From Sampler to Sower

Last week I wrote briefly on the significance of the imposition of ashes as part of an Ash Wednesday service.  Today I’d like to share a little more about the larger season of Lent and how it can strengthen and nourish your soul this year.

In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul employs an extended analogy from athletics to describe the importance of discipline in the Christian life.  (For more on this passage, see this sermon summary.)  He notes that while athletes run in order to win, winning isn’t the result of running. Winning is the result of training. While there is no point in training without running, there is no hope in running without training.

But what exactly are we called to train?  Certainly not our bodies, for the race Paul is describing is not won by speed or even mere physical endurance.  So if not our bodies, what?

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Our church is preparing to embark on an exciting journey next Wednesday night. Along with many sister churches across the denomination, we will be journeying from Ash Wednesday, through Easter, to Pentecost Sunday in a series we’re calling Ashes to Fire.

To begin this journey, we will be having a special Ash Wednesday service on Wednesday, March 9 at 6:30 pm.  Like most Ash Wednesday observances, our worship service will focus on reflection and repentance at the outset of our Lenten journey.  And as in similar Ash Wednesday observances in the past, our service will include a ritual called the imposition of ashes.

We realize that such a ritual may seem unusual to some of our parishioners.  It is very possible to have grown up Nazarene and never taken part in such a ritual.  Understandably the unfamiliarity of the ritual to some, as well as its association in the minds of some with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, leads to questions.  This is my attempt to answer some of these.
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I recently received the Big Chap-ter, an email update from a good friend and youth evangelist Jim Chapman (or Big Chap as he’s affectionately, if ironically, known.)  In one part, he observes that frequently he sees youth workers at camps and retreats who spend the week  hanging out with the students who seem to have it all together, while students with challenging personalities and difficult problems sit alone on the margins.  It led him to reflect:

It reminded me of how we get caught in that trap of gravitating to students that don’t make us work hard at ministry. This is easy to do, but opposite of Jesus’ approach. When we look at the ministry of Jesus He spent time with prostitutes, tax collectors, liars, and sinners. (Read the full article.)

Opposite of Jesus’ approach

That’s the line that really caught my attention.  And I think it’s right on.  How often do we avoid the messy and seek the easy, when Jesus calls us to the least of these?  We rationalize, telling ourselves that we are doing ministry Jesus’ way, focusing on the Peter’s, James’ and John’s of our ministry, discipling those students with the natural charisma to become disciplers.

But we forget that before they met Jesus, Peter, James and John were neither natural leaders nor the cool kids in school.  As fishermen, they were the kids who weren’t cool enough to get into school. Certainly they had not deemed worthy of selection to be talmadim, or disciples of a rabbi–at least not until Jesus found them along the shore of the Sea of Galilee plying their trade.  It wasn’t natural leadership potential or charisma that made them prime candidates for discipleship.  It was the time they spent with Jesus that qualified them to be leaders and disciplers. (Just ask the synagogue leaders — Acts 4:13.)

So, after whose pattern are you discipling: the rabbis of Capernaum who passed over the Sons of Thunder for Bet Talmud, or Jesus who reached out to those on the margins and made them ministers?

You can read the full article, and sign up to receive future editions of the Big Chap-ter yourself here.

Or check out Big Chap on the web.

True Love, Condoms and Purity Pledges

In my last post on this subject, True Love, Waiting and Purity Pledges, I questioned just how newsworthy the recent study by Janet Rosenbaum really is.  The study in question examines how effective purity pledges are in delaying the onset of sexual activity in teenagers by comparing students who report having made such a pledge with students from similar familial, religious and relational backgrounds who did not report making a pledge.

The study finds, ”Adolescents who take virginity pledges are not less sexually active than closely matched adolescents who do not take pledges, but they are less likely to use birth control and condoms.”

Previously, I reflected on what the first part of that finding should suggest about how we minister to teens.  Today I’d like to examine the implications of the second part of that finding – the fact that those who make purity pledges are significantly less likely than non-pledgers to use condoms or birth control if and when they do have sex.

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Purity Pledges and Waiting Until Marriage

The news has been making a lot about a recently released study by Janet E. Rosenbaum which studies the effectiveness of purity pledges in helping teens wait until marriage before having sex.  All the major outlets have run a story, from FoxNEWS to MSNBC, the Chicago Tribune to the Washington Post,  US News and World Report to Newsweek. (Oh, wait.  As far as I can tell, Newsweek is one of the few sources that hasn’t run a story on it yet.)

Stories have been leading with titles as titillating as ‘,Abstinence-only’ is a total crock, That virginity pledge I took didn’t work….and now I have four children, and the incredibly misleading Study: Teens Who Took Virginity Plan More Likely To Have Sex.

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A Woodcutter's Toolbox for Youth Ministry

It’s wintertime in Indiana, and that means at least two things at my house.

We’re literally burning through the firewood I stockpiled like a responsible ant while all you grasshoppers were out playing last winter.

And in anticipation of the likely advent of another winter roughly 12 months from now, I’m spending my Wednesdays (my day off) making sure I have another pile well stocked for next winter.  And so it was that I spent about six hours of quality time with my chain saw Wednesday afternoon.

And that got me thinking.

Every time I go woodcutting, there are a handful of things that I take with me.  Some of them are necessary for the task at hand.  Some of them are just to make the job more pleasant.  And today, I realized some of them could be valuable in youth ministry.

Below are five items from my woodcutting toolbox that would be an asset to any youth pastor.  And I’ve even made each image a link to Amazon.com so you can buy some for yourself, should you so choose.

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Tim Schmoyer at Life in Student Ministry got me thinking recently.  One of his (and my) favorite posts is his article 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write About.  And in that list of ideas for youth ministry bloggers is this nugget at #25: “Sermon presentations versus small group discussion Bible studies.”  That got me thinking about why I do what I do.  Our backbone event is built around the preaching of the Word.  Preaching is central to our youth ministry and the essential core of my calling.

Then again, I don’t know that “versus” is necessarily the right word.  There is a place for both small group discussions and sermon presentations in youth ministry, and both take place as a part of our youth ministry at Water’s Edge.  But they aren’t the same, and – truth be told – if you told me I could only do one or the other, I would choose to preach.

I believe in preaching

Of course such a blanket statement then begs the question “why?”

I’m so glad you asked.

There is a unique and spiritual power that comes with the preaching of God’s Word.  If you don’t believe me, all I need to do is point you to some of the greatest sermons ever preached.  Take for example my favorite sermon of all time, Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” sermon.

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A family helped by Heifer International

I’ve been giving my youth group a Christmas gift for about as long as I’ve been doing youth ministry.  Honesty, I only vaguely remember what most of them were.  I remember having to shop carefully to find something that I could afford to give each of my teens on a youth pastor’s salary.  And I remember some pretty cheesy gifts that I hoped would have some meaning.  I remember candy canes one year (complete with a card explaining the “significance” of candy canes for them to ignore).  I remember apple Christmas tree ornaments, and an explanation of the origins of the Christmas tree tradition.  And I remember some bookmarks, though when it comes to what they said, I’ve no clue.

And while I have only vague recollections, I secretly suspect that I’m the only one with any memories at all.  My teens have long forgotten the gifts I so carefully selected.

But there are two gifts that stick out.

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I was talking with a friend of mine recently, about his challenges in getting a new youth ministry off the ground.  He knew what to do, it was just that there were obstacles at every turn.  It reminded me of how hard starting out can really be.  And it got me thinking about how we started out here.

When I first moved to Middletown, over six years ago now, I took things slow.  We moved in the first of October and I immediately started at the church.  However, we did not hold our first youth service until three months later, when school started back up in January after Christmas vacation.  And we didn’t launch our grand opening promoting the service to the general public until March.  During those first several months, I focused on building a core volunteer team and laying the ground work for the youth service we would eventually call Water’s Edge.  Our praise team met weekly to practice.  Our leadership council began planning and preparing.  But we didn’t have any youth services other than our weekly Sunday School classes on Sunday morning.  What I understood then was that for a youth ministry to succeed, it had to have a backbone.

What is a “backbone” program?

According to Todd Capin’s Youthworker Journal article from 1998, now available online from Youth Specialities website, a backbone meeting is “the ministry time around which all other youth group ministries and meetings revolve and function.”  He goes on to give this sound advice: “In fact, until a student ministry has established a backbone, all other facets to the group should be put on hold (or at least pared back) until a solid, regular, backbone meeting is established.”  (more…)

So, you’ve mastered the art of harnessing the power of friendliness and because of word of mouth and word of mouse, new teens are checking out your youth ministry.  Now that they’re here, how do you make sure they “stick?”

The answer, in a word, is hospitality.  Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged dictionary defines it as “the cordial and generous reception and entertainment of guests or strangers socially or commercially.”  My favorite definition however comes from Washington Irving who said “There is an emanation from the heart in genuine hospitality which cannot be described, but is immediately felt and puts the stranger at once at his ease.” (from his story “Christmas Eve” in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.)

I like that a lot.  Genuine hospitality is hard to define and when you try to do so you end up with a cold fish of a phrase like “the cordial and generous reception and entertainment of guests or strangers socially or commercially.”  (No offense, George, Charles and Noah.)  But while hospitality is hard to define, it’s easy to recognize.  Some places, some people, simply have a way of putting a guest at ease which is immediately felt by all.

But more than something that we do, hospitable is something that we are.  Danny Meyer, author of Setting the Table puts it this way:

“Hospitality is present when something happens for you.  It is absent when something happens to you.  These two simple concepts—for and to—express it all.”

As long as we equate hospitality with all the things we do to our visitors, we miss the point.   Instead we must be hospitable for them, and most of that hospitality takes place long before they ever visit.  If I were writing the dictionary, I’d define hospitality as “the way we show others that we had them in mind before they ever came be our guest.”  Maybe it’s the Wesleyan in me, but hospitality is prevenient.

So how do we become a hospitable youth group?

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