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B4U Begin Youth sponsor’s Training Classes 1-6 (Updated December, 2006) B4U Youth sponsor’s Training Lesson 1 Our
Vision The
Big Picture Support
the Minister Importance
of Commitment Introduction
to Postmodernism Postmodern
Beliefs * Truth Deconstruction Relativism Spirituality Stress Holiness Mystery Legalism
for Protection * Religion
of Form * Not
All Postmodern is Bad * Crossing
the Bridge * The
Leader as Example What
is Spiritual formation? Christian
Spiritual formation Discipleship
and the Our Vision •
To Change lives by bringing individuals to God for forgiveness and
leadership •
To Simplify lives by focusing on God's priorities to produce a simple,
effective, and powerful lives, and •
To Disciple others by developing relationships that will encourage
life-long commitments to God The
HCC youth have a great passion for Christ. Being generally dissatisfied with
the "status quo" of the modern church, we strive to be a place
where openness and honesty is practiced, especially when dealing with the
issues facing the church, our culture, and ourselves. We choose to not be
silent but to be a voice for Christ for the emerging culture. The Big Picture Here
are some of the goals we would like to see as a result of the youth program: ·
To see students form deep,
authentic relationships with peers and adults. ·
To see students be known and cared
for my other adults besides their parents. ·
To see students grow spiritually. ·
To see students learn what it means
to truly become a disciple of Christ. ·
To see students explore God’s Word
together. ·
To see students view their small
group leaders as their youth pastor. ·
To see students consider their
small group experience as a highlight and one of the best time investments of
their week. Support for the Senior Minister In
general, Youth Ministers are taught that they should try to help the Senior
Minister and other adult leadership understand and get behind their
vision. However, actually the opposite
is true. We should grab a hold of the
Sr. Minister’s vision for the church and reflect this dream and passion to
the youth. God never intended a Senior
Minister to go in one direction while the Youth Minister heads somewhere
else. . . He wants each local body moving together with synergy, unity, and
oneness (Bartel, 10 Rules of Youth Ministry). There
are two primary places in every student’s life: home and school (no matter where or what
type of places these are). What we
want to create for our Youth Ministry our church is a 3rd place. A place that teens desire to come and be when
they don’t have to be at one of the other two places. This 3rd place should be: warm, inviting, and safe; a place where
youth can just hang out; a place
where they can invite their friends without the threat of having Jesus shoved
down their throats. Many
people don’t like the idea of creating a hang out at the church for the youth
because they are uncomfortable with the risk of having youth at the church
that much. However, we want to create,
in the church, a place where students desire to be and want to come to. Importance of Commitment Uncharted people are not just lazy or uniformed. They are wholly disinterested in church
life—often passionately so. Stirring
worship music won’t attract them because worship isn’t even on their radar
screen. More comfortable pews cannot
compete with the easy chair or the bed that already serve the uncharted
person well. Church events cannot
effectively compete with what the world has to offer. The only thing the Church can provide that
no one else has is a life changing, practical encounter-and on going
relationship— with the living God and with people transformed by similar
encounters. Until such a connection is
made, focusing on features, programs and benefits other than such a
life-shaping encounter is more likely to lose ground than to gain it (George Barna Updates, May 4, 2004). Simply
put, when commitment level is low, so are the results. If we are to become involved in people
lives to help lead them to Christ, we must be committed to seeing the process
through until the end, whatever that end may be. Introduction to Postmodernism There
is a swelling protest shouting from the depths of the human soul that the
physical and public side of the human universe cannot sustain our existence;
“Man shall not live by bread alone.”
We would do well to listen. -Out of all the age groups, those ages 18 to 32 are the least likely to
describe themselves as religious, as Christian, or as committed Christians. -Since 1991, the adult population in the -Young adults today in the -Young adults are avoiding church: Church attendance is declining by
generation. -Compared with teens throughout the past twenty years, today’s teenagers
have the lowest likelihood of attending church when they are living
independent of their parents. -The data regarding young people also poses the possibility that churches
are losing ground in terms of influence and may need to consider new
approaches (Barna out of Kimball, First
off, let me say that post-modernism is not “anti-modernism.” However, there are many “postmodernists”
who bash everything modern. What we, at HCC, are trying to do is to see and
to understand how Modernism has shaped our concepts of church, faith, and
spiritual formation. Some of the
concepts that are practiced by the “modern church” are “traditions” that are
more or less accepted standards rather than Scriptural mandates. The point is that not all modern is bad,
just as not all postmodern is bad.
Basically, what the post-moderns are calling for is a renovation; a
re-thinking of all aspects of our church and practices so that we can weed
out the Godly from the un-godly practices that we have adopted throughout the
years. There
will always be a generation gap between parents and their children. However, we are dealing with more than just
a generation gap when referring to the Baby-busters and the Millennials (Gen-X, Gen-Y, Etc). Let
me illustrate: Garth Brookes is a contemporary country western singer. As one would expect, he looks very
country. He wears country-western
ten-gallon hats and his shirts are country western. The edge of his guitar shows mother of
pearl western-style detailing. His
smile is country-western. This makes
reasonable and logical sense. We can
put this in a neat package and understand it. His music matches his image
with no contradictions. . . .But then a strange thing happened a few years
ago. Brooks, in a postmodern twist,
chose to “deconstruct” himself and his country image and to “reconstruct”
himself as a grunge-punk rock star named Chris Gaines. Instead of happy and smiling country
western Garth, we now have a brooding Garth (Chris Gaines) dressed in black. In his new persona, he released an album of
a sort of grunge-pop music that fits no modern categories. Garth, in essence, is bringing together two
opposing musical systems and two opposing fashion statements. Once country-western stars were
country-western stars, not deconstructed and reconstructed country and grunge-rock
dual personalities. Many
people have done this: Shania Twain
and Faith Hill are presented more and more like rock stars than
country-western artists. Madonna’s
self-titled record in 1984 reflects the look of the You
may be thinking, “What does this have to do with the church? We
now experience postmodernism in everyday life. It’s values have rapidly made their way
into our schools, TV. shows, movies, advertising, magazines, and
fashion. They have effected changes in
the way we view the world, human sexuality, religion, and spirituality. The communications and media explosion
brought by technology and the internet have only sped up this process. Image no longer needs to align with its
original meaning. The lines are fuzzy,
if they exist at all. Contradiction is
accepted. A
person can claim spiritual belief without living out that faith in any
genuine way. Contradiction in
spirituality is acceptable. And that
is exactly what we are seeing. In the
modern world, this was called hypocrisy;
but in the post-modern world, this is simply a way of life. This is why people such as Brittany Spears,
Christina Agularia, Jessica Simpson can profess to
be a “born again” Bible-believing Christian in public and also send hyper-sexual
messages through their appearance and lyrics.
Beliefs blatantly contradict actions, but from a postmodern
viewpoint; no harm done. Because
of this cultural change, we cannot simply just change the types of songs we
are playing to the “more hip” or popular songs. Likewise, we cannot just dim the lights and
add some candles to address this “postmodern” thing. We must re-think how we
have done things in the past, weed out that which is not Scriptural or relevant
to the upcoming/emerging generations, and go after them in a way that will
impact their lives through the world in which they live. Post-modern Beliefs Truth Post
modern's are very pragmatic because they do not believe absolute truth
exists. (Absolute truth is that which
is true for all people, in all times, and in all circumstances.) “Rejecting the idea of absolute truth, Xers believe that everything in life is negotiable. ‘In this way of viewing the world, since
there are no absolutes, all decisions and realities can be debated until an
accommodation is reached between the parties involved’” (Barna
in Zustiak, The Next Generation, 74). Therefore, they do not base their decisions
upon what is right or wrong; they base them simply on what works. “For them everything is relative” (Zustiak, The Next Generation, 73). And
while members of this generation who claim to be Christian might claim that
they believe in absolutes, the evidence of how they live their lives shows
that they do not believe in absolutes (for further research into this topic,
see George Barna’s Baby Busters). Deconstruction This
is one of the main concepts of the postmodern worldview. Deconstructionists reject the basic, historically accepted rules
concerning communication and understanding in language. They do not believe that words have
objective content. They teach that
meaning is not inherent in a text itself, but emerges only as the interpreter
enters into dialogue with the text. To
dialogue with the text means that the words presented are not sufficient in
themselves to communicate meaning. The
reader must infuse his own experiences and values into the text. This implies that all knowledge is
historically implicated. Nothing is
known apart from its cultural setting.
There are no culturally neutral facts.
Therefore, the meaning of a text is dependent on the perspective of
the one who enters into dialogue with it, so that there are as many
interpretations of a text as there are readers (Zustiak, The
Next Generation, 136-137). Deconstructionists'
do not believe in objective truth.
Therefore, reality is that which we create in our own minds. As a result, knowledge is not found so much
as it is made. “The words we use can
take on different shades of meaning depending upon who is speaking, who is
listening and the context in which it is spoken” (Zustiak,
The Next Generation, 137). So to
interpret the meaning of what someone is saying is to impose yourself upon
it; or in other words, to misread it. The
goal of the deconstructionist is to “deconstruct” a text to discover the true
meaning that is being covered or masked behind the words. This view causes postmodernists to be
suspect of all truth claims; and they treat them as if they were a cover-up
that they must deconstruct to find the real truth behind the lies. From
the church’s aspect, this means that “Scripture is placed at the mercy of the
culture, rather that Scripture critiquing and transforming culture” (Zustiak, The Next Generation, 138). Relativism Postmodernists reject the idea that truth is rational and absolute. They believe that truth can be non-rational
and even emotional and intuitive. For
the postmodern man, truth is at best relative and possibly even
nonexistent. Truth must be a mental
construct, something that man creates in his mind, but not something that
“really exists” as a universal absolute (Zustiak,
The Next Generation, 140). Naturally,
postmodernists believe that there are many truths, and no one truth is any
more valid than another. It is even
possible for truths to be diametrically opposed to one another. The postmodern worldview accepts this
because it doesn’t have a problem with contradiction. Einstein’s
theory of relativity has been accepted as the rule of thumb for society. 1.
There is no such thing as an
objective point of view in matters of physics; all viewpoints are relative in
time and space. 2.
Under some conditions, subjective
experience supersedes objective measurements. 3.
Space and time are relative, not
absolute, concepts and depend on such factors as relative motion and the
points of view of the observer. The postmodern mind transfers these assumptions to those areas of ethics,
morality, philosophy, and religion.
This means that there can be no absolute, objective points of view in
matters of morality and religion, only situational ethics (Zustiak, The Next Generation, 142). It
used to be that morals were based on the character of God (objectively). Now personal feelings determine what is
right for a person (subjectively). Postmodernists
place such a high regard upon their subjective feelings that they will accept
them over logic and objective facts.
They place a higher priority on relationships and experiences that
make them feel good as opposed to pursuing intellectual questions about what
constitutes truth. Spirituality Millenials, Gen. Xers,
etc are very interested in spiritual things.
However don’t make the mistake of assuming that “spiritual” is
synonymous with “Christian”. For
postmodernists, all religions (New Age, Eastern Mysticism, Native American
religious practices, Buddhism, etc) are considered legitimate sources to
investigate in their search for spiritual insight and meaning. Because their world view holds no absolute truths, this carries over into
their spiritual realm. For the typical [postmodern], no one religious
denomination or religious belief is the only tight one for all people at all
times. It is more a matter of “what
works for you.” Since they have
rejected the concept of absolute truth, there can be no objective standard by
which to measure any one belief.
Judgment, then, is based upon feelings, experience, and practicality (Zustiak, The Next Generation, 75). |
