldn’t have eternal life and endless cocktails in the airplane at 30,000 feet!

By the time I was in my first year of seminary, I realized many of those same childhood questions still hung over my head. The answers had become more sophisticated, but they were no more satisfying. So I resonated with Erik Leafblad’s frustrations with the theology of glory in light of his grandfather’s death. I nodded as I read the article, thinking of every “God must have needed another angel” comment given to parents who have lost a child, or, “You’ll see this is a part of God’s plan” comment given to someone whose life is crumbling to bits. For many of us (and as far as I can tell, for a growing number of us), those statements just aren’t enough anymore. In fact, they’re enough to make us consider walking away altogether.

Leafblad mentions a day when he encountered Nietzsche at his dorm room desk and wept. Nietzche’s honesty and courage to call grief and pain what it is led Leafblad to a theology not of glory but of the cross, where we can say—where we must say—that God loses. I had an almost eerily parallel encounter at my seminary dorm room desk. Determined to decide whether I found the cross tenable, I picked up a copy of The Crucified God, by Jurgen Moltmann. The very first sentence changed my life: “The cross is not and cannot be loved.”

I had never loved the cross. And nobody, not once, had told me that was okay, much less preferable. That book gave me the freedom to continue on the path of faith with Jesus. It helped me redefine the cross not as something to ignore or something I had to celebrate (guiltily) but as something that speaks to the depths of the human condition. The cross exposes the very worst of what we can do and be. If there is good news, it is not that Jesus died. It is that Jesus did not leave us, even when we killed him. If there is good news in the cross, it is not the kind of good news that forces us to shove our suffering down until our stomachs are queasy, just so we can smile. It is that Jesus understands our suffering and suffers alongside us and knows deeply why it is that we cannot smile just yet. As Leafblad writes, “God loses because God embraces our loss.”

Here’s the interesting thing. A theology of glory not only robs the cross of power, but it also robs glory of any real power too. Like an adult too afraid to check underneath her frightened child’s bed, a theology of glory that doesn’t travel through the loss of God on the cross is infantile and feeble. A Savior who has looked suffering in the face, who has settled down into death for three days, who has experienced betrayal and loss and undeniable cruelty—this is a Savior who will not shy away from our pain but who can also help make a way through it. A hope that endures open-eyed suffering is the only kind of hope worth having.

This matters—not only for those theology nerds out there, and not even only for those people in our pews and communities whose faith is wavering because they don’t think God is big enough to handle their pain. This matters because, as Leafblad affirms, it has a lot to say about how we live as the church. Are we to be people who create services that shrink from the suffering of the world? Is our worship to be a practice in putting on a happy face? Is our budget to reflect those things that make us comfortable and safe and content? Is our communal life of faith primarily about our happiness?

See, just having a metal gate to block the entrance to your neighborhood or street doesn’t really keep the riff-raff out; it just discourages door-to-door salespeople. They do not actually protect you and your family from harm but falsely ease your mind about the whereabouts of your children and whom they are with. The suburbs of the California foothills, east of Sacramento, not only had fancy wrought-iron gates blocking their entrances and secret pin-pad entrance codes; they were also physically located in areas away from the city, away from major intersections and hopefully away from trouble and problems.

I recognize that, growing up, my life was very different from many other kids. It took two things to begin to learn about how my situation was different: Point Loma Nazarene University and a skateboard. At PLNU I got involved in a ministry called Skaters for Christ. It was pretty low key. We met for Bible study on occasion, skateboarded a lot and spent way too much time hanging out and not enough time studying. But somehow, from influence apart from myself, our group was concerned with more than ourselves. Every several weeks we bought a trunk full of pizzas and headed to downtown San Diego. We grabbed our skateboards and skated for blocks around downtown, looking for people who could use a hot meal, and we invited them to where we were having the big pizza party. We loved pizza and figured homeless people did too. During those skating and pizza outreaches, I had conversations with people on the street in San Diego that opened my eyes to a reality I had only seen on television and in books. I had never actually had a real conversation with someone who was homeless.

It was during those formative times in college and in conversation with the homeless on the street in San Diego that I recognized my poverty. I still had cash in my wallet; my school loans hadn’t hit repayment yet; and I knew I had a safety net back home. But I had a different type of poverty. My poverty was a relational poverty and a worldview poverty.

What the gated community did for me was remove me from people who were different socio-economically, culturally, ethnically and experientially. And I was poorer because of it. It was difficult for me to relate to and understand those who were different from me. It’s hard to walk in another person’s shoes when all you’ve known is one pair of shoes—and a new pair at that, brand name and full price.

When we remove ourselves from honest conversation and dialogue with those who may be different from us, it is easy to resort to lobbing hand grenades. When we are rarely in proximity to those in different socio-economic situations than ourselves, it is easy to articulate the reasons for their circumstances and the political solutions needed to fix them. When we do not have friends from different cultures or ethnicities, it is easy to paint them as monsters. When we divide the community of faith down red and blue lines and are unwilling to walk with brothers and sisters in Christ because of political issues, the gospel suffers, and the church suffers.

So what’s your gated community? How are you trying to insulate yourself from others who may not agree with you? You don’t have to live in a real gated community to isolate yourself. You can live in the middle of a city and still build up walls to those around you who are different from you. We all have a tendency to gravitate toward people who are like us. Churches do this too. I have visited several churches across the country, many claiming to be focused on reaching their neighborhoods, but when you take a quick glance at the demographic of the neighborhood, it is not represented in the congregation.

So what is it for you? Do you watch more than one news channel? Are there areas of town you stay away from? Are there people in your neighborhood, church or community group you avoid? If you believe you can learn from people who are different than you, you have already begun to move out of the gated community.

Higgins shares the beautiful story of Paul Eddington and his desire as a Quaker to “do no harm.” I’d like to propose a companion to the mantra “do no harm,” and that is, “I may be wrong.” I have heard many great theologians and biblical scholars present compelling and articulate arguments and then finish with, “I may be wrong.” Humility marks the lives of virtuous theologians; I think it is time to bring it into our public discourse as well. If we, in good conscience, can move outside the gated communities we’ve built with a desire to do no harm and articulate our ideas with a spice of humility, we may be surprised that our neighbors are more human than we realized.

A few years back I had one of those conversations.

I was sitting in my low-rent office (Starbucks) talking with a friend of mine who was part of a church plant we launched with a handful of other couples. As we sat recounting the journey, he made a fascinating observation I will never forget.

“So many times I hear people talk about becoming a Christian because they wanted to go to heaven someday. For me it was completely different. I know it may sound odd, but I really didn’t care about going to heaven. It wasn’t the crux of my becoming a Christian.”

He went on to tell me that one day, while sitting in our community, he decided to see if this “way of Jesus” was real. He decided he would read the gospels and try and put into practice what he found there. If it worked—whatever that meant—then maybe he would think about becoming a Christian.

He continued, “A few months into my experiment of living the way of Jesus, I remembered thinking, This stuff really is true. I think Jesus was right about how we should live and what kind of relationship we should have with God. I want to commit my life to this Jesus. I want to orient my life around this Jesus. I just figured following Jesus was the right thing to do; the heaven thing was just a bonus.”

There was no prayer. There was no walking an aisle. There was just a deep realization that following Jesus was the right thing to do—in the here and now, and forever. He didn’t need proof of God’s existence. He didn’t need proof of heaven or hell or of the Scriptures being God’s Word. What he needed was to experience the truth of God as being truthful.

Long after our conversation ended, I was still captivated by what he shared. How many times had I done the exact opposite—believing that, if I could prove God exists or get people to see the intellectual rationality of the faith, they would simply fall down and cry out, “My King and my God”?

What I came to realize that day is that we as the Christian community often spend our time trying to convince people of the faith—presenting it as something logical and reasonable. We fall into the trap of believing that if people would just see how logical the faith is, they would automatically take the next logical step and become Christians. Yet, if we truly can convince someone of the logic of following the way of God, have we not therefore made the faith devoid of true faith? Have we not reduced it to a series of intellectual cause-and-effect propositions?

Adam English, in his article “Dolls, Divers and the Existence of God,” touches on this idea in regard to trying to prove the existence of God. Using the writings of Søren Kirkegaard, he demonstrates that “if you make Christianity probable and plausible, you reduce it to just one more possible fact about the world… You eliminate the need for faith. In fact, you make faith impossible.”

English continues, “Attempts to prove God only prove that we do not really believe in God. Once we stop trying to verify and validate God’s existence on our terms, we are in a position to allow God to reveal himself to us on his terms. We must let go of our logical, rational, scientific crutches and walk (or leap) by faith. Only then will the truth become evident.”

So what are we to do? Is there another way forward?

The fact of the matter is this: More often than not, people need to experience the truth, not merely be intellectually convinced of its validity. People need to taste and touch the truth in order to acknowledge it as truth. And once they have experienced the truth, the truth can set them free. John 8:31-32 puts it this way: “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’” (emphasis added).

What is astounding about Jesus’ statement is the progression in which he leads his listeners. For us post-Enlightenment followers, we tend to focus on the latter portion of Jesus’ teaching. We believe that if we can somehow help people intellectually assent to the truth, then they will naturally be set free. What we lack is the former teaching—a distinctly Jewish one—that if we choose to live the way of Jesus, following his teachings, then we are truly called his disciples, and then we will know the truth for what it is and be liberated. True freedom does not come by intellectual assent; it comes by experiencing the truth for what it is and allowing it to rule our lives.

In a very real sense, God is not seen in our intellectual proofs of his existence, but rather he is encountered, when as English reminds us, “we let go” of needing to prove his existence. For, when we let go, “existence emerges,” according to English. In other words, when we cease trying to prove the existence of God and rather focus on inviting people to experience God in all his fullness, the reality of God’s existence becomes self-evident.

So what does all this mean? People are changed not when they encounter God propositionally but when they encounter him pragmatically. They are changed when they are invited to taste and touch the goodness of God. People will orient their lives around God not when they are intellectually convinced of his existence but when they experience the truth of life in him.

Our role as the people of God is not to stand amidst this world as convincers but as inviters—inviting people to taste and touch the truth, to try it on, to bask in it. For when they experience the truth, they will know the truth, and the truth will set them

The gaming world has certainly changed. I’ll never forget saving my paper route money to purchase my first Atari 2600. I was the only one of my friends in the neighborhood to have one, and we all marveled at the freedom of playing hours upon hours without any quarters. Twenty-five years later, when I connected it to our TV, my excited children were quickly disappointed by its limits. My oldest thought it was some sort of joke. “Dad, I thought you said this was a video game system. When does it get cool?” He has only known systems with life-like graphics, the ability to chat with friends while gaming in different houses or even from different continents, stream movies, TV, music and more.

It’s a far different landscape now; 25 years ago I may have been the only one in the neighborhood with a system, but today gamers are in the majority. And it’s not just acne-riddled, socially stunted, teenage guys. Old and young, male and female users are logging on every day. The stereotypes just don’t work anymore. And it means our churches are full of people with this hobby in common—not just the youth ministry.

Mark Hayse’s assertion that “the church needs to sponsor a sustained and rigorous conversation about the meaning of video games” is right on, but at the same time, I wonder if it will ever happen. Even with the gaming population increasing, my experience as a youth pastor has been that, for many parents, it’s just not a priority. With all of the other overwhelming demands of parenting, it seems for most that being blissfully unaware of what goes on in the XBox is preferable because at least they know where their children are, and they are too engrossed in the game to get in trouble.

I used to be fairly self-righteous and judgmental of parents when it came to the games they let their kids play and the amount of time they let them do it, but as my own kids have gotten older, I’m starting to feel like a hypocrite. After an exhausting day, it’s just easier to just let them play what they want in exchange for a few hours of peace.

Recently I hosted a seminar on navigating technology for parents, hoping to create more awareness and discussion about the content and ways that adolescents are using their different devices. In a church of 1,500, I could count on one hand how many households were represented at the seminar. I also tried to distribute Walt Muellers’ Download, a three-week DVD study, to families as a resource on this topic, encouraging them to watch the three 10-minute sessions together and talk about how wisdom, discernment and our faith are connected to what we watch, listen to and play. Only a few were taken. I just wish I could be more optimistic about the church having a sustained and rigorous conversation about the meaning of video games, but it sure hasn’t seemed like a priority to people in churches where I’ve ministered.

I definitely think Hayse is asking the right questions. “To what extent do video games possess the capacity both to enliven and deaden us?” “What relationship—if any—might exist between the moral choices within virtual worlds and moral character development within the non-gaming world?”

The challenge is in finding a way for our congregations to engage these questions and see them as not only relevant but critical. Maybe the message needs to come directly from the pulpit. In other words, take advantage of the times we know people will be there to listen. Considering the widespread saturation of technology, these are questions everyone in our churches needs to be struggling through.

Another avenue I’ve considered for years is hosting an annual video game tournament as a way of broaching the topic with teenagers and even using our Playstations and Nintendos as outreach tools. Then again, that could just be me wanting to live out my childhood dream of being Fred Savage in The Wizard. I still want a Power Glove. It’s so bad.

What ways have you found to be effective in pursuing this conversation in your churches and circles of influence? Why has it been or not been a priority for you?