Youth Ministry and Me

A week or two ago I posted some of my  reflections on going to the Men's Shelter run by the Salvation army called the Anchorage.   There were a number of comments including some recommended reading.

Just the other day two new books arrived in the mail from the Book Depository for me.

When we started the church we invested in a designer to develop our stationary and website. Communicate Jesus mentions this often but a good website will drive bodies to your church! Think about it  this way – if you spend $1000 on a website (for example, with Clover Sites) and you pick up one member who gives $20 a week, you pay for that investment in one year…oh and they get eternal life and get to go to heaven.

Ok, so the title of this post is deliberately provocative, but it reflects something that I see out there in the world of Evangelicalism.  Something that I've been guilty of, and probably will do in the future, but something that doesn't sit right with me, and something I want to avoid.  I speak as someone who considers himself in this camp, so I'm not lobbing a grenade from afar.

Recently at the NYMC I attended a session run by an Irish worship musician called Andy Flannagan.

I bought his CD the collection and I've been really enjoying his music and his style.

He was a really genuine guy who had a clear passion to see Christians worship God in more real ways than singing songs about how much we love our boyfriend Jesus. He is also big into social justice and had written some songs to reflect the justice of God in worship.

A cool guy.

Check out his website

Ok, so is it just me or is there some sort of large irony in calling a church planting movement, which aims to bring the Gospel to people not currently reached, The Geneva Push? (news story here)

It makes me think of some city in Europe where they discuss human rights and how Guantanamo Bay probably breaches those rights. My brain, doesn't really go to the reformation church historical link that it refers to. It wasn't until I asked someone at the recent National Youth Ministry Convention that I understood the name.

Just saying Church Planting Australia would have been a heaps better name.

(P.S. Despite this, I still think these guys will do great work by the way)

Give Uganda water! This is a great project. It only costs $23 and someone gets all the water they need for the rest of their life! That's worth sacrificing one meal out for!

In 2008, we traveled to western Uganda to visit and be involved in the work of Kiburara Gospel Centre Church. While in Kiburara we saw the filthy drinking water and learned that waterborne diseases were the leading cause of death. Motivated by what we observed, we returned home and by the end of the year raised enough money to build three wells for the village. Today waterborne illnesses are no longer the leading killers in Kiburara. This year our goal is to build an additional three wells in neighboring villages.

Check out this suggested list for determining successful ministry:

1. The number of cigarette buts in the church parking lot.
2. The number of adoptions people in the church have made from local foster care.
3. The number of pictures on the church wall of unwed mothers holding their newborn babies in their arms for the first time.
4. The number of classes for special needs children and adults
5. The number of former convicted felons serving in the church
6. The number of phone calls from community leaders asking the church’s advice
7. The number of meetings that take place somewhere besides the church building
8. The number of organizations using the church building
9. The number of days the pastor doesn’t spend time in the church office but in the community
10. The number of emergency finance meetings that take place to reroute money to community ministry
11. The amount of dollars saved by the local schools because the church has painted the walls
12. The number of people serving in the community during the church’s normal worship hours
13. The number of non-religious-school professors worshiping with you
14. The number of people wearing good, free clothes that used to belong to members of the church
15. The number of times the church band has played family-friendly music in the local coffee shop
16. The number of people who have gotten better because of free health clinic you operate
17. The number of people in new jobs thanks to the free job training center you opened
18. The number of micro-loans given by members in your church
19. The number of churches your church planted in a 10 mile radius of your own church

Here is a very interesting post by fellow Ridley student, Dave Hughes (although I don't think we've ever actually had a conversation) about the medium and the message of the gospel and how both can and do change over time.

Interesting. Here's a quote to entice you to head on over and read the full post:

What we seem to miss is that the medium is the message. Yes, the Reformers changed the form that the message was being communicated through, but they also changed the message. What makes us think that the message won’t change in this new cultural revolution fueled by the rapid surge in new technology? You change the medium you change the message, you change the message, you change the medium – the two are intrinsically and irreversibly linked.

Luke (and again here) and Will both make some interesting comments about protestant churches in Hobart and their concentration in middle to upper class areas.

Not that I can add anything to this as I lived my entire Hobart life in the more prestigious Hobart suburbs and hardly ever ventured north of the flannel curtain (aka Creek Road).

I haven't really read anything he has said, or listened to him preach, but I'm warming to this Texan pastor.

See these quotes from a recent article:

How does this mega-church pastor/global Christian leader keep everything in order? “I don’t have any hobbies,” he says. “I preach the gospel, challenge men to be godly men, and I love my family.”

“I don’t know that Mark Driscoll in Dallas would work all that well. And I don’t know that Matt Chandler in Seattle would work all that well.”

Matt Chandler on Podcasting from Sydneyanglicans.net on Vimeo.

6 ways to live evangelistically

(via Ed Stetzer, via Mikey Lynch)

1. Look at people with eternity in mind. We need to see them as God does and care for them like it counts.


2. Show some hospitality. Believers should be the people that everyone else wants to be around. Remember, you're the ambassador for Christ so get into the lives of people living outside the kingdom.


3. Watch for a chance to serve. People give away all of their energy on family, work, and menial chores. Look for ways that you can care for your neighbors--even if it is just cooking a simple dinner for them.


4. Visit someone new. Look around and find someone who needs a friend. Maybe it's visiting in a nursing home or rocking babies in the NICU. Make your days count with people who feel they don't.


5. Whatever you do, don't do it alone! Take your family, your small group, or the whole church. And be sure to take the kids. They're ready to change the world, so let them.


6. Love like Jesus. He lived a robust life of caring for the lost. He did it by meeting their needs and telling them the truth.

Perhaps foolishly I'm blogging about JAAL again. Only this time it's only going to be short and to refer you to something someone else said.

Dominic Steele from Christians in the media has written a post suggesting how you might use the ads to have a conversation about how Jesus is all about life.

It's a good idea for using the campaign for good conversations about Jesus. Which is what the whole point of it is!

I've blogged about The Age columnist Catherine Deveny before. She seems to be a God-hating, Christian hating columnist. Anyway, according to her most recent article she recently went along to a Planetshakers church service. She makes a number of interesting observations some of which are fair some of which are not. All though of which Christians should take note of as she is the kind of person we want to come to our church services, experience Christian Community and respond to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Firstly, she makes probably a valid point, although overstated, about much of modern day Christian music.

Lyrics flashed up: "Come like a flood and saturate me now." I wondered what Freud would have made of the disproportionate use of such words as ‘‘come’’, ‘‘touch’’ and ‘‘feel’’, and the phrases "move within me" and "being filled". My favourite was "King of Glory, enter in".

A pastor banged on about sacrifice and said it wasn’t important how much we sacrificed just as long as we gave as much as we could. No matter how small it was. I didn’t know what he was on about until the giving cards came round. And a little bucket for coins. No lid with a slot. A big open bucket, so you could be shamed by your paltry donation.

Then there were the plugs for the Mighty Men’s night and Beautiful Women Seminar. Male volunteers were encouraged to get involved with the ladies’ seminar with the promise of ‘‘being able to tell 3000 women what to do’’. Beautiful women. Mighty men. Note: not mighty women and beautiful men.

As people yelled, "Yeah!", "Amen!" and ‘‘Awesome!" [To the preaching about 'sheepgate'] I wanted to yell, "I don’t get it". I love the way religion convinces people by making things deliberately incomprehensible and you feel too shy to say ‘‘I don’t understand’’ lest you reveal your stupidity.

The crowd left believing they had been moved by God and touched by Jesus. They hadn’t. They had been seduced by slick video packages and had their emotional desire for love, community and certainty met by manipulation. It wasn’t the Holy Spirit; it was just people.

Unfortunately Denevy failed to meet Jesus and see the power that lives changed by Jesus can have on her visit to Planetshakers. Some of this could be put down to awkward or unclearness of their service (there would be similar problems in all Christian services, so dont' see me as taking a cheap shot at Planetshakers here). Much of it is problem put down to Denevy being a sinner in need of God's salvation. I will continue to pray that God would open her eyes to the love of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

Finally, Denevy leaves us with this question at the end of her article:

Aren’t we awesome enough?

In September, Ellisa (my fiancee) and I will be joining 7 other people from our church and going on a mission trip to Port Hedland (North West Australia). We would love for you to join with us and support us in this.


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Port Hedland is a mining town. Iron Ore is shipped from the nearby BHP mines and lots of people move there with a view to working there for a short amount of time to pay off some debts or earn enough to buy a house for example. They do this because you earn big salaries, so you can do the same job in Port Hedland and get something like 3 or 4 times the cash. In this context there are a couple of great Pastors at the Anglican Church (I've met one of them). They do it tough, but it is a great ministry. To give you just one idea of the uniqueness of what ministry is like in this town, people who have been at this church for 3 years are considered long serving veterans! Their service fluctuates in numbers and sometimes they don't have the right people for a band. The minister might not even know this until it's service time.

This town also has a large divide between those who have lots and those who have nothing, especially when considering the local Aboriginal population, where there are many problems, such as drunkenness and other addiction. Port Hedland is ripe for the harvest.

The team will be doing a number of things. One of the major things we will be doing are performances and Gospel presentations in the primary schools. Ellisa and I have been tasked to see that these are well written and well performed. We will also be involved in a quiz night that will help the community and church grow more connections (if you run a quiz night in Port Hedland lots of people will go because there is nothing better to do!)

How can you support us?
We need two kinds of support; Prayer and Financial. If you would like to do either then please head on over to my Port Hedland Mission Blog for more information on how you can do one or both of these. I'd also love to know who is praying for us, so please let me know if you plan to do this.

Many thanks to all of you

God bless

Chris

Apparently in the UK the Back To Church Sunday mission worked well. So now it's been bought to Australia and on Sunday 13th September, it will be back to church day in Australia.

From doing a brief read of their website: www.backtochurchsunday.com.au it seems like this campaign has some similarities to the Jesus All About Life campaign. My thoughts about that campaign when it was run in Tasmania, which were somewhat controversial (see the comments) are recorded on my blog here.

In terms of youth ministry these days, you either have youth who go to church and youth who don't. When I was at school (so I'm assuming this applies for people from 23-30 at least) most of my peers had never been to church. So this is clearly a program aimed at people at least 40+. It has to be as they are the only people who probably used to go to church who might consider coming back.

Let's hope it works.

An interesting mission by my old Christian student group at the University of Tasmania.

An interesting post by Tasmanian pastor Mikey Lynch over in the USA on one of the ways you might know your doing a good job at contextualising your church. His reflections came after visiting the church led by Tim Keller in NYC.

Spotted this as I was driving along in traffic the other day...

In case you can't see it in this photo, here is a zoomed in version...

So this is either William Wilfred James Dowling (aka these are his initials) or a rich adult taking the WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) wrist band wearing phenomena to the next level. Either way I thought it was more funny than effective. But props to this guy for trying to get the word out there!