You gotta love a guy who has gathered statistics for the church for so many years that he starts writing articles about himself on his own website promoting an agenda based on no statistics with a book to solve all the problems arising from that agenda. Barna’s latest exploit is a Wake Up Call To Parents. He quotes many vague statistics about how much media teens consume and jumps right into how that makes kids into rampaging campus killers. According to this article, there ought to be more acts of violence similar to VT than we are seeing. By the way, Barna has a way to prevent this. Just get all parents to buy his book and follow his practices for parenting. Also, BTW, Barna’s parenting method seems to be to lock up your children and put their heads in the sand.

This kind of knee jerk reaction to the events of Virginia Tech boil my blood. To imply in any way that the parents are to blame for this tragedy is insensitive and infantile. Barna goes further though. He boils all of this down to exposure to too much violence in the media. I’m not saying that media has no impact, but saying this is the cause of the tragedy at Virginia Tech is the worst kind of fear based Christian response, and it makes me cringe. Unfortunately, this is the type of over simplification I have come to expect from Barna.

I say fear based Christian response because, after these life upsets, all people try to make sense of it in some way to make themselves feel better or safe. To make things worse, popular Christian site Think Christian picked up to article and seemed to endorse it. This reminds me of the Ozzy Osborne trial where the parents of some suicidal teens tried to blame him for his lyrics making their kids commit suicide. I know people want someone to blame when life doesn’t make sense, but this is wrong. The real tell on this is the Mel Gibson movie The Passion. It was one of the most violent movies I have ever seen and I don’t know of a single Christian organization that didn’t endorse it. You can’t blame the media for the violence we see and then endorse a movie that portrays that violence so vividly. Something is wrong with that type of reasoning.

Wouldn’t it be great if this actually worked though? What if art actually had the power to change our behavior in drastic ways like this? All we would have to do to fix our problems in violence would be to play CCM through out the day in the prison system, or even better yet the schools. Then all our problems would be solved. UGH!

I can’t imagine relying on the media to tell my kids what to do and expecting that. I would much rather raise my children so that they know how to respond to what they see, rather than trying to limit what they see.

I have been working with teens for over 15 years (basically since I was one, man I feel old), I read ypulse religiously and have studied hard to get into the minds of teens and understand their perspective. Today I was floored during a sermon at church. Basically he unmanned me with one very basic question that I had never even thought to articulate.

The sermon was on the tragedy surrounding the Virginia Tech shootings. He was explaining the differences in his generation and the generation that is coming: they grew up with 911, Columbine, Oklahoma and prevalent acts of violence. Basically he says they are disillusioned in a way that people from earlier generations are not. They just expect these acts of random violence. Then he said it.

What does the gospel mean to them?

This wasn’t some off handed question either, it got fleshed out. How does their perspective affect the way they hear the gospel that comes out of our mouths and out of what they see us do? How are we to bring them the gospel? How honest are we when we say that the gospel makes their lives better and give examples like happiness, long life and prosperity.

Then the sermon turned to scripture. Romans 12:2 has always been a favorite of mine. So again, it was a shock when I heard a new perspective on it. Basically, it is about not conforming to the world and being transformed by new thoughts. But that implies that there is a tendency or power that is trying to force us to conform to the world. That’s forced homogeny. That is the tendency to need to fit in, but do so in a way that shows our individuality.

This is all very vague so let me give an example. Someone is new in an area and they want community and fellowship. They see what the people are like in a certain group that they resonate with and they copy what they see so that they will be accepted. In so doing, though, they are accepted based on something that is not them, but on the characteristics of the group. This is rampant in teen groups.

And in the church.

I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked to just do youth ministry in the same old way even if it doesn’t have any objective at all. Churches want a prototypical youth guy who is fun and the life of the party. They want games before every meeting so that the kids who don’t want to be there have something fun to do. They want big numbers of decisions after every mission trip or retreat. That sounds a lot like a very backwards version of Romans 12:2. If that is what a church wants, as an older guy with tons of life experience, I can do all of that. But what does that do to my objective as a pastor to teens and their families? I could structure and manipulate kids so that these expectations are being met, but does that really make any difference in the lives of teens?

Does it present them with a gospel that they can understand and know to be good news to generation Y? Does it give them tools to live their life in this world with its twists and curves of death and destruction?

I would love to hear from you youth guys out there. In fact, I’m throwing down the gauntlet. This is our online community where we help each other. Someone give this some thought and comment. I might even have found a use for the previous post on the top twenty list. Maybe I can email each one and see what they have to say on the matter.

Does anyone have a clear answer to the yGospel?

You never know what you’re going to get when you have girls like mine. Jane has been in rare form lately. Probably because her sister, Elizabeth, has been sick, and she hasn’t gotten enough attention. Today was a more frantic version of our day. Cathy had to work 8-4 which means that I have the pleasure of being with our girls most of their waking part of the day. This morning we went to runs some errands and Jane apparently had some things on her mind. She has been very taken with the Backyardigans and her favorite episode is The Legend of the Volcano Sisters. Her favorite song from that episode is, of course, “Huka Pele” (don’t ask why).

Anyway, today on the way to the library, out of no where, Jane tells me she has claws. I look back in the mirror and get a simulation much like the picture above. I nod and ask why she has claws. She says,

“I have claws so I can pick my boogers.”

It’s moments like these that remind me of why I am in youth ministry.

There is just something very special to me about being in Birmingham in the Spring. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but it seems to me that it is just more beautiful here than other places I have experienced Spring. And Spring is a special time in my heart.

Today I took the fam out for breakfast (Jack’s - Cathy wanted a gravy biscuit) and then a trip to the botanical gardens in Mountain Brook. It was just a very chill morning. I was talking to Cathy about life in general and just feeling a sense of peace and renewal in the presence of of so much new growth. It wasn’t blooming as much as it was a couple of weeks ago, when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom in the Japanese garden, but it was still a great reminder of how this season brings new growth. It somehow, very metaphysically, restores my heart and soul. To be able to experience that with my family is a great gift. A year ago, I would have been too busy to enjoy it, even if I took time to do it. So goes the soil of my heart. There are new blossoms of growth that are growing from the decay that was there before. The winter that caused so much death and stagnation is beginning to thaw and bring new life.

Hopefully more on that later.

I haven’t posted in a while and though I have had lots to say, just couldn’t get myself to blog about anything. What brought me out of my silence? This:

Special Report
Top 20 Youth Ministers

Hmmm… The top twenty youth ministers? What the crap is that? I can’t for the life of me figure out why this article needed writing. Did the top twenty youth ministers need encouragement? So do we all. Does youth ministry in general need some press? Sure, but probably not this kind of publicity.

I am scratching my head and wondering what the criteria was. Wha exactly makes a youth minster in the top twenty? Is it the size of the ministry? The impact they have? The precision the ministry runs? The vision?

Makes me wonder who the top twenty first youth minister was.

ht: Grant