Archives For Discipleship

Reading and teaching the Bible as more than soundbites

April 18, 2013 — Leave a comment

This video shows why N.T. Wright is such an influential theologian at the moment. In just seven minutes he explains how you should read the Bible: as a whole, not as a collection of soundbites. His analogy of listening to only a part of a symphony instead of the whole thing is as brilliant as it is understandable. I also love that he especially wants to challenge students to read the whole Bible, whole books and not just verses and soundbites.

NT-WRIGHT

N.T. Wright on How to read the Bible

(embedding was disable for this video, so you’ll have to watch it on YouTube)

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In Discipleship, You and God , ,
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The discipleship approach that got Paul Martin fired

February 13, 2013 — 7 Comments

Paul Martin is a youth pastor who has just moved from Birmingham, Alabama to a small town in Nebraska (wow, talk about a change of scenery!) and he has recently published the brilliant book Masterpiece: The Art of Discipling Youth (be sure check out the review of Masterpiece we did). Since I only know Paul from his equally brilliant blog, I thought I’d ask him some questions about his book, discipling, youth ministry and whatnot.

A lot of books are written from what Bill Hybels calls a ‘holy discontent’, was it the same for you?

It’s true in the sense that this was a book I needed to write. I felt crazy for 15 years for how I did discipleship and youth ministry. I worked in several churches but what they said and wanted me to do, was different from what I did.

I was working in this church and at a certain point I was told that I needed to learn to perform. Only six months before I had exceeded all expectations in my review, but now they were unhappy with how I was doing things. There had been budget cuts and I had lost my staff. We didn’t have money anymore, so I started to do discipleship the way Jesus did it. And I ended up getting fired for it.

Still, it was worth it. It was one of those moments where you discover what is really important and God mattered more to me than job security. And in Masterpiece I basically wanted to explain myself, to show what I’ve been doing all these years.

Would you be willing to be fired for your convictions on discipleship? That's what happened to Paul Martin.

Would you be willing to be fired for your convictions on discipleship? That’s what happened to Paul Martin.

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In Discipleship, Interviews
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Book Review: Masterpiece

February 8, 2013 — 8 Comments

masterpieceYouth pastor Paul Martin has written an exceptional book on discipleship in youth ministry called Masterpiece: The Art of Discipling Youth. It’s not your standard how to guide with a program or a ten-step outline. Instead, Paul offers the values that enable a relationship-oriented approach to discipleship.

Here are the values he discusses:

Process over outcomes

Dynamic over static

Heuristic over Algorithmic

Specific over Vague

Personal over Impersonal

Internal Value over External Value

Implicit over Explicit

When reading Masterpiece, I constantly had this ‘Aha-Erlebnis’ as the Germans call them. It’s reading something that you have felt or experienced, but never put into words. In that sense, this book was a fest of recognition because I saw Paul describing a lot of stuff that I’ve been doing over the years…though never formally linked to discipleship.

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In Book reviews, Discipleship
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Guest post: Doing youth ministry in the right family context

November 20, 2012 — 5 Comments

As I have seen my youth ministry philosophy change over the past ten years, I must say that my view of parents has changed with time.

When I was first involved in youth ministry out of Bible College, I saw parents as needed – they needed to be communicated with/to, they needed to sign permission slips, they were important in the lives of students – but my primary focus was on the students. For most of my time in ministry I have focused the majority of my time and energy on students. How do we best reach students? How do we best communicate to students the life changing truths of the Gospel? Etc., because at the end of the day my role is Director of Student Ministries or Student Pastor or Youth Pastor.

I think that as leaders we get so focused on our primary audience that we miss the context that we must minister in.

We often do ministry as if parents do not matter. We think that if we can just get the students in our doors, then we will be able to change them (with God’s help of course… maybe) and send home this perfect little angel of our molding. But we know this is not true: we know that this idea grates against the Biblical family models (plus a whole lot of philosophical issues as well).

We need to do youth ministry as if we truly believe the family context that Psalm 78 lays out.

The Bible gives us a clear family context for doing youth ministry in Psalm 78. We can’t do youth ministry as if the parents don’t matter. (photo: Ben Earwicker)

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In Discipleship, Leadership
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The church and the paradigm shift in youth ministry

October 31, 2012 — 3 Comments

There’s a paradigm shift happening in youth ministry right now. But does your church see this as well? One comment on the previous post showed this isn’t always the case:

Many church leaders are exponents of the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ adage, and therefore they need clear reasoning to understand why the old paradigm has ceased to work.

The question therefore is: where does this paradigm shift come from? Why doesn’t the old paradigm work anymore?

This is one of those questions where it’s important to find and formulate your own answers. The reason for this is that youth ministry is shifting from one-size-fits-all to personal and highly contextual. I can’t tell you what works or doesn’t work in your context, I can only offer some basic ‘guidelines’, a basic paradigm if you wish.

But it’s taken me about two years to define this new paradigm, to thoroughly analyze the current state of affairs in youth ministry and figure out my convictions as to where youth ministry should be heading. I really advise you to take that time as well.

Some resources I found very helpful were:

  • Marko’s Youth Ministry 3.0 – especially because of his spot on analysis, I didn’t agree with all his recommendations
  • Kenda Creasy Dean’s Almost Christian – shows how little the old paradigm has really impacted students’ faith
  • The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry from Andrew Root – not an easy read, but a great challenge to take youth ministry more serious, especially theologically
  • Tony Jones’ Postmodern youth ministry – a bit of an oldie, but still very interesting
  • Mark Yaconelli’s Growing Souls – reading about experiments in a completely different way of doing youth ministry really challenged my convictions

Only when you are deeply convinced for yourself the old paradigm for youth ministry isn’t working and have a clear view of a new one, only then will you be able to explain it to your church.

Churches historically don’t have the best track record when it comes to adapting to change. How does your church feel about the paradigm shift in youth ministry?

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In Discipleship, Leadership, Personal growth , , ,
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Guest post: Are your students ‘doers’ or just ‘hearers’?

October 24, 2012 — 2 Comments

One of the most effective ways to make sure your students are grasping your point, is to have them apply the information you are teaching through community service.  Not only is this biblical, but it will address the different learning styles of your students -  more will understand your message through doing rather than hearing only.

Many of us learned James 1:22 in the King James Version:

“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” 

If you want to increase the chance your students will master the material you are presenting, help them apply the lesson to their lives.  God will bless the work of your students when they take action and obey his command to serve others.  Look for ministries – in your community or around the world – that will allow you to give your students the opportunity to apply your lessons and to obey God’s command to serve others.

Serving abroad is also a great way to become a doer of the Word and not just a hearer…

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In Discipleship, Practical stuff
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Are you showing or telling your students?

September 20, 2012 — Leave a comment

There’s an old adagio for writers, a golden rule if you wish. It’s this:

Show, don’t tell.

It’s about the difference between telling a reader what he should know, conclude, feel and showing him the situation, allowing for room for his or her own interpretation and emotions.

As a writer (while my main activity is non-fiction writing, I’m very much in love with fiction writing as well), this rule is very familiar to me. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to execute.

You see, telling is a lot faster than showing. Instead of finding the exact right words to picture someone being disappointed, I just write: He was disappointed.

Telling is more controllable than showing. Instead of hoping that the reader concludes for himself that the main character made a bad decision, I simply say: That was the biggest mistake he’d ever made.

Telling is more comfortable than showing. If I can just tell a character experiences pain, I don’t have to try and imagine what feeling pain looks like, feels like, shows up like.

And you know what, it’s exactly the same in youth ministry.

We can tell teens what the Gospel means, or we can show them.

We can tell them we love them and value them, or we can show them.

We can tell them what they should do, or we could show them what a disciple of Jesus looks like.

We can tell them what they should think, or we can show them what a transformed mind thinks like.

Showing is messy however. Showing costs time and energy. Showing has no clear, controlled outcome, not defined process, no one-surefire-way to success. Showing requires trust, patience and the art of letting go. Showing is a lot harder than telling.

But it’s so worth it. If we want true change, real discipleship, radical transformation, showing is the only way…

Are you showing your students God’s love or are you merely telling it?

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In Discipleship, Leadership, Personal growth
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What theology does your worship teach?

April 26, 2012 — 4 Comments

“While I was growing up, my basic understanding of Scripture was that the Bible is a road map or user’s manual for the Christian faith. There are some individual stories within the manual that taught me, but I had a hard time seeing a connection between those individual stories. This mentality led me to a faith that was confusing, frustrating, and extremely unsettling at times. (…) It was as though I had a bunch of puzzle pieces that showed little bits of the larger picture, but they didn’t make any sense on their own.”

(Jon Huckins – Teaching Through the Art of Storytelling)

I’m reading Teaching through the art of storytelling right now (a very interesting book by the way – I’ll post a review when I’ve finished it) and came across this quote. It struck a nerve in me, as I completely recognize this. I grew up in church as well, but I didn’t see the big picture either until later, despite being a committed Christian.

I’ve been thinking about what it takes to present our young people with the bigger picture for a while now, to connect the dots for them or help them to do that themselves. And one of the things this process has made me wonder about is the role of the type of worship songs we use in youth services or youth small groups.

What theology does your worship teach? Does it reinforce this fragmented puzzle of what being a follower of Jesus is about? Or does it support the bigger picture?

What theology does your worship teach? Does it present a full picture of God or only selected pieces of the puzzle?

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In Discipleship
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Creative ideas for memorizing Scripture

April 17, 2012 — 6 Comments

In the church I grew up in, we spent quite some time memorizing Bible verses. We always had vacation Bible weeks for kids where we were taught one or more verses, we did the same every Sunday in Sunday school and even the teen ministry gave it a shot.

But after that, I didn’t devote much attention or time to memorizing Scripture. In the last few years however, I’ve become more and more convinced of the importance of knowing verses, passages and maybe even whole chapters or books from the Bible by head.

If you want to know the many benefits of memorizing Scripture, I refer you to this excellent post (with very inspiring quotes) by John Piper and a more recent one from Sermon Central. I’m convinced that memorizing Scripture is a very important part of discipling our young people and I’d love to do more of this in youth ministry.

Memorizing Scripture is a powerful discipling tool in youth ministry.

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In Discipleship, Small groups, You and God , ,
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Challenges of postmodern youth ministry: reaching the unchurched

March 15, 2012 — 2 Comments

We’re doing a series on Postmodern Youth Ministry this week and the challenges it brings. After a brief discussion of what postmodernism is exactly we’ve examined the meaning of truth in postmodernism and how we can communicate the Truth to a generation that doesn’t believe in absolute truths. Today we want to study another challenge postmodernism brings us: the issue of reaching the unchurched.

Friendship evangelism under attack

Friendship evangelism by peers has been the  ‘golden standard’ in evangelism for the last decade or so, but it’s being challenged by the effects of postmodern culture:

  • Church attendance is declining, making the number of young Christians smaller and smaller. That’s an even bigger problem if you realize this generation of young people is the single biggest generation ever (1). That leaves us with very few Christian young people to reach a huge mass of unchurched youth.
  • Those young people that do still come to church don’t always adhere to ‘orthodox Christianity’ (for lack of a batter word), but often have a faith that isn’t exclusively Christian or exclusively focused on Christ (see the discussion on Moral Therapeutic Deism in the post What is postmodernism). That makes them less than suitable for spreading the good news, since they haven’t exactly found that good news themselves.
  • A third aspect is the effect of extended adolescence, which results in young people postponing becoming an adult with the accompanying responsibilities. Evangelism, reaching your peers, that sounds like a very adult and mature thing to do for many young people and often they see it as something they’ll ‘do later in life’. Also, they feel like they’re not ready to share their faith yet, like they’re too young.
  • The basis of friendship evangelism (namely spiritual conversations with your friends in which you slowly discussed Christianity) is threatened by how postmodernism views truth and religion and by the extreme tolerance it brings. Striking up a spiritual conversation won’t be a problem, but proposing Christianity as the single only ‘right’ religion, that’s not something that runs contrary to modern culture.
  • Another objective of friendship evangelism was often for young people to invite their friends to a youth group activity or event. That particular style may no longer fit this postmodern generation, who is far more focused on community, relationships, experiences and authenticity.

Peer friendship evangelism, long the 'golden standard' in youth evangelism, is under pressure from the effects of postmodernism.

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In Discipleship, Youth culture , ,
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