Open Forum on Youth Ministry

Discussing Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American

Church by Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean

Response

• Is this new? Or has this always been the case with teenagers?

• “We don’t teach Moralistic Therapeutic Deism in our Church.”

Challenge

• “What does it mean to be a Christian?”

Index Cards

• Write down anything that strikes you, or something you were surprised by.

• Write down anything that you want to challenge or talk about.

• You will share what you wrote with your small group during each breakout session.

The Prescriptive Task: What should be going on?

• What should be going on in youth ministry?• We will accomplish this task by summarizing

and examining chapters 3, 4, & 5 from the book, Almost Christian.

Chapter 3: Mormon Envy: Sociological Tools for a Consequential Faith

• Since the Mormon church has the highest number of highly devoted teenagers (in terms of percentage), Dean asks the question, “Why?” “What is the Mormon church doing that produces highly devoted teens?”

Cultural tools that Shape Highly Devoted Teens

• What are cultural tools?– “Cultural tools are the symbols, stories, rituals, relationships,

and worldviews that we pick up from our experience of the world around us—our default operating system—and we use them to construct meaning and guide our actions in the world.” (47)

– “In short, their cultural toolkits include a creed, a community, a call, and a hope that reinforce what Mormons believe, who they belong to, why they are here, and how they should live.” (47)

– “In addition, these youth seem to have families and churches that model—convincingly—that these tools matter.” (49)

– Example: American, solider, sports player

Creed or God-Story

• God (Elohim) became God by progress and development, and humans are called to serve at this pattern.

• Divine power is something humans acquire, evidenced in the vision given to church prophets to inspire all people to progress toward the “celestial kingdom.”

Mormon Seminary• “Long before their classmates are smacking their snooze alarms,

more than half of Mormon teenagers are rolling out of bed at 5:00 a.m., every single school day for four years straight, in order to attend seminary. Seminary is frequently taught by a parent and typically involves reflexive practices like journaling about one’s life and spiritual growth, as well as practical advice on how to plan and save for a two-year mission commitment to service and evangelism.” (51-2)

• “Young people’s ability to succeed in the Mormon community’s signature rites of passage, and to maintain their Mormon identities in the broader culture once they leave the Mormon enclave, depends upon this education. Parents take to heart their responsibility to get young people ready.” (52)

Belonging to a Community

• Family– “The most important faith community in Mormon life is

the family. Devotion begins at home (literally), and parents view part of their mission as the faith formation of their family. Belonging to a Mormon family simultaneously means belonging to the Church, which presents eternal kinship as a binding condition. Separating family and church is inconceivable in Mormon culture.” (54)

– “Mormons are almost twice as likely as other teenagers to pray with their parents at times other than meals or worship (79%) and to talk about God or religion as a family almost every day (74%).” (55)

Belonging to a Community

• Congregations– “Congregations function as extended families

(church members address each other as “brother” and “sister”). The intimate connection between a teenager’s family and her congregation bears directly on religious salience, since the number of adults teenagers can turn to for help and support increases proportionately with teenager’ religious devotion.” (54)

Pursing a Call

• The purpose of formation is mission.• Mormons, especially men, prepare for two-year

mission journey while they’re in seminary (in high school).

• “Mormon youth are vastly more likely than other teenagers to participate in mission trips (70%), share their faith with someone not of their faith (72%), participate in religious youth groups (75%), and speak publicly about their faith in a religious service or meeting (65%).” (56)

Confessing a Hope

• Hope for the Celestial Kingdom– “Yet ultimate salvation, or “exaltation” (what some refer to

as moving toward godhead) takes effort, and is accomplished only in the celestial kingdom as a result of specific actions, including secret temple rituals designed to emphasize the boundaries between Mormon and “gentiles” (non-Mormons).” (57)

– “The Mormon hope of entering the celestial kingdom represents the unifying goal of Mormon life; it affects what a Mormon teenager eats and drinks, how she spends her money, what clothes she will (and will not) wear, who and where she will marry.” (58)

The Four Cultural Tools

• These four cultural tools (a creed, community, a call, and hope), work together in order to shape and form the lives of Mormon teenagers.

• What is really significant is the unity between congregational life and family life. What is taught at church is reinforced and practiced at home, and vice-versa.

Breakout Session

5 minute break

Chapter 4: Generative Faith: Faith that Bears Fruit

“The whole purpose of [a] theology of the cross is to engender a movement—a people—that exists in the world under the sign of the cross of Jesus Christ: a movement and people called into being by his Spirit, and being conformed to his person and furthering his work.” Douglas John Hall

Christian Instruction

• How is Christian faith passed on from generation to generation?– Churches must help in the passing on of faith – by plunging teenagers into Christianity’s peculiar God-

story– by inviting young people to take part in practices that

embody it. – Telling God’s story and enacting it comprise the heart

of Christian formation, or catechesis, the “handing on” of a faith tradition from one generation to the next.

What is the purpose of Christian Instruction?

• clarifies the church’s understanding of who God is• shapes our ability to participate in the Christian

community• provides the means for discerning our call as disciples

and for claiming our hope in God’s future. • Christian instruction does not guarantee that teenagers

will follow Jesus. Only the HOLY SPIRIT ignites faith, transforming human effort into holy fire that comes roaring into our lives at the first hint of welcome insists on igniting us, sharing us, and being shared.

The Gospel’s Missionary Impulse

• Furthering Christ’s work is the root of the church’s identity.• God is the original missionary, crossing every human

boundary imaginable in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. • Mission originates in GOD. The missio dei is God’s sending

of God’s own self into creation, making God both the sender and the one who is sent.

• Jesus not only sends the church where he was sent; he sends us in the same way that he was sent, as human translations of divine love--PEOPLE WHOSE WORDS AND ACTIONS DO NOT GRASP FOR GOD AS MUCH AS THEY REVEAL A GOD WHO GRASPS FOR US.

Christian Identity

• Christian identity comes from worshipping a god who loves us enough to suffer on our behalf, and who calls us to enact this kind of love for others:

• “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Christian Identity: A Farm with No Fence

An African Christian described Christian identity this way: You Americans think of Christianity as a farm with a fence. Your question is, “Are you inside the fence or outside of it?” We Africans think differently. We think of Christianity as a farm with no fence. Our question is, “Are you heading towards the farm, or away from it?”• The church’s identity is not defined primarily by its

edges, but by its center: focused on Christ, the sole source of our identity. The more churches lose our ability to barricade ourselves off from one another, the more God’s grace flows through us into the world.

Christian Identity

• “The story of excessive, life-giving grace is the peculiar God-story to which highly devoted Christian teenagers subscribe. Christian identity is by Jesus Christ, whose Incarnation is evidence that God is not a distant, disinterested entity but a living, invested, passionate Being who relentlessly loves us, forgives us, and drenches our lives in grace.

• The Word of God is not a text, but a person--Jesus Christ.• In Christ’s hands, powered by the Holy Spirit, the cultural

tools of highly devoted teenagers become fields for divine-human interaction, vehicles God uses to enter the world through young people themselves.”

Christ and the Cultural Toolkit

• Claiming a Creed—what a teenager thinks and says about God; personal, a God concerned for them and powerfully involved with them—“a divine swimming teacher, powerful enough to save them but also ‘down in the water with them’ buoying them up as they learn to stay afloat.”, forgiving but disciplining, parent-like God images.

• Belonging to a Community—a community that provides young people with available adults, mutual regard, boundaries, and shared long term objectives.

Christ and the Cultural Toolkit

• Pursuing a purpose-Since being bound to Christ simultaneously means being bound to others, highly devoted teenagers recognize that their decisions have consequences for others, and that the church has a moral responsibility to look after others’ well-being.

• Harboring Hope-Because God’s future is wide and remarkable, it provides a worthy direction for our lives. A key to interpreting the present with confidence and hope because God controls the outcome—eternity.

Churches that help Resist MTD in our Youth

• full time youth ministers• a variety of programs for teenagers• opportunities for youth to participate in religious practice and

leadership• portray God as living, present and active• place a high value on scripture• explain their church’s mission, practices and relationships as

inspired by “the life and mission of Jesus Christ”• emphasize spiritual growth, discipleship, and vocation• promote outreach and mission• help teens develop “a positive, hopeful spirit,” “live out a life of

service,” and “live a Christian moral life.”

Video: Holy Mirrors

Breakout Session

3 Minute Break

Missional Imaginations

We Are Not Here for Ourselves

Why the fuss?

• Is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism worth such a fuss?• We want our young people to be happy and feel

good about themselves right?• People should always try to get along right?• Living out our faith beyond our own spiritual

boundaries may cause insensitivity or divisions.• Maybe we should be grateful that Christianity

matters to some young people and stop expecting it to matter to anyone else.

Then you hear about a story like this….

• Grapevine Texas: Voted one of the best places to live• Median family income $90,000• Award winning schools like Faith Christian School• Faith Christian is serious about high school football with 70

players, 11 coaches, the latest equipment, and hordes of parental involvement

• They are doing pretty good right? • No need to change anything right?• Enter the Gainesville State Tornados.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eogs3DcxWPs

Church is a Waste• How are we living before the eyes of a watching world?• Mark 14:1-9 tells of the woman who anointed Jesus with the valuable

contents of an alabaster jar. This caused many present to question the waste.

• In Mark 8:35, Jesus says “…whoever loses (wastes) their life for me and for the gospel will save it”.

• Following Jesus is a waste, the Bible tells us so.• Jesus is our greatest example of sacrificial love. Like the Gainesville

Team, we don’t know how to say thank you, we never would have known we were cared for this much.

• Our lives are so bound up with Christ that the Holy Spirit gives us more of God’s love than we can fathom or hold. This is how we become God’s witnesses. This is how God enters the world: through people like us.

The Church on Mission• Mission means participating in the very life of God, taking part in the “to die for”

love of Jesus Christ, is the purpose of the Church.• We are to bear fruit in the world.• Rich Mullins, a well known Christian Music singer and songwriter said this… “I don’t

believe that God chose you and blessed you so that you could heap those blessings up upon yourself. God chose you because he wants to make a difference in the world. What is scary is that He did not have a “plan B”. He left the church here, and the church is the only group of people and the only institution in the world that can bring about change. The church was chosen by God to make a difference”.

• This was the mission of the early church described in Acts chapter 2 verses 42-47. Lavish grace, reckless hospitality, utter devotion to Jesus Christ. Yet the NSYR dramatically demonstrates that today it is normal for young people to think about the church apart from the mission of God.

• A non-missional church is not a church in the first place. But this language has become necessary to remind us that the church exists not for ourselves but for the world.

Mission is not a Trip• Ask young people what missions means and many will describe a hot

week in July when they traveled to a poverty-stricken community to do home repair, lead Bible school, and help those who are culturally and/or economically “other”.

• These trips primary beneficiaries are middle-class teenagers who can afford to take them.

• Mission is not a trip of a youth activity, a silent cousin to evangelism, or an optional model of youth ministry.

• Christ views young people as participants in God’s mission. A missional imagination assumes that every Christian teenager is a missionary called to translate the gospel across boundaries, not because they are capable or even interested but because they have been baptized and therefore sent into the world as Christ’s ambassador.

Missional Imagination: An antidote to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

• MTD is the unholy residue of a church that has lost its missional imagination.• Without the antidote of God’s self-giving love revealed in the life, death and

resurrection of Jesus Christ, our culture of self-fulfillment inevitably seeps into congregations and clouds our missional imaginations.

• The missional imagination of the parents and students of Faith Christian High School bore fruit; game after game multiplied Christ’s self-giving love.

• Moving from “my/our mission” or “the church mission” to the mission of God reflects a change in perspective. In the mission of God, God is the focus, not us and our activities. God’s mission starts with God and what God is up to.

• Missional churches ask “What is God up to in the neighborhood?”• God’s spirit is always ahead of us. When we really begin to believe that, it

invites a very different understanding about how we relate to the world around us.

Breakout Session

Reflection

Questions? Comments? Was there anything that you found surprising or

profound?