like a fire

I have been really enjoying Marko’s posting some excerpts from his upcoming book Youth Ministry 3.0. If you haven’t read and of it yet, check it out. I’m wondering if this isn’t going to be the most important book for youth ministry on this next era of practice.

Having said that, Marko shares the idea of faith through the expression of the train.  The modernist view says that the faith train starts with the engine (facts) fueled by the fuel car (faith) with feelings in the caboose. For the modernist mindset, facts are the most important thing, since it proves what we can know. Feelings, again in the modernist mindset, can’t be trusted and are not necessary.

The postmodern view, one that most teens have, says that the train’s engine is actually experience, followed by the fuel car of faith, followed by the caboose of facts. Marko says it better than I can:

“Faith is still the fuel. But in a postmodern world, most teenagers (not all) come to a place of faith through their experience of the Divine: in others, in themselves, in nature, in spiritual community, in Scripture, in popular media, in pain, with the poor and mistreated, and all of the other myriad places God can be actively found. This experience (which always has an intimate relationship with feelings) becomes a pathway to faith. Facts are still there: it might be fair to say the caboose is more important in this scenario. But facts support faith and validate experience.”

I’m scratching my head a little at both these perspectives. I have always railed (he he) against the idea that facts actually lead to faith. That means that something is only true if we can rationally explain it. There are just too many things that we can’t explain with words, like faith, but also scientific phenomena like gravity. We understand it, kind of. but still can’t explain why it happens. Which would mean there are no facts about them. Who can explain why they have faith, much less how? As far as I know, facts are the opposite of faith, since, with facts, you believe in your own powers of reason rather than God. Likewise, experience is also the opposite faith since it relies only on what we can observe (don’t even get me started on Heb 11, Faith is the evidence of what we can’t see).

So neither of these seem to work for me, though I agree with Marko that many build their faith in these ways. I hope that Marko has some ideas about this that give us a direction in moving people to a more solid foundation of faith. I will most likely be reviewing the book when I get it. So check back for more when it comes out.