my contemplations

In our denomination we have a week of services around Pentecost. Every evening we get together, and usually there is a theme running through, so this gives pastors some room to run through something in a short space of time. Also, it’s quite common to get someone from another congregation to preach for the week. We had ours this week, a week late, to accommodate the guy we got to preach for the week.

Every second Thursday we have a youth night. Nothing fancy, nothing grand, just a place where youth between 13 and 16 get together, sometimes play games, sometimes read Bible, sometimes watch a video, socialize and where I can build relationships with them.

When this clashed with our Pentecost service this week I decided to arrange that the youth join the service. Did I think that they would find this the most amazing thing ever to happen at church? No. I actually knew that they wouldn’t really like attending church. But if we do things parallel, then I’m actually saying to them that church is for old people, and not really for you. Something which is the exact opposite of what we would say in our congregation.

So we entered the service. About 15 of 20 kids, into a church with another 80 people or so. First we sang some hymns, and in great discomfort we sat there, kind of mumbling together, I tried singing, tried saying to them: “this is OK, you can sing”. Then a looong sermon started, about how we neglected our pneumatology and should make more of the holy spirit in the Reformed tradition, or something like that. First three girls walked out, then another two guys.

I’ve been using the reviewing methods of Roger Greenaway for a number of years now. In reviewing we would say that a bad experience become a positive learning experience when reviewed well. So I decided to scrap the program for the rest of the evening, and review the church service. What came out was the usual, discomfort in church, church being for old people (although they did say they are very positive about our informal service on a Sunday morning). Looking at something like Four Views on Youth Minstry, which I’ve read a number of years ago, they would actually go for something like a “church-within-a-church” model. Where youth go to a separate ministry, and at some point move over to the “real church”.

But sitting in that service on Thursday, noticing their discomfort, I suddenly realised that these people are our conscience. They are the conscience of the church. If we take them out, we can just continue playing a number of songs on the organ, while no one really experience anything, or like singing when it feels like your singing alone. We can keep on with long sermons that only a few insiders can understand. We can just continue doing church the way we do church, because everyone that is sitting their is trained that “this is how things are supposed to be”. But when our young people start attending in their masses, we need to ask the question: “Why are we doing this?”.

Because they do not know our church conventions that well, they won’t do things just because this is how it’s supposed to be done, they ask stupid questions which the rest of us know we are not supposed to ask. Malan Nelthought me this valuable truth in my first year, saying that: “When we take the kids out of the church, the rest of the church is losing out, not the kids”. I wonder what the preacher thought when the kids started walking out of his sermon? Did they address his conscience, or only madden him? What about the rest of the congregation?

I do think this is the more difficult approach to youth ministry. Because now the whole church need to start thinking youth, the “family” need to start thinking “teenager”, instead of just getting the “baby sitter youth worker” to keep their kids happy. But we need this. If you lose our kids out of the church, the church will lose.

Just found this post in my drafts, wanted to post it a week or two ago, and somehow didn’t, can’t remember why…

Last week I had one of the best, but also most shocking, youth evenings. It all started when we read Psalm 1 last Sunday with the young high school leaders, and the Psalm only opened up difficult questions. They wondered what it would mean if they are not to dwell with “sinners”, since they know so many people with different believes, and then they started asking questions about theodicy (why do God allow bad things to happen). I didn’t answer the questions, but on Thursday we again read the Psalm with the whole group, and with the high school leaders leading the groups, they simply discussed what they heard, and the questions it made them ask.

The little room was buzzing as the 20 kids was discussing theology. Ons group talked about theodicy, another about how we address different religions, and yet another about the debate about science and faith. Obviously they wouldn’t have formulated their questions using these academic terminology, but that is what they were discussing.

When I stopped them they still wanted to talk, but I moved the conversation to the whole group. They started sharing what they were talking about, asking the questions that really bugged them, and at the same time providing quick answers for their friends.

What really shocked me was that our kids have nearly no tools for discussing God. Many would say: “The Bible says”, but no one would read a text and ask that we listen to what the text say. They use a slogan theology, stating slogans which supposedly are true, and building a whole idea from them in very crooked ways. Maybe worst of all is that very few of them know how to listen to something and evaluate what is being said; after a long conversation I finally ask if I can maybe give some thoughts, everyone went quite, and I said a few basic things which I thought might help, but as soon as the conversation continued, they continued using their slogans. But here and there spots of light appear, with a few coming later on to continue the conversation, asking what I meant with some of the things I’ve said.

Point is that teenagers seem to like discussing theology, or at least, they like talking about God or spirituality or the supernatural or something. But the ways in which this is done provide a very dangerous ground for their friends, because they feed each other with ideas which can be harmfull (I think). Answer is not to start preaching the supposedly “whole theological truth” to them, as if I know it. Many have tried, and many have failed. We need to provide a space where young people can talk about God, and it’s amazing that we have somehow created this safe space. But we also need to help them form a contructive way of approaching questions about God. Not neccesarily a set of answers, but just some tools which would guard them against slogans like: “God did this to test your faith”, when “this” refer to a family member that died…

Any success stories out there of how young people’s theology (way of thinking about God, not neccesarily doctrines about God) was formed in a positive way?

Well, for the youth ministry guys out there, I like following this blog, although it has nothing to do with this current post and my struggles…

Yesterday I posted some thoughts that were stirred by metaphors in the diving bell and the butterfly. However, the scene that had the greatest impact was something else. Juan-Do is editor of a fashion magazine, he has three children with one woman, who is basically his wife, although they never married, and he has a mistress. Before the stroke the mistress was the reason for a breakup between him and his wife, after the stroke, however, the mistress never came to visit, although his wife went through a lot of trouble to look after him.

At one stage his wife is visiting him, when the mistress calls. The only way that Juan-Do can talk back is if his wife translates his eye movements for her, although he can hear what the mistress is saying over the speaker phone. At the request of Juan-Do his wife leave the room so that the mistress can speak on her own. The mistress tell him how she wanted to visit him, but couldn’t get herself to see him in his state.

When the wife gets back, Juan-Do tell her, with his eye movements, to say: “Every day I wanted to see you” (or something like that). The pain that the wife feel is obvious, for some reason I also felt pain that Juan-Do must feel for having to say this through his wife.

I had a number of friends who went through these kind of relationship mess-ups, two people in a relationship, and then one of them decide to end the relationship and go into another one. It’s a very painful process for everyone involved, especially for the third person, the one that gets left behind. But there is also something normal in this process, there is something normal in being in a relationship, but needing a third person that force you to end a current relationship which whichever way you look at it anyhow couldn’t have worked.

I guess there is two things we need to notice in that scene. Juan-Do the bastard: how could he do this to his wife? But on the other hand his wife, which I think portrays the image of absolute love, almost stupid love, hurting herself because of her love for her husband. Now, I don’t think what Juan-Do did was good, actually, I think the message that is never put into words is that he was absolutely stupid to go for this other woman. That even now he must be stupid to want this woman, who doesn’t care nearly as much as his wife do, but I also see this happening with friends, saw it happening with myself a few years ago (obviously not in a married relationship).

I think it would help if we learn to see not only the bad things which the Juan-Do’s are doing in situations like these, but also the amazing love of the Juan-Do’s-wives. Noticing that somewhere, silently, there is someone who care, and sometimes it’s not so obvious to notice who this is, sometimes it might take the bad times to show us who really care.

Still, relationships end, and sometimes end in bad ways. The question we might wanna ask ourselves is rather what our role should be. Should we move on, should we still care, care simply for the sake of caring, sometimes knowing that even caring won’t fix a relationships, sometimes even being messanger for a new relationship, because this is what it would mean to care?

I think this is a clip that can be used with some success to point to the reality of relationships. To help those with pain because of situations like these to put there pain into words, to see the different roles that could be played.

Graeme Codringtonposted a nice summary on MBTI (Meyers-Briggs) and spiritual development (part1, part2). I have a kind of love-hate relationship with personality tests, I love them, because they can help give greater self-understanding and self-acceptance. Knowing who you are, and that it is normal, and different from some others, so that you don’t attempt to make yourself someone you are not. I hate them when people try to change who they are because some test have said that they are supposed to be different from they natural way they express themselves, but any good psychologist will tell you that this is not the idea.

According to MBTI I am an ENTP. And the descriptions I’ve seen of this, is shockingly accurate! I’ve read some stuff on creativity, and yip, ENTP was me, and on personality profiles, ENTP was who I am. I once tested INTP (after I once broke up with Maryke), and all my friends who read the description knew that something must be seriously wrong. I was mentored by a guy who is busy with his Doctorate, working on MBTI profiles in the liturgy; he really helped me understand these kind of stuff better.

So, according to Graeme, this is what I ENTP will look like with regards to spiritual disciplines:

Creative, resourceful, and intellectually quick. Good at a broad range of things. Enjoy debating issues, and may be into “one-up-manship”. They get very excited about new ideas and projects, but may neglect the more routine aspects of life. Generally outspoken and assertive. They enjoy people and are stimulating company. Excellent ability to understand concepts and apply logic to find solutions.

Study, Service, Celebration

• You need freedom from structures – disciplines are least helpful for you.
• Prayer is much more of your whole day than a specific event.
• Dream big dreams for God – you can change the world, if you try something really huge for God!
• You might want to try liturgies and written prayers that you read, but be careful of an overly “religious” life.
• Have spiritual conversations with others.
• Try serving other people.

Yes, and this is me. I remember the feelings of guilt in my 2nd year of university because I simply couldn’t get a structured prayer life together. Until I realised that prayer is part of my whole day, and I simply can’t seem to sit still for a “prayer-hour” or something similar. Maybe I should try serving though…

What’s your MBTI profile? Does the description Graeme gave fit you? Can you learn something about spiritual disciplines from them?

Tuesdays is half-price day at Sterkinekor, which mean Tuesday is movie day. Last night we went to see Grace is Gone, I found a whole number of people in the theatre who I know, guess great minds think alike, cause this was the first half price day it was showing.

The movie consists of mainly dialogue, showing the road trip that a dad take his two daugthers on as he tries to get away from the reality that his wife has been killed in the war in Iraq, and tries to hide this from his daughters, because he doesn’t know how to talk about this to them.

This guy really isn’t a good father. He doesn’t let his kids have any own opinions, have rules so strict it really gets the kids down, and then make the absolutely horrible mistake of deciding not to tell the kids about the death of their own mother. The movie then portrays how this guy start doing all the right things in the midst of doing this absolute horrible thing.

While taking the girls on the trip he relax his rules a bit, although the reason is that he tries to hide what is going on from them. He actually start talking to his two daugthers, listening to them. Possibly the most beautiful part is where he buy two packets of sigarettes after cathcing the oldest smoking, and then start smoking a sigarette with her. Although he seems to be a trained smoker, he then start coughing even more than the kid, and in the end she is so worried about him, she actually forget about smoking. Or maybe the most beautiful part was where he got into the little toy house in the store with the smaller one and just started talking to her.

Does the name of the movie only talk about the wife, “Grace”, or does the movie also show relationships where “grace is gone”? I think the latter even more than the former. But then the movie also show relationships where grace has been found, it show that grace can be found in the midst of the most horrible places.

Is this possible? Can we actually do the right things for all the wrong reasons? I guess so. Maybe this is the grace given to parents, that sometimes in the midst of making the worst mistakes you can think of, although maybe with the best intentions, you do the most right things. Sometimes we just need to sit down with kids, just listen to them, and that might be more important than all the fancy tricks about how to raise kids, what to do, what not to do, and doing everything right.

Once a month we have a “youth service”, although mostly attended by high-school kids, more and more I attempt to do it in a why to be more of an “alternative service”, with discussions, image-rich, and participation if possible. Not easy though. Last night we discussed the meaning of the cross and the fact that God could die. I used Acts 8, the story of the Eunuch, and worked with the idea that the text which is mentioned that he read, almost seem like he must have thought that this text apply to himself (read the story, and for a moment think what this poor castrated man must have thought when reading this text, and then see his question about the text). The message was that God can identify with our suffering, cause he know what suffering is himself, since he died on the cross (think Moltmann - crucified God).

I started with a discussion on the hand of some images. First was the word “Jesus”, and everybody just said what got into their heads. From there on different images of Jesus was shown. Of interest what how we were tought to not see the literal parts of Jesus playing with the lambs, but rather the metaphorical, how ancient art had absolutely no meaning to young people (which obviously ask the question what the ancients would have thought of our images), how we mainly see the divine in images, and not the human.

And then, as part of the series, I showed a picture of the face of Christ while lying on his back on the cross, with a hammer and nail in the foreground just before the nail is entering his hand. The reactions? “Fear” and ”pain” were most dominant, with a few similar words, and then, after about 15 seconds, the reactions changed… “peace” and ”fearlessness” then suddenly dominated the discussion. It was beautifully illustrated, I couldn’t have planned this to happen… so sad how we are indoctrinated about the meaning of the cross, in such a way that we miss the meaning of the cross. We miss the fact that it was a man which hung on the cross, it was really bad, really not what he wanted, really because he angered the authorities in such a way that they felt it fit to crucify him.

The first reactions I think was closer to what we ought to see when thinking of Jesus on the cross, the second what we were taught along with the idea that the cross what Jesus’ big plan.

The first bring us to a God that understand what rejection mean, what pain mean, to a God that has experienced this. The second to a God that in his divine might went to the cross triumphantly, which might have been in love, and which I can be thankful for, but cannot identify with necessarily. Maybe the two isn’t incompatible, but oh well, this was the thoughts from last night.

I guess networking is one of those postmodern buzz-words, also one of the business buzz-words. “It’s not about who you are, but about who you know”, Afrikaans people would say. In church, we talk about networking to learn, to support, to “network”, work together. In our synod there is a number of networks, old pastors, young pastors, pastors from mega churches, pastors from churches with only one pastor, and a few others. End of last year we started a new network, this one was for young pastors (since the pastors from the “young pastors” network are in their thirties by now), theological students and youth workers.

We had our first meeting last year, a few of us invited those we know to attend. We had a real “postmodern” approach, decentralized, non-hierarchical, you name it. At the first meeting we had some discussions, facilitated by five different people from various age groups at various stages of the conversation, and we decided that we would meet once in six months. At every meeting we would appoint someone to organize the next meeting. The task of this person would then be to arrange a time, about two weeks before the next meeting, where anyone who would like to take part in organizing the next get-together can talk about what would happen.

What we said we would like to happen is networking, getting to know others doing similar things in similar places, learning from each other through conversation, and maybe even sometimes from someone outside the group, but not generally.

I got the task of creating a facebook group for our network, but although quite a number joined, little happened on the group, there wasn’t a lot of conversation on the group, and what did happen, was only because of a small number of people repeatedly taking part.

So, last night we had a second meeting… with the full amount of six people. Not quite what we expected. So we started the conversation about networking again, about what we are doing, about what is working and not. Did we create a fulfillment for a need which didn’t quite exist? Are we only providing people with another thing about which to feel guilty because they don’t attend? Are we only furthering the overly busy programs of people by providing another event?

But I wonder, maybe the problem is that we have spent a lifetime to train people in becoming independent individuals, not in need of anything or anyone? Why would they suddenly take time out to become dependent on others, to talk, to lean on others? Cause networking, mentoring, all these things take time, it ask of us to sometimes come to a standstill, and it only works for people who commit to the discipline of networking and mentoring.

Any thoughts? Anyone with good experiences about networking, about support systems for people in ministry in this day and age?