Emerging Youth Group

εις επαινον δοξης αυτου: Emerging Youth Group

For my info and for your reading and thinking.

Whenever big-name types come to speak in chapel at DTS, at least one of the different groups on campus will try to get them to speak after chapel at a "Brown Bag" lunch. Anyone who wants to attend brings their own lunch in a brown bag (hence the name) and gets to listen to the speaker and ply him with questions about the nature of the Nephilim in Genesis 6 (and other such questions).

Last week Dawson McAllister was on campus, recording a podcast and speaking in chapel.

He spoke on the importance of "trench warfare" in youth ministry. He gave us an overview of his ministry and played a number of clips from the radio show.

Anyway, I was of course quite jazzed about his message, since my area of ministry is youth.

So, imagine how excited I was when I discovered that Pipeline, the youth ministry group on campus, was hosting a Brown Bag with the Sr. High youth pastor (Charley Hellmuth) at Irving Bible Church, who "is leading a great example of an EC youth ministry." The author of the annoucement doesn't specify if by EC he means Emerging Church or the Emergent Conversation. Either way, it should be a good talk, especially if we "dialogue" as the ad says we're supposed to.

So, this brings me to my question: For all y'all out there who know more about the Emerging/Emergent Church (I know, they're two different things, but they're lumped together in this topic), what's the impact the EC has/should have on youth ministry? Can it be ignored, or must it be addressed in youth ministry?

Sound off!

Interesting...any thoughts?

Theological Musings of SBC: Music, An Introduction (part 1)
Theological Musings of SBC: Music, The Reactionary Approach (part 2)

Have any thoughts on these posts on music and culture?

The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception

I started reading a new book last night that excites me. John MacArthur has written a book that isn't "friendly fire" among believers but points out that because some on the other side of this issue have deliberately attacked the authority and clarity of God's Word. He even says that they may not be authentic believers at all. Even some pastors and popular writers in the Christian market might be the enemy disguised as comrades. Here is a clip for the begging of the book.

Much of the visible church nowadays seems to think Christians are suppose to be at play rather than at war. The idea of actually fighting for doctrinal truth is the furthest thing from most churchgoers' thoughts. Contemporary Christians are determined to get the world to like them- and of course in the process they also want to have as much fun as possible. They are so obsessed with making the church seem "cool" to unbelievers that they can't be bothered with questions about whether another person's doctrine is sound or not. In a climate like that , the thought of even identifying someone else's teaching as false (much less "contending earnestly" for the faith) is a distasteful and dangerously countercultural suggestion. Christians have bought into the notion that almost nothing is more "uncool" in the world's eyes than when someone shows a sincere concern about the danger of heresy. After all, the world simply doesn't take spiritual truth that seriously, so they cannot fathom why anyone would.
But Christians, of all people ought to be the most willing to live and die for truth. Remember, we know truth, and the truth has set us free (John 8:32). We should not be ashamed to say so boldly (Psalm 107:2). And if called upon to sacrifice for the truth's sake, we need to be willing and prepared to give our lives. Again, that is exactly what Jesus was speaking about when He called His disciples to take up a cross (Matthew 16:24). Cowardice and authentic faith are antithetical.

Multicultural Church

Multicultural Church by Rev. Ken Davis, Director of Project Jerusalem. Baptist Bible College, Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania.

I have been having some conversations (not be confused with the emerging church style of conversations) with some friends on another blog. We have been talking about culture and multicultural churches. Let me know your thoughts about what Ken Davis has to say in this article.

Jesus walks into a bar …

Jesus walks into a bar …

More younger people are delving into Christianity. But they are unlikely to worship at the altar, writes Barney Zwartz.

'JESUS asked his mates to stay with him, but they got pissed and fell asleep, the bloody bastards." As an account of the disciples' failure in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before Jesus was cruci fied, it may lack the poetry and majesty of the King James Bible. But the 22 street people in a dingy city basement get the point powerfully.

This rather loose Bible reading from Matthew 26 by a young church worker, Virginia Moebus, is part of a weekly gathering in Credo Cafe, run by Urban Seed in Melbourne, a Baptist Church outreach to homeless and drug-addicted city dwellers.

Most of these people would never set foot in church, but they come faithfully to the gathering, followed by the free lunch served every day. "People see it like their living room, especially if they are on the street. It's somewhere they can come and sit down and be warm and safe," Moebus says.

But it's more than that.

It is solace, spiritual comfort, connection. They sing confidently during the service, accompanied by an extremely competent bongo drummer, and talk freely about the Bible reading.

They are part of an extraordinarily diverse and fast-growing Christian movement catering to the multitudes who reject the institutional church but want to follow its founder, Jesus Christ.

They meet in cafes, clubs, homes, halls, parks or galleries. Rather than "church", they may meet as families, students, businesspeople or surfies. They may be affiliated to mainstream churches or they may be entirely independent. Most are committed and young.

Read more by clicking the link above. This was sent to me by a missionary in Australia, Russ Matthews. What do you think about this?

Worldliness: A Definition Please (Part 1)

Paul, Peter, and John all faced early forms of a system of false teaching that later became known as Gnosticism. That term (derived from the Greek word for knowledge) refers to the habit that gnositics had of claiming an elevated knowledge, a higher truth know only to those in on the deep things. Those initiated into this mystical knowledge of truth had a higher internal authority than Scripture. This resulted in a chaotic situation in which the gnostics tried to judge divine revelation by human ideas rather than judging human ideas by divine revelation. (John MacArthur. The MacArthur Bible Commentary, pg. 1954)

Separatist Fundamentalism is dangerously knocking on this door. I don’t believe Fundamentalism intended to completely withdraw itself from culture but in separating from sin at a personal level, and then apostasy on an ecclesiastical level, it has separated from “worldliness” at a cultural level. Elitism is the placing of one’s culture about the rest. Fundamentalism has placed it's knowledge of God above that of understanding the world and anyone who is not at the same level intellectually is of the "lower class." The term worldliness has come then to mean “sinfulness.” This term “worldly” then needs to be defined. Without a definition of worldliness, the church will never find its niche within culture again. So then…a definition of worldliness.

In its simplest form, worldliness is being like the world. But that simply isn’t enough. Being like the world could mean thousands of things. But at the center of it all is one thing; rebellion from a Holy God. Worldliness can not be looked at as only an external expression, however external expressions can show worldliness. Worldliness has to be primarily an inward impression and secondarily an external expression. Luke 6:45 says "The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.” It isn’t the mouth that is the problem but the heart. The mouth is only a tool used to express the heart.

Secondly, once worldliness has changed the heart, it next changes the mind. This may seem backwards but we need to remember that at the front of all of this, worldliness is rebellion from a Holy God. Rebellion is sin so we can say sin hardens the heart. Once the heart is hardened or even “dead,” it moves to the mind. Only when sin has taken over the life source can our mind change. So what in our mind changes? God has given us an intellect, emotion, and a will. When the heart hardens, our emotion is changed to that of bitterness, rage, wrath, etc. When our minds change, our intellect changes. We begin to hate, whether God, parents, etc. Our minds change to that of independence from everyone by ourselves.

1 John 2:15-17 says, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

Pastor Mark Vance makes a good point. John 3:16 says that God loves the world. But John here says God loves the world. The word “world” here in 1 John 2:15-17 is the anti-God system or values that are embraced that are anti-God. It is an utter defiance of anything God. Pastor Vance says that worldliness is something that is primarily inward not outward. C.J. Mehany says, “John is equipping us to discern worldliness where it first lurks, within the heart. The sinfulness of the outward world system and the values and the things that it espouses, is simply the natural result that you are born with a sin nature. That you love sin inside of you.” However the church has boiled down a list of dos and don’t if I don’t dress like, talk like, dress like, and think like, I am not worldly. Avoid the places where sin is. Listen to his message on worldliness.

more to come...