I’ve been reading The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch. It’s really getting me to reevaluate how I look at Christianity in the West. Here’s a few quotes I pulled from a site that is also looking at what the missional church looks like and what it means to us here in the West. Let me add that I’m only writing this to get you to think about how we engage youth in ministry. I’m not saying that this is the only way of doing things. It’s just something to think about.
Dan Kimball in “The Emerging Church” (Zondervan, 2003) describes the missional church “as a body of people sent on a mission who gather in community for worship, encouragement, and teaching from the Word that supplements what they are feeding themselves throughout the week.”
This shift in thinking is expressed by Ed Stetzer and David Putman in their book, “Breaking the Missional Code” (Broadman & Holman, 2006) like this:(the last three are from site Friend of Missional)
From programs to processes
From demographics to discernment
From models to missions
From attractional to incarnational
From uniformity to diversity
From professional to passionate
From seating to sending
From decisions to disciples
From additional to exponential
From monuments to movements
From services to service
From ordained to the ordinary
From organizations to organisms
My passion is to empower and instill these into the lives of youth. It’s a complete paradigm shift and one that I believe youth are looking for. Adults are great at wording this the way it needs to be but I believe that the youth of today are ready for something that matters. According to Barna, this generation wants to be a part of things that matter and add value to their lives. It’s the whole active vs. passive faith conversation. If you take a look at one of my earlier posts you can see what they want and it’s not only impressive but unexpected to many people. I am a huge proponent of this generation and I am excited to see how they change the world!
Last Updated on Wednesday, 17 June 2009 04:30
Imagine
Written by Brian Smeltzer
Wednesday, 17 June 2009 03:46
Imagine: Groups of students from across denominational and ministry lines, living genuine, unprompted, unprovoked Christ-like walks, loving and serving others as Christ himself did - without pretension or concern for self… but only driven from a pure selfless devotion to others driven from a holy and righteous devotion to Christ and His Kingdom. I believe that this can be a reality. You say that you want it… let’s find out.
Imagine if…
…teens truly realized what it means to give everything to God and lived lives intentionally this way.
…teens randomly showed God’s Love through service each day.
…teens took charge of their faith and weekly led their group in prayer and study in the Word.
…this way of life caught on in surrounding schools, towns, counties and states… and the youth of this country led the way in living as Christ would live by seeking out an active faith.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 17 June 2009 03:48
Why youth are worth it.
Written by Brian Smeltzer
Wednesday, 17 June 2009 03:34
There are lots of books and leaders and ideologies surrounding living missionally. Most all of them are focused mainly on adults with kids brought in mostly through family involvement. In conversation with a friend of mine who is on one of those leading teams, I asked why there wasn’t a focus on youth. It wasn’t an attempt to backdoor him into saying anything. My reason for asking wasn’t to know why youth weren’t mentioned but for many others. So why was it? Was it because most of the people focused on this way of doing ministry were used to working with adults or that it would naturally flow down to teens if their parents were doing life this way? What would happen if it was taught from both ends? Obviously there is a learning curve and process to get there. It’s a big jump and one that, for teens at least, hasn’t been documented well… if it truly exists.
Over the past two years, we’ve been developing a framework that we believe is most effective for a youth setting. This list was created using Go As You Are - Part 4. As we’ve moved through this process, We’ve found these 5 statements to be almost universally true with teens. The objective is to hold teens accountable to the following statements. Even with these statements, there is a wide array of settings that these can flourish.
We want smaller groups to build authentic relationships and which create the environment that allows everyone to participate.
We want to be a people who listen passionately.
We want to love each other unselfishly. We demand equality, strive for openness that allows for sharing of struggles, hurts and successes.
We want to deepen our faith with other Christ-followers and honor Christ in all we do.
We will strive to develop a Christ-like attitude, love each other, a focus on prayer, service and sharing our faith.
