Open Your Eyes

by Chris Brooks

Look around. No seriously, LOOK around. As you are driving down the expressway, reading a newspaper, watching the big game, or online blogging—do you see the face of America changing right before your eyes?

According to the 2005 U.S. Census, 45% of American children under the age of 5 are minorities (non-white). In 2006, the nation’s minority population reached 100.7 million. (Wikipedia)

Amidst all of these changes, the elders of the African-American and Immigrant Communities are struggling to lead.

Someone who was a heart surgeon in Africa could have a hard time getting a job at Chipotle in America because of speaking broken English.

Or someone who was a business owner in Trinidad could be stuck in middle management in the US, struggling to raise their children.

Can you see us? Can you hear us?

In the middle of these realities, what is the appropriate response of the Church?
What is the appropriate response of YOUR church?
Having a strategy for ministering in the midst of urbanization and immigration and globalization is a MUST in an ever-changing America.

Are you ready?

[Chris Brooks is the National Coordinator of UrbNet, the National Network of Youth Ministries’ urban initiative. He will be leading a breakout at Shift 2008 entitled Bridging the Urban Suburban Gap.]

Podcast with Brian McLaren

Our second podcast is now posted on the Podcasts section of the site. It features an interview with Brian McLaren, who will be the opening main session speaker at Shift 2008. Check out the podcast here. You can also access it (and subscribe to the podcast) via iTunes by clicking here.

Podcast 02: Brian McLaren

The second Shift Experience podcast features an interview with author and speaker Brian McLaren, and includes a discussion about his new book, Everything Must Change.

Rumspringa

by Seth McCoy

I have recently been reading a book about Amish folks, after the Amish school shootings. I think for the first time I saw some one actually loving their enemy, instead of just not hating them. When they walked to the home of the man who had taken their children’s lives as well as his own, they offered forgiveness and comfort to his widow.

It made me wonder, how does a group of people like that view youth ministry?

The book I am reading, Rumspringa: To be or not to be Amish, is about the rite of passage Amish young people go through as they transition from children to young adults. For 3 years Amish youth are given permission to live outside the rule of Amish life and attempt to find life in the ways of our broken world. This makes the time leading up to this 3 year period critical in teaching and showing the ways of Amish life, knowing their adolescents will choose for themselves whether or not they want to follow.

In my church growing up it seemed like the job of my youth pastor was to help us have as much fun as possible in church, so we wouldn’t go looking for it elsewhere. I saw then, and still see, the fear in parents and youth workers of what will happen if our kids get a taste of the world. The Amish must have a lot of confidence in their way of life, allowing their young people to taste the other side. And it is working, over 90% choose to become Amish and get baptized into the Amish community.

All of this leaves me wondering.

What is my role as a shepherd and guide to people who are transitioning from children to young adults?

Am I motivated by the fear that I need to keep the students having more fun than they could have at the Burning Man Festival?

How inevitable is it that each of them will have to taste some of the ways of the world before they will actually be able to choose to lay their life down and follow Jesus?

I am very excited to be together in April at Willow with a group of leaders and thinkers who can help me ask these and other questions. I am praying that God will use that time to help me shift the ways I am guiding and shepherding students.

[Seth McCoy is the student & college ministries director at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, MN. He will be facilitating a Cup of Coffee at Shift 2008.]

Jesus Wrecked My Life (Part Two)

by Shane Claiborne

I know there are people out there who say: “My life was such a mess. I was drinking, partying, sleeping around … and then I met Jesus and my whole life came together.” God bless those people. But for me, I had it together. I used to be cool (I was prom-king for heavens sake). And then I met Jesus and he wrecked my life. The more I read the Gospel, the more it messed me up, turning everything I believed in, valued, and hoped for upside-down… I am still recovering from my conversion.

I ended up at Eastern University outside Philadelphia, studying Youth Ministry with Duffy Robbins and Sociology with Tony Campolo, a strange combo that got me in some trouble. I ended up doing things like having homeless folks preach at outreach events. On one mission trip serving in homeless shelters, our students started joking about how easy it would be to live on the streets, so that night we locked them all out of the building to sleep on the streets. Needless to say, my youth ministry career was short-lived.

Too often we just try to help our youth choose a good career track, asking what they want to do when they grow up. What would a teenage Jesus have said if they asked him, “What are you going to do when you grow up?” I don’t know, maybe something like, “I’m going to turn the world upside down… I’m going to hang out with prostitutes and tax collectors until people kill me.” Or what would Peter have said: “Well I was going to be a fisherman, and then I met this dude and he messed all that up.” So I started calling myself a vocational “lover.” My high school reunion handbook back in TN just listed me as a career “Lover”. I’m okay with that. I dream of the day when people here the word Christian and the only thing they can think of is Love.

What if youth ministry had a prophetic imagination that did not conform to the patterns of our culture that has strayed from the Beatitudes of our Lord and bowed to a market built upon the seven deadly sins? What if youth groups began to sew clothes together as a way of protestifying against the groanings of “least of these” laboring in sweatshops overseas? What if missionaries were students who went to law school to defend folks who are on death row because they are black or poor? What if Jesus-freaks were kids who ate lunch with their janitors?

My friend Jim Wallis met this radio DJ down in Nashville. He was a secular Jewish guy with some discontent with the embarrassing things done in the name of God, but then he said: “But the Bible’s got some good things to say, especially the stuff in red… and you all seem to take that stuff seriously… you should call yourself ‘red-letter Christians’.” So we did, a bunch of us including Jim and Tony and a bunch of other folks around the country have started calling ourselves red-letter Christians, and have set out to take the commands of Jesus seriously, and the commission of our DJ friend. We need red-letter Christians that will once again read the words of Jesus and ask, “What if he meant this stuff?”

[Shane Claiborne is a founding partner of The Simple Way, and will be a main session speaker at Shift 2008. Used with permission of YouthWorker Journal.]

Jesus Wrecked My Life (Part One)

by Shane Claiborne

As a youth leader, I remember seeing one of the high school kids that I witnessed “give his life to Jesus” get busted only a few weeks later for having Acid in his school. I remember asking in disappointment, “What happened, bro? What went wrong?” He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “I got bored.” Bored? God forgive us … for all those we have lost because we have made the Gospel boring. I am convinced that if we lose kids to the culture of drugs and materialism, of violence and war … it will not be because we didn’t entertain them but because we didn’t dare them. It will not be because we have made the Gospel too difficult, but because we made it too easy. Kids want to do something heroic with their lives … that’s why they play video games and join the army. You can only sing “Pharoah Pharoah” so many times. And eating cereal mixed with backwash out of someone else’s mouth can hardly compete with eating squid guts on Fear Factor.

I remember hearing one of my college profs say, “Being a Christian is about choosing Jesus and deciding to do something incredibly daring with your life.” I found it funny, since most Christians I knew lived just like everyone else, and had lives that were anything but daring. I decided to take Jesus up on the offer. The adventure has taken me from the streets of Calcutta where I worked with Mother Teresa to the warzone of Iraq where I lived through the bombing of Baghdad. Following the footsteps of Jesus, I have found myself led to the halls of power and the slums of the destitute, amidst taxcollectors and peasants, dragged into courtrooms and jail-cells… I can’t remember what it feels like to be bored.

A while back I did something dangerous, I decided to read the Bible. I fled the Christianity that was suffocating me, the fast faith that I had gorged myself on, another over-churched soul starving for God. I simply began to ask, what if he meant the stuff he said. And things have been a mess ever since.

[Shane Claiborne is a founding partner of The Simple Way, and will be a main session speaker at Shift 2008. Used with permission of YouthWorker Journal.]

Contemplation and Youth Ministry

I am really excited that Steve Argue from INTERSECT (he is also on staff at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary) is a part of SHIFT this year. He is not only a friend, but a brilliant thinker.

Steve just wrote a very interesting blog post about Contemplation and Youth Ministry. Check it out here.

Creating a Place for Students to Belong...

by Phil Shinners

In his book, The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg talks about characteristics of "third places" throughout history. The idea of the third place is that societies and people benefit greatly from (even need) these special places between work and home. These third places are "those gathering places where community is most alive and people are most themselves," says Oldenburg. Sounds like a cool description of a church to me.

Its not your typical church resource book, but as I read these pages, I found myself making connections between the thinking in them and some of what I'm trying to build in my student ministry.

It seems like part of the role of student pastor is to attempt to create places where students feel like they belong. By belong I guess I mean that they actually want to be there, that they call it their own, that they feel comfortable and connected there...

Here are some of the key characteristics Oldenburg found in third places around the world:

The Third Place is a Leveler
One of the things that I remember most about being involved in a student ministry (as a student) was that some of the normal rules of society didn't apply there. Students who typically "weren't supposed" to interact at school were found laughing together, freshman and seniors sang together, it was a powerful thing. Oldenburg notes that "Worldly status claims must be checked at the door in order that all within may be equals." I think students would love to come to our churches if we could create this.

Conversation is the Main Activity
"Nothing more clearly indicates a third place than that the talk there is good; that it is lively, scintillating, colorful, and engaging." What, not programming!? The truth is, great conversations can be harder to create than great programs. How could we work to create this? What would it look like for conversations to be the main activity of our student gatherings?

The Regulars
Every third place has these "regulars" that you can count on seeing when you come. Its kind of weird to think about, but one of my most important roles as a youth pastor might be to just be there when we gather. Maybe this is one reason why it's hard to do student ministry without real consistency.

How have you seen these characteristics at your local Starbucks?
How have you seen them in your student gatherings?
How many places can you think of where teenagers can hang out together, and not be looked down upon?
Is your church one of them?

Post your responses/additions to these thoughts and questions. Further discussion will follow at my Point Leader breakout at the Shift 2008 Conference.

[Phil Shinners is the Junior High pastor at Mariners Church in Irvine, CA. He will be leading a Point Leader breakout entitled Mariners Church Student Ministries: An Inside Look at the Shift conference in April.]

Shift 2008 on Facebook

If you're a member of the social networking site Facebook, make sure you check out the new Shift 2008 Event page.

Click here, log in to Facebook, and see who's already planning being with us at the conference next April. You can RSVP on the event page to let others know you're coming, as well as send invites to specific people you're already friends with on Facebook.

If you're not already a Facebook member, its free to sign up, and its a great way to get connect with friends, family, and other innovative youth workers.

Hope to see you on the guest list soon!

Information R/evolution

by Michael Novelli

One of the major shifts we are experiencing in our world is the transition to post-literate forms of learning.
These two videos from Kansas State University tell this story better than I ever could...

Information R/evolution (click here)
This video explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and create information effectively.

A Vision of Students Today (click here)
A video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.

[Michael Novelli is the founder of Echo, and will be leading a Point Leader Breakout at Shift 2008 entitled Teaching the Bible Through Story and Dialogue]

Information R/evolution

Information R/evolution

Video created at Kansas State University.

A Vision of Students Today

A Vision of Students Today

Video created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.

The Lost Art of Discipleship

by Jon Peacock

True Disciples is what the Church needs. True Disciples within and outside of the Church is what brings optimism to a bleak picture of the power and future of the Church. If discipleship serves as the ancient method of spiritual movement within God’s people then this poses a problem.

Currently the American Church does anything but excel within discipleship. We, as the American Church struggle to raise up True Disciples, and in my opinion this seems to have become a lost art. Sure, we love to see people cross the line of faith, but then what? What happens then? Do we teach people how to hear the voice of God, how to commune deeply with the Father, how to engage scripture? Do we model this to them? And then do we teach our communities of faith the horizontal focus, of taking what we have received from God and paying it forward, the art of reproducing ourselves into the lives of others? Is the western Church currently doing this? Well, unfortunately the answer for the most part is no. According to Barna’s latest research, along with scholars such as John Stott we are below average at best in raising up true disciples.

Last week I met a friend who is currently the most influential singer/song writer and church planter in South Africa, who happens to be in his late 20’s. He and I spent a couple of days together and discussed the condition of the Church and the future of it as well, both here in North America and on the continent of Africa. It struck me that our conversation continually came back to the center point of the cross, the intersection of the vertical and horizontal beam of Grace and Freedom; discipleship. My guess is that I don’t need to convince us that discipleship is a must in the Church now and in the future, I guess my concern is why we are not hearing more stories of success within discipleship.

Perhaps as pastors we’re too busy for this, or we’d prefer operating at a level to where we don’t regularly connect with the students in our ministries. I fully understand leadership realities, but we need to wrestle with some of the barriers that are preventing the resurgence of discipleship. Greg Ogden, author of Transforming Disciples states “the irony is that in our attempt to reach the masses through mass means we fail to train people the masses could emulate”.

As pastors of students and I’d like us to consider what type of students we’re sending from our ministries, The reality is we are all in the export business whether we like it or not. This thought continues to help me focus on the big picture and supplies my dreams for ministry growth to not overshadow my dreams and vision for what catalyzes spiritual transformation, we have to return to the patterns that Jesus and the early Church left us with. Just spend some days in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, and realize that Paul and his crew had around 3 months with the people in Thessalonica!

Shift 08 will be a powerful time for us to collaborate with each other as to what stands in our way in regards to regaining and the lost art of Discipleship - from Bo’s consistent vision of mentoring to Kara Powell’s main session teaching on “Deep Ministry in a Shallow World”. I look forward to learning from you and continuing the conversation!

[Jon Peacock is the director of Axis, Willow Creek’s ministry to 20-somethings. Jon will be leading a Cup of Coffee at the Shift 2008 conference entitled “The Mobilization of Missional Students”.]

It All Begins at Home (Part Two)

by Jim Newberry

In the last post, we reflected on the importance of the restored relationship between fathers and children, and the potential role we might play in helping usher in that restoration. I would like to pick-up where we left off by looking at the great Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. As I mentioned in the last post, most of our evangelism / discipleship efforts in youth ministry tend to focus on our events and programs. But I think this passage provides us one picture of how we might reculture evangelism / discipleship.

Obviously the big idea was for God’s people to love Him with all their heart, soul and strength. But look at the pattern by which children learned to do this. “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.”

When was the last time you heard of students in your youth ministry that had these kinds of experiences with their parents: talking together (yeah right!); going on walks together, sitting together, lying down together, sharing symbols together. Can’t we create these kinds of experiences for youth and parents?

Look – I know it’s problematic. I know students would much rather be on an event with their friends than with their parents. But do we see our events really forming the faith of youth over the long haul? I know not all students’ parents are believers and incapable of leading their children in this way. So is this the job description of our volunteer leaders or do we just have them leading table talk and driving vans? The Israelite children learned about a covenant relationship with Yahweh by going “along the way” with the parents and adults of their community. Maybe we should look at this too?

Jim Newberry is Pastor of Student and Young Adult Ministries at Christ Community (Evangelical Free) Church in Leawood, Kansas. He will be leading a breakout session at Shift titled Reculturing Evangelism / Discipleship.