Bono’s Subliminal Eccelsiology

We all know Bono from the megaband U2, my favorite band btw, has always walked on the fringe of Christianity.  I love him because he can’t be pigeonholed into any particular denominational or theological bent, and he always seems to piss mainstream conservative Christians off.  I know I shouldn’t like that, but I do find it amusing.

Anyways, if you have not listened closely to the words on their latest album, No Line on the Horizon, you’re really missing out on some incredible lyrics.  This album is so overtly “Christian” that I don’t know how U2 gets away with it.  If you doubt me, then I’ll just throw out a little portion of the song Magnificent:

Justified till we die
You and I will magnify
Oh, the magnificent
Magnificent
Magnificent

I hate when I ramble so I need to get to the point.  The first single released from the new album was a catchy pop tune called “Get on Your Boots”.  On a long drive from Florida back to Dallas I decided to listen to each song off this album over and over again.  I’m so glad I did this.  Get on Your Boots is a song about the Church’s role in our present time with a typical battle cry from Bono for us to get on our Boots – a metaphor for living out our faith with action.  He has long believed in Christians being active in their communities and the world.  His social commentary has always resonated with me and my dislike for the “country club” mentality of evangelical churches who spend millions of dollars on new church buildings, programs, and pretty much anything but the poor, vulnerable, and voiceless people throughout the world.  And, this song is no exception.  You will really need to listen to the whole song to get what I’m saying here, but I don’t want to copy the whole song so check out this little snippet:

Hey, sexy boots
Get on your boots, yeah

Here’s where we gotta be
Love and community
Laughter is eternity
If joy is real

You don’t know how beautiful
You don’t know how beautiful you are
You don’t know and you don’t get it, do you
No, you don’t know how beautiful
You don’t know
You don’t know how beautiful you are

To me, these are words that every church should chew on.  It’s long overdue for our churches to step up and get our boots on.  We’ll need boots because it’s gonna be messy work – providing clean water, feeding the poor, ending poverty, stopping AIDS, saving marriages, changing lives, etc, etc…  But, we also have to realize, as churches, just how beautiful we are.  We are the Bride of Christ and we have the only message that will truly make a difference in the world.  We are the physical existence of Christ on the earth today.  Do you ever think about how beautiful that is? How beautiful you are?

Now you might think that I’m stretching this stuff a bit – you know, seeing what I want to see in the lyrics.  Well, we all do it.  But, recently I’ve been loving this book called “The Hole in our Gospel” by Richard Stearns.  And out of the blue there’s this quote from Bono in it.  Unrelated to the album or any song he’s written he says, “The Jubilee Movement wasn’t a bless-me club; it wasn’t a holy huddle.  These religious guys were willing to get on the streets, get their boots dirty, wave the placards and follow their convictions with actions.  Making it very hard for people like me to keep their distance. It was amazing.  I almost started to like these church people.”

So there you have it.  I knew I was on to something when I listened to the song, but then I read this quote.  I believe Bono sees the modern evangelical church as an insecure teenager.  In reality we are as beautiful as we could be, but we’re so worried about our looks, our programs, and our budget that we miss the opportunity to be a strategic part of God’s reconciliation mission – bringing the Kingdom.

You are beautiful, you are Jesus on this earth, empowered with the Holy Spirit.  So, go get on your boots and start being Jesus to this world!  Thanks Bono for the reminder!

 

Missional Explained by a Dumb White Guy

First, this post is long. I’ve got such a bad case of A.D.D. that I’m not sure I could even read the whole thing. But, after some more reading and diggin’ in, I think I’m ready to spell out a rough definition of Missional Church. Again, there are so many books about this stuff surfacing right now, I’m not under the impression that I have some new revelatory information here.

From what I gather, most Missional Church thinkers agree that this is not something that becomes a church program or philosophy. This way of doing church has to become the literal heartbeat of the church. It must be the driving force behind all ministry that the church sets out to do, not just an aspect of how the church programs or defines itself.

To define what Missional Church is, you don’t need to look any further than what missionaries have been doing for well over a hundred years. Grossly understated I’m sure, but it works like this: a person or group gets called by God to a certain area of the globe or people group. Rarely have modern missionaries ever just hopped on a plane and gone into a location to minister without at least some basic training. In reality, most reputable mission agencies provide significant amounts of language and culture training before a missionary is commissioned and sent out. Then, once on location, there’s more language and culture training. You just don’t get dropped off in the jungle, run to the nearest village and start preaching. You live among the people. You learn their ways. You learn what they eat, what they wear, and how they interact. You do this because you want relationship with them. Because, you know that you have to earn the right to heard. Your life changing message won’t be heard if you are not trusted in the community. You have a calling and a deep, deep love for these people, and you desperately want to share with them your amazing God.

Boy that was a long explanation, but there is a point. America is quickly becoming, and some places already are, post-christian. The American church needs to begin to position itself as not only a sending agent of foreign missions, but radically reshape its mission here. American Christ followers are in desperate need of missions training. Not to go to the jungle, but next door to the neighbors. We need to take the time to learn their culture and language before we begin to preach. We’ve gotten so used to the “invite them to church and huddle them in to hear relevant messages” mentality that we actually act confused and shocked that folks aren’t knocking down the doors to get in anymore. We rarely shop with them, share with them, listen to their music, or live in relationship with them in order to earn the right to be heard. We judge them, tell them what their doing wrong, and alienate them if they ever do get the courage to break the threshold of our churches. In reality, it couldn’t be any more opposite from what missionaries do.

We have to ask ourselves if we have been called to reach this people group known as Americans. Do we have such a deep, deep love for them that we will seek training about their culture and their language? Will we live with them, or continue to try and preach to them? Will we serve them, help them, and love them? Or, just expect them to understand what makes no sense to them.

A missional church is a sending church to reach its community where it’s located. It has made the desicion that they have a calling and a deep, deep love for the people surrounding the building’s physical location. And, they will stop at nothing to engage these people. The church’s staff are mission training specialist constantly educating the congregants about the community’s culture. The program is to reach a people group – the only weird thing is that this people group are our neighbors, not some far off “national geographic” people.

So, did you even read all of this?  What do you think?   Am I way off?  Would love some dialogue about this lengthy definition.

 

Getting Kids Saved!

Just a clarification from my last post. I realized that I was a little vague as to my explanation. I do believe that in some way there is a personal, volitional experience someone goes through when deciding to follow Christ. Ultimately God knows who will make this decision, but I honestly don’t understand all the theology behind how someone is “saved”. I mean I know all the theological jargon about salvation, but the whole thing seems much more unexplainable, mysterious, and supernatural than that stuff.

My beef with the current, but dying, model of Gospel presentation in youth ministry is the tired and worn method of getting kids to say the “sinner’s prayer” as a cure all to their spiritual condition. And, the idea that this is somehow presenting the Gospel. The “Good News” is so much more than getting a kid saved. Joining in the Kingdom Mission of God is just as much, or more, a part of the Gospel.

Mike King in his book, Presence Centered Youth Ministry calls this decisionism. King goes on to lay out a viable alternative to this method. He writes, “We must move away from premature and manipulated decision making and instead create environments that allow for time and space, where youth are repeatedly ushered into the presence of God. We must allow transformation to come by the Holy Spirit instead of by gimmickry, tricks and manipulation.

I’m not simply trying to get a shock response from readers with this issue. I’m trying to be a good steward of the students He has placed in my care. Part of that is clearly and consistently communicating the Gospel. Presenting the full Gospel is not the easy way, and it’s certainly not going to get large amounts of students to say a prayer. But, it is going to better prepare them for a life-long journey of following Christ and joining His reconciliation mission. Thoughts?

 

Do you present the “personal salvation” message anymore?

“Every eye closed, every head bowed please. If you would like to ask Jesus to come into your life to be your personal Lord and Savior, then just pray this…”

You know you’ve said it. Quit trying to hide behind your computer, I can see you. Just kidding! That would be creepy. The thought for today is when will we abandon this tired and worn out model of pushing students into a “personal relationship” with Jesus? Was it the self-help movement that created this “gospel”? Simply, it is never mentioned in the Bible this way. I’ve found one instance in Scripture where the term accept or received is used in regards to Salvation: Col. 2:6.

In a missional community, the emphasis becomes less and less personal, and more and more communal. What is this infatuation with a “personal relationship” with Jesus anyway. How are you presenting your students with information about being a follower of Christ? Is it true to Scripture? Or, is it just the easiest way you can think of so they’ll understand? I would love to hear how you approach this stuff.

Stay tuned for some great stuff about a dude in the Northwest that is doing some unique things in youth ministry.

 

Missional Youth Ministry: A Definition – Kind Of…

While we wait for our entry about women in full-time youth ministry, I thought it would be a good idea to at least nail down a working definition of missional. That way, we can then try and apply its meaning to youth ministry.

This definition is compiled from a number of different authors. I will always try to reference each author because it’s important for any further reading you would like to do, and so you don’t think that I came up with this stuff on my own. I’m not that smart.

Alan Hirsch is one of the Missional church gurus.  He and Michael Frost are putting out the best stuff right now in my opinion.  So here is his definition of Missional Church:

“So a working definition of missional church is that it’s a community of God’s people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world. In other words, the Church’s true and authentic organizing principle is mission. When the church is in mission, it is the true Church. The Church itself is not only a product of that mission, but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God’s purposes in and through his people.” Alan Hirsch

One more and then we will try and connect the dots to youth ministry.  Rick Meigs has a website called “Friend of Missional”.  Here’s his definition:
“Missional is a helpful term used to describe what happens when you and I replace the “come to us” invitations with a “go to them” life. A life where “the way of Jesus” informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower.”  Rick Meigs

By now maybe you’re able to see how this is going to translate into youth ministry.  The problem is that this is a direct contradiction of modern youth ministry practices.  “Go to them” instead of “come to us”.  Living life in front of and together is the primary form of teaching instead of the boring lecture based model of today.  And, mission or service become priority over the rah rah pep rally worship service.  Say goodbye to your sacred numbers that make you look good.  You’ll be able to go deeper than you ever thought possible though.  But, you got to be able to keep your job through the transition.

So, what do you think?  My goal is to get a few folks that are actually doing this, all at different stages, to share what’s happening.  For now we’ll let all this just sink in.  Until next time… Abandon the Show!

Brian

 

Missional Youth Ministry: Abandon the Show

As mentioned earlier this is a blog about the journey to discover what missional youth ministry looks and acts like. I’m on this journey with a few others. Hopefully we can develop a community of folks that desire to see the current models and programs in youth ministry, to put it nicely, discontinue. There is literally a ton of info out there about the Missional Church. I particularly like Michael Frost. Like actually kind of a man-crush on the dude. But, there’s comparatively very little about missional youth ministry. So let me start by giving a more in-depth reason for developing this blog. Then, we’ll go from there.

During the last twenty plus years, the mainstream evangelical church went through what I like to call the 80’s of church history. You remember the 80’s. Neon everything, break dancing, huge hair, “friendship beads”, and Debbie Gibson. It was fun while it was happening (except for Debbie Gibson), but when you see pictures of yourself with spiked hair and a rat tail, you kind of want to puke. Well, the “Seeker Sensitive” movement in recent church history reminds me of the 80’s. God, in His complete greatness was able to use this movement in amazing ways. Certainly thousands, and possibly millions, became followers of Christ during this time. But, the truth is, there’s a lot of us in ministry right now that are still trying to sift through the rubble of what this movement has left in its wake.

Let’s not be such Murky Dismals! There’s reason to be excited. There are many churches spread all across the Western world that have begun to deconstruct the seeker model of church. Pastors aren’t trying to be CEO’s anymore. We’re not worried about being the biggest on the block. Missions, both globally, and locally are taking priority over potlucks and programs. Inward focus is being replaced by a desire to reach outside the box. There’s some really great stuff going on!

Ooops! Wait! Youth Ministry is still rocking away with D-Nows, Christian concerts, food fights, etc. etc. etc. How did everyone else get on board with this “new kind of” everything and leave youth ministry behind? I know there’s some stuff out there about missional youth ministry, but it’s just a blip on the radar screen. Even the big organizations are talking big talk, but still only offering large conferences and spiritual pep-rallies. Been there, done that! Not going back! I hope to tackle some pretty big issues here on this blog and some are sure to be offended. But, I’m wiling to fight this fight for a different kind of youth ministry. So, what is on deck in the coming weeks?

How about topics like:
Women in Youth Ministry as more than just Admins.
Has Modern worship music run its course in youth ministry?
Is speaking the most effective and affective way to communicate to youth?
How often is too often for your students to serve?
Do you have number envy?
Are there alternatives to typical Wednesday and Sunday night programs?

Expect number one sometime later in the week. I’m going to let a close friend “guest blog” about what it’s like to be a woman in full-time youth ministry. If you’ve got a problem with having a full-time pastor that represents 50% of your students better than you ever will, then you might want to skip this one. Just kidding… kind of.

Until then, hang in there and continue to fight the good fight and abandon the show!
Brian

 

The Time Has Come!

It is time to unplug, toss, delete, erase, etc. the youth ministry models, programs, and events that have been used, reused, and then used another million times. This generation of students is begging for more than the attractional, cool acronym-mission statement oriented youth ministry of old. This blog will serve as ground zero for a community of passionate youth workers dedicated to the hard work of uncovering what’s next for our students. If you’re doing things differently, and I mean really differently, teach us! Listen to us! Encourage us! And let us encourage you! We’re all gonna need support and prayer as we work together to change the landscape of current student ministry.

 

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