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Ministry Mutiny Principle 2 - Get Real

Posted on Thursday 22 September 2005 by Greg @ 2:40 pm
Filed under: Ministry Mutiny


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Ministry Mutiny

"We need to get real about the mostly postmodern teens we are dealing with in our youth ministries. They are very different from the kinds of kids that I encountered when I started in youth ministry a few decades ago. These teens aren’t sure that a person can be sure about anything. As you reach them and teach them they need to know that it is healthy for them to wrestle through their doubts to their faith, just like the early disciples did.”
 “I thought we were supposed to try to remove their doubts by teaching them the truth,” Ty said bluntly, a distinct edge in his voice. 

“Actually when you start teaching them the truth you may be introducing even more doubt into their minds. I mean, come on Ty, think about some of the basic creedal stuff of Christianity. We believe in a God that we can’t explain, trust in a Savior we’ve never met and look forward to a heaven we’ve never seen. It sounds, well, unbelievable. That’s why it’s called amazing grace. If it was easy to understand and embrace we’d call it average or normal grace. The claims of Christ contain a whole lot of truth for an adolescent mind to wrap around and embrace without doubting some aspects of it. This is especially true about Jesus claim that he was “the way, the truth and the life” and that no one gets to heaven except through him. Many in this postmodern culture reject the notion that there is one true truth. There’s your truth and there’s my truth, but there is not one true truth.”

excerpt from Ministry Mutiny…A Youth Leader Fable

Questions:

  • What is different about seeking to reach postmodern students verses youth ministry in the past?
  • How do we change our tactics for reaching them without compromising the truth and our trust in the timeless power of God’s Word?
  • How "infected" is your youth group with the "true for you but not for me" mentality so prevalent today?
  • What can we do to get our teenagers to repent (change their minds) about the power of God’s Word, the gospel and truth?

  Comment on the 6 Youth Ministry Principles of Ministry Mutiny

  1. Listen for God’s Whisper
  2. Get Real
  3. Go Wide
  4. Grow Deep
  5. No More Outsourcing!
  6. Build on Values, Not Fads
  7. What principles did I miss, get wrong, understate or overstate?
Signed, Greg Stier

3 Comments for 'Ministry Mutiny Principle 2 - Get Real'

  1. On September 22, 2006 @ 7:10 pm Becky said:

    • The thing that helps me learn is examples or pictures.Or if you relate real life situations to the bible.I try to pay attention but sometimes things can get uniteresting.Most teens including me sometimes just need to learn by your testiomony and we like it when it is always diffrent.

    • Permalink to Becky's comment

  2. On October 6, 2006 @ 6:59 am Jason said:

    • What is different about seeking to reach postmodern students verses youth ministry in the past? Not as much as we’ve been led to believe in the past.  It has been asserted that this generation is so different we have to change our approach to presenting the GOSPEL with them.  It seems like this changes with every generation.  We’ve made it look and sound so different I’m not sure we are communicating the truth to them at all in some cases.  I think of the GOSPEL presentation that Stephen gave before his stoning in Acts and I’ll be honest, I can’t remember the last time I heard it presented that clearly to this generation (other than a D2S conference).  I’m not sure that we should put as much energy and money into addressing the unique postmodern generation as we have.  I think we’ve made this much harder and much more complex than it really is.  I think the core of Youth Ministry, ministry for that matter, is the same.  Whether they’re postmoderns, millenials, gen-Xers…it doesn’t matter.  At the end of the day we all need Jesus.  It time we started sharing the GOSPEL plainly and clearly.  We put far too much thought into the type of people we are sharing our faith with and then alter the message vs. focusing on the message we are relaying…that’s right…we are relaying a message presented to us by God through His Son Jesus Christ.  We don’t have copyright authority to tweek and change the message as we see fit.  It is what it is and it has changed lives for 2000 years.  Who are we to think that we need to do something different to make it more appealing to this generation?

    • Permalink to Jason's comment

  3. On February 19, 2007 @ 10:59 am Mike Conner said:

    • Greg, this is a great idea. It is very easy to use, although it scares students to death. I started using this principle this past Sunday and the students I had a chance to spend some time talking with loved it. I could see the "walls" of their life come down when we honestly talked about our struggles. I believe it is extremly important to give this opportunity for students to express how they feel and what they struggle with in such a way that they will not be condemned to "beat up" for the "wrong answers." Mike C

    • Permalink to Mike Conner's comment

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