It is critical for church leadership to challenge believers to be in the Word of God, consistently growing in their knowledge of the Scriptures. One way to do that is to teach and encourage study of the Scriptures in the context of the grand narrative of redemption. I try to read the Bible in the way it unfolds. The Bible is not a series of isolated morality tales. Instead, by looking at it as a whole through a Christ-centered lens, I read the Scriptures with the whole story of redemption in mind….

Churches today face some big challenges. One of the greatest is the evangelical angst occurring in North America. Evangelicals in our country are just not sure of who they are or where they’re going.

Perhaps what evangelicals need most right now is a strategy for biblical literacy. We need to reengage the biblical narrative and immerse ourselves in consistent study. It will help us be more gracious and winsome in the way we communicate. It will help us have a clearer view on controversial issues. It will help us to understand and communicate a clear Gospel as laid out in the Scriptures — a Gospel of the cross and of the Kingdom. The Word of God is essential to where we are right now.

Read it all.

Why do young Christians leave the church?

New research by the Barna Group finds they view churches as judgmental, overprotective, exclusive and unfriendly towards doubters. They also consider congregations antagonistic to science and say their Christian experience has been shallow.

The findings, the result of a five-year study, are featured in You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith, a new book by Barna president David Kinnaman. The project included a study of 1,296 young adults who were current or former churchgoers.

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While many pastors and parents have heard horror stories about children straying into dark corners online, few are aware of just how common these problems have become ”” even in their sanctuaries and homes.

This is the kind of danger and sin that religious leaders often fear discussing, precisely because these realities have not remained bottled up in the secular world. Thus, Heil urged his listeners to ponder the following statistics in his presentation, drawn from mainstream research in the past year:

Ӣ Two-thirds of Americans under the age of 18 have reported some kind of negative experience while online. Only 45 percent of their parents are aware of this.

Ӣ Forty-one percent of children say they have been approached online by some kind of stranger, possibly an older predator.

Read it all, another from the long line of should-have-already-been-posted material.

Challenging the cultural climate is a major component of the new apologetics, said Sean McDowell, head of Worldview Ministries. “The apologetics resurgence has been sparked ultimately by teens who are asking more questions about why people believe the things they do,” he said. “Those who thought that kids in a postmodern world don’t want an ideology were wrong.”

Greg Stier, founder of Dare 2 Share Ministries, agrees. “[Teens] are aware of the latent apologetic conversations in culture””Harry Potter, for example””and want to react,” he said.

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Irish society is not just suffering from the sex abuse scandal but from a failure to pass on the faith to the younger generation, said the archbishop of Dublin.

“We have to completely, radically change the way we pass on the faith,” Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told Catholic News Service May 16. “Our parishes are not places where evangelization and catechesis are taking place.”

The archbishop traveled to Washington to present the Order of Malta Inaugural Lecture, “Faith and Service: the Unbreakable Bond.” During his speech and in remarks to CNS beforehand, he spoke of the declining practice of the faith in Dublin — 18 percent of Catholics regularly attend Sunday Mass — and of the need to give young people responsibility in the parish to reinvigorate them.

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“Within the Church,” the Pontiff said, “believers’ first steps along the way of Christ must always be accompanied by a sound catechesis that will allow them to flourish in faith, love and service.”

He continued: “Christian revelation, when accepted in freedom and by the working of God’s grace, transforms men and women from within and establishes a wonderful, redemptive relationship with God our heavenly Father, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit.

“This is the heart of the message we teach, this is the great gift we offer in charity to our neighbor: a share in the very life of God.”

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Fifteen teens and youth minister, Oeland Camp, from St. Paul’s, Summerville walked 4.4 miles from Summerville’s town square to the I-26 overpass and back carrying wooden crosses Saturday. Cole Sanders, an 18-year-old Pinewood Preparatory student came up with the idea after seeing the “famous man who carries his cross across town.”

“I thought ”˜Why don’t I do that?’” Sanders said. “I told all my friends and this happened.”

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The Archbishops of Canterbury and York and more than 30 bishops committed themselves to making young people a priority in the Church of England, when they attended a conference held in Sheffield last week.

The Regeneration Youth Summit took place at St Thomas’s, Phila­delphia Campus, on Thursday of last week, and was organised by the Church Army, the Archbishop of York Youth Trust, and a group of young people, including Sam Follett, aged 20, the youngest member of the General Synod.

More than 120 people aged from 15 to 21, and about 30 youth workers, discussed ways of better equipping the Church to reach out to young people. All delegates were invited to sign a pledge committing to the work of the Church and young people.

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Moving Images, Changing Lives by Sarah Brush and Phil Greig uses popular films to engage young people creatively with the themes and ideas associated with Confirmation and discipleship via a course of 11 sessions.

There are clips from more than 30 films, including Star Wars: A New Hope (where Obi Wan Kenobi faces Darth Vader in combat), Bruce Almighty, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (showing the reanimation of life on earth), Big Fish, The Miracle Maker, Notting Hill, The Matrix, Dogma, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Dolores Umbridge’s speech), The Passion of the Christ and The Life of Brian. All lead to discussions, the study of Scripture, fun ice-breakers and prayer.

Read it all.

Leaders from the Church of England have gathered in Sheffield to meet over 150 young people.

The Bishop of Sheffield, Right Reverend Dr Steven Croft attended the event at St Thomas’ Church in Hillsborough alongside Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams and the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu.

The event, called ‘Regeneration’ was a summit led by young people aged between 15 and 21-years-old, giving them an opportunity to talk about how young people feature in the churches agenda.

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More than 100 young people are preparing to meet with Church of England bishops at a national summit in Sheffield where the future of the church will be discussed.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, will be attending the Regeneration Youth Summit on March 3rd along with more than 25 bishops and 30 youth leaders.

Regeneration is being led by young people, aged between 15 and 21 years old, and offers them a unique opportunity to meet with bishops on their terms. Throughout the day they will seek to make the future generation a priority for the Church of England and discuss in small groups how the church can better equip, resource and reach young people in the UK.

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Check their website here; I will post more on this tomorrow.

The study pointed out that relatives were most often esteemed because of goals accomplished, personality traits, and overcoming adversity, while friends were most highly regarded because of the encouragement and support they provide the teen. Faith leaders received recognition because of their strong spiritual convictions, their moral lifestyles, and because the teen hopes to pattern their lives like these leaders. Coaches and teachers also made the grade because teens hope to follow their lifestyles and because of the encouragement coaches and educators dole out.

Not surprisingly, entertainers and sports figures are recognized most often for their talent. However, the profiles of the two types of celebrities diverge from there. Entertainers earned teens’ attention not only with their humanitarian efforts but also with fashion and money. In contrast, sports stars scored points with teens based on their accomplishments as well as their ability to overcome adversity.

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…somewhere around the 10 year point in my own youth ministry experience, I began to realize that I was teaching on some of the same topics over and over again, and there was really no plan guiding me. Looking over the messages I had delivered over the previous three years, I discovered that we spent almost six times as much time in the New Testament as we did in the Old Testament; that we spent more time studying general topics than we spent studying specific biblical texts; and that our teaching curriculum was more a reflection of my training and biases than it was a reflection of the whole counsel of God.

I took my concerns to our volunteers and we began with the basic premise that we might have a student in our ministry for three years. On the basis of that assumption, and with input from our pastor and some members of our Youth Advisory Team, we developed a curriculum plan of topics and texts that we wanted our teenagers to be exposed to prior to graduation. For students who were in our youth group from grades 7-12, we decided there was no harm in their repeating the cycle a second time as long as we used different lesson plans.

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A BBC Today audio report on this is described as follows:

A Church of England bishop has called on Anglican clergy to take the Church’s message to young people by trying to address the fundamental questions of life and death. Dr Graham Kings, the Bishop of Sherborne, in Dorset, says a lack of religious knowledge is one of the causes of religious doubt. Robert Pigott reports.

Listen to it all (about 3 1/2 minutes).

You may also find much more about this ministry here.

1. Is youth ministry killing the church? by Kate Murphy (February 4)
I’ve always met young Christians through youth programs. I’ve been hired by churches that expect regular events created exclusively to minister to young people. But I wonder now if we’re ministering them right out of the church.

Read it all and follow the links to the articles/posts if you have not seen them.

If you’re the parent of a Christian teenager, Kenda Creasy Dean has this warning:

Your child is following a “mutant” form of Christianity, and you may be responsible.

Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls “moralistic therapeutic deism.” Translation: It’s a watered-down faith that portrays God as a “divine therapist” whose chief goal is to boost people’s self-esteem.

Dean is a minister, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of “Almost Christian,” a new book that argues that many parents and pastors are unwittingly passing on this self-serving strain of Christianity.

Read it all

“Entertainment for the sake of entertainment is missing the point,” said Cameron Cole, director of youth ministries at [Cathedral Church of the] Advent. “A lot of youth ministry focuses on entertainment and behavior modification, not on long-term spiritual formation. If there’s no belief system that undergirds it, there’s not much foundation on which to stand.”

Anglican theologian Ashley Null, a chaplain for the U.S. Olympic team, led a discussion about pressures on youth ministers to entertain, draw numbers and “fix kids.”

The push to perfection for both youth ministers and youth can be destructive, he said. “Are you pursuing perfection to your own harm?” he asked. He urged ministers to embrace God’s grace and love of imperfection.

“Love does strange things to us,” he said. “We gladly make changes out of love.”

Read it all and enjoy thew lovely picture of Ashley Null.

Yes, evangelicals do have more retention of youth than mainline churches. But it is unfair to say that this is because evangelicals care more about keeping them. As someone who grew up as an evangelical and who is now in a mainline denomination, I see a different way of analyzing this trend. Rather than evangelicals caring more, they engage in the business of scaring more (sorry for the pun, it just worked well.)

Mainline denominations are uninterested in telling youth that they are going to burn in Hell if they don’t commit to Christianity and regularly come to church. Evangelicals, on the other hand, do. Mainline denominations are uninterested in guilting their members into attending; evangelicals see no problem with this. It’s a matter of philosophy. Evangelicals are consequentialists when it comes to youth formation”“the end justifies the means. Mainline denominations are typically deontologists”“if the means are not right, the action is wrong, even if good comes from it….

Read it all.

O Almighty God, from whom every good prayer cometh, and who pourest out on all who desire it the spirit of grace and supplication: Deliver us, when we draw near to thee, from coldness of heart and wanderings of mind; that with steadfast thoughts and kindled affection we may worship thee in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–William Bright

Birmingham youth leader Helen Tomblin has jumped out of planes, abseiled down buildings and tackled white water rafting but she thinks she may have bitten off more than she can chew with her latest challenge ”“ the Tough Guy.

Superfit Helen is aiming to complete the notorious course near Wolverhampton when Tough Guy holds its summer event, known as the Nettle Warrior, later this month.

And the 36-year-old from Stirchley is training flat out to ensure she is up to the grade for the gruelling run and assault course which attracts competitors from around the world.

Helen, who is the Bishop’s advisor for youth mission for the Anglican church in Birmingham, says she believes this may be her toughest challenge yet.

Read it all.

Injustice is all around us: oil spews into the ocean, and people live in poverty around the world and in our own backyard. It seems like everything we buy is built at someone else’s expense. Where is truth found? Often, it’s in the most unlikely places. Young Anglicans will explore that quest for truth at this year’s Outreach Conference youth program, taking place Oct. 16.

The youth will listen to hip hop and read children’s stories, hear from each other, and connect their reflections to the parable of the talents. They will then learn about practical ways of responding to issues such as poverty, environmental destruction and corporate responsibility.

Meanwhile, the regular conference program will be highlighted by a keynote address by Ched Myers, a gifted author, theologian and justice advocate. Re-reading the Bible in light of concrete struggles against violence and oppression is a key focus for Mr. Myers. “I believe that the Judeo-Christian sacred story is the older, deeper and wiser tradition that has the power to transform our lives and our history ”“ but only if we can overcome its domestication under the dominant culture,” he says.

Read it all.

Evangelicals care more than mainline Protestants about keeping their young people in the faith. This is the striking conclusion James Wellman reaches in his fascinating book, “Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest” (Oxford). Based on observations, interviews, and focus group discussions with people from 24 evangelical and 10 mainline churches, all vital churches with stable or growing memberships, this lively book compares these two religious cultures in many ways. How people think about youth and youth ministry emerges as a key difference: “For evangelicals, if children and youth are not enjoying church, it is the church’s fault and evangelical parents either find a new church or try to improve their youth ministry. For liberals, the tendency is the reverse; if youth do not find church interesting it is their problem. Evangelicals are simply more interested and invested in reproducing the faith in their children and youth and their churches reflect this priority.”

Even though evangelical and mainline churches both lose many young people to the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated, and even though both groups lose more young people than they did before, evangelical churches still lose fewer young people than liberal churches lose. Evangelical families emphasize religion more than mainline families do, and evangelical churches involve young people in a denser social web of youth groups, church camps, and church-based socializing, all of which increase the chances that a young person will remain in the fold as an adult. This is one reason that evangelical denominations have not suffered the same membership declines in recent decades that more liberal, mainline denominations have suffered.

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[GREG] COLLARD: It’s not just a Charlotte problem. U.S. Census figures show almost two-thirds of African-American kids don’t have a biological father living at home, and that can lead to other issues. A Justice Department report found the incarceration rate for black men in 2008 was six-and-a-half times that of white men.

Mr. WARREN BROWN (Bishop): We’re not just going to visit you in prison, we’re going to try to keep you out of prison.

COLLARD: That’s Bishop Warren Brown speaking this month in Columbia, South Carolina, at what was billed The Great Gathering. Almost 7,000 people attended a meeting of the major black Methodist denominations: the AME, AME Zion and CME.

Mr. BROWN: We recognize that oftentimes we feel that we will deal with our young black men in the eighth or tenth grade. That’s too late. We’ve got to work with them out of kindergarten.

Read or listen to it all.

Check it out.

When 17-year-old Anthony Turner was gunned down outside a city home early the morning of Nov. 1, 2009, siblings Emily Gibson, 14, and David Gibson, 17, knew they couldn’t stay silent anymore. Anthony had attended East High School with the Gibson siblings, and the home he died in front of belonged to someone they knew from the Cathedral Community Youth Group.

Emily, David and other members of the Cathedral Community Youth Group decided they had to do something to try to stop the violence that plagues their neighborhoods. With the help of Belinda Brasley, the Cathedral Community’s youth-ministry coordinator, the teens decided to hold a Teen Prayer for Peace, which took place at Sacred Heart Cathedral on the rainy evening of Jan. 24.

The lighting in the cathedral was dim that night, indicating the solemnity of the occasion. The mood of the approximately 50 people gathered there, however, was light. The teens and adults in the audience smiled as they murmured to one another before the event began.

Read it all.

The Barna Group pollsters and the Innovating Tomorrow blog site reports that 75% of teens from Christian families stop going to church when they leave home to get a job or go to college and don’t return to church until they have are married and have children of their own. Some blogsters blame the teen walk out on a general increase in agnosticism and atheism. Some blame the parents. Some blame the internet. I don’t agree.

I blame the churches. I blame the dumbing down of the message so that many leave out of sheer boredom. The rock music and mimicking of worldly culture which was thought to appeal to teens is driving some away. However, I think the main problem is the lack of content and the metaphysical shallowness of the teachings. During one’s late teen years, one is trying to discover the meaning and purpose in life. The teens want to gain a sense of who they are and to find a place for themselves in the grand scheme of things.

Questions on meaning and purpose and questions about the grand scheme are metaphysical questions. The typical evangelical ministry behaves as though they are afraid of metaphysics. For this reason, many teens find the shallow ministries offered to them irrelevant to their needs. This is the only convincing explanation I can think of to explain the general teen walkout.

Read it all.

Watch it all and here is a challenge for blog readers. I think every youth ministry in whatever parish where you worship should be challenged to discuss this issue whether through this report or another. Contact your youth minister or youth leaders and see if it has happened and if it hasn’t ask why not–KSH.

Caught this one on the morning run. Take the time to watch it all. Those of you with connections to youth ministry, this video is the kind of thing all youth groups needs to be challenged to watch and discuss.

A remembrance service took place on 27 November 2008 at Southwark Cathedral for Damilola Taylor and all young people lost to violent crime. The date marks eight years since the murder of Damilola. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who chaired the inquiry into the 11-year-old’s murder investigation, delivered the sermon during the service.

This is holy ground ”“ we should take off our shoes. We are here for Damilola Taylor, and for the families still grieving for their young ones murdered on our streets for the past eight years. We are treading on the holy ground of human grief, of love wounded by violence.

And yet on this holy ground, where we must tread so gently, there are voices we must hear, and things we must learn. For we stand also at the foot of the cross, where I believe God took upon himself our sorrows and our love turned in on itself, so that we may return from our self-imposed exile to our true home of love.

Read it all.