Youth workers are not supposed to know everything about youth

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I once had to free a pigeon from my window wiper on the streets of London.

I’m not sure what made the feathered fiend attempt to land on the rear window of an aging Seat Ibiza in the first place, but the only spot it could find to balance on was the rear wiper blade.

Graciously then, I turned the wiper on, not knowing that this pigeon had managed to get its clawed toes stuck in the wiper itself. The result was a squawking, flapping bird, swinging desperately from side-to-side, being dragged along by the wiper.

There have been many times in youth work where I have felt just like that desperate bird, being dragged to-and-fro, flapping widely, just trying to keep up, and waiting for somebody to save me.

Youth work, like anything else, comes with the pesky Dunning-Kruger thing: you don’t know what you don’t know. The more I learn and experience, the more I realise just how much I haven’t learned or experienced. Not only do I not know everything, but I’m coming to understand that I’ll never know everything!

However, this is not always clear – to us, or to those we work with.

We often feel like (or made to feel like) we are supposed to know everything about young people, youth culture, and youth work – not to mention child psychology, cognitive development, event management, project growth, mediation, conflict resolution, social media, logo design, safeguarding, budgets, how-to-run-a-game-for-300-kids-with-nothing-but-a-shoelace! … etc.

Is this possible, and – even if it is – Is it healthy?

A missing convention

In most care-related careers there is a professional assumption that the person in post will not be an expert across their entire field. A doctor, for instance, will train for years but will never have a full encyclopaedic knowledge of, or practice experience with, the entire human body or psyche.

Reaching out for help in these instances is seen as professional practice. This is an expectation not a concession. In fact, if a doctor does not refer to a specialist, or reach out to a consultant, then they are creating a risk that the patient might not receive the best possible care.

Doctors call specialists, assign treatments, recommend support groups, draw in pharmacists, nurses, and healthcare groups. There is an expectation that patient care be shared among a team – not dominated by a single individual.

In youth work, however, the worker is often the lone-ranger, superhero, jack-of-all-trades. There can be external expectations from churches that the youth worker will necessarily know all about young people and do all the youth work. Then there are internal expectations from the youth worker that says, ‘I’m supposed to know all and do all.’

Not only is this unhealthy for the church and a recipe for burnout for the youth worker, but it is likely to be denying the young people themselves the best possible support and care.

Youth work (like a lot of ministry) is missing an expectation or convention that is found in many other places. We’re not meant to know all and do all; we’re meant to facilitate a team to help young people have the best possible chance to grow as a healthy follower of Jesus.

It’s not only bad practice to keep everything to ourselves, but in terms of ‘seeking the best’ for young people, it’s actually quite selfish.

The power of specialisation

Thinking back to doctors, they of course specialise. There are psychologists, anaesthetists, paediatricians, cardiologists, etc. and by working together they are able to offer deep expertise in specific areas for particular patients.

What about us? Youth workers simply cannot understand everything needed to bring all young people the best discipleship journeys by themselves, so what can we do instead?

First, know the special areas of interest and personalities in your church and network. This allows you to connect young people up with others in a healthy and specific ways. Facilitate the wider body to bear upon the walks of young people.

Second, utilize resources that you don’t do well. Not every church needs a youth club, especially if there’s a good one around the corner that you can plug into. Not every youth worker needs to run a camp, or write all the resources for every meeting, or develop their own mission trips, or do all the school’s work. Develop links with other youth workers locally and resource groups nationally and design a project calendar using those partnerships. We need to be less clingy, less grabby, and frankly less tribal in our approaches.

Third, be a specialist. What is it that you’re good at or are well resourced to do? Dig deeper into that. Not every youth worker needs to reach every young person, so look for local, untapped needs, and match them with what you could resource, and specialise in those areas.

Forth, say ‘I don’t know how’ more often. Help the culture around you understand that you’re not a one-stop fix to all things youth work. This has the knock-on effect of helping us recalibrate where to spend our time, how to focus, and where to seek training.

Keep a balance

This idea of specialisation is not a ready-made excuse to neglect needed ministry that we’re not skilled at (or enjoy), and it’s not a reason to bypass training.

We should always work with those that God has laid before us, even if that takes us out of our comfort zones. We need to keep a balance between needs and skills. This is not an easy balance to strike, but when you begin from the place of ‘I don’t know all and can’t do all’ then it becomes a much more honest and pragmatic issue to explore.

You’re not supposed to know everything, and you’re not supposed to do everything. So, what has God called you to do, locally, in your area, with your young people, using the resources available to you? Start there.

 

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

What the Brewdog scandal teaches us about branding our projects

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I only started drinking when I turned 30. It was my birthday, my wife and I were at a festival, and we decided that we would celebrate with a glass of wine. It was horrible! After being teetotal for most of my life, my tastebuds were just not used to the tannin rich flavours.

Since then, I have discovered that a pint of pale ale with a meal, or over a football game, is about my limit. For this reason, I have really enjoyed local microbreweries and craft ales. I stumbled across Brewdog early in this learning process, and like most people I thought they were a small, local business, with that artisan hipster vibe that I tend to be drawn to.

I was wrong.

I first heard of issues with Brewdog early last year. Reports said they were effectively ripping off other small brands, undercutting genuine local businesses, and entering into all kinds of silly copyright claims over words like ‘punk’. This week more has come to light about the toxicity of the work environment, and something almost like virtue signalling in its approach to brand identity.

Put another way, they like to look like something rather than actually being something. They’re trying to look small-bespoke-hipster to sell to people like me, but they’re hiding a massively corporate body under their whitewashed brand.

Youth work identity branding

Youth workers, we can be so guilty of this. In our passion to appear relevant to pockets of ‘Gen Z’ we often dress up in cultural clothing rather than actually truly cultivating culture.

In our passion to find the right fonts to use, the right brand name to dress up, the right clothing to wear, the right boxsets to reference, and the right language to speak, we can very easily create a Brewdog-style façade, hiding our true selves and true intentions underneath.

This creates a serious disconnect and is one of the main reasons that we run clubs rather than grow community.

The basis of this is classically attractional ministry. We dress a project up in a way that we think would appeal to broad masses of young people. We look at generational trends, evaluate popular TV shows, examine how young people are spending their time, and we build a project brand around those ideas in the hope it will attract young people.

At one level there’s nothing wrong with these things, as long as they flow naturally out of the community of young people that we’re directly working with. However as so much of our work is intrinsically geared towards attracting new people (rather than developing long-term healthy relationships with just a small nucleus) we tend to put this brand cart before the horse.

Looking like or truly being?

The issue then is, unlike the culture it emanates from, we develop this identity in a vacuum from real people. This means that no matter how ‘on trend’ our project looks, it will always have a serious disconnect with the people that we’re trying to embrace. It will always be in some way fake, false, phoney, fraudulent, and foundationally bankrupt. Sorry!

I think this is a symptom of a fundamentally broken youth work model. Youth work has a habit of trying to look like something rather than genuinely being something. Let me say that again because I think that’s the heartbeat of what I’m trying to get across here: youth work has a habit of trying to look like something rather than genuinely being something.

Relationships create culture, and culture drives community. A healthy project is one that is built in this direction, and in this order. Starting instead with an attractional brand idea which is essentially disconnected from actual people, will always be inauthentic.

So how should we do it?

  • We start with the nucleus of just a few young people.
  • We connect deeply with them building healthy relationships and facilitating healthy communication among them.
  • This begins to manifest as its own specific culture.
  • The culture then cultivates community.

Put another way, do it first, name it later! Live it first, brand it later! Grow it first, label it later!

Let’s not Brewdog this thing anymore. They got caught, so will we. Young people can smell a rat. They have authentic radar! So, let’s just not fake it to begin with.

Peace.

 

Photo by Eeshan Garg on Unsplash

Rethinking “biblical masculinity” in youth groups.

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Blessed are the barrel-chested
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who bench 220
For they will be comforted
Blessed are the grunters and the spitters
For they will inherit the earth
Blessed are those who hunger for angus burgers, and thirst for real ale
For they will be filled
Blessed are those who can shoot, fight, and hunt
For they will see God
Blessed are those who can chop wood
For they will be called the children of God
Blessed are the hairy, the sweaty, the musky, and the bearded
For theirs is the kingdom of God.

Not really.

There was a post on a popular Christian youth work forum earlier in the week asking for ‘manly activity’ ideas for his boys-only Bible study group. They were about to start looking at ‘biblical masculinity’ and wanted activities that supported the venture.

“Biblical masculinity.” I’d like to make war on that phrase.

The responses to this forum post were as you’d expect. A ready list came within minutes from multiple people that included fishing, shooting, camping, chopping wood, making fires, and even axe-throwing. There was also carpentry, ‘making stuff’, and life skills like how to change a tyre or grill a burger. Y’know… ‘things men do.’

My question is: from what part of the Bible do we derive at these object lessons for ‘biblical masculinity’? Why have we attached exactly these types of activities to a concept of biblical manhood?

Are we in reality propping up a cultural view of masculinity with a flighty idea of manhood that we think is in the Bible, but might not be?

Is it what the Bible says?

What we often think of as ‘biblical masculinity’ is simply not in the Bible. Instead, I believe we have arrived at a composite idea of a very particular type of manhood from various cultural perceptions throughout history. I’d even go as far to say that you can trace many of these ideas back to Homeric philosophy, and the Greek pursuit of challenging the Olympian gods through raw strength and power.

As odd as it might seem to some, many boys don’t want to be known by their aggressive prowess – and this shouldn’t be a reason for us to make them feel like any less of a man by how we program or teach on manliness.

Now, I have no problem with wood-chopping, fire-making, or even axe-throwing as youth group activities (post risk-assessment!). Sounds like fun! But I don’t see anything in the Bible to assume these should be limited just to ‘the lads.’ In fact, I’m pretty sure many of the girls in my group would enjoy these adventurous activities just as much, if not sometimes more, than the boys.

My issue is indiscriminately attaching these activities to ‘biblical masculinity.’ Frankly, I don’t believe the Bible says what we think it does about masculinity – and I think we’ve been guilty of some pretty simple interpretive mistakes in our haste to create this skewed version of manhood.

Let’s take a step back. If I asked you to go and find me the ‘biblical masculinity’ passages in the Bible – where would you go? What verses, passages, characters, or ideas come to mind? Now are they explicitly or exclusively about manhood?

Edwin Louis Cole in his best-selling ‘Maximized Manhood’ starts in 1 Cor. 10:6-9, a passage that applies to all of Israel, but Cole makes it exclusively about men. John Eldredge takes a similar approach in his successful book, ‘Wild at Heart’. He uses passages that apply to men and women equally, and then overlays them onto his particularised construct of manhood.

I’d accuse both of these authors (and others like them) of several Bible-reading errors, for instance:

  1. Putting the cart before the horse – having an idea, then wedging verses in later to prove it.
  2. Spring-boarding – starting with a verse, and then using a word or an idea within it to bounce off into a completely different point.

When you’ve been through books like this, however, the cumulative weight of these prooftexts, along with the ways the authors have connected them, can feel very convincing. That is until you stop yourself at each verse and ask the question: Is this actually talking about masculinity? In most of the cases, the answer is no.

Why does this matter?

Many of the traits that we assign to ‘biblical masculinity’ are simply not limited to men.

If I asked you to write down a list of traits that might be considered biblical masculine, what would it include? Have a go. I’m guessing your list, like mine, would include ideas like ‘strength’, ‘endurance’, ‘protection’ and ‘provision.’ These are important traits – but now try and find the Bible verses that tell us to pursue these virtues.

You will find verses; however, they won’t be speaking just about men.

Instead, you will find passages about parents, prophets, elders, devout followers, or those seeking holiness. You will find passages about developing childhood, engaging in worship, dealing with outsiders, or developing a healthy community.

That’s the issue with applying these traits just to men when they are linked to godliness within all of God’s people. Are we really not going to teach girls to be strong or protective? In fact, in the case of the four traits above, the only place you find them specifically linked to gender is in Prov. 31 – and that ain’t talking about men!

It’s about relationships

The problem is we have turned ‘biblical masculinity’ into what I call a ‘vacuum category’. That is something that you can build in isolation from other people. So, we become very inward focused, looking at traits like ‘healthy-strength’ or ‘self-control’ or ‘properly-directed aggression’ as if they just existed in us, regardless of whether we ever meet other people.

However, teaching on being a healthy man in the Bible is almost always (if not entirely) spoken about in relationship to another party. So, we learn about godly men because they are good husbands, or dads, or mentors, or followers of God.

This makes masculinity far less inward than we treat it. I believe we’re too concerned with ‘what a man is’ rather than ‘what a man does.’ Or, to use the language the Bible speaks in more often, ‘how a man treats others.’

Being any kind of person is importantly shown in how you treat those around you. We don’t learn about who we are in isolation and then drag-and-drop that identity into a community. Community and relationships are utterly essential to our formation. Learning about ‘biblical masculinity’ as a vacuum category of abstract traits simply doesn’t work.

This isn’t to say that the Bible doesn’t celebrate differences between men and women, I think it does. However, that sits way below a much more fundamental pursuit – and one that should colour any concept we have of masculinity. Let’s end with that.

So, is biblical masculinity dead?

No, but I think our concept of it is far too narrow and has bounced way off the court of truly being ‘biblical.’

As a rule, when the Bible doesn’t use our categories, we have to look for what categories the Bible does use and extrapolate from them. The Bible doesn’t have a cleartext theology of masculinity, but it does have a theology of leadership, of parenting, of worshipping, etc. all of which can play out differently for different types of people – men included.

These are the categories the Bible uses to help us pursue whole and healthy identities. Let’s start from there, instead, and see if we find a healthy version of masculinity within these pursuits.

The overwhelming pursuit in the Bible, then, is not manliness, (or womanliness for that matter); it’s nearness to God. This is achieved though worship, obedience, and imitation.

The godliest men I know are not pursuing manliness, they’re pursing nearness to God. This will ordinarily shape itself around how God designed them to be. Trying to do that bit first, however, is like learning to play the violin by drawing the instrument over the bow, rather than the other way around. It’s clumsy, it’s uncomfortable, and it makes crummy music!

If we want our boys to grow into fantastic men, then let’s spend less time teaching them how to be men, and more time helping them to draw near to God. It’s a far more effective tool – and it allows them to grow as they’re designed to be.

 

Photo by Craig McLachlan on Unsplash

How to lead a ‘conspiracy theory’ session with your youth group (part 2)

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Earlier this year my zoom-group ran a ‘conspiracy theory night’ with our young people. It was lots of fun!

If you’ve read Part 1 of this blog series, you’ll know that I’m concerned about the level of adult noise around conspiracy theories today, and just how unhelpful they are for our developing young people.

Not only can a session on conspiracy theories with your group be super fun, but it can also give them some tools to think critically, grow resilience, and provide some relief that not everyone is actually out to get them!

What do you want to get out of the session?

There are a number of ‘wins’ for a session like this. Here’s the few that I really wanted to happen:

  • A safe place created for young people to bring up theories they have heard and are worried about.
  • A chance to demonstrate how to think critically about things they see and read online, building resilient skills.
  • A place to show how to love and respect someone (including parents) without agreeing with everything they say, building resilient relationships.
  • A chance to differentiate between conspiracy and mystery – bringing it back to the gospel.

The tone

A night like this needs to begin light, informal, and fun, and it needs to move people through a feeling of safety and enjoyment, to sympathy, to eventually empathy, with the ability to look at issues more objectively.

As this is developing, we should hold in tension that some young people (or more likely people in their family) might believe in one or more of the theories we were going to talk about. Because of this we decided to use a few more short (<2min) video clips and ask more open questions than we might usually have done. This approach creates space, and provides more passive reflection times.

For us then, we began with lots a laughter and fun, but then tried to find common threads that show how even the most outlandish-seeming conspiracy theorists are real people needing love and grace – and might not be all that different to us. From this we looked at ideas of self-care, critical thinking, and bought it back to the gospel.

How we ran it

We had a group of maybe fifteen young people, a few adult leaders, and some student leaders. We advertised it in the week with some OTT videos and pictures. The point here was to start with conspiracy theories that were so ridiculous that no one was going to begin by getting offended. We put out videos and pictures saying Pixar, Disney, and Dreamworks were in cahoots to eat our souls! Here’s one of those pictures:

Here’s the order from the night:

  • We began with a quick clip from the Simpsons and asked the big open question ‘what is a conspiracy theory?’
  • We had a second funny clip from a British comedian on his favorite conspiracy theories, followed by the question, ‘what others have your heard / do you know about’?
  • I gave a list of some of my favorite conspiracy theories including:
    • Paul McCartney died in 1966 – but the Beatles kept it a secret with a body double and sound-alike.
    • Medicine companies and trying to make you sick so you will… wait for it… buy more medicines!
    • Elvis Presley is still alive and is now 81 years old.
    • Aliens helped to build Stonehenge.
    • Prince Charles is a vampire.
    • Finland doesn’t actually exist – it’s a fictional country made up by Russia and Japan.
    • Megham Markle is actually a robot – because she doesn’t blink enough.
  • Third clip, this time from a rocket builder who believes in the flat earth conspiracy. We asked what they knew and thought about that theory, what it would mean if true, and why is such a theory attractive.
  • Final clip, from a TV physicist, talking about the moon landing conspiracy theory. This led us onto questions around what it would really take for some of these conspiracy theories to actually be true.
  • We moved into what I like to call ‘moment of honesty’ time, asking two questions: 1) ‘Are there any conspiracy theories that you’d love to be true?’ 2) ‘If you were being super-honest, are there any that you kinda think might be true?’ I shared my secret soft spot for the existence of big foot and megladon!
  • We then asked a few questions to generate discussion, such as ‘Why do people love them/want them/need them?’ I then shared some other reasons including:
    • Make people feel safe & in control.
    • We all love gossip a bit more than we should.
    • Gives them someone to blame/somewhere to redirect feelings of anger and hurt.
    • We all love a good mystery.
  • Then came the big question – ‘don’t Christians sometimes look like conspiracy theorists? Why?’
  • This was followed by a longer time in breakout groups brainstorming answers to the question – ‘How can we share Jesus without looking nuts?’
  • We fed back then asked why is the gospel called ‘a mystery’? Looked at Eph. 3:1-6.
  • I shared some final thoughts about the gospel being enough without needing padding, and how Christians often look weird simply because they try to pad the gospel.
  • We had a camera off mediation to the song ‘Indescribable’ using this words-on-screen video.
  • We ended with a mixture of Q&A, hanging out, and prayer

Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash

Young people and your conspiracy theories (part 1)

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I think if you could label, in one word, the overwhelming feelings of some of the loudest adults speaking on COVID-19, that word might be ‘anger’ or even ‘rage’. Not all adults, of course, just many who make the most noise on TV, the internet, or in shopping queues.

However, when a person of influence or power is primarily and constantly angry, what effect does that have on the vulnerable around them? They don’t feel anger, they feel fear.

Fear is what children feel when their parents are angry. Fear is what workers feel when their boss is angry. Fear is what civilians feel when world leaders are angry. Fear is what young people feel when loud adults all around them are angry.

There are quite a few righteous and legitimate reasons for adults to be angry, but there’s also plenty of self-righteous, short-sighted, narrow-visioned, socially-irresponsible, down-right-stupid-and-selfish reasons too.

Angry conspiracies

I was heartbroken this week when an old mentor from when I was growing up took to social media with an all caps warning about ‘new world order’, the ‘great reset’, and the ‘globalist conspiracy to move everybody towards communism.’ This was all dressed up in COVID-19 pandemic language.

The post, and subsequent conversation in the comments, went exactly the way you’d expect. There was an assertion that they had done extensive ‘research’ from ‘non-mainstream’ sources and uncovered some ‘hidden truth’. They made appeal to experts, some of whom had made up credentials, many had serious ego-issues, and most had been widely discredited. Finally, there was a complete disregard of any information that didn’t agree with their own experts as ‘all part of the conspiracy’. It was foolish, it was misguided, and it oozed deep resentful anger.

I hate these conspiracy posts. Hate them, hate them, hate them. They bug me intellectually, and I think they undermine genuine work by good people, but that’s not why I hate them. I hate them because they do exactly the thing they’re trying to ‘expose:

  • They rewrite anything that doesn’t agree with them using the terms of their own conspiracy.
  • They label any source other than their own as ‘mainstream’ (as if that really means anything), in order to outright reject it without discussion.
  • They rely exclusively on sources run by half-baked egotistical groups driven by agenda and drenched in apocalyptical rhetoric (and poor spelling!).
  • They rage against secret truth while claiming only they (and certain others) have the full picture.
  • They end up in a position of power – and the only acceptable response is swallow everything they say and join their cult.

So, I hate conspiracy posts like this. They don’t represent narrative discovery as much as they represent narrative creation. They leave the poster looking and feeling superior, like they’ve been let in on a secret. They draw attention away from what we’re actually told to do (share the gospel!), and then they prey on the vulnerable, the lonely, the isolated, and those who feel of less value.

Young people are in the room

I’m not sure these adults have any concept of how loud they are online, or even just at home. This constant rhetoric permeates the environment of young people, and it sends roots right down into their developing sense of reason.

These conspiracy theories used to sit on the fringes, but I’m worried that the increased isolation of the last year is amplifying them into whole new arenas. Again, young people are listening, and how do we want them to develop?

We want young people to exercise critical thinking, independent judgement, and grow as wise consumers.

We want young people to be able to look at the world and make value calls in line with the gospel, driven by compassion, and under-girded by hope.

We want young people to interact in a healthy, fruit-of-the-spirit-shining-through way with other people.

We want young people to be led by the great commission, fuelled by the great commandment, and supported by a church who are also led by the great commission and fuelled by the great commandment.

Are you one of these adults?

Are you knocking on the doors of conspiracy plaza? Are you spending a little too much time scrolling through headlines on fringe websites or YouTube channels? Have you taken to play-testing some of these ideas with your family, or one your personal social media platforms?

Maybe this is the time to pause and consider what effect this could be having on the young who hear. You are entitled to believe whatever you want, but please do so respectfully and at least knowingly that you’re having an effect on young people in your blast zone of influence.

If you’re going to research alternative theories, do so with same levels of critical caution that you would want a young person to exercise. If you’re going to push back on groups you don’t like or agree with, do so with the same presence of mind you would want a young person to learn. If you’re going to call out people who you think are dangerous, then do so with the same integrity of Spirit that you’d want the adults of tomorrow to demonstrate too.

Is it really anger?

I said ‘anger’ at the beginning but let’s be honest with each other. Anger is often the calling card of fear itself. Fear self-perpetuates itself and often anger is its vehicle. We are, as a culture, afraid and we’re tired. We have been all year. But for the sake of our young people let’s not let our fear push anger to drive the outputs of our lives.

Instead, let’s pray for more hope! Hope is what drives us through tragic and challenging times. Hope is what builds resilience. Hope is what draws us to deeper, more firm-footed placed of faith. If you’re struggling to find hope, maybe start with the classic ‘count your blessings’ to feed your gratitude furnace. That’s where hope comes from.

I like to say that gratitude leads to hope, hope leads to faith, and faith leads to love.

Stay tuned for part two: “How to lead a conspiracy theory session with your young people.”

 

Photo by Bruce Warrington on Unsplash

When relationships are not enough

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For years we’ve been using the word ‘relationships’ as the silver bullet; the key to understanding young people and unlocking the highest potential of our youth ministries. But do we really know what we mean when we say ‘relationship’?

Caveat: Before I go any further, I’d want to affirm the utterly essential place and practice of relationships in youth work. We worship a relational God who created us with unbelievable capacity for connection, and a deep-seated need for it. In fact, you can trace almost everything that’s wrong in the world to a lack of healthy relationships with others. The heart behind this post then is: yes relationships are immensely important, so let’s be clear about what we mean and pursue them as healthily as we possibly can! This is one of those areas where being too broad and nonspecific can actually be quite damaging.

I wonder then, if ‘relationship’ just might have become a bit too much of buzz word in youth ministry?

Starting simply, relationships can be good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, abusive or constructive. Relationships in ministry can be authoritative or authoritarian; or can be cooperative or communal. Not all relationships are the same, and not thinking about how they might be different can cause some very real issues.

Going a little further, in settings like school, family, church, or youth ministry, relationships are rarely between equal parties. There are different relational expectations, different vulnerabilities, and different safeguarding boundaries between teachers and students, parents and children, leaders and young people. They should be equal in terms of value, dignity, and respect – however, they might not be equal in functional terms like life-experience or positions of power. Trying to squash out theses difference can be quite harmful – even abusive.

I think that maybe we’ve begun to use relationship (singular) a little too much as a theory rather than relationships (plural) as a reality. The former is often too broad and abstract, whereas the latter requires us to get specific and personal. Simply saying ‘we are relational youth workers’ or ‘we do relationship-driven youth ministry’, doesn’t necessarily mean much in isolation.

There have been some popular youth work books published in the last fifteen or so years that have driven a muddy, and I think unhelpful, narrative on relationships that have resulted in a more unclear concept of what we mean by relationship. Three particularly questionable ideas that are part of this narrative are:

  1. Relationships, unequivocally, are the end in themselves and having any other objective than ‘relationship’ is manipulative.
  2. Relationships should include equal vulnerability and exposure of both parties.
  3. Relationships are designed to make young people feel loved.

I believe these can actually be damaging or even abusive when looked at carefully.

An end in themselves?

Starting with 1.), ‘relationship’ as an end in itself is a semantic nightmare. Relationships always have subtext. We have relationships for companionship, love, guidance, nurture, fulfilment, belonging, structure, experiences, passions, shared convictions, and to help form us to grow. In fact, all relationships are by their very nature formative and healthy relationships help us grow well.

Having a relationship to have a relationship is simply non-sensical. There are always reasons for relationships, and always aspirations for relationships too. Draining all purpose or influence from a relationship necessarily drains the thing itself to become either a thing that is not a relationship, or a shallow or even an unhealthy relationship.

For us as Christians, surely one reason we build relationships is to share the life-giving message of Jesus. However, some authors see even this as manipulative. Dr. Andrew Root, for instance, sees remotely any kind of potential influence in relationships as unhealthy, and thus any youth ministry that is trying to influence a young person to become a Christian as depersonalized and dishonest (2013:113-114).

Authors like Root (and Root himself) don’t, however, differentiate been healthy and unhealthy influence. I have a wonderful relationship with my wife for instance. This relationship includes healthy influence; simply put – she helps me be a better person and less of a jerk! This works because the relationship has been built on trust, respect, and dignity. Healthy relationships, therefore, can provide healthy influence.

A more extreme scenario might be talking someone down from the ledge before they attempted suicide. This would also be an example of healthy influence. Many of us would argue that this is exactly the type of influence we exercise by trying to help young people know the gospel.

Root and others like him do provide an important cautionary tale about manipulating young people through inauthentic relationships. Yes – I’m with them on that. However, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater! Relationships are by their nature influential and contain a variety of moving goals. Our job is to build them with love, grace, trust, respect, and dignity so they grow healthily.

Equal vulnerability and exposure?

Some argue that true relationships are where both parties fully experience and inhabit each other’s deepest pains, sufferings, and vulnerabilities as equal partners. If we want to apply this to youth ministry, however, then expecting a teenager to be an ‘equal partner’ and carry the baggage of a much older youth minster is a recipe for relational abuse – if not actually abusive in itself.

One of the problems here is that the only examples often used in books and blogs sharing this idea are between equal partners (marriage, friendship etc.). This is simply not the relationship a young person should have with their youth leader.

Some of this has come from the parenting language of a few research pieces that came out about a decade ago that made a big deal of young people looking for parenting figures. Youth leaders jumped on this as a way of developing more parent-like interests in their young people.

I think we read this data correctly, but that we found incorrect ways to address it. I believe that the church should be like surrogate families, but youth leaders should not be surrogate parents. This level of engagement creates all kinds of issues.

Always being on is something that parents do for a set number of years and they make a lot of mis­takes, as we all know. That close family relationship, all-warts exposed, cannot extend to twenty-some young people twenty-four hours a day. It’s a recipe for the happening of terrible things—and also sets a precedent for those young people, allowing them to fall into unsafe behaviours and times with other peo­ple in their lives who perhaps they shouldn’t trust.

While always being open to young people is a drain on health and family, robbing the worker of their effectiveness, it also creates safeguarding vulner­abilities. Being alone on the phone to a young person at all hours, having them come into the house alone, regularly meeting in quiet spaces, and prolonged private conversations can create unhealthy levels of dependency and exclusiv­ity. Things are easily misconstrued in concealed spaces, especially with hurting and vulnerable young people.

Personal boundaries and healthy safeguarding practices are necessities for today’s youth worker to be in their post for years to come. Longevity demands healthy practice and accountability. Surely, we want these relationships to last more than a year or two too?

Even in this scenario, however, a parent is not a functional equal party with the child. So this move in the last few years towards treating relationships with young people as functional equals is even more exposing for both the young person and the youth leader. Young people should be treated with dignity and respect, but that doesn’t mean they can handle the immediate extra weight of an entire adult experience.

Put another way, it’s healthier if we think about being friends to young people, rather than being friends with young people.

Relationships should make people feel loved?

In 1970, a film adaptation of Erich Segal’s novel ‘Love Story’ made famous the line ‘love means never having to say you’re sorry’, but it took another 34 years and an 8-year-old called Lisa Simpson to point out ‘No it doesn’t! This movie is drivel!’

There is a growing trend today that says perception is reality. Love, therefore, gets held to ransom by the loved. It’s measured in the eye of the beholder. Imagine for a second that we decided that something was only food if we liked its taste. I really don’t like taste of celery, but because I don’t like it doesn’t make it not food. I really do like the taste of PlayDoh, but I don’t think that makes the neon pink putty into food, just because I have weird taste buds.

When it comes to love, we have begun to say things like ‘if I didn’t feel it right, then you didn’t do it right!’ If people don’t feel loved by our love, would it necessarily mean, however, that we’re loving those people ‘wrong’, or that our love is in some way defective, damaged, or deficient? It could but doesn’t have to the case.

When we love someone then, we don’t simply ‘feel’ towards them with some kind spasmodic force. Feelings will accompany what we do, but they are not the whole. When we love somebody, we serve them, help them, lift them up, support them, stand with them, are present to them, and we protect them. Occasionally we might even withdraw from them out of love.

Understanding love languages as a part of personality types can help us communicate better with people and be more sympathetic. This is not the whole story though and needs to be balanced with a much fuller philosophy of who people are and what love is.

We really want young people to feel loved. Of course we do! But that can’t be the main goal or measure of loving relationships. After all it’s entirely possibly to make someone feel loved, but not actually love them at all. We cannot let truly loving actions and relationships be held to random by the feelings alone, especially if by doing so we would be required to sacrifice healthy relationships in order to ‘make them feel it.’

We should be loving but we cannot attempt to manipulate how people think and feel and still claim to be developing healthy loving relationships.

When relationships are not enough

‘Relationship’ as an abstract, non-specific concept is not enough. We need to pursue a particular type of relationship practice that honours and develops multiple healthy relationships as a result.

The real question, then, is how are relationships pursued and for what purpose do they serve?

Relationship practice should include healthy boundaries, careful loving influence, open and clear goals, multiple parties’ involvement, ongoing honest accountability, and creative and understood purposes.

It should also flow more readily out of relational theology. Questions on the relationships within the Trinity, between God’s people, and to us through revelation, all bear on this idea. This is why it’s really odd to separate ‘good relationships’ and ‘right theology.’

The heart behind this post is yes relationships, but if we’re going to relentlessly relational work in our youth ministry – and we should – then let’s do it as well and healthily as we possibly can!

Gough out.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

 

50 stupidly wrong misconceptions that I started ministry with

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When I was at Bible College, I knew everything, and I mean everything. Everyone else was stupid, inconsistent, fallacious, illogical, irrational, and erratic. I was one of the sound ones which – for some stupid, inconsistent, fallacious, illogical, irrational, and erratic reason – meant that I could speak to and about others with sarcasm, condescension, or even open distain. Like Sensi Akira Kurosawa from The Simpsons said of Bart, “ah ah, the impetuousness of youth!” But was it just youth, and is it just me?

I always called this First year at Recognised Theological College Syndrome (or FARTS for short), but since the dramatic sprawl of Christian influence on social media, it seems to linger beyond college, and is far more pervasive than just among the ‘qualified.’ FARTS, it seems, is a wider problem.

Another, perhaps more sinister way of thinking about it, is the legitimised suspension of the Fruit of the Spirit. That as long as you think that what you’re saying is ‘true’ enough, and your opponent is ‘false’ enough, you could legitimately speak about others without need for grace or mercy.

Some of this is emotional convenience. Self-righteousness and pride, at some carnal level, feels good, affirming, and even empowering. It’s easy to grab some cheap measure of this with a bit of sarcastic rhetoric – or by dropping a back-handed gif to a person on Facebook that we’ll probably never meet. An avatar, after all, is not eye contact, and an emoticon is not the same as tone-of-voice.

I sometimes wonder if this is something that those of us who consider ourselves as particularly ‘Bible-centred’ are perhaps more guilty of overall.

So, with all that in mind, I thought I would throw out here a whole bunch of stuff that I’ve been wrong about. Dead wrong. Stupidly wrong. Especially from when I was at Bible College, or early on in my career. This is not to say I don’t still make mistakes now (I do!), but this is not that post. This also isn’t to say that I was ineffective, unloved, or a bad person – we all make mistakes and nurse misconceptions. I’m trying hard to learn and grow, and it’s helpful for me to be able to point these out and go ‘wow, was I off!’

In the spirit of ‘this is a safe place’ feel free to share or comment on your own early misconceptions of ministry life. Here for now, however, are a few that I had:

  1. I’m probably the Holy Spirit in some kind of unique way.
  2. Unbelievers – especially those with influence – are the enemies.
  3. Satan, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t really exist.
  4. Being ‘bold’ makes it ok to be an ass.
  5. Aggressive rhetorical devices are justified by gospel passion.
  6. Anything that does not agree with my ‘sound’ theology is heresy.
  7. Said heretics should be shot from a cannon into the sun.
  8. Nobody has said anything useful since about 1600.
  9. Youth ministry is healthiest when it’s fundamentally separate from the rest of the church.
  10. Parents are part of the problem.
  11. I have nothing to teach parents.
  12. Parents have nothing to teach me.
  13. Proof-texting is fine, as long as the thing its proofing happens to be somewhat true.
  14. It’s only ‘dogmatic’ if you’re wrong.
  15. I’m more responsible for young people than the pastor… or their parents.
  16. Schools are fundamentally evil, and teachers are the tools of Satan.
  17. I know better than the entire education system.
  18. I also know better than the entire ______ system (fill in as appropriate).
  19. It’s easy to change people’s minds.
  20. It’s better to change someone’s approach to ministry than it is to change where or how they serve in ministry.
  21. Jesus only loved me when I was being lovable.
  22. I would be more effective with a soul patch.
  23. I would be more effective with blonde highlights.
  24. DC Talk are probably prophets.
  25. Youth workers don’t last because they are weak quitters.
  26. Pastors, overall, are pretty stupid.
  27. If a young person does drugs, goes drinking, has sex, etc. it’s probably my fault.
  28. Theology is really simple. Black and white in fact.
  29. It’s OK for me to publicity criticise people that I’m not praying for.
  30. Other things are just as important as the gospel.
  31. Anything ‘social gospel’ is probably heretical or a compromise.
  32. I’m clever if I use the phrase ‘logical fallacy’ as much as possible.
  33. Because someone is upset with me, they deserve my immediate attention.
  34. Because someone is upset with me, they are somehow abusing me.
  35. It’s godly for me to surround myself with toxic people in order to be accepting.
  36. Decisions are made in meetings.
  37. Those who use Greek and Hebrew have been let in on secrets that God doesn’t tell other people.
  38. The Bible doesn’t talk about youth ministry.
  39. The Fruit of the Spirit is secondary to soundness and boldness.
  40. Children’s work is theologically-lite by nature.
  41. Authority is limited to the qualified.
  42. Soundness and boldness are next to godliness.
  43. Soundness and boldness are whatever I think and however I speak at any given moment.
  44. It’s cool to be controversial.
  45. You don’t need to pay attention to Matthew 18:15-22 if you’re writing online.
  46. Being clever and being right are synonymous.
  47. I know just as much as ____ (insert Christian leader here) regardless of their experience, life, or qualifications.
  48. Only Christians understand anything about love.
  49. Delirious can’t play in tune (I’m still on the fence on this one).
  50. I’d be better than the guy on stage.

 

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Why I won’t be showing my youth group ‘The Passion of The Christ’ this Easter

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This morning I accidently flicked toothpaste into my eye. It was stupidly painful and more than a little humiliating. That, however, was not the reason for the toothbrush or the toothpaste – I wanted to clean my teeth! The 2004 Mel Gibson film, The Passion of The Christ – in some odd way – is much like my unfortunate brush with the toothpaste. A significant emphasis on pain and humiliation that largely loses the reason behind the story.

I first watched The Passion of The Christ alone in my brother’s room when I was seventeen. I had a pretty mature Christian faith, and I was plugged into a good youth group. The initial post-movie shock lasted me about three hours. I remember guilt, fear, gratitude, and floods of tears. After that it took over my mental processing for weeks. There were just aspects of it that I couldn’t work out or square away.

On the whole, I believed it was generally a more helpful than unhelpful experience at the time. And that’s the thing – I wouldn’t say that The Passion of The Christ is a bad film, or even – on the whole – unhelpful for a lot of Christians. There are some very precious parts of the film that were handled with real grace and care. The question today, however, is whether we should show it at our youth clubs to groups of 11–18-year-olds? And linked to that question – does it honestly display what really happened to Jesus in those last days of His life?

A youth club staple?

I’m part of an online forum of youth workers who addressed this very question just last week: Should you show The Passion of The Christ at youth clubs? The debate drew very strong opinions from both sides. One person said the film was ‘manipulative and traumatizing’, to which someone else responded ‘you should try the source material sometime.’ Ouch! A parent raised concerns too, saying ‘absolutely not… I have a daughter that would be traumatized.’

Although this was just last week, it is an old debate. The argument usually goes back and forth between, yes show it, it’s important to see with accuracy the pain that Jesus went through; and no, don’t show it, it’s too violent, and it’s inappropriate for young people.

I have sympathy for both of these views. I think it is important to know how much tragic pain, violence, and humiliation the cross inflicted on Jesus, and for young people to be able fit that into their faith language. However, that should be done with 1) accuracy, 2) necessity, and 3) sensitivity as measures. Unfortunately, I think these are all found wanting in The Passion of The Christ.

Accuracy

The Passion of The Christ promotes a myth of accuracy though claiming loyalty to the Bible as its source material and historical meticulousness. There are, however, plenty of accuracy issues in The Passion of The Christ, from the clothes and beards to the languages and customs, to the off-kilter presentation of both the Jews and the Romans, to the reoccurring (and frankly creepy) anthropomorphised images of the devil. Sorry, I’ve got a soft spot for Christian mysticism, but 40 year old baby-Satan was just weird!

There are just far too many details that are inaccurate to take the film as solid history. However, it’s not just a case of ‘if you can’t get the small things right…’ There are also a few much more significant problems. For this post, I’ll focus on just one – and it’s a big one!

The film’s particular and extended image of ‘scourging’ – repeated lashes with something akin to a cat-o-nine tails embedded with pieces of bone or metal – does not come from either the Bible or historical authorities. As archaeologists Berlin and Magness comment ‘there are neither descriptions, pictorial representations, nor physical evidence for the brutal implement that is used at length and to such horrific effect in The Passion’s “scourging” scenes.’[1] In fact, the only implement the Gospels’ mention is a ‘reed’ (Matt. 27:30; Mk. 15:19), and the only example of a weapon anything like what’s displayed in the film is ‘the whip’ used by Jesus to drive people out of the temple (a ‘φραγέλλιον’ in Jn. 2:13 ). This, however, was a collection of leather chords, not a metal-encrusted torture device.

Although the image of a torture weapon with multiple chords and chains and with bone or metal hooks is widely shared in Bible studies and on the internet, in reality there is very little evidence of the Romans using anything like this in the time of Jesus. The closest thing we have from archaeology is a ceremonial instrument carried by pagan priests (which wasn’t used for torture) or a 4th Century ‘plumbate’ whip, which wasn’t around in 1st Century Palestine. It wasn’t really until the 15th or 16th Century that the Church began to speculate on this kind of torture weapon. Our understanding of the ‘cat-o-nine-tails’ scourge is, in reality, an invention of medieval art, not Roman antiquity.

In the film, however, Jesus is lashed, flogged, and scourged across several positions, with several embellished tools, around one-hundred times. If the film is correct, and Jesus was tortured in such an unprecedented and remarkable way – and one that diverges so much from Roman custom – you would have thought that one of the Gospels would have mentioned it?

Going back to the youth workers’ forum I mentioned earlier, one person said, ‘If anything [the film] doesn’t show half of what suffering our savior went through!’ and another, ‘[The] Passion of the Christ doesn’t hold a candle to what actually happened but is the closest thing to it.’ Sorry guys, I appreciate your passion, but if you’re using either the Bible or historical record, then the scourging scene was overdone, exaggerated, and largely fabricated.

This isn’t to make light of Jesus’ flogging. By no means! But it is a matter of focus. Whereas the Gospels focus on the teaching and person of Christ without overly concentrating on his physical pain, The Passion of The Christ completely reverses this emphasis. It dials up the torture to a degree that is indefensible from either historical or biblical evidence – and loses the purpose or person of Jesus behind it. There is accuracy in some of the drama presented, but much of it is heavily embellished.

Necessity

My second issue is contextual balance. Theologically, the film places so much emphasis on the physical, human-flesh suffering, that it loses the eternal battle for souls almost entirely. It’s mostly important that we know that Jesus died for us, and then it’s definitely meaningful to remember that that was an intense and unfair death. But the pain experienced is not the point! When we super-over-hyper focus on any single aspect of the gospel to this extent, we throw the perfect balance of the story out of whack, and we lose the narrative power of the whole.

If you put rocket fuel in Ford Mondeo, you’re not left with a faster, cooler car. What you actually have is a very messy explosion! Even if The Passion of The Christ was mostly an accurate depiction, the severe overemphasis on Jesus’ torture and death without any explanation or context loses the wider story of His incarnation, crucifixion, atonement, resurrection and ascension.

The most glaring issue throughout the two-hour violent depiction of Jesus’ torture and death then, is that at no point does the film address the question why? For what reason did Jesus die? If you’re going to use The Passion of The Christ as an evangelistic tool, then that’s a really significant hole. And considering the intensive emotional state that your young people are going to be in after watching it, are you going to be able to then explain what’s missing? You might get a positive-looking immediate result (“they were speechless!”), but you also might be unpicking it for years to come.

Put another way, if you’re going to justify over-emphasising  gratuitous violence for theological reasons, you’d better make sure your theology is on point. This is especially true if you’re working with vulnerable young people.

Sensitivity

Entertainment Weekly ranked The Passion of The Christ as ‘the most controversial film of all time.’ I’ve heard Christians say this is because the gospel is offensive and divisive, but that’s not the reason the magazine gave. It was ranked this highly because of its extreme depictions of torture and violence. For context, they ranked this ahead of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, a film for which the phrase ‘ultra-violent’ was invented.

The question that comes to focus here then is why do you want to show it to your young people in the first place? Because of the extreme violence and gore, it’s an 18-Rated (R in America) film that has been deemed unsuitable for younger audiences. This means you would need a very good reason to show it to them. If that reason isn’t accuracy or necessity, then what do you have left? My fear is that it stylises Jesus in such a way that invokes a response – and if we were really honest, that’s why we show it.

Even in a teenage world of ‘Call of Duty’, ‘The Hunger Games’, and ‘Game of Thrones’ our responsibility to safeguard the development of our children should not be dialled down. Even if they are exposed to violence in the media, it is not an excuse for us to jump on the same bandwagon and attempt to disciple them pastorally by exaggerating the violence of our own tradition. While a wide range of gruesome violence exists in the Bible, taking in a movie laden with visual effects and featuring real actors is an entirely different experience.

Coming back to the true cross

We must teach Jesus and we must teach the cross. There is nothing more essential for us to do! But let’s begin and end with the real Jesus and draw them to the cross of the Bible. It’s there where true power is found, and a lifetime of passion is fuelled.

The cross was a violent, gruesome, humiliating, and unfair treatment of our saviour. It was an incredible amount of suffering! However, we do not need to embellish the details, bypass the facts, ignore the theology, or neglect context to tell this story. It’s important that we share the fullness of who Jesus truly is.

Good youth work doesn’t rely on easy wins. Rather than depending on these intensive (and insensitive) ‘jumpstart’ moments, let’s instead do the real work of building relationships with young people that will draw them close to Jesus with integrity, love, and longevity – rather than guilt, fear, and confusion.

It’s not a terrible film, and some of it I really value, but I won’t be showing it to my teenagers this Easter.

 

[1] A. Berlin & J. Magness (2004), Two Archaeologists Comment on The Passion of the Christ. The Archaeological Institute of America. Available at: https://www.archaeological.org/pdfs/papers/Comments_on_The_Passion.pdf

 

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Deconstructing your deconstructionism.

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Since the mid 1990s anything ‘deconstructed’ was suddenly very cool and everything from deconstructed Aristotelian ethics to a deconstructed sandwich (which is effectively two slices of bread on a plate next to some ham) was suddenly column inch worthy.

Driven largely by postmodernism outside the church, deconstructionism inside was dressed up in ‘challenge everything’ and ‘strip everything back’ language. The popular coat this wore for a number of years was The Emerging Church (remember that?).

The thing is that I like this kind of language and approach. Arguably the basic attitudes around this kind of deconstructionism are found in sound exegetical methods and healthy critical thinking. We should challenge traditions and attitudes of our belief systems, and it’s also important to step back, take stock, and even strip back what we believe to its roots and uncover the gold under the dressings.

Taking this further, if we were to truly honour what philosopher Jacques Derrida meant by Deconstructionism, I think we would find all kinds of helpful avenues to explore. Although this tends to be far less what we mean by ‘deconstructionism’ and so won’t be the focus of this post.

I want deconstructionism to work, therefore, but at its heart there’s an issue: Deconstructionism, in the way we use it, literally means taking something apart.

If all you’re doing there is taking something apart to see how it works, then I can see some wisdom in this. It’s a smart way to figure out the mechanics of anything – take it back to its fundamental, component parts. This is also ideal if you have a supply of spares in case you break anything.

Of course, you can’t do that with living things. If you start ‘deconstructing’ a pig, at some point you’ll take something out that can’t just be put back in, and that pig will die.

You just can’t do this with people. They bleed. You can’t do this on yourself either. You bleed too. At the very least it’s a risky thing to do alone.

Shooting yourself in the foot

Taking the more positive side, you can look critically at your worldviews and (ideally facilitated by a therapist) do some healthy unravelling and delving into your personal history. You can look for root causes, repressed hurts, and milestone events. That’s healthy. The Bible would mark this out as part of our journey of sanctification and wholeness.

But taking yourself apart indiscriminately is just not the same thing. You bleed. The more you take apart without compassionate help, or invested guidance, the more chance you have of cutting something irreplaceable, or unscrewing something fundamental. The damage of caviller or isolated deconstructionism can last for years.

The same thing is true for organic systems like families, marriages, the environment, and even churches. If you haphazardly start taking things apart, at some point you could cut something that shouldn’t be cut. The modern deconstructionist attitude to this is, ‘well maybe that thing needed cutting’, but who are we to make that decision for other people? This type of cutting affects more people than just us.

Even without the inherent selfishness behind that, you end up shooting yourself in the foot. As soon as you start deconstructing an organic thing, you exponentially limit the ability for that thing to grow, change, or be made well. Isn’t that what we wanted?

Are you really doing what you think you’re doing?

Deconstructionism is held up as almost an Eastern philosophical approach. It’s used in the same conversations as mindfulness, reflective practice, and spiritual formation. It’s seen as a rebuke to the imperialistic and controlling nature of the world, education, politics, or the established church. All of this is super attractive to a Millennial like myself! In reality though, this dramatically misunderstands the epistemological nature of what deconstruction is.

As a quick caveat, if you’ve studied Deconstructionism (big D) as a theory, you’ll know it’s really the brainchild of Derrida as a way of contrasting and drawing words from meaning. Although there is overlap, this is rarely what people are really doing when they use the word ‘deconstruction’, and this is perhaps truer in Christian circles.

You can trace the roots of what we mean by deconstructionism directly back to Rationalist Philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume – or more recently, the Analytical approaches of Moore, Wittgenstein, or Russell. It is not an Eastern approach by any stretch of the imagination.

An Eastern approach looks at something in its organic entirety. It moves things around but doesn’t strip parts off the whole and it doesn’t naturally remove concepts from the table. It keeps things together and it keeps dialogue open. Eastern philosophy highly values to nature of community over the individual. The deconstructionist approach is Western and individualistic to its core.

How we approach deconstructionism destroys and it eliminates. It strips and it breaks. It pulls things apart and reduces ideas down to obtuse simplicity. It relies on an objective coldness towards, and disconnect from, the subject matter. This has its place – especially in arenas like engineering or chemistry – but it’s not the obvious place to go for organic health.

The destructive patterns of deconstructionism

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

  • Person A has bad experience of church.
  • Either Person A doesn’t seek, or church doesn’t provide, healing and reconciliation.
  • Person A leaves church, but still feels spiritually connected to God.
  • Person A starts a ‘time of deconstruction’ to harmonise their connection to God, and their experience of church.
  • Person A gathers others and starts a new form of deconstructed ‘church’.
  • New church starts to formalise and institutionalise.
  • Person B has a bad experience of this
  • Rinse and repeat.

This is simplistic, but it tells one of the many stories of deconstructionism.

Sometimes we engage in deconstruction when we should engage in conflict resolution. Sometimes we engage in deconstruction thinking we’re doing soul care but end up with a much smaller faith. Sometimes we engage in deconstruction as a way to ‘fix’ church, but instead end up disabling the very things needed for growth.

There is much in our faith that needs to be fought with. There is plenty in established church to be challenged. Church as a whole needs to do much better in all kinds of ways. There are also many legitimate reasons to leave a church – especially after experiences of abuse or harassment. These experiences can even necessitate seasons of solitude away from established Western church practices. We need to do something, but deconstructionism isn’t necessarily the answer.

I think the healthiest things we can do that resemble deconstruction are done carefully, with a therapist, in a family, or within a community. In fact, if we took the Bible seriously – especially the community ethics encouraged in the early parts of the book of Acts, Paul’s epistles, and the pastoral teachings of Jesus – then I think we’d find better practices.

Deconstruction, at its heart, is a cold, mechanical way of breaking things. It’s not designed for things that are alive, and as a result often makes things much worse. It’s tempting, and it’s hot right now, but that doesn’t make it helpful for longevity, healing, change or growth,

We should engage in critical thinking, in spiritual formation, in self-examination, in healthy debate and dialogue with church and family. We should be vulnerable and honest and seek mutual support in a community of meaningful relationships within a worshipping body. We need to consider the whole and think about the necessity for organic matter and systems to be connected in order to work, change, or grow.

Church is far from perfect – but it’s a big boat that moves slowly when were all committed to seeing it at its best.

Let’s leave our versions of deconstructionism to the inanimate.

 

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

A neurodivergent’s experience of Christian youth festivals

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Not everyone responds to things the same way. We should all know that, however it’s too easy to forget that neurodivergent young people exist in our groups, and they have very different experiences and at high stimulus events. Student, author, and playwright Chloe Perrin gives us her experience of what it was like to be a young person at a Christian festival with an – at the time – undiagnosed neurodivergent condition. Thank you, Chloe, for your honesty and clarity in helping us see another perspective! Over to you…

 

Cry Night

I spend too much time on TikTok.

Due to the number of hours I’ve clocked (remember, Christians don’t judge) the algorithm knows me pretty well and I’m frequently suggested content by fellow neurodivergent ex-youth-group kids. It was while mindlessly scrolling at 3am that I was suggested a video by one such creator asking if anyone else who went to Christian youth festivals remembers “cry night”?

I’d never heard it called that before, but I knew immediately what she was referring to. The culminating night of any Christian Summer camp, where a particularly heartstring-tugging talk is followed by weepy worship and an alter call. The night usually seemed positive – it was cathartic and a good number of young people would give their lives to Christ. However, I decided to do that most dangerous of things and peep at the comment section to see what these majoritively ex-Christians had to say. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t positive.

One word regarding the night popped up in the comments over and over again: manipulative.

Neurodivergence and “The Spirit”

I’m neurodivergent, which means I experience socialising, emotional processing and sensory stimuli very differently from a “typical” person. For me specifically, “normal” stimuli such as certain sounds or lighting can be massively effecting in a variety of ways. This knowledge has had me looking back at the numerous youth festivals I’ve attended to untangle what experiences were Holy Spirit and what were simply my brain being my brain, and when I read the comments on the Cry Night (as I’ll be referring to it) video I felt relieved. Seeing people explain the problematic elements of the night in a way I’d never been able to, I could finally put words to my suspicions.

The way I describe myself post-diagnosis is as having tools previously inaccessible to me. Through therapy I’ve been able to understand a world that isn’t designed for my brain, which makes it easier to identify what triggers my own physical and emotional responses. When I was attending youth festivals, however, I was undiagnosed with no inkling that my world experience was any different anyone else’s.

Cry Night was always a particularly messy night for me, where all my emotional hurt came flooding out in a glorious display of tears and mucus. At the time it felt like an appropriate response to what was going on around me – but I was never quite able to understand why my memories of this night felt bad. Had the spirit not moved me? Is the Father’s healing not sometimes messy because we’re broken people?

The Logistics of Cry Night

Let’s break down Cry Night. It’s the final or penultimate evening of a typically five-day long festival which usually involves camping. Logistically it’s a glorified evening service – big sermon followed by intense worship. The sermon is the most emotional of the week’s programme and we’re affirmed by whoever’s onstage that this is a safe space to open ourselves up to the Spirit. The lighting and sound design are big, the only other time you’d see such design being concerts. Everything is tailored to brush against the exposed emotional nerves of the young people present, making it easier to invoke the Spirit.

Those physical and emotional triggers I mentioned earlier? That’s the entirety of Cry Night: I’ve been camping for a week, my clothes are sodden because even in the height of Summer, British weather is still British weather. I’m getting zero energy from the sugar and junk food I’ve been binging on for five days straight, I’m tired. I’ve been sitting on the floor all week because chairs are illegal in youth spaces, I’m uncomfortable. Big lights and music – that’s a sensory overload right there. And to top it all off, I’m in the middle of a crowd, so socially I’m overwhelmed with little space to stim (self-stimulating behaviour to manage anxiety, for example I swing my arms or bounce on my toes).

Two worship songs in and although I don’t realise it my body is in panic mode. The lights hurt, the music pounds at my head, I’m losing the tangible sense of where I am or what I’m doing, and my thoughts are moving too quickly for me to even attempt to ground myself. I start to break, which is when curl into a tight ball and rock back and forth.

As a neurodivergent person most of my outward actions aren’t based on how I’m feeling but on what others are doing, I take my social cues from everyone else. On Cry Night, people are crying, spaced out or sometimes literally screaming, giving me little opportunity to gauge “correct” behaviour. Stewards checked in offering prayer, but none recognised my medical needs as my actions fell under the umbrella term for appearing overwhelmed in a Christian space: “being moved by the Spirit”. I couldn’t vocalise my discomfort because the only vocabulary undiagnosed me had to make sense of the situation was vague Christianese. I was “having a moment with Jesus”, nothing unusual there, it was happening to everyone.

Is it Really That Bad?

The fact that many ex-Christians refer to Cry Night as manipulative is no surprise, because it’s literally a design choice. It’s designed to help young people open up emotionally, to be vulnerable to accepting Jesus. The key word there is “vulnerable”, and if you’re manipulating people into a vulnerable position to get a reaction, you need to take into account that some people, like myself, are unable to handle that in a healthy way. This damage doesn’t last a night either; I’m still unpacking the emotional state Cry Nights put me in and my last one was half a decade ago.

There’s also the mountaintop affect. As someone whose neurodivergence gives them emotional instability and impulsivity issues, the comedown of the mountaintop effect isn’t just depressing for me, it’s dangerous. I felt big things at these festivals; things that forced me weeping to the ground. If I don’t feel that again until the next event, I think “why is the spirit abandoning me so often?” I don’t need to tell you the places that thought can take you, but I will stress that the general lack of NHS resources or peer understanding for neurodivergent people makes it ten times worse for us.

I’m not saying all Christian youth events are bad for neurodivergent young people, I know our understanding of accessibility is constantly changing and steps are being made. However, these events as a whole are still largely inaccessible to us. We wouldn’t dream of putting on a big youth event and taking away ramps or signers, I just ask that this sensitivity include neurodivergent young people as well.

 

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash