THREE WORLDS DIARY
"Let the (Youth) Come to Me"
This week, Josh Weiger (Youth Pastor at Park Place Church of God) and I are leading 3W Seminars on "Developing a Youth Program" in Liverpool, England (Birkenhead) and Paris, France. My guess is that of all the seminars we offer at 3W, this one will probably be the most requested. Attracting youth to church is never easy. By it's very nature, church is a place of absorbing norms, keeping traditions, and practicing spiritual self-control. That pretty much describes the opposite of what we all want to do as teenagers. Being a teenager is about experimentation, breaking rules, and living in the moment. Not such a great match eh?
At the same time, churches need youth and young families to survive. They cannot allow themselves to age and ignore the younger generations. They must continually attract and integrate them--absorbing some changes and resisting others. It's a tough balance.
When a church decides to focus on young people (and I'm glad that so many are in the European/Middle East region because that is what 3W is all about), it is embarking on an uncertain adventure. There are no guarantees that many young people will join the church. Even if they do, there are no guarantees that they will stay with the church or keep their lives straight and narrow. It is a risk. But we shouldn't do it to build up our churches or just for our own survival. But rather we should do it because young people need God and need an opportunity to find him.
Jesus said "let the children come to me," which always makes us say 'awww.' Had Jesus said, "let the modern teenagers come to me," we might not have been so charmed. Teenagers can be irreverent, self-absorbed, and very inconsistent. They sound a lot like the Disciples, actually, who were all of those things plus young to boot (possibly teenagers during Jesus' ministry).
Of course the concept of "teenagers" is a new post-World War II phenomenon. Through most of human history, by the age of 12 or 13, you were expected to work and contribute to the family and clan. The delaying of adulthood made possible by the modern world creates people that on some levels are mature enough to think like adults and even procreate like adults, but yet keeps their lives unstructured enough that the age becomes one of experimentation and constant identity-seeking.
As I shared at the seminar in Liverpool, when I was a teenager going to church, was I a good kid? Or was I a bad kid? I was both and neither. I loved church but my spiritual maturity was virtually zero. Trying to be the same person in church as I was outside seemed near impossible. I loved participating in church, but sometimes it was with motivations to please God, other times it was for my own ego boost. That's what we are dealing with when we work with young people. Things are not so neat and simple. That's why the pay-offs are often not immediate.
Nevertheless, a positive church experience in our youth can have a dramatic impact on us for the rest of our lives. Church was the one place as a teenager that I felt truly safe. I would not have been able to articulate that. I certainly could not have affirmed my pastor and youth pastor to say something like: "Gee, I'm experiencing a lot of discomfort and insecurity in 8th grade, but by golly, I feel like a valued human being when I attend Wednesday Night youth group." Yet the words of affirmation and encouragement I received in church had a lifelong impact on me.
In the church, we often pretend that so much is measurable. It should be obvious if our church is healthy, or growing, or if we are producing good disciples. But the reality seems to me to be much more complicated. I've been in large mission-fields with lots of churches that are utterly dysfunctional. I've been in small churches that have more unity than churches 100 times their size. One would think that by the time Jesus arrived in the Garden of Gethsemene,the Disciples should have been at a pretty good point--well trained, consistent, on the road to greatness. But when Jesus needed them most, they fall asleep and run. Total failures? Was the whole discipleship project a complete failure? No. The road had a lot more twists and turns to come, but Christ's investment in them was worth the while for all of us.
The Economist reports that the situation for youth employment in Europe is a disaster and getting worse:
For the periphery, it is frightening to think that conditions may actually grow worse. Jobless rates in Greece and Spain are already at eye-watering levels. Among young people, those under 25, rates of joblessness across the whole of southern Europe are startling. In Greece, 45% of young people were unemployed as of August, which is the last month for which data are available. In Spain, the rate is 49%, up sharply from a year ago. In Italy, youth unemployment is 29%; in Portugal, it is 30%. Even in France, 24% of young people are without employment. Within a few months, southern Europe may be home to more young people without jobs than with them.
For a lot of the youth of today in Europe, life is not turning out as they thought it would. The things that they thought would be there--affordable education, work, and a higher standard of living--are turning out to not be dependable. As much as young people often come off as jaded to the world and indifferent to spiritual things, the fact is that their spirit is being broken on many levels.
*Many come from broken-families and have had multiple step families.
*Many are living with a large amount of debt.
*Many have image and self-esteem issues.
*Many come from abusive homes.
*Virtually all of them live in societies where authentic community is completely absent.
After the Pope's recent visit to Spain, 8,000 youth committed their lives to the priesthood and to becoming nuns. This, in one of the least religious societies in the world, where the Catholic church is in extreme decline, and amidst terrible sexual scandals plaguing the Catholic church. So what did the Pope do? He challenged them. He gave them an opportunity to go down a different path.
We don't know how big the pay-off will be?
There are no guarantees.
But all of our churches must ask ourselves the question: "Are we challenging our youth and offering them a different path?'
3W Seminar LIverpool Complete
We had a great 3W Seminar here in Liverpool (Birkenhead). Josh Weiger knocked it out of the park today talking about "How to Structure a Youth Ministry." People were quoting him and all the great things he said. I've really enjoyed partnering up with this talented young, emerging Church of God leader. He is so sharp and has connected so well with the folks up here in Northern England. We both feel like we are with family here. What a lovely group of people. It has been such a great time with Pastor John, Linda, and the rest of the congregation here.
Tomorrow is church, followed by a trip to Wales. Apparently Josh has wanted to go to Wales, so Zach and Audrey (awesome young people in their own right) are going to drive us to Wales--which is not very far away. Maybe 45 minutes. We're so blessed to have young people like this in the Church of God. If this is the future, we're in good hands.
My Favorite Beatles Song?
I'm in Liverpool with Josh Wieger, just 9 hours away from our 3W Seminar. We had a great day seeing Birkenhead with Zach and Audrey who are working up here, and a great afternoon meeting with Pastor John and Linda.
This city honors the Beatles. We walked passed the cavern club where they played here before they were famous. We flew into John Lennon International Airport. Their stamp is all over their city. (What? Nothing for Gerry and the Pacemakers? Frankie Goes to Hollywood?").
There is literally a Beatles cover band playing music outside of our hotel room in downtown Liverpool. It's loud, but I love it since I love the Beatles--my all-time favorite. So, you are asking...what is my favorite Beatles song of all time? Are you crazy? I can't give you just one. I must give you 5....with commentary.
FAVORITE BEATLE? Absolutely Paul. They say you can tell a person's personality type by their favorite Beatle. I'm a Paul guy. So it's interesting that songs 1-3 feature John Lennon so heavily. Overall, in my top 20 or 50 Beatles songs, the majority would be Paul songs.
FAVORITE BEATLE BOOK: "Shout" is great, but "The Love You Make" is the best one I've ever read.
And I might add, "The Complete Beatles" is still the best documentary about them.
Uhm....thanks for asking.
We're Back!
We're back! Did you miss me? I missed myself.
These little breaks from the Diary that I have started to take after 9 to 10 years of doing this are a good idea. I think it was 2002 that the diary was started. That's a long time to be writing once every 3 days on average. Most blogs don't last nearly that long. But over the years it has been a great way to communicate. Nevertheless, from time to time, I need a little break. In the future I'd like to have a guest blogger (diary writer) take over when I'm on diary vacation. Perhaps we will try that in 2012. That would be cool.
Well, here's what is coming up in December.
*Josh Wieger of Park Place Church of God in Anderson, IN will be joining me tomorrow as we head to Liverpool, England for our 3W Seminar on "Developing a Youth Ministry."
*The following weekend I will be back in Paris doing 3W Seminar II in Paris also on "Developing a Youth Ministry." Josh will be joining me as well and preaching on Sunday in the beautiful church there.
*We will continue our discussion of Philip Jenkins' book, "The Next Christendom."
*I will share about our recent trip to visit the CHOG's in Lebanon.
*I will continue to write stupid things with occasional references to 80's pop music (some things don't change).
*It's time for my annual Top 10 Books of the Year Awards. It's a spectacular star-studded gala.
*And we get to take a little 6 day winter vacation after Christmas again over Marco's school holiday. Once again we will go to Austria. We will try to unplug completely. No work. Just Monopoly, UNO, and things that don't cause stress.
Throughout this past month that we have been offline here at the diary, I have continued to write at Bookface and Tweezer. So be sure to check us out!
Facebook: Three Worlds
Twitter: 3WCHOG
So thanks for giving me some time to catch my breath. You all are cooler than Bootsy Colllins playing a bass solo in Reykjavik, Iceland during a snow storm.
"Stay Thirsty My Friends."
Join the 3W Care-A-Van!
This coming April 5th through April 19th, Three Worlds will be introducing its first ever Care-a-Van experience. Care-a-Van is an opportunity for North American Christians to join us on the road in Europe as we visit a few small churches located throughout Europe that could use encouragement. Throughout Europe we have many Church of God congregations that are isolated and struggle in an environment hostile or indifferent to Christianity. It is difficult to stay encouraged. Consequently, the Care-a-Van will give North Americans the opportunity to connect to these churches and encourage them through prayer and fellowship.
The Care-a-Van (a group of cars driving from church to church led by the Nachtigalls and Aaron and Nicole Varner) will set out from Munich, Germany and make their way through the Alps to visit congregations in Southern Germany, our newest church in Arco, Italy, as well as to join in the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Rome Church of God. Along the way our visitors will be educated on the challenge of ministry and mission in the European context and given ideas for how churches in North American can enhance their global connections. The trip will be educational, strategic, encouraging, and will include some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. It will be a great introduction to Three Worlds.
We highly recommend this trip for mission pastors as well as lay-leaders and pastors who are interested in learning about the Three Worlds vision and connecting with churches in Europe and the Middle East.
Cost: Approximately $2,000 + Airfare to Munich, Germany. Contact us for further details.
See You in December!
As I have started to do in this last year, I am going to take a break from the diary for a while. We'll be back in early December when we do our next 3W Seminar in Liverpool, followed by a 2nd one in Paris. Park Place Youth Pastor Josh Wieger will be co-leading those two seminars as they are about youth ministry. We will also continue the next part of our Next Christendom discussion in the Three Worlds diary.
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Thank you to the Church of God in Greece for allowing me to visit and share about Three Worlds this past Sunday. Thank you also to St. Andrew's International Church in Athens for allowing me to share as well.
The Next Christendom: Discussion 2
Today we look at Chapter 2 of Philip Jenkins' book: "Disciples of All Nations."
It is often said that "history is written by the winners." That tends to be true. Those in power are often able to define what "historically happened." And so Jenkins writes Chapter 2 to remind the Western (and Non-Western reader) that Christianity is not a Western religion. That strong, vibrant expressions of the Christian faith existed before Christianity became associated with Europe and the United States.
Even non-Westerners (and certainly American and Europeans) tend to think of Christianity as being Western. But long before that, Christianity was strong in places that today we call Syria, Iraq, and Ethiopia. While Constantine is remembered as starting the mingling of Christianity and the State (Christendom), Jenkins points out that the same thing occurred in Armenia and Ethiopia at the same time.
The same holds true for the Coptic Christians of Egypt who have a long ancient history as do the Thomist Christians of Western coastal India. "I would argue at the time of the Magna Carta or the Crusades, if we imagine a typical Christian, we should still be thinking not of a French Artisan, but of a Syrian Peasant, or Mesapotamian town dweller, an Asian, not a European."
The the 1500's arrived and the first period of globalization led to countries like Spain, Portugal, and England propagating the faith to every corner of the world. By the 1950's, "the United States was supplying two-thirds of the 43,000 Protestant missionaries active around the world.
For Protestant Christianity, the center of the faith was very much in the West. Only 1% of Protestants were non-Western in 1800, but by 1900 it was 10%. Since then, of course, we have seen exponential growth as we discussed in discussion 1.
******COMMENTS
It's true that Christianity has primarily been viewed as Western for the past few centuries because it has primarily been propagated by European and North American nation-states. This coincided with a rise in economic power beginning in 1500. Asian, the Middle Eastern, and Latin American empires and civilizations were not able to compete with the fast economic growth. The combination of nation-states advancing Christianity and the rise of Protestantism (sola scriptura) expanded the rate at which Christianity could be shared.
But another reason why Christianity is often viewed as Western is because Armenian, Nestorian, Ethiopian, and other Eastern forms of Christianity often had big theological differences between the orthodoxy of the West. For instance, some of these groups were monophysites: They did not believe Jesus was fully human and fully divine but rather had one nature while Nestorians believed that the human and the divine were fully separate. Because orthodoxy came to be defined by the churches of Western Europe, Eastern Europe and today's Turkey--anything beyond that is forgotten as having been a part of Christian expansion.
So Christianity became "Western" as did the definition of Christian orthodoxy. One of the challenges that the current wave of non-Western growth is presenting is that often the theology growing in Latin America, Africa, and Asia is not entirely orthodox either.
This raises some questions:
Is there such a things as orthodoxy?
Did Nestorian Christianity and the other earlier versions of the faith get a bad deal?
Or were they genuine expressions of the faith?
If African Christianity or Asian Christianity now goes in a different unorthodox direction, is that okay?
Is "orthodoxy" just a Western product?
Some scholars and people are suggesting that the answer is "yes." That if we look at the historical church councils, we see that there were close votes and political campaigns in deciding what would become "orthodox" thought. Consequently, it is not entirely fair that the West got to define Christian Trinitarian orthodoxy. So if this (Western) Christian Trinitarian orthodoxy is dismantled by the Next Christendom (Non-Western Christianity), this is not such a bad thing.
I actually disagree with that position. I do believe there is a concrete Christian orthodoxy we can appeal to--and that God revealed that through historical moments and human beings--just as he did the scripture. So I trust the early Christians and the Councils that they set up. I do not, for instance, believe that the Prosperity Gospel is orthodox Christianity, nor do I believe that post-modern Christianity that emphasizes Jesus as a nice guy and underplays the role of Christ's atonement is orthodox.
Does that mean that Christian orthodoxy is Western? Not really. These councils occurred in the Near East, not in London or Boston. Furthermore, it is more an issue in my mind of apostolic authority and the authority of the Early church than geography.
The best thing about Chapter 2 is that it gets Western Christians out of the mentality that Christianity went directly from the Apostles to Europe and America. Many denominations and Western traditions act as if this is the case. Nothing mattered but the Apostles, Martin Luther, and their denominations history. Chapter 2 corrects that and is consequently very important.
Check this out!
When were you really born according to global population history? Check out this fascinating chart and put in your birthdate.
3W Roundtable
This week I am in Paris working on the creation of what we are calling the 3W Roundtable. We are entering an era of new fiscal challenges, new legal challenges in the area of transparency for non-profits, and an era in which we need to re-examine the effectiveness of the flow of money from North America to mission-fields around the world. We need to make sure that our investments are well-thought out, strategic, and do no foster unhealthy dependencies.
In an effort to make sure that we at Three Worlds examine these issues and always operate with high levels of transparency, we are creating the 3W Roundtable which offers an extra layer of transparency for us Regional Coordinators, our 3W crew, and our partners on the field.
The goal of the 3W Roundtable is to create an extra layer of accountability and transparency.
It will:
*Provide a higher level of transparency.
*Serve as advisors and and offer an objective viewpoint.
*Provide an added layer of personal accountability for Jamie and Patrick.
*Strategize and create synergy.
*Help 3W become a portal that churches, districts, and other organizations can tap into for healthy global ministry.
Creating healthy churches and mission-fields is not something that happens automatically. And churches and Christian organizations can easily fall into the trap of basing decisions on individual, subjective interpretations. In this region, we are wanting to make sure that our decisions foster health and longevity. It means making sure that we have equal relationships (not balanced too far toward North America nor too far toward the field), that we share a common missiology, that we share a common vision for the field, and that we share a commitment to health and financial transparency. If those things are not in place, good intentions can lead to disaster. We want our partners to know exactly what is going on in the field and over the coming years, we will be increasing the ways that people can be in touch with our region.