[Getting Fired for the Glory of God, Collected Writings of Mike Yaconelli. By Mark Yaconelli. (Youth Specialties, 2008). pp.23-26]
Selected quotes & summary notes on some sinful tendencies that youth ministry can easily stray towards from from ‘The Sins of Youth Ministry’ by Mike Yaconelli (found in ‘Getting Fired for the Glory of God’.)
1. Oversimplification
“We know that life is much more complicated than ‘take two Jesus pills and call me in the morning.’”
“When we promise that life with Jesus is simple, we set up our students for failure.”
Its so easy to oversimplify the message of Jesus. And sometimes so much more palatable. But, when we do this, how on earth do we expect these young people to hold on to Him when life gets tough, complicated, dark, or confusing? – Jesus is about real life. Lets not oversimplify!
2. Manipulation
“If I witness one more Jesus cheer, if I hear one more “let’s have a hand/round of applause/praise offering for Jesus… I’m returning my youth ministry ID card.”
“As much as we rant the evils of MTV and pop culture, we’ve imitated them by rushing to create the worlds biggest youth events… at these events we mesmerize young people with how ‘cool’ Jesus is.”
“So rather than cheering young people into the kingdom, maybe we should point them to the broken, inconsistent, uncool followers of Jesus in the Bible.”
Once again its so easy to ‘hype it up’ rather than tell it how it is. But the truth is Jesus is about real life, the whole emotional-spectrum – so lets make our youth ministry about the real Jesus.
3. Self-Deception
“What’s so disturbing about youth ministry today… is how little truth telling there is.”
Mike’s talking about sharing ourselves as youth pastors; our ups & downs, successes & failures, strengths & weaknesses, and our victories & defeats. Lets not pretend to be super-hero-Christians. Lets be real, and be fellow journeyers with our young people.
Discussion
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