YS 2006--"Reveal"

Hey all!  I wrote the below letter to YS after a few days of reflection on the National Youth Workers Convention in Anaheim, CA.  I would be curious to hear what you all think.  Did you get this sense as you were there?  I doubt I will hear back from them, but maybe.  I think this is a real problem we are missing right now (amongst others) in this "new" direction that seems to be everywhere.  Peace.---Matt

Mark,

My name is Matt Overton and I recently attended the YS convention in Anaheim.  I am a youth pastor at a Presbyterian Church in California and recently attended seminary.  I had been invited to the convention by Kenda Dean who is a former professor to help lead some of the focus groups for the Nothing but Nets program.  This is just so you know where I am coming from and so you don't think I am a complete whacko.  It was my first convention in four years and I was thoroughly stoked to be there.

I love the conventions because they take the time to care for a group of people that nobody really takes the time to care for.  For so many there, they are both practical and therapeutic.  You all are an answer to prayers for so many out in the field and I pray that you continue in what you are doing for a long time to come.

I was struck this year by the shift in the theological perspective that has taken place since I was last there just a few years ago.  I have to admit I was really taken back by the new emphasis on the Kingdom of God not as an empire of Christian converts, but as an ethic.  It was the first time that I have heard any large youth ministry group speak about the Kingdom of God as an ethic and as a reality, something that we are actively participating in bringing about.  It was so refreshing and it has been a long time coming in the culture and theology of American youth ministry.  Thank you for your theological reflection and your willingness to say and do some things from up front that were probably new, and perhaps challenging to many of the youth workers there. Paradigm shifts are a good thing.  Having said all that, I also had some deep concerns with what went on at the convention as well.

I was struck on several occasions by the way some of the speakers would allude to this new Kingdom thinking.  Often I heard things like, “I am not sure why we thought that youth ministry was just about getting butts into heaven.” “That is just how we used to do things.”  “We thought ‘fun’ was what ministry was all about.”  “We just assumed the gospel was about reading our Bibles, praying, and getting kids saved.”  Usually, this type of sentiment expressed that we were now abandoning an old way of doing things and it was often followed by a new way of doing things according to the Kingdom theme of participating in what God is doing.  The whole theme of the convention was “Reveal.”  God is revealing something new in youth ministry.

I think the problem that I began to see was that in none of the statements I heard was there any genuine sense of personal or institutional culpability in the whole youth ministry endeavor that had come before.  Not one single YS person or seminar leader ever expressed any sentiment that the model of ministry that they themselves had been pushing for the last 20 some years missed the Kingdom ethic of the gospel.  It was as though the reduction of the gospel to fun, personal discipleship, and conversions had just “happened” without anybody’s involvement. “That’s just how we used to do things.”

This was remarkable to me because if we truly have been neglecting the care of our neighbor and the ethics of peace and justice then we really have been participants in an amazing evil.  We have distorted, reduced, and tamed the gospel of Jesus Christ and that is a travesty.  Think about the people, communities, and nations that have been neglected while we were off duct taping kids to the wall (not in and of itself a bad thing) in the name of Jesus Christ.  I guess the problem I was having is that there was no sense of contrition in the room.  I was overwhelmed by the sense that youth ministry was excitedly forging ahead to the next great thing with a patentley absent self-critical moment.

In the end I am not sure what repentance and contrition looks like for YS or youth ministry in general.  In fact, I have no idea what it looks like.  My hands have just as much blood on them as everyone elses.  I spent the first five years of my youth ministry in college neglecting the real and authentic Kingdom of God that Jesus tells stories about in the Gospels.  But, my fear is that by neglecting to remember what we did in youth ministry in the past we are waiting to repeat it.  I hope that God is not just revealing some new paradigm.  I hope that God is not just revealing the next solution to low numbers or to our church boards being on our backs.  If that is all that is being revealed, then I am deeply saddened because 20 years from now we will have forgotten about “being missional”, or 1 Life, Nothing but Nets, or whatever.  The Kingdom ethic won’t be cool or edgy anymore.  Are we just excited about the Kingdom of God as ethic because it is a new direction and people are buying into it, or because we genuinely believe that we were neglecting the proclamation of the whole gospel of Jesus Christ?

Elie Wiesel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, was a survivor of the holocaust.  I found him as the result of Miroslav Volf’s recent book, “Exclusion and Embrace.”  Wiesel says this about remembering, “I decided to devote my life to telling the story [of the holocaust] because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. And anyone who does not remember betrays them again.”  Wiesel has always been concerned with remembering the past so that we never forget it and then repeat it.  My hope in writing this is not to gain an apology or prove I am right, or anything else.  Indeed, I have as much to repent of as every other youth worker, or YS group, or Christian camp, or Mission trip organization.  I write it in the hope that we might give some pause to think about what it means that we neglected the full scope of the Kingdom of God in our ministries for so long.  I think we might be better served if we engaged in this discipline before we moved on to what we need to do next.  I am genuinely worried that we are missing the fact that “somebody” didn’t just make a “boo boo.”  It was me, it was you, and it was a gross neglect of the gospel.  We neglected what God had already revealed.  I think its important for us to remember that out loud and not just forge ahead.

I apologize for the length.  God bless you in all that you do.

Matt Overton

Comments

[Jeremy Watson]

That was an articulate letter, Matt. Let us know if you hear from them. I'm anxious to be a part of the Charlotte conference, next weekend.

Did you do a critical concerns course?

[marko]

hey, how 'bout an acknowledgement that i DID respond, and we've been in (at least i think) an interesting email interchange about these themes...

(i really do respond to emails. people can stop saying 'i doubt i'll get a response'.)

[Matt]

Marko-
Sorry, just hadn't gotten to it yet man. I have had Thanksgiving at youth retreat etc. EVERYONE, Marko did respond, which was awesome, and I was probably a little quick to judge since I hadn't been at a YS thing in a while. I'll post his reply and mine next.
Also, I meant nothing personal about the "I doubt I will get a response." That had less to do with you being to big or aloof for this little blog than it did with my assumption of your busy schedule given your role.