youthpastors.com

Pastors Switch Pulpits To Promote Racial Unity

How much racial unity is there among youth groups in  your community?

I'm working in a community in the south these days where there may not be much racial tension, but we probably have a ways to go before we reach the kind of unity God wants for us.

There are never any easy answers or simple solutions to these problems, but my hat is always off to those who try to make a difference and bring God's people together.

A group of pastors in Central Kentucky are switching pulpits in an effort to promote racial unity where they live.  Check out the Courier-Journal story here.

Master the Possibilities at Sam's

Sam’s Club is making the lives of youth pastors everywhere a lot easier.

Sam's announced today that it will start accepting MasterCard Inc. credit cards for the first time.

Sam’s Club previously accepted credit cards only from Discover Financial Services Inc. and its own in-house cards at its 589 stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada (a royal pain when trying to stock up for mission trips and such). The chain does accept MasterCard and Visa credit cards for gasoline and online purchases.

So rush out and stock up on a 500 lb. container of jolly ranchers.

TV Viewing Among Pre-Teens May Be Linked To Alcohol, Tobacco Use

Two new studies spotlight both the difficulty parents often have in keeping children away from the TV and also the potential health rewards for kids in cutting down on TV and other media, HealthDay News reported.

For example, one study found that 9-to-12-year-olds who were barred from watching R-rated movies on television also had lower risks for smoking and drinking.

Those results show that "the media is a very important part of children's lives today, and parents need to take it seriously," said the lead author of the TV-and-health study, Madeline Dalton, director of the Hood Center for Children and Families at Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, N.H.

The findings are published in the November issue of Pediatrics.

In the first study, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania sought to determine whether or not new TV-watching guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) were being implemented in real life.

Among other things, the AAP suggests that parents limit TV time to no more than two hours a day for children over 2 years of age, and that children shouldn't have TVs in their bedrooms.

The researchers interviewed 180 parents and children about their media use. The kids were between the ages of 6 and 13 years old.

They found that most children spend at least three hours per day watching TV.

"Getting parents to be aware of how much time children are spending in front of a screen is important," said the lead author of the first study, Amy Jordan, a senior research investigator at the Annenberg Public Policy Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "When parents started adding it up, then they started realizing, it was probably three, four or five hours a day."

The average home in the study had four television sets, and two-thirds of the youngsters had TVs in their bedrooms, the researchers found. About half of the households also had TVs in the dining room or kitchen area.

Most parents said they did have rules for TV viewing, but few reported restricting the amount of time TV was watched.

Email Is For Old People

If you think your youth group members aren't reading your emails, you're probably right.

A new survey by Parks Associates shows that teenagers are less likely to communicate via e-mail than any other demographic, Fox News reports.

According to the study, less than one-fifth of the 13-17-year-olds surveyed profess to using e-mail to communicate with friends, compared to 40 percent of adults aged 25-54.

The study shows that instant messaging is the dominant form of communication for teenagers, with one-third of teens relying on the messaging system, compared to only 11 percent of adults.

'The Nativity Story' Big On Details

Looks like the "next big thing" in Christian film circles will be The Nativity Story, due in theaters December 1.

A number of pre-screenings for youth pastors and other ministy leaders are taking place around the country all month.

One thing is for sure, the producers are pretty big on authenticity.  The film's web site declares:  "Director Catherine Hardwicke, a former production designer, was adament that every detail from the locations, to the sets, to the props, look and feel authentic.  As a result, Harwicke, writer Mike Rich, and production designer Stefano Ortolani spent countless hours researching the era."

No kidding.

USA Weekend reported that, in order to bolster authenticity, the cast members were taught how to milk goats, press olives and grapes, make bread and cheese, use period-appropriate tools and build a home. 

To Be Confirmed Or To Not Be Confirmed...

Last spring, I attended a one-day seminar on confirmation put on by the Presbyterian Church (USA).  In the past, I have helped organize confirmation in a United Methodist Church and it was interesting to hear the Presbyterians' take on it. 

In most Christian denominations that practice confirmation, the rite results in formal church membership being conferred upon the person or persons being confirmed.  Many non-mainline evangelical churches do something similar, but use different language such as "new member classes" or "Class 101" etc.

There has been a lot of debate in youth ministry circles over the past decade about the effectiveness of confirmation.  Some, like authors Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Powell (The Godbearing Life) have pointed out that, in many churches, confirmation is more of a "graduating out" of church instead of into it.

Consider these recent posts from teens re: confirmation and church membership on the web site christianforums.com:

One of the youth workers from my church just came over to talk about confirmation with me as there's an opportunity to be confirmed at my church next week but we've decided that I should wait perhaps or not be confirmed at all. The next opportunity is in May. Anyway, she said that she thought I was spiritually ready but she didn't want to rush me into being confirmed if I didn't really see the point of it and it wasn't something that I really want to do at the moment. I just don't see the point of confirmation. I am already solidly anchored into my faith and consider myself a Christian, and I have declared to God that I will worship him forever. What's the point of going up to the altar and telling everybody else about a decision I made such a long time ago now anyway? They already know I am Christian and I already know I am a Christian. What more is there to be gained by confirmation?

I was never Baptized or Confermed into a church. I still believe I have promised to God that I will reject the Devil and keep God's commandments.  I think, at my age of almost 16, I will probably wait till I'm older and have settled where I will live, then join a church. At this point in time, I really don't know where I'll be living then. I think all that is important is what I believe and I myself know that I am true to God.  A Church I have gone to has had Communion for anyone. Even if you have not gone through Confermation. That church was an ELCA Lutheran.

I am definitely never going to say that I am one specific denomination. Also, I don't think that confirmation is really about joining a particular church. I'm almost certainly never going to settle down throughout my life so there's no point in waiting until then. I just want to know what the point in being confirmed at all is. Not whether I should wait or not.

This, of course, represents a small sample of youth group teens.  And I suspect that those who actually participate in a forum like this are at least a thousand percent more tuned in than your average youth group kid.  But still, I find their views interesting -- especially the part about denomination.

Do many teens see confirmation as wedding themselves to a denomination for life? (Not that denominations would necessarily see anything wrong with that!)  How good a job are churches doing at explaining what confirmation is anyway, other than the old "if you're in seventh grade, it must be time for confirmation" tactic.

A lot of churches have simply stopped emphasizing church membership with teens who, in many cases, couldn't seem to care less -- despite their seeming desire for all things "community."

I'm not sure what the long-term implications are of all this, but I do know it's time for the Church to take a serious look at how it presents church membership -- and public commitments like confirmation -- to this generation of teens.

Faith and Football at Ohio State

The 9-0 Ohio State Buckeyes are on the road this week at Ilinois, coming off a 44-0 win over Minnesota last Saturday.

But many on the team took time out this week to share their faith with teens and other fans.

Thousands packed an arena on the Ohio State campus Monday night to listen to coach Jim Tressel and several members of the Number 1 team in college football talk about Christianity, and how it affects their lives and their sport, Mission Network News reported.

"Once you understand that God is behind everything, it gives you strength," wide receiver Roy Hall told the crowd.

What was called 'The Main Event' at times resembled a pep rally, with a band playing and game highlights running on projection screens at St. John Arena.

Tressel said he wanted to step away from his role of coach and speak "as a child of God." He told the crowd that in 1969 he attended a high school sports summer camp where retired New York Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson asked him, "If the game of life ended tonight, would you be a winner?"

Tressel asked that same question to the crowd and told people how they could have a relationship with Christ.

Senior Joe Penton echoed those comments. "We would feel so bad talking about our relationship with Christ tonight, without giving you an opportunity to enter into that very same relationship, Penton says. "When Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, died on that cross, he took on the penalty for our sin. Because he paid it, we can have a relationship with Him. We can know Him personally. We can have the promise of eternal life -- living forever with God."

The Sexual Lives of Young Adults

A new Barna Group study finds that Busters – those in their 20s and 30s – are twice as likely to have viewed sexually explicit movies or videos; two and a half times more likely to report having had a sexual encounter outside of marriage; and three times more likely to have viewed sexually graphic content online.

Their attitudes toward sexual activities were also less conventional. More than two-thirds of the generation said that cohabitation and sexual fantasies are morally acceptable behaviors.  For the older generation – those over the age of 40 – half agreed.  Most Busters also contended that engaging in sex outside of marriage and viewing pornography are not morally problematic. Only one-third of pre-Busters agreed.  Also, almost half of young adults believed that sexual relationships between people of the same sex are acceptable, while only one-quarter of older adults said the same.

If there is a generational trend going on here, one wonders what a survey of millennials will reveal.

Youth Ministries Go Back to the Bible

There's lots about youth ministry in the Nov. 6 issue of TIME magazine, which hit newsstands today.

In one article, the magazine chronicles three different youth ministries -- one each from California, Texas and Maryland -- that have abandoned the old program model of youth ministry in favor of an approach that focuses on Bible study, small groups and worship.

Reports TIME:  Youth ministers have been on a long and frustrating quest of their own over the past two decades or so. Believing that a message wrapped in pop-culture packaging was the way to attract teens to their flocks, pastors watered down the religious content and boosted the entertainment. But in recent years churches have begun offering their young people a style of religious instruction grounded in Bible study and teachings about the doctrines of their denomination. Their conversion has been sparked by the recognition that sugarcoated Christianity, popular in the 1980s and early '90s, has caused growing numbers of kids to turn away not just from attending youth-fellowship activities but also from practicing their faith at all.

None of this, of course, is news to any youth pastor who wasn't buried in a time capsule in the early 90s.  It is interesting, however, just how much attention youth ministry is getting from the national press these days.

In the other TIME article on the subject this week, the magazine examines the results of recent Barna research showing an exodus from the church by young people after high school (discussed last month in detail on this weblog).

Government Expands Reach of Abstinence Programs

It looks like abstinence ed isn't just for kids anymore, at least as far as the federal government is concerned.

The government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007, USA Today reported today.

The National Center for Health Statistics says well over 90% of adults ages 20-29 have had sexual intercourse.

But Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, told USA Today the revision is aimed at 19- to 29-year-olds because more unmarried women in that age group are having children.

Government data released last month show that 998,262 births in 2004 were to unmarried women 19-29, the ages with the most births to unmarried women.