I guess I never realized how much ski-trips were essential to youth "ministry" until the other day. Growing up in poor, rural Pennsylvania I didn't go on my first youth group ski trip until we had a new pastor come in and tell us that to be an effective youth ministry we need to go on one.
I was upset, and was going to blog when I got back but I put it off and never got around. Then the other night in our youth council meeting the students tossed out the idea of doing a movie night at youth group. I spoke up and said that a movie night would have strict limitations given current copyright laws and the fact that I would not allow anything over a "G" movie. As we were having discussion I heard one of the youth counselors mutter to another counselor "he's never been a fan of showing a movie" in a disgruntled tone. To be fair, she's right. I'm not a fan of taking valuable spiritual formation time and spending all that time in entertaining students. The only real way I'd consider this would be if we found a movie that offers a great chance for spiritual dialogue and then we analyzed the movie afterwards. But I know that this isn't what they have in mind.
I was a little disturbed by the fact that I have to constantly defend my desire for formation over entertainment in our youth program but just counted it up to a need for further growth and education.
Today, as I came into the office I got a small "events guide" in the mail. The guide is by a group called "Entertaining Teens" which offers "Live Entertainment, Touring Ministries & Events." Seriously? How did youth ministry ever get to be about entertainment? Especially the crappy, cheesy, gimmicky, over-the-top entertainment that this organization offers. What are we doing?
Many people would object to my anti-entertainment ministry stance citing that we need to "attract" the youth and get them here. I honestly can't think of a bigger lie in the history of the Christian church. The idea that we, in youth ministry, can somehow compete with Hollywood, friends, video games, etc in the realm of entertainment to "get kids here" is absolutely laughable and until the youth ministry culture realizes that we will continue to produce generation after generation of half-discipled students who will easily drift away from Christ when life gets hard, the entertainment stops, or other things grab their attention.
Some would point out that the youth ministry culture is changing. That this is a growing realization. I would disagree.
I recently (back in September) attended the Youth Specialties National Youthworkers Convention in Los Angeles. As I sat in the small break-out groups I had much hope. I heard the presenters talking about deep discipleship, having kids encounter the scripture, and other wonderful things. I really thought the culture was changing...until I went to the main sessions. These main sessions were filled with "sermons void of content," rock 'n roll covers as "worship" songs, high production videos, sound, and lighting design, and enough "ra-ra, yay Jesus" to put the National Cheerleading competition to shame.
As these two worlds (the small and large sessions) I realized that the culture really isn't changing. Sure, there is a growing emphasis in youth ministry on contemplation, silence, and the like. But it is still shrouded in gimmicks and entertainment. Silence is only valued if it's accompanied by powerpoint images and eclectic music. Contemplation is valued only at a pragmatic level. The emphasis is still with entertainment. Why? Because this is how the youth directors are filling their souls.
Sure there are always the exceptions (Praise the Lord!!) but as long as those who lead the youth seek entertainment and not discipleship then youth ministry will continue to be entertainment driven and as such we will continue to fail generation after generation.
6 comments:
Two words: The Island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_%282006_film%29
1. Your kids will think they are watching this film: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_%282005_film%29
2. They will actually watch one of the greatest films of all time (IMHO).
The only thing entertaining kids in church will do is teach them that the emotions are the seat of our encounter with God, rather than the drawing of the mind into the heart through prayer, ascesis and sacraments. They will then be unable to discern or test the spirits and will be lead astray to false teachings and sin.
Wow Ben, this is honestly one of the best posts you've ever written. I want to tell you that I deeply appreciate your honesty (and indeed the powerful soul-searching that I hear behind the words of this post).
One set of phrases realy struck me, but I also wasn't quite sure what you meant by it: "The emphasis is still with entertainment. Why? Because this is how the youth directors are filling their souls."
Were you trying to say that youth directors have been falsely filling the souls of teens with entertainment or that the issue is deeper, that they are filling their own souls with pathetic trifles and entertainment when they should have been filling them with the kingdom of God? I suspect you mean the latter, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
Nathaniel,
I think you're right and that is something I've been thinking about since high school. Emotions obviously can't be the seat of our encounter with God, but what role to they play? It seams to me that they're important in some regard but how is it that we encourage holy expression of them?
I think I see this tension (and I may be way off base here) in St. Climacus. He talks a lot about tears and at one point even talks as if they serve in a baptismal way. Obviously he's not talking about just any tears or just emotional tears, but tears that come from repentance and grief over our sin.
So emotions, where do they belong?
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Ed,
Thank you for your kind words. It's good to hear from you, it seems like you've been MIA for a long while with your heavy work-load.
What I meant by the statement you cite is that it seems to me the youth directors (as evidenced by National Youth Workers Convention large sessions) are filling their souls with entertainment driven ministry. Obviously there are the exceptions, but if we (as a Protestant youth ministry "community") continue to spiritually feed ourselves in this method then we will truly have nothing of substance to offer the youth to whom we are ministering.
I guess it seems logical that if youth directors are filling their own souls with this drivel then they are in turn also filling the souls of the students the same way. I do agree with this, but it wasn't intended in my original statement.
Take for example Donald Miller. I was sitting with Kyle Hazen and I was cynically saying that Donald Miller is a joke and that his presentation was saying nothing of substance at all. The youth ministers in front of us heard my critique and couldn't believe that I dared blaspheme the name of Donald Miller.
The biggest problem I had with the interaction (and it was cordial) was that they were being fed garbage and weren't able to see the truth. Miller's presentation was nothing more than emotionally driven sensationalism that appealed to the American desire for adventure and meaning, but it stopped short of presenting anything that resembled classic Christianity.
Sure Miller is a great presenter; he speaks well, he is funny, and he is entertaining but he didn't say anything substantial. His presentation was crap wrapped in a shiny tin foil package that attracted all the ADD-riddled youth workers. That may sound overly harsh and it probably is, but it saddens and angers me that this sort of entertainment driven "spirituality" (if one can even use the term spirituality) is the driving force behind the current wave of youth ministry.
I hope that clears things up. Feel free to push back or ask more questions if you need to. I need to stop writing this and finish my youth lesson. I'm sure this week's topic will be ever-so-popular since it's on fasting. ha ha.
I had that feeling a lot at Asbury. There were times when the professors or other designated "spiritual leaders" were just plain full of nonsensical crapola rapped in cute, fluffy words. If you ever tried to criticize them in front of the average Asbury audience, people would look at you like you had two heads. "How could you ever even think to question that this man or his words were from God? Of course they are!"
Not surprisingly, I had any number of conversations along these lines in my time there. Generally, my conversation partners would try to defend the fluff itself. Then, frequently failing that, they would vigorously defend the fluffer (and generally insinuate that I was a bad person if I thought there might be something wrong with the fluffer because of his fluffing).
There always seemed to me a bizarre nievite about those sort of people. As long as the institution (or popular opinion) pointed to someone and said "this is a man of God," to them he simply unquestioningly was, no matter what methods he used (or indeed often what theology he had).
Ed,
We probably should have hung out more at Asbury. I had those same conversations. People really thought I was out of my mind when I took issue with a professor stating that the he thought the Nestorians were on the right track. He said it again a second time after I pressed him for clarity on the issue.
Ben, this is really good. Thanks for the post. Unfortunately the trend has been happening for a long time.
When my parents were in their early twenties and beginning to raise support as Wycliffe missionaries, the church they were going to needed a youth leader. So my dad volunteered and they just studied the bible - no games, activities, or anything like that. The youth group grew from 20 kids to 100 kids in the space of a year and as my parents were leaving (having raised support) the church hired a youth pastor. The youth pastor introduced games and activities and in the space of a year the youth group shrunk to 10 kids.
If kids come to youth group, and it's just a social/activities club, then what's the point? Unfortunately, it's hard to communicate that kind of thing to a leadership team. Counter-cultural Christianity is not very popular.
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