Wearing Our Colors and Living on the "Other Side"

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Originally published in September 1996.

“Out of the corner of her eye, Lena Horne saw what looked like a small, dark-brown bag falling from the window of the 14-story apartment building at 3833 South Langley Avenue. It hit the ground less than 20 feet from her feet and lay there motionless amid the debris scattered around the courtyard. Lena thought it was a bag of trash. As the thirteen year old walked to the rear entrance of the building and banged on the door, a boy rushed up and begged her for help. ‘Somebody just threw my brother from the window,’ he pleased. Lena ignored him.

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Revolutionary Truth

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Originally published in June 1996.

“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” John 14:6.

This is a favorite verse of many teachers and preachers. There has been plenty said about Jesus being the Way. You can only get to heaven through Jesus. Not by works, not by status. The lesson of Jesus being the way is very important.

Jesus being the Life is also taught a lot. I know I have taught that a lot. I love the thought of life is more than what you get in heaven. Life is also here on earth. We don’t have to live by Satan’s rules which kill and destroy. We have abundant life—even in trials and tribulations we have a hope that brings life. I love this message!

The part of John 14:6 that is not often preached is Jesus being the Truth. In a world full of lies and deception, there is truth—bottomline and absolute truth.

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Freeing Truth

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Originally published in April 1996.

Col Jessup: “Do you want answers?”

Lt. Tom Caffee: “I think I’m entitled to them.”

Col. Jessup: “You want answers?”

Lt. Tom Caffee: (with a dramatic fist slammed to the table) “I want the truth!”

Col. Jessup – “You can’t handle the truth!” (From the movie, A Few Good Men)

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Refreshing Truth

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Originally published in March 1996

“Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” John 3:18-19.

This is the verdict. The talk now is of what were you doing when the O.J. verdict was given. Years ago it was what were you doing when you saw man walk on the moon or when JFK was shot or even when the Challenger blew up. Now it has come to the O.J. verdict. Oh please.

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Of Sparrows and Lost Teens

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Originally published in January 1993

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:29-31.

I may not know a lot of sparrows who have fallen but I do know a lot of the teens I have worked with who have fallen. I can picture them as sparrows hitting a glass window (splat!), falling injured and not knowing how to get up. The idea of God’s grace is inconceivable. The politics of church life are as secular as in the real world. The picture of God does not seem to square up with the real world.

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Holy Tension

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As part of our Lenten observations this year, each week (including Easter) a teen is teaching an object lesson to the church. These teens are the recipient of years of children’s sermons, particularly at Advent, so I thought I would create a little holy tension in them by proposing they teach the church family in a way they were recipients of when they were younger.

The volunteer the first week was a new member to our group and not the recipient of those children’s sermons. But he volunteered to do the first week, much to my surprise. He experienced lots of holy tension as he set the stage for the following weeks as well as being new to the church family. What would inspire the “new kid” to volunteer for this project at all--and for the first week? I thanked his parents because their impact was obvious. Yet still what drew the “new kid” to this challenge?

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The Faith Task of Responding in the Age of Delayed Adolescence

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Most of us work with teens meaning that once they graduate high school they leave the youth ministry and supposedly join the adult world.  Or at least the adult world of college and singles.  However there has been a growing trend of what is termed delayed adolescence.  The coined word for this new life stage is Youthood.   Chap Clark, for Fuller Youth Institute, did a great job of surmising this new life stage, “By the 1960s the end of adolescence was still generally accepted to be around age 18 to 19, for young people left high school and pretty much decided who they were and what they were going to do with their lives. While the social revolution of the late ’60s and early ’70s was fueled by the dreams of a newly emerging young adult force willing to take responsibility to right the wrongs of former generations, it further lengthened adolescence. For those who could afford it, college moved from being the preparation phase for young adults to halfway houses for old high schoolers. ‘What are you going to study?’ was a question that actually made sense in the early 1970s—but it’s met by blank stares today! In contemporary society, graduate school is often a place to ‘find oneself,’ and numerous studies attempt to understand the historically unheard of phenomenon of 30-somethings who have Ph.D.s living at home or waiting tables who have yet to ‘discover what they want to do.’” (Chap Clark, “Youth Ministry in the Age of Delayed Adulthood” )

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Lifelong Habit of Spiritual Responses

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I’ve been living out a story that I thought I would never have to.  One of the boys I’ve been raising was arrested for murder.  It’s hard enough to fathom that he witnessed a murder, a violent shooting death over a drug deal gone bad.  But he was there, in the car along for a ride to the mall.  Suddenly his entire life is different.  And I’m feeling pain I never imagined bearing.

This Randy is one of my leaders, been on a mission trip and he’s been being discipled by me for nearly four years.  Yet this is not his first arrest but this one is murder.  He witnessed a murder and never told anyone. How do you not tell anyone?  How do you have friends that commit murder, much less everything else that led up to it?

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Why Do We Expect Our Youth To Take a Decision About Faith Into Adulthood?

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A question was asked by a youth pastor, not to me directly but to a group.  It was “Why does it seem that Christianity, or the church, has no power to keep youth, or most people, for that matter, in relationship with God?  How many of us have seen kids who have a genuine conversion and relationship to God, on fire with excitement and enthusiasm, seem to slip away and go back to the old ways?”

Who reading this can relate to this question?  All hands raised right?  Both hands too, right?  I know I also have my feet in the air.

There were a lot of answers.  Some of the answers were to uphold the youth more in prayer; we work so hard to get youth to feel that high, that we never really teach them how to stay there; we haven’t taught them how to make God the center of their lives because He is in our lives already, the teens don’t know where to begin; discipleship is missing; spending too much time on issues and not enough on teaching life lessons; not providing enough mentoring; and lack of follow up.

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Teaching A "To" Faith

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You are probably all too familiar with this scenario.  You are catching up with one of your teens who’s been missing youth group lately and who you’ve also heard things about.  You decided to order a “just-checking-in” pizza with this student.  In the discussion over that pizza he/she simply tells you that, “I’m going to have fun now and come back to God when I’m older.”  Decision made.  You say some desperate encouraging words back but then you watch this teen leave and you are filled with dread for him/her.  You know all you can do is pray, particularly for protection for the upcoming years.

These stories hurt.  These stories are why youth ministry can be so hard.

The band Slick Shoes are of the social punk genre who had large exposure from the Vans Warped Tour.  They signed with Tooth & Nail in 1997 but when that contract ended they chose a new label, Side One Dummy Label.

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Providing Innocent Laughter

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Innocent laughter is when someone, preferably the teens whom we love, breaks out in giggles and joy from something simple.  Not contrived laughter.  Not schemed laughter.  Just simple laughter that happens when there is safety and relationships.

This frivolity of fun is a part of youth ministry.  Yes, it is not one of those more spiritual parts.  Or is it?  I believe providing a place for innocent laughter is an important part of youth ministry.  So much so that it must be planned.

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