Category: DOC Thoughts
Missional Ministry with Children & Youth
One difference that I’ve observed as I have aged is that our country treats children and youth like “mini-adults” and that we train them to consume. I recall “chores” as well as “play” as a kid. But, there is no room for play, unstructured or structured, in the lives of children and youth anymore. It is a problem that is effecting how children and youth learn to live in diversity, problem solve as a group, and develop skills that can help them as adults. One important aspect of Christian community could be creating an environment where children and youth can be who they are, children and youth, by creating safe space for play, worship, conversations, and study. This may be one of the most important “missional” ministries that the Church can offer children and youth. I think youth group, whenever you have it, should be 60% fun and 40% learning opportunity, but that doesn’t mean that learning is not happening during the “fun” part of youth group. I’m not advocating an edutainment style of ministry with children and youth. There is much, too much of this happening in religious and secular life. I’m advocating for allowing kids to be kids and respecting that age of development so that persons are ready to enter community at age 18, the age we consider someone an adult, equipped to participate in shaping their community rather than extending adolescence into their 20’s. The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article on the topic of play. Here is an excerpt from the article. Click the title to read more.
Toddlers to tweens: relearning how to play
By Stephanie Hanes, Correspondent / January 22, 2012 / The Christian Science MonitorThat has changed dramatically, she says. In the early 1980s, the federal government deregulated children’s advertising, allowing TV shows to essentially become half-hour-long advertisements for toys such as Power Rangers, My Little Ponies, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Levin says that’s when children’s play changed. They wanted specific toys, to use them in the specific way that the toys appeared on TV.
Today, she says, children are “second generation deregulation,” and not only have more toys – mostly media-based – but also lots of screens. A Kaiser Family Foundation study recently found that 8-to-18-year-olds spend an average of 7.5 hours in front of a screen every day, with many of those hours involving multiscreen multitasking. Toys for younger children tend to have reaction-based operations, such as push-buttons and flashing lights.
Take away the gadgets and the media-based scripts, Levin and others say, and many children today simply don’t know what to do.
DOC Character . . . Nailed
These careful, moderated theological approaches are increasingly important voices and advocates for Americans in times of cultural and political polarization, division and distance. Ministers graduating and serving churches across the country from Brite truly are, according to the hymn, “the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love.”(1)
For the past fifteen years my denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), has been in a full-blown identity crisis. I don’t know if we are “middle-aged”, but we have certainly lived that stereotypical struggle. Many, in an attempt to woo the Church consumer, have moved away from education to edutainment and from covenant community to commercial consensus. I think of my denomination as “pragmatic dabblers” which can be deadly without a well-formed identity. A seminary professor reminded our class, Christian Theology of World Religions, that one cannot join a inter-religious dialogue without first knowing your own religious identity, heritage, and by checking your need to “convert” at the door. Pragmatic dabbling is healthy when you know who you are and religious dialogue important when you have a clear sense of self and respect for the other participants. In our world of polemics, economic, political, and religious, the Disciples identity and voice is needed more than ever before.
The quote above comes from Pearce Edwards writing for the Daily Skiff. He is covering the opening of a new building at Brite Divinity School which is on the campus of Texas Christian University. Near the end of his article, “Harrison Building Reflects Brite’s Importance”, he offers this short sentence that nails what I would call “classic” Disciples identity and work in our nation and world. Disciples theology and practice will have to evolve rather than transform, reform, or conform to current consumer or corporate preferences if we are to remain a relevant voice of Gospel in our Regions, nation, and world. The next fifteen years will define the kind of Christians and citizens of the kindom that our denomination will be.
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Reference
1. Pearce Edwards, “Harrison Building Reflects Brite’s Importance”, TCU 360, contributor to the Daily Skiff, January 19, 2012.