Mike King

No Easy Answers: The Shared Role of Parents and the Church in the Spiritual Formation of Teens

I served as Editor for the Youthfront Book Shorts Series published by Barefoot Publications. The title I'm featuring today is Leslie Snyder's No Easy Answers: The Shared Role of Parents and the Church in the Spiritual Formation of Teens.

I first met Leslie Snyder in Seminary.  I quickly labeled her as the fanatical advocate for parents who have kids in youth ministry.  This turned out to be an accurate label.  Leslie is passionate and deeply committed to help parents in our churches be more involved in the Christian Formation of their children.

Leslie eats, drinks, sleeps and dreams about ways to serve parents of young people.  She insists that youth workers must be more aware of the family context of the young people they minister to.  Leslie’s voice joins the growing chorus of voices articulating the importance of Christian Formation of young people needing the involvement of the entire church community.  She describes ways that youth workers can become guides, facilitators, pastors and leaders for the movement toward creating a broader faith community engaged in passing the faith onto our emerging generations.  For Leslie, investing in parents of teenagers is an essential aspect of nurturing a more holistic faith community for our youth to be spiritually developed.

Leslie gives youth workers practical ideas for helping parents of the youth you minister to and how this will broaden you ability to disciple them.  One of the biggest challenges we face in the church today is to help our churches really live for and love Jesus, and for our congregations to be deeply committed to Christian formation.  It’s no wonder our young people don’t take their faith serious when they haven’t seen this modeled by the adults in our churches.  Leslie makes the case that we have to look at his issue holistically and in doing so we can make a difference.

*The cool thing about this book short series is the fact that they are downloadable and can be reproduced by youth workers to engage in conversation with their volunteer staff for the purpose of training and shaping the ethos of the youth ministry of a church.

ORDER HERE

Erik Leafblad, "God Loses!" and other news...

My good friend, fellow staff member, collaborator and thought partner, Erik Leafblad will begin working on a PhD at Luther Seminary beginning this fall.  Erik will continue some of his key roles at Youthfront but his Youthfront job descriptions shifts to a primary focus of earning a PhD in Theology.  Erik is perfectly designed for this task and I am thrilled for him, along with the rest of our staff.  If you want a glimpse into Erik's thinking then you should consider these two resources.

The first is especially relevant in the midst of Holy Week.  The current edition of the Immerse Journal features an article by Erik entitled "God Loses."  I'm telling you that the price of an Immerse subscription is so worth it when you get the quality of articles such as Erik's in edition after edition.  While you must be a subscriber to read Erik's article (SUBSCRIBE NOW :-), you can see Daniel Shroyer's response to "God Loses" online here.

The second resource from Erik comes from the Youthfront Book Shorts Series published by Barefoot Publications. His book short entitled, Youth Workers as Spiritual Guides: Spiritual Theology as Living Knowledge, should be consumed and contemplated by thousands of youth workers.  I hope Erik’s ideas shape the way youth workers construct their ministry theology and praxis.

Erik Leafblad has a brilliant theological mind and youth workers should be thankful that he is focusing his theological work on youth ministry.  Erik helps us examine Friedrich Schweitzer’s work on the social dynamics of Pluralization, Individualization and Privatization and how these impact religious ideals of the young people we minister to.  Erik gives us insight in how we might navigate through the current cultural landscape in guiding youth into meaningful and sustaining Christian formation.

Erik makes the case for leading youth deeply into the Story of God and why and how youth must see their own personal stories intersect with God’s overarching story.  Erik believes that youth workers should not underestimate young peoples ability to think deeply and sophisticatedly about theology, meaning and life.  The wise youth worker, who serves as a spiritual guide for young people, must help them make the critical connection to participation with God’s Mission.  When someone gets clarity of what it means to actively participate with Jesus Christ’s ministry it is life altering and unshakable.

Envisioning small groups of youth workers sitting around discussing the concepts in this book short make my heart beat with excitement about the impact potential this would have on the youth worker’s churches, communities, congregants, young people and even their own lives with God.

*The cool thing about this book short series is the fact that they are downloadable and can be reproduced by youth workers to engage in conversation with their volunteer staff for the purpose of training and shaping the ethos of the youth ministry of a church.

ORDER HERE

 

Presence-Centered Youth Ministry In Fifth Printing

Just got the news from my publisher InterVarsity Press that Presence-Centered Youth Ministry has gone into it's fifth printing.  I think that is good news.  If you are a youth worker and haven't read it yet, you can order the fifth edition here.

The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Youth Ministry

I served as Editor for the Youthfront Book Shorts Series published by Barefoot Publications. The title I'm featuring today is Sally Rymer's The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Youth Ministry.  Sally recently graduated from High School and in this book short, she shares some interesting things about youth ministry and youth workers.

Sally Rymer is one of the most amazing young people I’ve had the privilege of ministering to and with. That is saying a lot, since I’ve seen tens of thousands of young people involved in our ministry during my thirty-seven years as a youth worker.

Sally is bright and mature beyond her years. Sally was fourteen years old when her life was turned upside down by the ugly reality of human trafficking. Sally believed she could and must do something about the global injustice of human trafficking. She wanted to make a difference. Fortunately, Sally was surrounded by parents, youth workers, teachers, and other adults who believed in her calling and encouraged her efforts. Sally raised thousands of dollars along with her peers to rescue children enslaved by the sex trade industry.

Sally left the USA to finish her last two years of high school in the prestigious United World College system in India. She graduated from UWC Mahindra College and is now attending the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. Sally has some definite ideas about what kind of youth workers her generation needs. She makes a case for the importance of teaching young people classic Christian practices. Sally gives insight to youth workers about surrounding youth with space to think, question, and dream. I hope you will carefully read and consider her take on The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Youth Ministry.

*The cool thing about this book short series is the fact that they are downloadable and can be reproduced by youth workers to engage in conversation with their volunteer staff for the purpose of training and shaping the ethos of the youth ministry of a church.

ORDER HERE

Missions as Pilgrimage

The Youthfront Book Shorts have been released by Barefoot Publications.  I served as Editor for this series.  The title I'm featuring today is Missions as Pilgrimage by Kurt Rietema. 

*The cool thing about this book short series is the fact that they are downloadable and can be reproduced by youth workers to engage in conversation with their volunteer staff for the purpose of training and shaping the ethos of the youth ministry of a church.

Kurt is a Christian thinker extraordinaire and a true author. A writer takes ideas and expresses them in articles, books, blogs, etc. An author is someone who originates ideas and concepts.

In Missions as Pilgrimage, Kurt helps us reorient the current thinking about short-term missions into something more biblical, sustainable, and transforma- tional. Kurt puts his heart and soul into all he does. His honesty reveals that he is not standing back, trying to enlighten all those who don’t get it. Kurt genuinely wrestles with what it means to be Christian in the deepest way, what it means to love God and truly love others. Rarely can I escape reading something Kurt has written without feeling genuinely convicted for the indifference that insidiously hides deep in my heart.

Missions as Pilgrimage challenges us to consider how we shape our young people in Christian formation through disorientation, spiritual practices, justice, and pilgrimage. Kurt helps us reshape our narratives to become enmeshed with God’s overarching narrative. I’ve seen the results of Kurt Rietema’s ministry. Kurt subverts the many narratives of the North American church that prevent our lives and the young people we minister to from being shaped in the cruciform life of Jesus Christ. Read this at the potential peril of your safe and comfortable life.

ORDER HERE

Evangelicals and American Conservatism

Christopher Benson has written a review for Books and Culture of D. G. Hart's new book From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism.

After reading Benson's review, it seems that D. G. Hart is trying to challenge Evangelicalism to regain a biblical mooring uncoupled from an incompatible nationalism.  I think that this issue is profoundly important.  I long for a robust Christianity in North America not rooted in either liberal or conservative ideologies and not beholden to either Democratic or Republican political agendas.  Maybe this book will move forward a conversation and consideration of what it means to live faithfully for God through Jesus Christ in the midst of the culture in which we find ourselves.

Here is an exerpt of Benson's review in Books and Culture;

"From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin belongs in conversation with To Change the World, the game-changer from sociologist James Davison Hunter. Both authors acknowledge the challenge of difference (or pluralism). They discredit evangelical schemes to redeem the culture as a "late-modern form of Constantinianism" (Hunter) and closely akin to "the Enlightenment project of social transformation" (Hart). They sharply criticize "what would Jesus do?" politics. And they strenuously exhort the church to decouple the public from the political, thereby restoring the importance of vocation. American Christians, they aver, are like the Israelite exiles in Babylon. Our call is not to turn Babylon into another Jerusalem but to seek its welfare through love and service, following the social—not political—power of Jesus. To Hunter's paradigm of "faithful presence"—enacting the shalom of God where we are situated—Hart adds traditional conservatism, which "seeks to preserve what is good in existing social arrangements because of an assumption that order is better than chaos, that change invariably produces instability, and that programs of perfection have been some of the most destructive in human history."

Together, faithful presence and traditional conservatism could rescue evangelicals from their addiction to changing the world—an addiction that ignores the Reformation doctrine of two kingdoms, as articulated by theologian David VanDrunen: "God rules the church (the spiritual kingdom) as redeemer in Jesus Christ and rules the state and all other social institutions (the civil kingdom) as creator and sustainer." In the former kingdom, God redeems a people for himself; in the latter, he preserves culture. Traditional conservatism is highly compatible with this doctrine because it chastens benevolent busybodies who try to immanetize the eschaton, as if sanctification rides on political engagement. A "painful transition" to classically conservative politics can happen, Hart says, if born-again Protestants reconsider the source of American greatness, which lies with its political order more than its religious identity, and reconsider the source of Christian greatness, which elevates the ministry of the church over swollen estimates of the family and state. With an Augustinian emphasis on the limits of politics, a Lutheran sensibility for the paradox of Christ and culture, and a Burkean wariness about revolutionary change, Hart's iconoclastic thesis arrives just in time as a presidential contest heats up, tempting many evangelicals with statist ambitions and utopian fantasies."

READ FULL REVIEW HERE

An Evangelical Social Gospel? Finding God's Story in the Midst of Extremes

I highly recommend my friend Tim Suttle's new book, An Evangelical Social Gospel? Finding God's Story in the Midst of Extremes.

I have many friends who have a difficult time embracing the description Evangelical because it has become so jaded.  I have not cast off the label Evangelical, although I find myself defining and redefining what it means to be Evangelical in a culture that has lots of confusion about this term.

Tim challenges Evangelical's to shake loose from the culture war ideologies and categories that are limited to describing issues either left vs. right or conservative vs. liberal. 

Here's what Hauerwas has to say about Tim's book, "An Evangelical Social Gospel? is a joy to read because Suttle is so deadly serious about matters that matter. The book is filled with delightful surprises, not the least being the recovery of Walter Rauschenbusch to challenge the individualism of evangelical Christianity. But this book is more than critique, it is a wonderful imaginative attempt to develop a folk theology that is faithful to the gospel. --Stanley Hauerwas, author of Working with Words: On Learning to Speak Christian (Cascade Books)

Tim also has an article right now on Huffington Post entitled, An Evangelical Social Gospel?

 

Jesus, My Father, the CIA and Me...

My friend and fellow Wild Goose Co-founder and Board Member Ian Cron's new book Jesus, My Father, the CIA and Me: A Memoir…of Sorts is being released tomorrow.  I had the good fortune of reading an advanced copy of this book.  I loved Ian's first book Chasing Francis, a book I have and will continue to recommend far and wide.  Ian's new release proves what an extremely gifted author, word artist and master story teller Ian Cron has come to be.  Schedule this book for your summer vacation and you'll thank me for the recommendation.  Here is a small but beautiful excerpt from the book describing the books cover picture. 

"When I first discovered the grainy picture in my mother's desk-me as a towheaded two year old sitting in what I remember was a salmon-orange-stained lifeboat-I was overwhelmed by the feeling that the boy in the boat was not waving and laughing at the person snapping the photo as much as he was frantically trying to get the attention of the man I am today. The boy was beckoning me to join him on a voyage through the harrowing straits of memory. He was gambling that if we survived the passage, we might discover an ocean where the past would become the wind at our back rather than a driving gale to the nose of our boat. This book is the record of that voyage."  

Here are a few more endorsements:

“Ian Morgan Cron writes with astonishing energy and freshness; his metaphors stick fast in the imagination. This is neither a simple memoir of hurt endured, nor a tidy story of reconciliation and resolution. It is – rather like Augustine’s Confessions – a testimony to the unfinished business of grace."   The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams

“Simultaneously redemptive and consoling with bright moments of humor…this story is chock-full of sacredness and hope. Cron is one of only a few spirituality authors who could articulate these themes as poignantly.”Publishers Weekly

Jesus is for Losers...

My friend Ethan Bryan has just released a book entitled, Jesus is for Losers.  Ethan is a passionate follower of Jesus Christ.  I thought I had it tough when I started losing my hair in my mid-thirties.  Ethan lost all his hair when he was in grade school.  That can't be easy.  It could even make you feel like a loser.  No matter how a person might believe him/herself a "loser," Ethan reminds us that Jesus is FOR Losers.

Ethan's book proceeds are all going to Coldwater which is a non-profit that provides a free food pantry, clothes closet, and backsnack program for children in Jackson County, MO.

Ethan is also a wonderful youth pastor that truly knows how to be a place-sharer with young people who believe that are hopeless losers.  Ethan knows how to stay with the kids and not go away.  Order Here

Here are a couple of endorsements for Jesus is for Losers.

Ethan Bryan has written a fast paced, readable, practical, personal book on what it means to follow Jesus…today…in America.  At times this book caused me to take a “gut check” and created discomfort (in a very good way). At other times it caused me to smile and say to God, “Yes, I want to live like that.” I recommend this book and hope many will read it.

 

Daniel Vestal

Executive Coordinator
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

 

Ethan Bryan and Nash High may be the victims of unfortunate timing...or perhaps fortunate timing. While I read Jesus is for Losers I kept hearing Charlie Sheen’s voice in my head shouting “Winning!” Now, we all know that word, spoken that way comes with a big dose of sarcasm. “Winning” means anything but. As I read I found myself trying to come up with a one word slogan to go along with the book. ”Losing!” Doesn’t work. I thought of FAIL with the inverted “L” placed on the forehead...perhaps that is closer.

 

One of the great lessons of the book, to me, is the phrase...”Then Jesus...” Just those two words. When these two words show up in our lives everything changes.

 

Peter and John were just doing their jobs, then Jesus...

 

Levi was despised and hated and couldn’t get the time of day from most people, then Jesus...

 

I was as far down as a person could get...on my knees in a filthy parking lot in the pouring rain, screaming out my anger at God...then Jesus...

 

Those three dots after Jesus are vitally important in this conversation.

 

Jesus is for the losers. When the winner is being carried off the field on the shoulders of the fans...Jesus has his hand on the guy who threw the intercepted pass.

 

When prom king and queen are getting their picture taken for the yearbook AGAIN! Jesus is sitting by the girl who wishes someone would text her...she’d even take a wrong number...just to have the company.

 

Bryan and High not only ask us to turn the whole winner/loser thing upside down but to re-evaluate what it means to live in a competitive environment. Our culture asks us to compete because that is where our self-worth comes from. Losers says, not so much.

 

Bryan and Nash also provide discussion questions. Jesus is for Losers would make a great curriculum for Youth school classes or one of those let’s-meet-at-Starbucks young adult groups. It is a series of well written, well thought out lessons that will be pushed aside as naive by some but if embraced by a few will change the lives of many. 

 

I’ve been working with teenagers as a career for nearly 25 years. Losers will be a part of my ministry. It will hold a place on my bookshelf...not the shelf where I keep books that people expect me to own...but the shelf with the books I will actually use to teach.

 

Steve Case is the author of many books including: The Book of Uncommon Prayer, Everything Counts, and God is Here.  Case is an insightful youth ministry veteran who lives in Florida with his wife, Becky, and his two children, Aprille and Eric.  In recent years, Case has been travelling and speaking to youth in a plethora of venues.  He can be found at: www.stevecasespeaks.com. 

 

The Christmas Riddle

Last November, our friends Jess and Jennifer Elmquist, came to our daughter Jessica’s wedding.  Jess has served on the Youthfront Board for eight years and is Vice President at Lifetime.  The next morning Vicki and I had brunch with them before they traveled home.  While we were enjoying our time to catch up on life, Jess and Jen shared the joy they had experienced publishing a story from Jess’s childhood that had shaped, not only Jess’s life but had become a deep tradition and narrative for their family.  They shared how the book entitled, “The Christmas Riddle” tells the story of a truly unusual and wonderful relationship between Jess and Miss Pixley.  Miss Pixley, an elderly woman, offered a refuge to Jess as a ten year old boy who had to leave his home to go live with his grandparents because his parents had become consumed with helping Jess’s three year old brother survive cancer.

Jess and Jen promised to send us a book as soon as it arrived from the publisher.  I finally got the book the week of Christmas but was unable to read it because of all we had going on.  I decided to save it until the start of Advent this year.  It was worth the wait.  A couple of Sunday’s ago, Vicki and I went to a coffee shop to read before going to church.  I disappeared into Christmas Riddle.  The only times I surfaced was to respond to Vicki who wanted to know why I was in tears.  The story is truly beautiful.  

Let me say, first of all, that I get asked constantly to review books, read manuscripts and endorse books.  I don’t endorse books unless I thoroughly read them.  You’d be surprised at how many people do.  Secondly, I have declined endorsing books because I couldn’t do it wholeheartedly.  That’s not easy and I’m sure I’ve disappointed authors and publishers.  That said; I believe that The Christmas Riddle should become a Christmas Classic.  The story in this little gem of a book is told in a captivating and compelling way that pulls you deeply in.  Jess has always been a master, verbally gifted storyteller and he carries that gift into the writing of this book. So do yourself a favor and, if you have children, make a gift to them by getting this book and incorporate it into your Christmas traditions.