Vintage21 Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, has a satirical video series on YouTube originally developed for a four week teaching series on Jesus developed in 2003. The four videos dub satirical voice overs on scenes from a classic Jesus film, highlighting what are regarded as preconceived notions from a staunch starched Sunday School era of the past.
Hide and Seek
“No Peter I wasn’t playing hide and seek. I only told you that so you would leave me alone. You see I’m an important guy…”
Church Meeting or Football
“Rule number two. You’re not allowed to have any fun unless you’re laughing at how dumb the devil is”.
Naming the Sinners
“Frank we all know what you did, but I can’t repeat it…because I’m Jesus”.
“John you drank too much wine the other night, not way too much just enough to make me angry”.
Jesus in the Temple
“Okay get me off this thing, if i can walk on water i can walk to the door”.
I’m taking a workshop on online social networking and youth ministry for the New Beginnings Youth Ministry Intensive at Trinity College in Brisbane, next week. We’ll have 90 minutes to explore ways in which youth ministry can happen online.
We’ll identify some of the relational modes we’ve seen already:
And then we’ll take a look at the social networking side - Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Friendster…
Rhett Smith, college director of The Quest, at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, has his outline for a workshop online, exploring our own online journey, the issue of online identities, the challenge of leading within an online structure where there is no official leadership, the ambiguity found in positive and negatives, and the call to be involved in transforming communities.
Here’s a few of my issues…
1. Development of identity.
Young people need to develop their own sense of who they are in relationship to their community. Online communities provide opportunities for experimentation.
2. Development of intimacy
I’ve seen socially awkward teenagers develop the capacity for in depth conversations once the tongue-tied blushing body had become irrelevant. There’s potential here but also the danger of imbalance. There’s a tension between knowing and being known by many and knowing and being known well. The more ‘friends’ we add to our profiles the more difficult it is to foster relationships of integrity.
Freedom and Addiction
The house church I belong to is currently working through a series of studies relating to Lent, focusing on ‘Letting Go For Life”. Youth leaders have the opportunity to reflect with young people about the cravings (some very healthy) that can end up as addictions. Winning at that game. Being affirmed by others and added to their lists of friends.
Proximity
I don’t expect youth leaders to spend all their time with young people. There’s a need for healthy boundaries. However it is important to be accessible. For that reason I’ve accepted teenagers from church youth groups etc as ‘friends’ in MySpace and Facebook but have not gone pursuing them.
I worked with 25 teenagers and adults yesterday to look at ways of responding ‘when church sucks’. There’s a danger in raising this topic that our already existing tendency towards consumerism will be confirmed. However the organisers of the Summer Madness Uniting Church weekend believed that equipping young people for taking part in the Christian community needs to include dealing with disappointment, frustration and boredom. Not dealing with it has clearly led to many young people walking as soon as loyalty, family and peer pressure has worn off.
We began with an excerpt from Mr Bean goes to church. It’s the skit in which Rowan Atkinson’s character walks into church to find that the sermon is totally unintelligible. While the preacher drones on, in another language it seems, Mr Bean must deal with a runny nose and no handkerchief, drowsiness and the desire to eat a sweet without attracting attention to himself. Add to that the difficulty of navigating the hymns.
Young people in the workshop certainly related to the tiredness factor. Sunday morning is not the easiest time to stay awake for many. It’s hard to be spiritually focused when the body is not functioning well!
We drew inspiration from 101 Things to do during a Dull Sermon, by Tim Simms and Dan Pagoda (illustrator). These guys came up with a list of ideas for higher learning, diversions, games, musings and meditations, fine arts, church-er-cise, facts and figures. My favourite is church cricket. This is not listening to the cricket on the radio or using a mobile phone to check scores, great ideas that they are. It’s a competition to gain the most runs based on the gestures of the preacher and worship leader. You can earn points for a wide, four, six, bye. Leg byes are not common in church. A finger in the air indicates you’re out and it’s the next person’s turn to bat. To check out the signals see the BBC Sport Academy Guide.
Ideas from the workshop included:
1. Organise the toddlers at the back to make the service interesting…
2. Rearrange the Bibles and hymn books - by alphabet, colour…
3. Do a word search (count) in the Bible for key words
4. Pass the parcel combined with key words from the preacher
5. Phone the preacher’s mobile phone to check that it’s turned off
6. Share bluetooth photographs
7. Develop a cheer leader routine
8. Gameboy, PSP hand held games
On a more serious note, we looked at ways the preaching slot can be redeemed for young people (and a lot of adults).
1. Divide long sermons into smaller sections, using video, cartoons, discussion, interviews etc
2. Show some enthusiasm, at least once during the sermon!
3. Risk telling a joke
4. Try multiple formats - so that if people aren’t connecting with the preacher at least there’s something else to look at. Imagery (not just key points) helps with this. Photographs, art, movies…
5. Communicate with alternative forms - using drama for example
6. Mix up the preaching roster - give others a go, even for shorter slots.
So what makes preaching dull?
Preachers are sometimes in the same boat as the people in the pews - they’ve not had enough sleep. Particularly if they stayed up into the wee hours writing the sermon. I’ve heard of ministers who have fallen asleep during their own sermons! Low blood sugar level can lead to drowsiness. THe appeal from these young people was for preachers to be at their best. If need be, have an energy drink or coffee before - though that can lead to post service depression and exhaustion.
Lack of preparation, be that intellectual, emotional or spiritual, can lead to lack of clarity. I remember a minister who misplaced his notes halfway through his sermon. He confessed to the congregation that he couldn’t remember what he was going to say next. A clever member of the congregation replied, “If you can’t remember what you were going to say, how do you expect us to remember what you said?”
Relevance is a subjective thing. Young people in my workshop talked about the test of relevance being linked to why we have sermons in the first place - keeping us on track with faith in action. Will we be inspired and equipped to live out our beliefs? Most people make a call on that in the first few minutes. If there’s little hope of relevance it’s back to 101 Things to Do During A Dull Sermon.
For Comments
How have you dealt with dull sermons, as a listener or preacher?
Steve Drinkall in Brisbane has launched Postcard Radio, a podcast site focusing on emerging missional church in Queensland, sponsored by the Churches of Christ, Queensland Baptists and Uniting Church in Australia.
Postcard Radio is committed to discovering and interviewing those brave souls who are finding innovative new ways to communicate an old message. All of the people interviewed on the site live, serve, work and play in South East Queensland and all have a passion for helping ordinary Australians connect with the person of Jesus.
I’m one of the first three interviewees, along with two Baptists…
Billy Williams is serving and reaching urban aboriginal people in Brisbane’s northern suburbs. As the founders and leaders of Dhiiyaan , Billy and his wife are reinventing what it means to be the church at a park on any Sunday afternoon.
Mick Cross, youth pastor at Reedy Creek Baptist on the Gold Coast, has taken the challenge of multiplication seriously in his youth ministry. He has restructured everyone into “Tribes” and allowed student interests to dominate where they meet, what they do and who will lead them.
Some of the ideas here are small, some are large. Some involve thousands of people, some involve just a handful. Some require lots of resources and some are completely free. We hope that these stories and ideas will create a new movement of innovation in living and sharing the message of Jesus with people in our region. Tune in, switch your brain on and imagine what else we could do…
Doctor Who is being featured in a worship service held in Cardiff on Sunday September 23, near the site of the fictional rift in time. Worshippers are being invited to compare a Time Lord with the Lord of Time during a eucharistic service.
Taste is a new cafe style worship experience for young people in Cardiff, part of the Anglican-sponsored Enter the Mystery experience. Teenagers and young people in their early 20s are being targeted for the “cafe-style” Communion service, with music and video clips from the hit series, at St Paul’s Church in Grangetown, Cardiff.
The Anglican church was used as a location two years ago for the Father’s Day episode of the first series, in which a giant reaper creature attacked wedding guests at the church.
Fr Dean Atkins, youth officer with the Diocese of Llandaff and one of the organisers of the service, said: “The figure of Doctor Who is somebody who comes to save the world, almost a Messiah figure. In the series there are lots of references to salvation and the doctor being almost immortal. We are using the figure of Doctor Who as a parable of Christ. The language used in the series lends itself to exploring the Christian faith.”
He added: “Christ is a kind of cosmic figure as well if you like, somebody who does not travel through time but all eternity is found in him. He is a kind of encapsulation of the beginning and the end, in fact he existed before time began and he will exist when time ends.”
Parish priest Fr Ben Andrews said: “I love the series, and it has such a great following that we couldn’t resist doing something for young people on a Doctor Who theme. Lots of people think that young people are the future of the Church. This kind of event will show they are part of the church of the present and have an important part to play in its future. We are building on the past but always looking forward.”
See the story on the BBC site, including a streamed interview with Dean Atkins.
I’ve spent today at a conference in Melbourne in which Christian Research Association researchers are sharing the results of their work on Gen Y spirituality in Australia. The research reflects the strong buy in from major denominations and, understandably, the attendance this week reflects an in-house institutional response. I’m part of that, connecting with a team of Uniting Church mission, youth ministry, social justice and communications staff from around the country.
Today we had a look at the results so far, putting our hands on the freshly published book, “Putting Life Together”, Findings From Australian Youth Spirituality Research by Philip Hughes. The other three researchers on the team, Michael Mason, Andrew Singleton and Ruth Webber, are publishing “The Spirit of Generation Y” in July.
It’s clear, from the conversations with them during the day, that there is more than one way to interpret findings from the research. But a common theme coming through is that so-called generations are not necessarily different to one another. There is a strong sense of continuity between the present beliefs and values of Baby Boomer parents and their Gen Y children.
Attending this summit has been a part of the re-emergence of my doctoral studies project, “Generations in Conversation”. Now that I’m in the second year of my latest job, it’s time to get stuck in and finish off the work I started when I was living in NZ. I’m planning to spend some time in the USA this year, focusing on interviewing and writing for the theological reflection course I started developing last year.
Michael Jeffrey is posting one free shockwave flash animation each week at the new Digistry website, www.new.digistry.org as part of a lectionary-based resource for worship.
Each Monday Michael posts a list of 4 to 6 clips, for $5 US each, that will work with the lectionary readings for the upcoming week. He’s also providing some ideas on how the clip might be used.
This Sunday being the first Sunday in Lent, Michael’s posted Believe - focusing on themes of overcoming temptation, Are You Tempted, focusing on the way Jesus overcame temptation, (Luke 4:1-13), No Matter What - an off-the-wall cartoon starring Captain Sensible, (Romans 10:5-15), Hidden from View - a reflection on God’s help in times of trouble (Psalm 91), Consuming Fire (Deuteronomy 21:1-11) and The Word (Romans 10:5-15).
The Gold Coast will be invaded by youth ministry specialists in September this year. Chaplains, church youth pastors, government and community youth workers, teachers, university workers and any Christians that work with youth or young adults are invited to an event designed to help them in their crucial tasks.
The National Youth Ministry Convention (NYMC) is a four day event that brings together Christian youth workers from across Australia and New Zealand for a time of professional development, networking and refreshment.
It will be held from September 25-28, 2007, at Surfers Paradise in the heart of the Gold Coast. Delegates will attend one of six full day seminars, five general sessions and eight of 38 electives, in between forging connections with peers from around the region and enjoying the best the Gold Coast has to offer.
Elective sessions include.. “What Paris Hilton taught me about following Jesus”, “Working Alongside ‘At Risk’ Young People”, “Reading the Bible for a post-modern world”, “Empowering young people to change the world”, “Purpose Driven Youth Ministry”, a “Spiritual retreat” and 38 others.
On Friday afternoon I was part of a panel responding to Dean Hoge’s lecture on young adults in the Catholic Church.
Dean’s a Presbyterian who’s been lecturing in sociology of religion at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC for thirty years. He was part of the team that published the 1994 book, “Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers”. On Friday Dean was presenting research on Catholic young adults in the United States, to an audience consisting mostly of Catholic educators and youth ministry staff from Brisbane.
Dean Hoge is pictured below (left) with my fellow panel members Selina Harris (Sunnybank Catholic Parish) and Paul Mergard, (right) photographer and Salvation Army church planter in West End, Brisbane.
I’m using William Grimbol’s book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Spirituality for Teens, for a session on youth spirituality in Adelaide next Thursday.
William Grimbol is pastor at Shepherd Island Presbyterian Church, New York, and for some years has worked with young people in the area through a youth centre.
Grimbol writes the way he talks - a bit like Robin Williams, if the online sermon reviews are to be believed.
I like Grimbol’s grappling with spirituality a way of experiencing life. He says that spirituality is all about awareness, being fully awake to life, mainly noticing. Spirituality, Grimbol writes, frees you to see deep into the universe that exists outside and inside, looking deep insisde yourself, others, the world, the earth, and even God. Spirituality, he says, is a vision of the best you can be, the best we can be, and the best the world can be - heaven on earth.
Spirituality, Grimbol reminds us, is not becoming less loving and more indifferent or hostile. It is not about becoming less forgiving and more judgemental, less tolereant and more intolerant, less open-minded and more rigid in your thinking, less willing to change or compromise and more inclined to be fixed in one position, less willing to make a mistake and more inclined to have to be perfect, less humble and more self-righteous, less fascinated by life’s many mysteries and more certain that you have it all figured out. As I read this section I couldn’t help thinking of the movie, Saved.
Grimbol offers some very practical approaches to spirituality for teenagers. There’s material on learning to recognise the language of the body - paying attention to lumps in the throat, goosebumps, tears, dumbstruck feeling, breathlessness and so on. He introduces the language of artistry - learning from the masters, experimenting with creation, claiming mistakes.
He goes on to explore spirituality through the five senses - vision quest, listening to your life, smelling like a rose, getting in touch, and developing good taste.
Grimbol finishes with an examination of spirituality as living the longings for home, calling, life to the fullest and forgiveness.
Duncan Macleod posts on life, faith and culture in Australia, drawing from his involvement in the creative industry, the Uniting Church, the blogosphere, generational research, the emerging church and life on the Gold Coast.
I’m using William Grimbol’s book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Spirituality for Teens, for a session on youth spirituality in Adelaide next Thursday.
