Provo. In Three Tweets.

Last week Rachel and I got back from Provo, where we'd spent a few days ministering and sightseeing with some great friends of ours. Here are three tweets that well sum up what i'm thinking about, post Provo.

Any step away from the sufficiency and supremacy of Jesus in all things is a step towards cultdom.
— Ed Goode (@Ed_Goode) July 7, 2014

I don't think cultdom is a word, (and neither does my spellchecker) but you know what i mean. Provo is 98% Mormon, which means that everyone you meet is LDS, or lapsed LDS, or pick and choose LDS. There are some weird and not so wonderful things that the LDS church teaches and practices, but in the final reckoning, it all comes down to their view of Jesus. Simply, for the LDS Church, as for every other derivation from Christianity, and every other false religion, Jesus isn't quite enough. Sure, just like everyone else, they want Jesus on their team. They want Jesus in their paradigm, but as a cheerleader, not as a Saviour. As an example, not as a payment. Every step we take away from 'Jesus paid it all,' is a step towards a man focused, man pleasing, man imagined religion.

As indicated by the next tweet:

A man just asked, "How do you guys make it without temples, no priesthood, and no authority?" Bryant said, "We have the Bible." #winprovo
— Logan Michael Wolf (@loganwolf85) July 4, 2014

Provo hosts one of the biggest 4th July festivals in the country, so for part of the trip we helped work the New Morning Church booth there. We were sort of out of the way down an alley, so my suspicion is this guy wanted to come and find us. You see how tweet one links with tweet two? Jesus isn't sufficient in the LDS system, so they need a priesthood and temples. Jesus isn't sufficient in the LDS system, so neither is He authoritative. It's a killer. Get away from Jesus, and His Word and you're on sliding scale with women bishops on one end, and your own planet when you die on the other. In our lives, and in our ministry, we must be careful, we must labour all the time, to make sure that we're not just paying lip service to Jesus, but heart service. If not, we'll be cut adrift into the wasteland of our own ideas, and today's cultural mores.

Want to experience a foreign missions trip without leaving the States? Go to Utah.
— Ed Goode (@Ed_Goode) July 9, 2014

I've spent all of nine nights in Provo, so i'm no expert, but it's a different place. Provo is blessed/plagued with moralism. Blessed, because your car probably won't be keyed by a drunk college student in the middle of the night, plagued, because everyone thinks their OK, jack. It feels different. Their history is not America's history, their way of life not America's way of life. Their monuments are not America's monuments. I think it was CS Lewis that said if the devil ran a town the churches would be full (think about it) and i can only imagine he was on his way home from an undocumented trip to the Beehive state when he wrote those words. In ministry, and particularity youth ministry, particularly in the Bible belt, we must slough off every temptation to present a moral Gospel, and instead, with Bibles open and guns ablaze, preach the risky, dirty, bloody, leper-touching, i'm alive so let's have breakfast on the beach, Gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Ask Doug: What are your thoughts on youth groups?

Yes! And amen. Everything is based on what 'ministry' means. Drawing a crowd or growing disciples? Plugging up the Xbox or opening up the Bible? Supporting Christian parents in Christian homes trying to raise Christian kids, or supplanting them? Preparing teenagers to be grown ups in the church, for church life that's not all about them, where they sing and give and listen and pray? Or guaranteeing that the next generation of churches will look just like adult youth groups. Or even more like them than many currently do. Were that possible.

Long Distance Ministry

I can't imagine many things worse than being in jail. My liberty taken away, my plans all made for me. It doesn't look like much fun in the 21st century (not that it should be) but it would have been even worse when Paul was there. It would have been hard knowing his friends were risking their lives to feed him, it would have been wearing on those old wounds to always be cold and uncomfortable, but i wonder if what weighed on Paul the most was not being able to see the churches that he loves so much.

Philippians 1:27 seems to come out of that feeling. Paul wants, more than anything, to know that the people he loves are standing firm in the things he's taught them. This was his long distance ministry. Not only a distance of many miles, but of many years. And all ministry, in this sense, is a long distance ministry. All ministry looks five, ten, thirty years into the future, praying that the seeds sown today are still bearing fruit then.

How does a youth pastor think about his effectiveness? Well, not really by how many people come to teen church or sunday school but whether those teens are bring their teens to church in twenty years. What was the fruit of Paul's ministry, not (just) Christians in Philippi, but generations of Christians at Philippi. Not just his readers standing firm as they held his letter in their hands, but standing firm years later.

What does it look like to stand firm? To live a life 'worthy of the Gospel of Christ.' Well thats all of us out right? Well maybe not. What is a life lived worthy of the Gospel? A life with Gospel priorities, Gospel dreams and Gospel hopes. It means the church is strong as people stand shoulder to shoulder in the faith that Paul delivered. It means that the church is striving to reach out to people that don't know Jesus is Lord yet. It means that the faith of the Philippians doesn't depend on Paul who may or may not see them again, but on Jesus. And what joy will fill Paul's heart when he hears of their faithfulness in his absence.

And this is the case whether or not Paul sees them. He doesn't write for his own benefit, he doesn't write to make himself feel good, but he writes so that if he doesn't come, the faith of the church os strong. And we preach, not to draw a crowd, not to build our own name, but so that in years, and generations to come, the church is standing firm.

Blood Soaked Youth Ministry

We've all heard the stats i suppose, about teenagers who grow up in church, go to college, and then never darken the door of the church ever again. Teens who grow up in youth choir, at camps, on activities, and now spend their Sunday mornings sleeping off the night before.

We've heard the stats, and though i struggle to believe that the number really is as high as the 70-80% i've heard quoted (what is it about evangelicalism and a love for negative statistics?) it's obviously a problem. 

What causes that problem? I guess there are a couple of obvious ones. Firstly, if your teen grows up in a teen centric environment, if they are always entertained and never asked to serve, always eating pizza and never studying the Bible, of course it's going to be a rue awakening when they go to church at 19 and suddenly they're treated like an adult. Of course they're going to be surprised when the plate in question is for them to give, not to take another piece of cake off. So there's that. The second is like the first. Maybe the majority of our 'church kids' just aren't getting saved. Maybe the sickness is in the youth group, not the frat house.

Both of those and more are part of the problem, but you know what i think a big, and overlooked problem is? I'm so glad you asked.

We've never taught our teenagers to sin. 

Let me explain. If our teens grow up in a world where they never fail, guess what they're going to equate Christianity with? Not failing. And when they fail at college, anywhere on the scale from fornicating to...whatever is on the other end of that scale, they're not going to know what to do with that failure. They've got no answer to the 'how're you going to go to church now?' question, so they quit.

If we teach young people that Christianity equals perfection, of course they're going to leave the church when they fail. Of course their seared conscience is going to keep them out of the Bible. They've sinned, how can they approach a holy God now?

This is the burden of the book of Hebrews. The blood of bulls and goats never changed a man's heart, never eased a seared conscience, never assured man of his salvation. But the blood of Jesus can and does. Hebrews 9:14 promises that the blood of Christ cleanses our conscience so that we can once more serve Christ. This is what our teenagers need as they go to college. A blood soaked youth ministry. We can teach five steps to a better recess when we run out of Gospel. We can fire up the attractional smoke machine and rock band when the blood of Jesus stops being relevant.

We need to be honest about sin. I sin, you sin, and our good church kids sin. Blood talk only makes sense in the light of sin talk. And it's blood talk, and only blood talk, that will grow faithful teenagers into faithful adults.