One of my goals is to read at least something from every book in the Bible during high school Sunday school over the next four years. I found myself torn because that meant a lot of good material had to be left out. And then I thought about the kids who were juniors and seniors and who wouldn’t get to experience the “full effect” of this comprehensive plan. I really wanted everyone to be able to experience the whole four years.

And then I realized that in order for anyone to be able to be a part of a plan like this, they have to be here at the beginning and see it through to the end. If they are not freshman, then they miss out. It seemed to me that planning this out made me take an anti-missional stance. The whole idea is predicated on people being here their freshman year. I was working under the assumption that if our group grows and people get involved as sophomores, juniors, or seniors that they won’t get the full benefit of the program. And I didn’t much like thinking that way.

I’m going to probably stick to the rough plan that’s been laid out simply to provide some balance and to make sure that we don’t cover the same things over and over. But what is important is to realize that it’s not the planning or the programs that make our break someone’s faith development. If someone connects with our church and ministry in their senior year, we have to continue to put the impetus of growth and maturity on sustainable relationships that will last beyond and outside of these programs. These structures only serve as a container within which to house and develop some of these relationships.

Or, at least, that’s where I’m at on this whole deal right now.

Does anyone else do comprehensive long-range planning and have the same struggles?

• Adam Lehman shares how he uses Scalable Communication
• How to debrief your youth group missions team – A free resource
• A you scheduling time for Dreaming, Resting and Growing?
• Thoughts on Selecting a Short-Term Missions Experience
• A new youth ministry conference is in the works: Youth Network Conference
• I was blown away by this quote by Wendell Berry on “Contemporaneity”. With all the talk of relevance in youth ministry today, this quote is needed.

Church and Theology

• Maybe churches and small groups could take up this idea of collaborative giving
• Interesting research on accents: I Don’t Trust the Way You Talk
• Look out: ZOMBIE PREACHERS!
• Is your church or ministry Addicted to the Practical?
• During times of emotional crises, it is tempting to be Unreasonably Reasonable
• Interesting thoughts on end-of-life care: Hospice medical care for dying patients & Health Care in America—What to Do at the End of Life?

Random

• After last week’s awesome post on the ethics of ice cream, the gelato girl responds
• Thanks to Jake Bouma for pointing out this article on the best philosopher you’ve never heard of, Sidney Morgenbesser: Sidewalk Socrates. For more, you can go to his Wikipedia page.
• Curious Case of Bimbo vs. Ho Hos

“[It is] urgent … to reclaim a Big Tent Christianity, a centrist return to ‘just Christian’ in word and action. The two poles are driving each other ever further apart, spawning ever deeper hostilities. The solution — in American society as in the church — certainly is not to let the other’s anger fuel my own. As leaders it’s our task to help break the cycle of anger, of rejection leading to rejection, and to foster a radically different understanding of the heart of Christian faith.”

- Philip Clayton

There is an upcoming conference entitled Big Tent Christianity, which attempts to embody the above values and transcend some of the differences between Christian denominations and traditions today. Is it possible to get back to being “just Christian”?

I grew up in a tradition that typically identified itself as “just Christian.” For most of my childhood until I graduated high school my home church was an independent non-denominational Christian church. When anyone would ask us where we went to church and what denomination that was a part of our typical response was, “just Christian.”

For the last four years, however, I have been a part of a church which belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a big-time denomination boasting over 4 million members. When someone asks us about our church and which denomination we belong to, we say the ELCA.

The interesting thing to me, though, is that in my experience the big time denominations are more likely to embrace this idea of Big Tent Christianity than are the smaller, independent churches who already claim to be “just Christian.” People who are presbyterian, methodist, episcopal, and lutheran, to a large extent, do not seem threatened by the idea of seeing Jesus at work in other churches. We tend to hold our theology with an open hand and be open to working together to achieve common goals.

The irony is that in a Big Tent Christianity world, denominations will cease to exist–at least in their current forms. When we are open to working with other churches based on a common mission rather than belonging to a common group, then the obvious outcome will be less and less of a priority on denominationalism.

And that is good news for denominations.

You see, denominations are already facing heavy decline. Denominational leaders are trying hard to keep their huge ships afloat in a world where the waters are becoming more shallow and ever wider, a world build for small, agile boats. What is at stake for many of these denominational leaders, I believe, is mission. There are many great things that 4 million members in the ELCA can do together that we cannot do separately, things like eradicating malaria in Africa. If these huge denominational structures cease to exist, won’t these efforts suffer?

Not in a world of Big Tent Christianity.

Big Tent Christianity seeks to bring people together based on their common missions. Big Tent Christianity transcends denominational borders in order to reach common goals. We can be confident in a world of Big Tent Christianity that Christians can still do Big Things, dream Big Dreams, and tackle Big Problems without resorting to the old forms of bureaucratic denominationalism. Big Tent Christianity will help us continue to do the things that we can do better together, things that we cannot do separately. Big Tent Christianity can continue the mission in the absence of denominations.

Though denominations are dying, the mission of the church is not.

• Adam Lehman is now a part-time student ministry director. And he’s not bitter.
• Adam McLane’s ministry is shifting to a Go and Do Discipleship Model
• A sweet graphic: Social Media Infographic. The most interesting stats: 78% of customers trust peer recommendations; 14% trust advertisements; 34% of bloggers post opinions on products and brands.
• As I talked about earlier this wee, more teens are choosing to wait to get driver’s licenses.

Church

• Is anyone surprised that church finances face long-term challenges?
• The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Churches should heed this: “Carrots and sticks can promote bad behavior, create addiction, and encourage short-term thinking at the expense of the long view.”
• The church needs to pay attention to the move to open-source. Up next: textbooks.
• Surprise, Evidence Grows of Problem of Clergy Burnout
• Twitter Disciples
• Scot McKnight talks about inerrancy

Random

• My favorite post of the week was The ethics of ice cream. Best part of the exchange: “One sample per customer.” Stirred by her apparent misunderstanding, I looked at her passionately, full in the face, appealing to her not so much as the gelato girl but as a fellow human being. “But don’t you see,” I said warmly, “it makes no sense to provide one sample! It’s just the same as providing no samples at all! I’m sure I would love many of these flavours – but at the moment, all I know is that I don’t like the melon. Really, if you could just let me try one more, just the caramelised fig…”
• Doug Rushkoff thinks that not even the corporations will be able to turn a profit for very much longer
• Cool video: Slow motion lightning strike

I remember being so upset when I learned that my sixteenth birthday occurred on a Sunday because that meant I would have to wait one extra day before getting my license. I was peeved. Why did it matter to me so much? For one, I was (and still am) simply a car guy. There’s something about the confluence of engineering, design, style, do-it-yourself-ness, adrenaline, skill, leisure, performance, and camaraderie that occurs within the car and driving subculture that drew me in years ago and wouldn’t let me go. I admit that most teens likely don’t fall into this category.

But secondly, driving was a rite of passage. It marked a clear demarcation of increased independence. In those days there were no graduated licenses or restrictions once you passed your driving test at sixteen. We got a license, piled as many people as could fit in a car, and hit the road trying to time, to the minute, pulling into the driveway at night with our curfew. There was a load of independence and responsibility that was conferred instantly when we received a driver’s license. It seems like the kind of thing for which Dr. Epstein advocates.

Driving seems to be viewed as more of a practical necessity than a rite of passage, as evidenced by this young man’s comments in the Washington Post story. It’s almost as if teens don’t even want independence, they just want to get to their next athletic practice or student council meeting:

The senior at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring has a learner’s permit, but the required 60 hours of practice driving toward a driver’s license have taken a back seat to his Advanced Placement classes, the rowing team, the literary magazine and Web design projects. “It’s hard to spend all that time on driving when I can get places without it,” he said.

Conlon said this as his mother, Eva Sullivan Conlon, was driving him to the store to buy supplies for a school project; she ends up taking him places a few times a week.

The article suggests a few key reasons for this shift in the priority of driving in teens’ lives: increased academic and extracurricular loads and increasingly electronic relationships. Quite simply, it is difficult to find the time to take the courses, study the material, and get in the driving time necessary for acquiring a license on top of AP classes, club involvement, athletics, and fine arts. Add to that the fact that teens today are comfortable relating via Facebook and text messaging, and there is no imperative that teens get a license so they can meet up and hang out together. It’s easier, and common, to just meet up digitally.

I find all these trends troubling. Decreasing independence, increasing commitments to academic and extracurricular activities, and an increasingly digital and un-corporeal relationships seem like things that will have a long-term negative effect on our teens and our culture at large.

What shall we do about it? Car and Driver magazine is launching a Save the Manuals! (manual transmission) campaign. I don’t think it will be that simple, but I’m all for saving manual transmissions. No, there is something deeper going on here that is increasingly enslaving our teens to school and the digital world, and I’m not exactly sure what my role and the churches role should (could?) be in breaking this trend.

What is the church’s role in all of this? Isn’t it getting to the point when enough is enough?

• Transforming Churches into Mission Centers: Rethinking Ordination, 2009. “If we are going to be a church free to move swiftly with the movement of the Spirit, a church that takes seriously the priesthood of all believers, a church rooted in local community, a church that believes that all are called by God and equipped for ministry, then the current structural handcuffs that go along with ordination, seminary, the call process, the sacraments, and the host of other issues related to ecclesiology must be removed.”
• Emerging Church: Bridging the Academy & Church? 2007. “Is the emerging church the manifestation of the academy and the church coming together? Are the ivory towers finally being brought into our sanctuaries? It seems to me to be so. If it turns out to be true, I think there would be some pretty massive implications.”
• We’re all Heretics, 2007. “To me, orthodoxy is an eschatological reality towards which we are all striving. In the end, we will finally be ‘orthodox’ and believe as we should. Until then, we are all just heretics.”

• An alternative to mission trips: Co-Mission
• Continuing with the discussions about youth group mission trips, Tim says Short Term Student Mission Trips Are Worth It.
• This isn’t a youth ministry post, and I don’t really know what I think about the book recommendation in it, but in general he is right. All youth ministry people need to acknowledge The Value of Theology.
• Have a small youth group? Here’s some thoughts on Growing a Small Youth Group.
• The title says it all: Religion and Sex Among American University Students.
• What kind of teacher are you? Two kinds of schooling.
• Need cheap ministry ideas? The $1 Idea Bucket.
• The Declining Faith Of Our Teenagers? Thoughts on one of the latest Barna reports.

Church, Mission & Theology

• The ELCA made the New York Times: Lutherans Welcome Seven Gay Pastors. Some good reflections on the issue are here: Gospel Writ Large.
• Should preachers not seek to be a good preacher?
• David Fitch thinks churches should not make any public statements, for or against, on GLBTQ relationships. Here’s Why Pre-Labeling A Church Community’s Stance on Same-Sex Relations is a Bad Idea.
• Drew Tatusko is blogging again, thankfully. I think he’s one of the best bloggers out there right now. Two posts from this week–we cannot change unless we mourn & evangelical indulgences?: idolatry in reverse.
• Ed Stetzer talks about When Missional Churches Will Multiply
• More thoughts on the recent public fame of liberation theologian James Cone: for some context see this Interview James Cone, and for some opinion, see this article at The Other Journal
• On pastoral visitation: Doing Ministry in the Living Room
• A huge series with lots of thoughts: The Future of Mainline Protestantism

Quite the title, isn’t it? Yes, The Promise of Despair: The Way of the Cross as the Way of the Church by Andrew Root has quite the suggestive title, but that is part of the point. This is a book about death, in both a literal and symbolic sense. Death is not limited to people physically dying, but is also present when we lose a job, are debilitated by illness, or a slave to addiction. Death lurks all around us. Root contends that the church usually tries to avoid death, but that a true church can only be found in the midst of death, by facing it and owning up to it because we worship a God who also can be found in death, facing it, and not turning and looking the other way: “Christian faith is a faith that has as its central event the cross, the reality of death” (xxvii).

In a way, this book is a kind of practical theodicy. It does not so much answer the question Why is there evil, pain and suffering in the world? as much as it tries to answer What does the church do about evil, pain and suffering in the world? For Root the source of pain and suffering is the “monster” of death, and he carries this personification of death as a monster throughout the whole book.

The book is divided into two parts. The first sets the groundwork regarding our current cultural situation, an environment where we must deal with things like the death of meaning, authority, and identity. Although postmodernism seems like a topic that is starting to become overhyped, Root gives one of the most succinct and philosophically robust accounts of the current postmodern landscape. The first part of the book functions well as a primer on postmodernism. Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Baudrillard, and Anthony Giddens are some of the philosophers who weigh heavily in these discussion.

On of the best chapters in the book, especially for youth ministry, is the final chapter in Part One that deals with the death of identity. In this chapter Root explains how identity used to be formed by work and love: what one did for a living and one’s family. Today, he says, identity is defined by consumption and intimacy. It is no longer what we do or produce that form us, but what we have and consume. Root defines intimacy as “feelings of closeness” (60) as opposed to love, which is a commitment. In youth ministry, where we are dealing with adolescents constructing their own identities, this chapter has much for us to ponder.

Part Two outlines the reasons why the church must face the reality of death and enter into it as a central practice. He draws from Luther’s theology of the cross, arguing that the God of the Bible is encountered in Jesus Christ on the cross: “The church is the community that seeks to live from the new order–not from life to death, but from death to life” (88). When the church faces death, the church faces reality. The church must be with people in death because we are a people who hope in a future when death will be no more; we are a people moving from death to life. This hope that the church can offer to those in the midst of death is not to be confused with optimism:

The problem with an optimistic church is that it spends all its energy on creating optimistic artificial light, seeking to pull people who know so well the darkness into faux light. An optimistic church seeks to cover the darkness. But the church of the cross seeks to make its life in what is, in darkness, hoping for the day when darkness is no longer covered but is overcome completely by the dawn of God’s future. (147)

It should be noted that Root is not speaking about death in the popular sense of “dying to self.” Instead, he is speaking more about passages like Galatians 6:2: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” In fact, he uses the word sacramental to suggest that God is particularly present in a special way, conveying his grace, when we encounter someone else in their despair. If this is the case, then the church should not shy away from ministering to those facing the monster of death in their lives.

Though this book is a weighty book simply because of the subject matter, it is a fairly concise and accessible book (160 pages or so). And while I think that Root might be a bit repetitive at times, this is such a unique book that there is no where else to go for a treatment of this subject. For Christians and church leaders trying to lead lives and churches where we deal with people’s lives in reality (and not in an idealized state), this book is a must-read.

For another review, see Jake Bouma’s review of the book in the American Theological Inquiry .

Disclaimer: This book was provided as a review copy free of charge from the publisher.

Below is a message from Andrew Root, Associate Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary, and author of the books Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, Relationships Unfiltered, The Promise of Despair, and The Children of Divorce.

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Hello Youth Ministry friends, I’m sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled blog reading, but I have broken transmission to offer you an opportunity.

I wanted to get before you the chance to get a free copy of my book Relationships Unfiltered. As the new school year approaches and you think about volunteer leader meetings and trainings I would like to suggest you take a look at Relationships Unfiltered. It’s written just for this setting with discussion questions and chapters filled with illustrations and stories–but also promises to get you and your team thinking theologically about your core practice this coming school year: forming relationships with young people.

Here’s what I can do: If you’ll email me (aroot@luthersem.edu) I’ll send you a free copy of the book so you can look it over and decide if it would be of help to you and your volunteers. If you’re interested in using it you can then go to Zondervan.com or Zondervan.com/ministry and type in the code 980752 in the “source code” box. Starting August 1 this will give you a 40% discount on as many books as you’d like.

And I’ll also offer this, if you do use the book with your team, I’m willing to do a select number of skype or ichat conversations with you and your team after getting through the book.

- Andrew Root

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I bought a copy for all my small group leaders, so the 40% off offer is possibly a great way to save on a quality resource. If you do not have this book, you should at least take up the offer on the free book. I have posted my thoughts on the book in my post here and say:

In my mind, this is the book that every small group leader and mentor needs to read. I have said before, and this book confirms it, that although youth ministry is not easy, it is not complicated, either. In fact, it is fairly simple. It has to do with loving Jesus and loving teenagers. What Root does in this book is tell us what it looks like to love teenagers: focus on the who instead of the how. Root says that the first questions for youth leaders is not How do we get kids to church? or How can we influence kids to be better Christians, but the first questions should always begin with who: Who is this teenager in my small group? Who are the marginalized in our community? Who is Jesus Christ in the lives of these students? Root says that How? questions do not properly attend to the humanity of the individual and instead focus on method. Root argues persuasively against this by grounding his approach in the theology of the incarnation.

• Killer Guests. Each week they interview a guest, usually someone who has recently released a book (but not always). Their past guests have included: Andrew Root, N.T. Wright (yes, I said that correctly), Richard Rohr, Harvey Cox, Philip Clayton, Walter Brueggemann, Terence Fretheim, John Cobb, John Dominic Crossan, John Caputo, and many more. And even the people you haven’t heard of that they dig up are usually spectacular.
• Quality interviews. The interviews are usually above-average quality, asking insightful and interesting questions that don’t just allow the authors to rehash their books all over again.
• It’s done by two average guys with a Skype account. This is one of the coolest things, in my opinion. Tripp Fuller is a youth minister and PhD student, and Chad Crawford works for a nonprofit organization. And yet they get these great scholars and theologians to do these interviews with them. It is a sign of the times–the little guys are outdoing the big organizations and corporations.
• They realize they are two average guys with a Skype account and don’t take themselves too seriously. I love listening to the introductions of every episode because of the banter between Tripp and Chad. You get the feeling they would be cool to hang out with.

They are pretty big proponents of process theology and have a disproportionate number of process theologians on their show, but I think that’s okay. I’ve learned a lot about process theology by listening to their show that I haven’t heard elsewhere. Even if you don’t agree with it, you can learn about it.

So, if you don’t already listen to the show, I think you should. They have 81 episodes thus far, so there is plenty of material to get you started. Go listen to a few and I think you’ll be hooked.