Immerse | A Journal of Faith, Life, and Youth Ministry

Going Deeper With Sarah Arthur’s: “The Art of Improvisation”

by Jake Bouma on September 12th, 2011 -- filed under Story

If you’ve been in youth ministry for longer than a week, you’ve almost certainly been in a situation where something you planned didn’t go quite right. Suddenly, you find yourself with an extra half hour of time to fill, and  you improvise an activity or lesson on the spot. I have been in these situations numerous times, and sometimes they have totally flopped, and other times they’ve been tremendously successful. This type of “oh no” improvisation is decidedly what Sarah Arthur is not talking about. For her, improvisation is a theological concept, and it takes practice to become proficient. “We need to school ourselves in the art of improvisation,” she says.

About two paragraphs into the article, I stopped midsentence, put in my headphones and scrolled through iTunes until I landed on jazz pianist Keith Jarrett’s 2006 album The Carnegie Hall Concert. Jarrett is a living jazz legend who is widely known for playing sold-out concerts consisting entirely of improvised piano compositions. On The Carnegie Hall Concert, for example, the first 10 tracks are titled “Part I,” “Part II,” and so on, because the music itself didn’t exist until Jarrett’s fingers coaxed it out of the piano right then and there, on the fly. I thought it would be particularly fitting to finish out Arthur’s article while Jarrett’s virtuosic display of improvisation graced my ears.

In addition to the music itself, which is almost hypnotic, there is another aspect to the The Carnegie Hall Concert that makes it compelling: the…

Going Deeper With Brandon Winstead’s “Discovering God’s Grace”

by Nathan Didlake on September 12th, 2011 -- filed under Theology

I am woefully afraid of board games. My idea of a good time is sitting back with my pals, eating, talking and laughing. But when someone brings out a board game, my lungs collapse. My skin goes pallid. And my stomach wrenches into a putrid explosion of awful. Every part of me wants to escape, to disappear. And if I am forced, coerced or generally expected to play, I find a way to lose quickly and exploit it.

I have ADHD. When I sit, my leg bounces. When I stand, I glide about. Reading is a chore, but I can do it. I can focus in conversation. I can even listen to a four-hour lecture and get by (if I’ve taken notes and brought a recorder). But pull out board games, and you will see my ADHD flare like the blueberry girl on the old Willy Wonka film. They are the only things that scare me in a group setting, and I avoid them at all costs.

How could a guy like that write anything valuable concerning a theology of play? Like Brandon, I wish to understand how God made me and others. Working with youth calls me to understand the world around me, to accept mysteries where they are present and to inquire deeply into things as simple and complex as play. I agree with Brandon’s critique of our performance-based society, the need for students to be free of those pressures and the merciful nature of Jesus to lay…

Going Deeper With Rustin Smith’s St. Johnny and the Artist’s Pilgrimage

by Aaron Mitchum on September 12th, 2011 -- filed under Arts and Culture

Smith identifies the calling of the Christian minister as that of an artist and the craft as that of forming human lives toward their intended shape. This is done through the use of mediums like sermons, meetings and questions, all undergirded by the Holy Spirit. Then, putting his finger on the integral need of this “communal artist,” Smith poses the question, “How do we become inspirited, inspired?” His answer comes in a three-part harmony articulated mainly through the device of story.

Getting Back

Renting the story of Johnny Cash, Smith highlights how that great artist’s journey is one of self-discovery with extreme ups and downs. For Smith, getting back is about re-finding oneself outside the narrative surrounding oneself.

I resonated deeply with this idea. I was struck with the realization that getting back is not something we do just once or even annually, like a checkup at the doctor. We are always getting back. Even while we’re getting this and getting going, in a way, we’re still getting back. It’s something we struggle with every day. Getting back is the means of grace that breathes into us a renewed sense of God-filled identity.

But, as seen in the story of Johnny Cash, getting back isn’t fully done in isolation. It requires community. Often this looks like someone calling out the shining image of God in us that we are too bogged down to see. Or perhaps more accurately it’s someone else creating the space needed for us to hear God…

Going Deeper with: Aaron Mitchum’s “Pleasures of the Imagination”

by Micah Thomas on March 7th, 2011 -- filed under Arts and Culture

As an artist, I have wondered from time to time what it is that makes art good. I live, think and practice primarily in the musical realm, but I believe whatever can cause art to reach past the surface and into the soul is transferable between mediums. I was delighted to read Aaron Mitchum’s “Pleasures of the Imagination” and learn from his observations. According to Aaron, “Honesty is why some art is great while other art is not. Before technique or form, honesty is first in defining good art.” At first blush, I was not entirely convinced of this simple calculation, but after further consideration, I believe Aaron is really onto something.

We have all experienced art that is enjoyable and that reaches us in ways that cannot be put into words. It can be difficult to determine how much honesty is involved in the creation of such art. However, I believe it is the test of time that will naturally and accurately winnow art that was created with honesty and art that was not. Even cheap, gimmicky, or surface-level art can be attractive, but it has little staying power.

For some, this is best proved through top-40 radio or contemporary Christian music. These genres tend to be self-referencing to the degree that anything new is the same as what came before with only slight modifications. This overplayed and under-created kind of art tends to lose its effect and annoy those who encounter it faster than heavily donned cheap perfume…

Going Deeper with: Jess Elmquist’s “Lighthouses and Sirens”

by Brent Parker on March 4th, 2011 -- filed under Archive

Download Lighthouses and Sirens here.

When the little church in The Woodlands, Texas hired their first full-time youth minister, they likely had no idea what they were getting into. The church was growing; new families with teenagers were joining the church; and the congregation just knew they had better do something. What they didn’t know was the immediate splash that a 24-year-old former bartender and basketball coach was capable of making. They handed him the keys to the church and the vans and then put him at the helm of their youth ministry ship.

The journey started out fairly smoothly. They watched as the new youth minister sat at the youth table for the church’s Thanksgiving dinner, encouraging the tearing of plastic tablecloths to make whistles and then causing eruptions of laughter to result in food spewing from the mouths of teenagers. It wasn’t that bad for the youth minister to send the 15-year-old boy in the youth group to bring around his car for him, rather than going all the way to the other side of the church. But, when the young man decided it was perfectly responsible to drive the church van home from a retreat with the van on cruise, his feet out the window, the radio full blast and a dozen youth mosh-pitting over the van seats, it became clear that the new hire was not quite what the church had bargained for.

After a casual first read of “Lighthouses and Sirens,” the average youth worker…