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

Going Deeper With Cody Fisher’s: Cuts That Heal

by Hal Hamilton on February 20th, 2012 -- filed under Story

I was moved by the simplicity and the profundity of Cody’s story. I was touched by the reminder of how God uses foolish things (1 Corinthians 1:27) to shame the wise. The stories of Jesus, the hearts of young people, a Sunni father’s love for his daughter and simply showing up provide a fertile soil for the seeds and saplings of reconciliation in the field where power, politicians and prejudice have long had their way.

Injustice happens everywhere. Unforgiveness is a natural result. But restoration can begin in the most unexpected places. And it often does. For Cody, it “began in America, among churches and with youth groups. It happened in me, with my wrong perceptions of Muslims and the Middle East, my assumptions and fear of ‘the other’ and my lack of love for my neighbor and my enemies.”

Many years ago the organization I was working for was restructured, and I received a new boss from another state. I made an appointment and excitedly took him a proposal that had been six months in the making. He would be the first to see it and could get in on the credit. However, he made a big show of throwing it into the trash unread. No one was going to tell him how to do his new job. I was hurt, disappointed, angry and felt justified in harboring resentment and mistrust. I began to spiral internally. My focus became my own sense of injustice and the wrongs and slights…

Going Deeper With Initiation

by Tim Baker on January 6th, 2012 -- filed under Story

The first time I ever saw my son Jacob, he peed all over the floor. And, if you’re a parent, you get how wonderful newborn pee is.

Seconds-old Jacob had apparently been holding back his first trip to the bathroom for weeks, maybe the whole nine months. So the moment his tiny newborn body entered the cold hands of our family OBGYN, the dam broke in his bladder, and Jacob covered the table and the doctor’s hands, before the doctor eventually held him upside down so he could finish his business.

Jacob doesn’t obviously remember anything about that moment, but he retells that story often. We have many of these stories in our house about Jacob—the time he broke his arm; his first rash; strep throat; and, my favorite: the first time he put his Fender mini strat behind his head all “Jimi Hendrix style” and played the pentatonic scale perfectly. I’ve been there for everything. I love my son more than I love the air I breathe. And when we pray together at night, we often put our foreheads together and say secret things to each other. He tells me about the hopes he has for his life, what he wants to do, asking me what I think God is calling him to become. We talk about what it means to have a crush on a girl and who has bigger arm muscles.

I desire so much for Jacob. I want him to be a good man, a good husband…

Still Going Deeper With Sarah Arthur’s: Daring to Improvise

by Kate Obermueller on October 10th, 2011 -- filed under Story

Until about three weeks ago, I was a stranger to comedy radio. Now I drive down the road in hysterics as I listen to 30–60-second bits of a given comedian’s best improv. People probably think something is wrong with me because I’m often still laughing when I get out of the car. So when I saw the title of Sarah Arthur’s latest article, “Daring to Improvise,” I was expecting something funny; a lighthearted and entertaining article about having to create things on the spot during chaotic youth group meetings or fumbling for words while discussing the awkwardness of teenage life. Instead I was met with a much deeper argument for a solid theological concept that gave me joy and made my insides shout, Yes! This is how the body of Christ is supposed to act! Arthur’s examples of communities that dared to improvise gave me hope that there are places in this world where perhaps even God thinks, This is how it’s supposed to be. 

The beauty of Arthur’s article is that the art of improvisation as a theological idea is not new. What she’s getting at, I think, is a solid practice of Christian faith that is evidenced in her stories of congregational life, with examples of both success and failure in the process. With a spin that is both fresh and refreshing, what Arthur describes as the art of improv is actually the work of relying on the energetic movement of the Holy Spirit to create new paths through…

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…