Youth Ministry and Me

Hey everyone.  2012 is well and truly underway and so it brings a brand new era in our family life.  It has now been 2 months since we finished at Holy Trinity Doncaster so I thought I should update you on what's been happening since then and what's in-store for the next little while.

After finishing up at HTD we headed down for a week away on Phillip Island with Ellisa's family.  This was nice and relaxing.  On Christmas day we narrowly avoided dying in the Melbourne Christmas Day hail storm and after the weather cleared up flew down to Hobart.  We spent around 3 weeks back there mostly relaxing, but I also had the chance to preach on New Years Day at my old/home church Wellspring and speak on their junior youth camp.  The youth camp was really excellent with a few of the youth making decisions for Christ or reaffirming their commitment to him.  I'm so thankful to God for the work he is doing down there.  It was also encouraging to see youth who had been in a discipleship group I led back there stepping up now into significant roles of leadership (directing camps and assisting as senior leaders).  In that way that God knows how to do things, it was a great encouragement to me at just the right time.

After Tassie, we came back to Melbourne and had a hectic week sorting things out and hanging out with visitors before Ellisa began her fulltime teaching job and I started learning Hebrew at the Ridley Melbourne Biblical Hebrew intensive.  That was three weeks ago, and today I am three days away from sitting the exam and having my head around enough Hebrew to get somewhat involved in a commentaries discussion of some debate over the translation of a Hebrew word.  I've really enjoyed the intensive as it was taught in a more 'natural' language learning style than Greek was.  In Hebrew we have been doing lots of listening and watching and speaking and then filling in the gaps and grammar later.  This has made Hebrew almost seem easy (for a language)!

Which brings me to first semester at Ridley.  This semester apart from Hebrew which is just about done I'll be doing four subjects.  My first theology subject (Doctrine of God and Work of Christ), Church Planting, Christian Worship (how we do church i think) and, Paul and Corinthian Christianity (exegesis subject).  In addition to these I'm also doing an internal subject called Anglican Identity which will help as I continue to explore and discern the possibility of journeying towards Anglican ordained ministry.

I'm yet to figure out what this means for the blog or what I should do with the title (Youth Ministry and Me) seeing as I'm currently not in Youth Ministry.  But when I do blog my feeling is they will take on a more theological reflective sort of nature.

If you pray for us, then the main thing would be that Ellisa and I find a church community to call home.  We've been searching pretty intently in the month or so that we've been back and we are close to making a decision, so prayer for the right church that we can contribute to and that will equip and encourage us.  It's a nice feeling to pick what church to go to, but also hard to be homeless!

Two Sunday's ago (11 Dec) I preached my final sermon.  It was a charge from Philippians 2 to live united humble lives so that our community would grow and the gospel would grow.

You can listen to it here

Ok.  So here is a developing thought that I've been playing with for a while now and it has to do with the nature of words and I suppose language and the way we use and interpret the Bible.

This is probably nothing new, and is most likely well researched by linguists and the like so i'd appreciate anyone who can point me in a direction of something to read.  I think my thinking is somewhat shaped by my sociology degree.

So let me try and outline it, this is my first attempt so don't shoot me!  The bible uses words (in the New Testament it uses Koine Greek words).  These words don't actually mean anything in and of themselves but their context, culture, and the idea behind them give them meaning.  So when we argue about what a particular word means we are arguing about what big idea in the stream of consciousness of the day was trying to be conveyed by the uses of that word.  Often we can figure that out by the surrounding sentence or sentences or book or books.

Now, we read an English bible.  It also uses words.  It uses words that in our context and culture portray the same meaning to our stream of consciousness.  So we have words like gospel or worship or church or marriage or grace that are used in the bible to convey particular meaning.

Now, there are some who get pretty revved up about correct use of words.  So we can have big long conversations about the word 'worship' or 'gospel' or 'church'.  Or some will prefer not to sing songs that use words like 'lovely' or 'fully sick' or something to describe God because the bible doesn't use those words.  On one hand I get where they are coming from.

But I think I'm starting to think that perhaps we just need to become as good at reading our culture and interpreting it (cultural exegesis if you like) as we are at doing biblical exegesis.  Perhaps we need to be less hung up on words and more hung up on ideas.  Words change, meaning changes, contexts change.  If we are hung up on defining everything in the exact same way as a word is used in the bible (or with different words that are not explicitly used in the bible, but might fit the big idea) then perhaps we are missing something of the richness and deepness that is life with Jesus and we are missing opportunities to take the good news about life with Jesus into our contexts.

After all english words in the Bible are just someones attempt to communicate an idea from a different context (1st Century Greek speaking Paul for example).  And Paul was using greek words to communicate an idea that was in some sense beyond the words he used.

Just thinking philosophically.  I still believe in Jesus' real life and death for my sins and reading the Bible as the primary way to know about Jesus.  I'm just trying to work out how language works or something.

The Research Project argues that Sydney Anglicans have done better than most other denominations and dioceses in resisting decline not so much because we see vastly more people converted as adults, but because we have done a better job at ministering to the young people of our church families. Proportionally, we have many more young people in church than other Anglican dioceses. And this is largely the reason we have not declined...

Now you can see me as well as hear me.  This was my sermon on Psalm 146

I preached last Sunday night on Psalm 146.  The theme was trust and my goal was to be faithful to the text and short.  I think I succeeded in both.

You can listen here

Tim asks a really good question over on his blog: Are youth group kids committing to Christ or to youth group?

As I'm preparing to transition out of the Youth Ministry at Holy Trinity Doncaster I guess that's a question that I'm asking about our ministry.  When I last left a church a number of the more fringe youth who came along to stuff did just stop coming after I left.  So I'm hoping the same thing doesn't happen this time round.

The same thing can happen with youth leaders too.  As I step out a number of the leaders are rethinking their future too.  This is probably just a timing thing, but it serves as an important reminder that people need to be serving because of who Jesus is, and the gifts, talents and opportunities he's given them to be disciple making disciples.

So the question is, how do you help people to take ownership of their own faith?  How do you help people invest in the community they're part of because of the community, not because of the leadership of that community? It definitely has something to with Jesus and people taking ownership of their own faith, but it's a very hard thing to do I think.  Probably you've never really going to know really deep down why people are there until you leave.