I’m currently working on the bones of a book on Christian youth work. Here is some of my thoughts on the different ways Christians do youth work. I’d welcome any comments on these, as well as some sexy category names…
The broad category is “Christian work with young people”. Primarily, it has meant:
1) Youth ministry, which has meant the evangelisation, discipling and equipping for mission of young people. It has taken place within the local church, with the primary aspiration of drawing more young people into relationship with God and participation in the local church. To which I say, ‘Amen’! I became a youth worker through my participation in a church youth group. Because of the nurture I received, I was empowered to become a leader in the youth groups of this ministry, eventually taking the role of youth pastor.
2) Parachurch organisations such as YWAM, YCW, YFC, Scripture Union, chaplaincy bodies and Concern Australia do Christian work with young people, but they locate this work outside the context of the local church. In schools, prisons, homes, large youth events, the holiday season, drop-in centres and neighbourhoods, they often have similar aims to local church youth ministries. Though a sympathetic friend of the local church, their location ‘at arm’s length’ has created opportunities to utilise youth work philosophies & practices borrowed from social work agencies: employment programs; post-release initiatives; community development; counselling services etc.
3) Another form of Christian work with young people is these social work agencies mentioned above. Many social work agencies in Australia have strongly Christian roots and still have connections to the denominations that birthed them. Christian youth work in these agencies is done by Christians who are not ‘professional Christians’ as in youth ministry or parachurches, but work with Christian inspiration and vision and see their work as a full expression of their Christian identity, with equal value as an ‘explicitly’ Christian worker.
4) Yet another form of Christian work with young people is expressed when local congregations release youth leaders to work primarily with young people outside, or marginal to, the congregation, with little or no expectation that this work will result in increased numbers of young people attending. Admittedly, this is rare, but it is an important innovation. It recognises the role of the local church in serving the local community, outside of any benefit to itself in terms of numbers. In this form, Christians working with young people are playing a similar role to parachurch workers, but with a significant difference – they have a strong and ongoing connection to the local church.
5) One last form of Christian work with young people is that performed by people who are not Christians, but the character of their work can be affirmed as ‘in sympathy’ with the values of the Reign of God. How far such work can be affirmed is a thorny issue, but we need to at least acknowledge that such youth work is valuable, and to consider partnering where we can.
Those on FB may know that I have left it. I’m having some withdrawal symptoms involving a twitch in the hand when holding my phone, an automatic mouse move to the place where the FB shortcut was, and a niggling feeling that I am missing out on a debate, event or work-related opportunity.
And I definitely am missing out on something. In the same way that the telephone was once a luxury, but now is as necessary as a letter-box, Facebook has become almost essential if you work amongst anyone aged 10-30.
Justin & Jenny Duckworth are to blame – they have written a book called “Against the Tide, Toward the Kingdom” and one of their helpful ideas is that we all have things to chuck out of the boat. In this metaphor, the boat is what we travel in on our kingdom journey.
Facebook needs to be chucked out of my boat.
Nothing is more fallacious than wealth. It is a hostile comrade, a domestic enemy.
John Chrysostom, early church father
A few years ago I was talking with a young man who was really interested in God – we’ll the young guy “Brad”. Brad had been talking to a youth worker who was also a Christian. This youth worker told Brad that he had prayed for a vehicle and someone had donated a motorbike to him. Brad thought this was fantastic!
It was obvious that the youth worker believed strongly that God had directly intervened to make this happen. I don’t want to denigrate his obvious gratitude. I think that God can bless us financially or materially. But there are a few things to say about it.
First, any gift we receive from God has no connection to the depth or quality of our faith. We didn’t get it because we prayed better, lived better or sacrificed more. A deeper faith may lead us to realise that our gifts are truly from God, but a deeper faith is not why we received them.
Secondly, any gift we receive is held on behalf of others. That is the meaning of the body of Christ. Gifts are held by us, but God entrusts them to us for the benefit of others. They are not ours.
Thirdly, nowhere in the New Testament do we find God blessing people financially or with material possessions. We find that Jesus blesses people with sight, healing, inclusion, love, justice, forgiveness, but not with material possessions. In the early church, we find the same thing – people give away money, property and possessions rather than receiving them. When property, money or material possessions ARE mentioned, it is to narrate giving them away, guard against their dangers, advise the best use of them or condemn their abuse.
It’s therefore very difficult to argue that God gives us material and financial riches to enjoy. Instead, I would argue that when we do find ourselves with material possessions and money, a biblical response is to use them for the wellbeing of others, primarily those without the gifts we have received.
So, I need to ask this youth worker “For what purpose did God give you this house? How can it be a source of blessing for others?”
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I’ve been feeling a little down today as a few thoughts in my head coalesce. I feel a perfect storm is coming, a revelation of what our society is really like under the surface. The following is a little melancholy – be warned!
What are the winds that make this storm?
First, we have a rapidly ageing workforce, and a majority of the population will be beyond working age. Two major consequences flow from this: 1) that there will be less tax dollars to fund human services such as mental health, community development, youth work, family support etc; 2) a generation which is, in general, more likely to serve the community, is going to disappear soon.
Second, my wife came back from a work conference at which a Department of Human Services (DHS) senior bureaucrat foresaw the withering of the welfare sector as the financial crisis that is currently engulfing Europe inevitably finds its way to Australia. Funding to nonprofits and human services will be cut drastically, with the idea of the Big Society coming to the fore. The Big Society is a UK policy of devolution of responsibility for communities to the local level. Usually, I am all for a such a redistribution of power to the local level: it gives responsibility and ownership to people on the ground, who know what their community’s need. My first thought was – that’s great that the financial crisis has stimulated such a creative policy.
But then the crunch came.
Mark Sayers spoke at “Heartland”, a Christian youth work training event organised by Praxis and others in Bendigo. There, he mapped the cultural terrain that youth workers need to navigate. Mark’s main point is that youth and young adults approach life from a consumer perspective. That is, choices of all descriptions (phone, job, education, church, relationships) are re-framed in terms of what is good for the individual. The arena of decision-making has become the individual, rather than the community. Mark gave a rousing challenge to us there, to model wholehearted commitment to the cause of the reign of God.
You might be able to see the connections I’m making here. The factors of ageing population and financial crisis/Big Society require a new generation of people committed to the common good, who make decisions within that orbit rather than their personal needs. Great! But the pervasiveness of a consumerist worldview, across most of the population, means that people generally have a consumer approach to community service. I’ll do this homework club until I get bored; I’ll read to these kids until their parents frustrate me; I’ll visit the nursing home for as long as it’s ‘rewarding’; I’ll mentor those young people until I get a job offer interstate. This consumer approach to community service doesn’t build a community, it undermines it. Let me say that this attitude is not limited to young people and young adults.
What is needed? A body of people committed to the wellbeing of others and the community beyond personal comfort, whose source of motivation comes from beyond what others can give me. Sounds like the Church. Jesus Christ’s outright denial of a culture of reciprocity, which consumerism relies on (I’ll buy this if it gets me that; I’ll participate if I get X), is the good soil in which commitment to the common good can be fostered. And here is where I get alternately despondent and hopeful. On the one hand, the Church is withering away in Australia, and its numerically successful instances often rely on consumerism. On the other hand, there is a new movement of Christians excited about mission, pouring energy into their neighbours, schools, workplaces and communal institutions – that gives me courage!
However, if this ethic of community service doesn’t get passed on, and if the Church’s better angels don’t win out, and if the welfare sector we have contracted to do our dirty work for us is simply not there to hold back the tide, what’s going to happen? Wholesale breakdown of society. I’m not usually given to hyperbole, but I don’t see another option. Feel free to provide a more hopeful one.
In that day, the oddest book in the Bible, Revelation, will become eerily sensible. When humanity is stripped bare, when all the props have been knocked out, all that we have left is “patient endurance”. The book of Revelation advocates that the Church be the Church – if we allow God to shape us into that Church, there’s some hope.
G’day all – it’s been a long time between drinks! Apologies for that. I’ve been doing a fair amount of writing for study, and haven’t had time to write for this blog, although the list of blog post drafts is building up.
So, I’ve decided to inflict some of my writing from my study onto you. The first is from an essay on Evangelism and Community Development, sharing the faith and sharing the power. You are welcome to download the PDF version if you want the full whack of academic writing.
Evangelism and Community Development – Dave Fagg
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Evangelism needs Christian community development because without it, evangelism can only trace the outlines of the personal and corporate vision that the ‘good news’ advocates. Christian community development is a powerful way to help people participate in the kingdom of God, and within such participation the stories and ideas of the gospel come alive. From the Christian community development side, evangelism provides a risk factor without which Christian community development easily slides into secularised self-help mush. Evangelism points to a larger, deeper transformation, one that community development methods, even Christian ones, can only grasp at.
Evangelism and Christian community development have a number of similarities that make them natural partners:
• Theologically, they share narratives and doctrines
• They work best at grassroots level
• They are both on about transformational change
• They both value voluntary methods of change highly
• They work by reframing present reality in the terms of the kingdom of God
• Both believe the resources for change are (partly) present already in people’s lives
• Both are inspired by the possibility of “real change”, by historically concrete changes in people.
• Neither makes sense in a secular context without the other: without Christian community development, evangelism will be co-opted by consumer spirituality; without evangelism, community development will be co-opted by the welfare economy.
Given these similarities, evangelism and Christian community development can co-operate and integrate…
Both evangelism and Christian community development suffer from a weak theological base. Although this is not the time to develop a detailed theology of evangelical community development, there are three central theological themes that enable a theological interface between evangelism and Christian community development.
First, the doctrine of the Trinity. Taking a social Trinitarian approach, we can see that a community of mutual relationship is at the heart of God. This application to Christian community development is obvious. For evangelism, the application becomes clear when we take WJ Abraham’s view of evangelism as “primary initiation into the kingdom of God”, because his view is an inescapably corporate vision of evangelism, in which people are drawn into a relational life with respect to their salvation and their identity.
Secondly, a partially realised eschatology. Both evangelism and Christian community development passionately advocate transformed lives in the present. A view of the kingdom of God that recognises its ‘now…not yet’ tension enables evangelism to be concerned with current reality, and Christian community development to recognise that its aims lie beyond the horizon of contemporary social work theory. This eschatology sees that Jesus’ incarnation, life, death and resurrection has planted a tree, the roots of which are deep and strong, which will one day flourish into a tree for all to shelter in. What is the effect of such eschatology? As NT Wright puts it:
It gives us a view of creation which emphasises the goodness of God’s world, and God’s intention to renew it. It gives us, therefore, every possibly incentive, or at least every Christian incentive, to work for the renewal of God’s creation and for justice within God’s creation…[T]here is continuity between our present work and God’s future kingdom…(Wright, 1999:24)
Thirdly, a keen appreciation of the Holy Spirit’s work. For evangelism, it allows us to be confident that the Holy Spirit has already been working in people, awakening them to the possibility of God. For Christian community development, this prevenient grace enables us to work simultaneously with the intrinsic strengths of a community, knowing that these strengths are not wholly human, their true source being the Spirit of God.
On my radio show last night, I talked with Anglican theologian Charles Sherlock and Cornerstone’s Andy Vincent about RE in schools. Why do it? Should it be allowed? Should it get funding?
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It is a truism that the Church, in its Christendom form, is no longer at the centre of political and cultural influence. But in the blend of activities that make up our “Christian witness”, should the same fate befall the “church event”? I’m defining the “church event” as a time when Christians gather deliberately and publicly to worship God.
Against the background of plural worldviews and competing interests, the church event is assuming an increased profile in the struggle to maintain Christian identity, a bolstered status as the marker of what it means to be Christian. In the face of a secular culture, church events become sharply focussed as a way to remind ourselves who we are. Churches pour huge amounts of energy into the music, preaching, environment and promotion for church events. Compare this to the time of Christendom, when most went to church on Sunday and Australia was a “Christian nation”. The church event had less focus and less energy, because it was not the only reminder of Christian identity.
In Christendom, the church and its purpose was affirmed by other cultural markers of Christianity, such as public prayers, significant media comment by church officials, no Sunday trading, honouring of Christian holy days.
Now, the range of cultural markers of Christian identity has reduced. So, the church event has acquired increased importance. But should it be this way? What are the alternatives to spending huge amounts of time, energy and money on an event that still requires people to come to us? I still think the church event is crucial as a public opportunity for people to encounter God through the community of Jesus, but we need to spread our resources around. There are other expressions of church that need our attention.
Today I appeared at the Geelong Magistrates Court to answer for the crimes of (1) hindering police in their duty, and (2) blocking a road. The road happened to be the entrance to the military base at Swan Island, Queenscliff. Along with 8 others (hence the ‘9’), I was attempting to draw attention to Australia’s involvement in the Afghanistan war, and to make public my opposition to it.
I didn’t do this lightly, and had wrestled with both the idea of getting arrested, and with my convictions about war and violence. But us thinkers need to bite the bullet sometimes (not a very nonviolent metaphor, is it!), and do something, even when all the questions don’t have satisfactory answers.
We were arrested, and had our day in court today. We pleaded guilty to the offences. The magistrate found the charges to be proven, but did not record a conviction, and chose to dismiss the charges, and chose not to give us a punishment. It’s the legal equivalent of saying, “I know you did something wrong, but I like it!”. One of our number did receive a good behaviour bond (as a repeat offender) but still was not convicted.
Before we were sentenced, the magistrate allowed us to say a bit about why we broke the law. I hesitate to put my statement out there, because of 2 reasons: (1) There is a lot of misplaced talk of ‘heroism’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘inspirational’ applied to people who commit civil disobedience. I think it’s unwarranted unless the person is at real risk of jail time or harm. I am at risk of neither, nor do I like words like ‘heroic’ being applied to me; (2) the other reason is that I have a small, but significant profile in the Christian community of Bendigo. In smaller places, news that someone has been arrested spreads fast and can dent one’s reputation. Not that I care overly about my reputation, but if people are going to criticise me, then I’d rather they would do it from the basis of fact.
Please contact me to argue, disagree, converse etc. It’s what I love doing and I don’t mind talking about the tensions and difficulties in living out the good news of Jesus Christ.
This is what I had to say:
Your Honour knows from your records that in 2002, I was taken to court for refusing to vote in the 2001 Federal Election. I did so because of my belief that our political system tends to marginalise the powerless, and as a Christian I felt I needed to stand against it. I still think our political system is deeply flawed, but I now believe that I need to participate in it to reform it. So this year I voted in 2 elections…though their ambiguous results have hardly inspired me.
But that is what my actions at Queenscliff were basically about. I acted as a Christian citizen of a democracy. My trust in Jesus Christ inspires me to participate in our democracy for the sake of peace and justice. I can do this through voting, but I also take part in my community’s activities, and through my paid job as a youth worker. Political involvement means more than the ballot.
And when our government insists on fighting an unwinnable, immoral and unjust war, then we need to act. When our Prime Minister commits to another decade in Afghanistan, even though the war’s original reasons have been lost in the crippling need to appear resolute, then we need to voice our opposition forcefully. We have shown that such opposition can be done peacefully, and non-violently.
This war won’t root out terrorism: the war against terrorism needs to be fought with the weapons of peace or not fought at all. Using the violence of armies to extinguish the violence of small groups will only result in the proliferation of terrorism. We are already seeing that as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Most Australians implicitly realise that the Afghanistan war will not solve terrorism. And a majority of us want our nation to withdraw. As a citizen, I want to participate in the democratic process to persuade my government that their actions are wrong. Drawing attention to the secretive Swan Island military base is part of that persuasion.
Your Honour, my Christian beliefs inspire me to advocate for a just peace. I was often told as a child that that Australia is founded on Judeo-Christian values. I sincerely hope that it is, and those values would include those of Jesus Christ, who advocated loving our enemies and refusing to take revenge.
Jesus continued in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets, who called the leaders of their day to justice and mercy. And that is what I call our leaders to today – to forgo revenge, to love mercy and do justice by withdrawing our soldiers from Afghanistan.
Recently, a new “high energy” church just planted a franchise in Bendigo. It’s called ‘Enjoy Church’. It is similar in culture, aim and method as 2 other large churches in Bendigo. I immediately thought: “Are they in competition?”, and then thought – ”well, yes”. People who currently go to the other churches might decide to go to the new one, and the 2 established churches will need to work harder to distinguish themselves from the newcomer. Closer to home in my work (training Christian youth workers), there are about 15 different Christian groups in Victoria offering training to their youth workers. My organisation is trying to persuade young adults to do our course – simultaneously the 15 other groups are doing exactly the same thing. How can there NOT be competition?
After having these thoughts, and I tend to have them frequently (not sure what that says about my state of mind!), I tell myself: “Dave, stop thinking that. We’re not in competition. We’re all in the same game.” Christian leaders often say the same thing: “We are not in competition”. When a new church starts up down the road, or a ministry begins that needs the same sorts of leaders as you do…”We are not in competition”.
Let’s take a look at this aversion to competition, or the aversion to publicly admitting it. For this blog, I’m not examining the role of competition in business, sport etc, but between Christians groups.
Ostensibly, we don’t want to compete because we believe we are part of the “one body” of Jesus Christ. That’s true in an abstract sense. All people following Jesus are working towards revealing the Reign of God in all dimensions of life. However, this is not true in a practical sense – we are not working in one big church or mission organisation. There isn’t one “Jesus Church” to which all of us are members. There isn’t one big mission agency. Instead, there are thousands of groups, denominations, agencies etc, all trying to do the same thing in different ways. I think this is basically a good thing, because it allows variety of expression.
However, often these different bodies are quite similar: they have similar objectives, try to connect with a similar demographic, and need similar types of leaders. This is not a problem for anyone until these groups find themselves in the same ‘territory’, whether that be a university, neighbourhood, city or ‘media space’. When this happens, competition can’t help but occur. It doesn’t usually occur on the level of the people they are trying to reach; there’s more than enough people to go around. But it happens more on the level of money and people. Money to resource their activities, and people to be contributors to making a Christian ministry or mission happen.
Up to now, I’ve been describing the situation, but the question is – Is Christian competition bad? Regular readers of this blog will know that I am going to give some thoughts on both sides of the question.
Christian competition is bad
On the ‘Yes’ side, Henri Nouwen certainly thought competition was in (umm) competition with the values of the Kingdom. He reveals:
I am constantly surprised at how I keep taking the gifts God has given me– my health, my intellectual and emotional gifts– and keep using them to impress people, receive affirmation and praise, and compete for rewards. (The Return of the Prodigal Son)
Christians in competition communicate that even when groups are on about the same thing, they can’t work together, a disappointing advertisement for the command to ‘love one another’. It’s a drain on the resources of time, energy and money of Christian groups. They all need to spend themselves in self-promotion in order to show their distinctiveness amongst the others, and self-promotion is poison to the good news. Smaller groups, who need to continue their valuable ministry, end up folding while the strong, populated and wealthy groups cannibalise the rest. Competition simply reflects the values of the success-oriented culture we find ourselves in.
Christian competition is good
On the ‘No’ side, arguing for competition as a necessary dimension of our existence:
[T]he Bible describes human beings making choices to stand against natural limitations of any kind when these are the result of the Fall, of sin, or of a broken world. Competition is necessary in order to struggle for that balance required to live …We compete in order to fulfill our purpose as human beings and live. (Udo Middelmann)
The benefits of competition are well-argued by economists, and I think some of them apply to Christian groups as well. There are often Christian groups and churches in which there is little spark left. Christ is with them as ‘two or three gathered together’, but as an organised group it is time for them to disband. A little competition from other groups can be persuasive. Competition also helps us clarify what our special ‘charism’ or gift is. Rubbing up against other groups refines what we are trying to do, and motivates us to improve what we do.
A Way Forward
In Perspectives on Competition – Christian & Otherwise, Dr. Sharon G. Johnson and Dr. Galen Smith give 4 approaches to Christian competition, in which they frame the question in terms of Christ’s relationship to competition:
1. CHRIST RESISTS COMPETITION: In this approach, competition is seen as antithetical to Christianity. It deserves no place in the individual or communal endeavours of Christians. It is a symptom and sign of evil in our world.
2. CHRIST AND COMPETITION IN PARTNERSHIP: In this approach, competition is an aid to the work of Christ in the world, and Christians should be involved in it. God is a competitive God!
3. CHRIST REFORMS COMPETITION: competition is seen as a qualified good, that Christians should be involved in, but need to challenge at some points. It is given by God, but in a fallen world is in need of redemption.
4. CHRIST AND COMPETITION IN PARADOX: this approach holds an uneasy tension with competition, recognising that the Bible warns against competitiveness, but also recognising that Christians are often in situations of competition that may contribute to the Reign of God.
My preference, when thinking about competition between Christian groups for resources (time, energy, money), is for the 4th approach. Competition exists, it can be good and it can be bad, it’s consequences can be good and bad, at times it seems to reveal God’s character, at times it seems to obscure it.
Your preference?
Yes, I know it says “September”…I’m just slow at getting these shows up.
On this show, we interview Terry Hunter, gluten-free bread inventor and theologian, as does Carl Rusbridge, chaplain at Maryborough Education Centre.
Plus, important news about the Pope’s fashion choices.
