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youTheology is a Saint Paul School of Theology Pan-Methodist program that is preparing leaders, deepening faith, providing youth ministry resources, and giving opportunities for loving and serving God and others with high school students and youth workers.
CED775 — Innovations: Cultivating Youth Spirituality in Experiential Environments
Mike King/Summer 2012
June 25-29 at Youthfront Camp and online 7/2-7/30
Catalog Description
Explorations into the contemporary spiritual lives of youth afford youth ministers an opportunity to develop new and innovative approaches to spiritual formation both for and with adolescents. This course explores one such approach to youth spirituality and youth spiritual formation through intensive settings such as retreats, pilgrimages, short term missions and camp ministries. The course utilizes one of the more innovative approaches to youth formation occurring through YouthFront a national youth ministry resource with specialized camp ministries just south of Kansas City. http://www.youthfront.com/directions This course allows participants the opportunity to explore the spiritual lives of youth, engage in formation practices with youth alongside recreational settings, and imagine the possibilities of similar ministry approaches in their own contexts.
The course includes an intensive, one week, situated learning experience at YouthFront South exploring youth spirituality while engaging youth and youth leaders on the journey. Special fee required for staying at the camp (required for all students). For more information contact NTS or Dr. Dean Blevins, director of the MACFD program.
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.
This is an extremely important question, not only for youth ministry and the spiritual formation of young people in our youth ministries; this is a critical question for the church and Christianity in North America.
The word theology combines two Greek words, theos (God) and logos (word, speech, or discourse). Theology, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “the study of God and God's relation to the world.” Many Christians think theology is something that only seminary students engage in and what theologians do for a living.
Theology helps us understand what the Bible means. Theology shapes what we believe about God, about ourselves, about life, about death, and about the future. Theology is crucial to understanding prayer, why we pray, and what happens when we pray. Theology helps us wrestle with issues like evil and why bad things happen to good people. Theology is vital to discover the meaning and purpose of our lives.
In reality, every human being is a theologian. Unfortunately, most people—including those who profess faith in Jesus Christ—are not very good theologians. The reason we are not developing good theologians is the church’s lack of intentionality to develop good theologians.
The North American posture toward life and the meaning of “the good life” is dominated by pragmatism. Pragmatism is largely an American philosophy that holds the belief that “the meaning of conceptions is to be sought in their practical bearings, that the function of thought is to guide action, and that truth is preeminently to be tested by the practical consequences of belief.”
Pragmatism has a significant influence on theology in our culture. Pragmatism as an orientation toward life and meaning subverts theology and tends to focus primarily on human action. If divine action is acknowledged, it is mostly a formulaic response to human action. It is challenging to question the success of the Joel Osteens, T.D. Jakeses, and Rick Warrens of the church world. How dare we not acknowledge their accomplishments? Certainly they must be evidence of God’s favor, right? Maybe, or maybe not.
Most youth workers have been wrestling with the findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion, a research project directed by Christian Smith, professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, and Lisa Pearce, assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Smith uses the phrase moralistic therapeutic deism to describe the current religious mindset among young people today. Moralistic therapeutic deism is religious pragmatism writ large and is the result of very bad theology.
So what do we do to help young people become better theologians and engage in deeper theological reflection? We must become intentional about teaching young people to think theologically. We must create consistent opportunities for young people to participate in dialogue. We have to allow for dialectical tension. We must help young people embrace paradox. We must expose them to the great theological issues like election, sanctification, justification, atonement, sin, holiness, the nature of God, plus much more. We must deal with such questions as What does it mean to say God is triune, and why does it matter? If God is all powerful and good, why do bad things happen? Is the Bible from God or human beings, and is it inerrant, infallible, inspirational, or what? What really happened on the cross? and What does the resurrection of Jesus Christ mean for our future?
Theology helps us come to know what we think about God, and that shapes how we live. Theology will help young people form their identities and nurture their spirituality.
Most importantly, our theology should be Christocentric. Dietrich Bonhoeffer believed that theology begins in prayer and has Jesus Christ as the center of God’s revelation to human beings. Jesus Christ is God for us. Perhaps we should begin to improve our theological reflection in youth ministry by spending time answering slowly the three questions that form Bonhoeffer’s theology (as stated in Andy Root’s Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From A Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation).
1. Who is Jesus Christ?
2. Where is the living, active presence of Jesus Christ?
3. What then shall we do?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pragmatism
This post originally appeared on Slant33 (used with permission)
Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean is Professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of the recently released books, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church (Oxford University Press, 2010) and The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry (Intervarsity Press, 2011). Kenda serves as an Advisor for Immerse: A Journal of Faith, Life and Youth Ministry. Recently, Youthfront staff member Erik Leafblad interviewed Kenda for the Immerse Journal Blog. Definitely worth a listen. Click here.
One of the books I like to visit and revisit during the season of Lent, especially Good Friday and Holy Saturday is Alan E. Lewis’ classic Between Cross & Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday. Here is a theologically rich little excerpt I contemplated on during this silent and empty Saturday before Resurrection Sunday.
Barth insists that in encountering our death God never ceases to be God. Far from dedivinized, God remains Lord over every contradiction, is indeed victorious eternally, “in advance” of the conflict with death, and thus able in a new, creative act to raise the crucified Christ out of death and nothingness.
Barth thus subverts the old and modern dualism which dictated that divine suffering would indeed mean conflict in and with God’s being. “In the light of Jesus Christ the empty loveless gods which are incapable of condescension and self-humiliation can be understood only as false gods. The God whose being is in becoming unto death is given to us utterly, but does not give up being God. In that self-forsakenness by which the Father abandons and delivers up the Son, Godness itself is not abandoned, given away to the point of cessation, but maintained, revealed, perfected. With stubbornness and perspicacity, Barth takes seriously that what appears impossible for God—to embrace mortality and death while remaining God—is declared by the gospel story to be an actuality and so a possibility. It is precisely in remaining God, while subjected to change and opposition, that God’s true immutability consists. So goes Barth’s radical bouleversement of the ancient and modern axiom of impassibility. Not the divine nature, but all human ideas about the divine nature are contradicted by the cross. It was sinful human pride to reject, on the basis of extraneous philosophical assumptions, the ontological consequences of the triune revelation. That uncovers in God’s love and grace and power a freedom to visit the farthest reaches of humanity’s far country and to do so in fulfillment, not diminution or negation, of who God is. Such is the unheard-of, impossible possibility, the foolish wisdom, of the God who elects to be located on a cross and in a tomb. (pg. 194, 195)
Next week I'm making the pilgrimage to Princeton. It has been a couple years since I completed the Certificate in Youth Ministry and Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. The first year I started this program I was there with Tony Jones. Kenda Creasy Dean challenged Tony to come to Princeton to work on a PhD. After meeting with Kenda, Tony and I spent an afternoon processing on what Tony should do. That was a great afternoon. On Monday Tony defends his Dissertation and on Monday evening a group of friends are gathering at Kenda Creasy Dean's home to celebrate Tony and his accomplishment.
I am thankful to have him as a friend. I have had people tell me that I should not be a friend of Tony Jones because of something that they disagree with Tony about. I wouldn't have any friends or a wife if I had to see eye to eye with them on everything. I know the caring sensitive side of Tony who is a true friend.
I also love Tony for blog posts like the one below where he takes on Marcus Borg's liberal view of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as a spiritual metaphor and not a literal, physical resurrection. Love it, love it...
I appeared as a guest on Andy Root's live blog to discuss the Re:form curriculum for confirmation produced by Sparkhouse (a division of Augsburg Fortress). We talked about this video piece of the confirmation content. You can listen to our conversation here.
@Andy_Browne tweet says it well, "WOW that blog post really blew up. It amazes me how important eternal damnation is to some peoples theology."
There is a new Slant33 Post out dealing with the question, "In what ways is hope essential to our theology?"
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Alan E. Lewis: Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday
Kenda Creasy Dean: Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church
Dirk Hayhurst: The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran
Philip Sheldrake: Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory, and Identity
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