Dan Savage and Youth Ministry

Youth Ministry can learn from Savage

The words and works of Seattle sex advice columnist Dan Savage are no different than the other times and activities that have been influential on the rising generation. Fred MacMurray had his Follow Me, Boys!, Hitler stirred his 100,000+ youths in the late 1920s and early 30s, Billy Graham challenged youths at the rallies in Chicago and beyond, and Henrietta Mears influenced 1000s through Forest Home Christian Conference Center—and on and on it goes. Before we move on, let’s not forget about the dad wearing his red cardigan buttoned sweater in the 60s sitting next to his wife on the living room sofa—she’s wearing silver horned-rim glasses and her hair is in a bun—and he’s combing through the Luther League catechism at the family altar after the evening meal. Bessie, Jimmy and Butch are sitting at his feet. We can hear the recitation going on: Do you hope to be saved? Yes, that is my hope. In whom then do you trust? In my dear Lord Jesus Christ. Youth ministry and all, here, flourishes too. Influence happens. The elder shall serve the younger. Dan Savage knows youth ministry is inescapable.

We read of Savage gone savage in Seattle recently and we get upset. He’s been given a venue to practice in a concentrated way what Francis Schaeffer said in the opening paragraphs of How Should We Then Live? that theology comes out of our fingertips. Savage’s theology oozes—a non-Christian one, we know.

But what can we learn about youth ministry from Dan Savage?

1. Church Youth Ministry that tries to mimic his vulgarity and sensationalism shouldn’t. Our vulgarity cannot compete with Savage’s. Ours is too Christian. We’ll only spin our wheels in mimicry. We’ll get fame for 3 weeks, hear from our parents and church elders about it, and that will be that. Vulgarity is attractive to youth pastors. Don’t go there. The same goes for sensationalism. Sensationalism seems fun, but it is like spiritual Listerine—it puckers your lips and must be spit out. Dads, youth pastors, retreat speakers, stay with your strengths: tell stories. Tell them calmly, without the sensationalism of the bizarre and ooh; and without the cheek-grimacing, eye-squinting looks due to the gore—and please, retreat speakers, forgo for the umpteenth time some story about throwing up. A good story about a slice of your life about what you learned will go miles for discussion fodder with young people. Savage wants to light up the scoreboard. Take your cues from Joshua—tell stories about the memorial stones stacked up next to the Jordan.

2. Church Youth Ministry that practices one-person, one-direction influence, like Savage’s, loses. You, dad, in the cardigan sweater can outdo Savage. Youth pastor or small group leader on Wednesday nights, you can own Savage. He speaks from a distance. He’s at a microphone—he stands on a platform at that. Also, as a columnist, he writes at a keyboard. His ministry is one of d-i-s-t-a-n-c-e. Unlike Savage, dad and mom, you live with your sons and daughters. Elders and pastors, you live around the 20-somethings in your congregation. Savage doesn’t. He won’t win because of his distance. He can speak. But he cannot model. His practical theology is absent of Trinitarianism. Not yours. Be with your students. Speak to them, live with them. Teach them, and model alongside of them. Trinitarianism wins. Not Unitarianism—not the one person, one way, influence. No way. Savage loses. Youth Ministry which practices Trinitarian life with connectionalism with life-to-life discipleship, with multiple persons and varied persons, wins. Savage is transcendent, but his immanence is wanting.

3. Church Youth Ministry that lacks the biblically informed practice of circular reasoning will fail with respect to defending truth on the street. Savage does circular reasoning. In his apologetics, he uses an authority to defend authority. We can learn some things from him. Apologetics in Youth Ministry has been popular for decades. Evidence That Demands a Verdict blew wind in our sails for 35 years—and it’s still blowing. It’s been the Youth Ministry Apologetics Thing. Watch Savage. Believe it or not—he appeals to the Bible. There’s nothing new here; many people do. But Youth Pastor, take a cue from Savage. The Seattle Times writes of the recent speech that he gave, “In the speech, Savage, citing Sam Harris’ ‘Letter to a Christian Nation,’ said the Bible gave instructions about how to treat slaves. If the Bible erred ‘on the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced ... What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? 100 percent,’ said Savage. Students are heard cheering and clapping.” Savage, like Sam Harris, has standards. In this case, interestingly, it’s his use of the Bible. Two questions come to mind—1) How do I know the Bible is true? 2) How can I make proper use of it? On the first, the Bible says it is true. The Bible is the cement upon which knowledge rests. Can we really use the Bible to prove the Bible? You bet. How is Savage proving his points about questions in life? He’s proving his answers with the Bible. Good, Mr. Savage, I say. He knows that no argument proves itself; there must be a starting point. Good for him. For many of us as Christians, sadly, our starting point might be experience. Feelings. Medicine. A parent. Archaeology. The number of extant NT manuscripts. But wait. What happened to using the Bible? Savage does. Why don’t we? If we use something other than the Bible as an ultimate authority then we haven’t proven it to be ultimate authority. We used something outside of and apart from the Bible. Youth Ministry, make your starting point the Word. Second question: How can I make proper use of it? This is where Savage goes savage. He’s dead wrong on this one. He imports feelings or science or statistical information into his interpretation; rather, instead, the Bible should interpret itself. Mr. Savage, let the Bible teach us. You appeal to it, use it—properly. Dad, mom, elder, Sunday school teacher, the Bible has 66 Books. It is one voice with multiple authors within its cover. The voice of the Old Testament is heard in the New. The New speaks and echoes the Old. Scripture, our authority, interprets Scripture. Only God testifies about Himself. Equally biblical, only God is to explain His teaching about slavery, sexuality, marriage, personhood, work, family, calling and more. We must go to the Bible as our final authority, and we must use the Bible properly to prove and interpret ethics for everyday living. On one hand, we take a cue from Savage—we are to prove our points by God’s Book; on the other hand, we must become students of the Word to use it well. Savage gets our attention about these things. When Youth Ministry recovers a practical apologetics, biblically informed about its circular reasoning, just as Savage shows us, we’ll begin to properly equip our students in our churches.

In thinking about tolerance or no—with respect to Mr. Savage and his ways, and in addressing the matter of straight bashing or no, and bullying or no, Youth Ministry is cooking in Seattle. We all get our shot at this. The Savage train is right on schedule. Toot. Toot. Youth Ministry, get aboard.

G. Mark Sumpter

Horton's Do Hard Things as Part of the Rebelution

Michael Horton Showing the Way in Youth Ministry

“The year I was twelve things began to change in my life—not all at once, but gradually. I had been involved in family devotions and Bible reading, but suddenly the Bible sprang to life for me. The book of Romans began to shatter many of my earlier notions about reality. Every time I read from Romans I found myself searching for a deeper understanding of God’s purpose and grace.

After playing baseball each afternoon, I would come home, and pick up Romans, and go through it again and again. What I found in Romans had me mesmerized, and I began to share my discoveries with anyone who would listen.

My parents were owners of a nursing home, so I had a ready-made congregation. I began conducting weekly services that lasted, with brief interruptions, for six years (up to my senior year in high school). People who were not even residents attended the services to hear about God’s effective grace.”

From Horton’s Mission Accomplished, pp. 13-14

Young people are the church of today, not merely the church of tomorrow.

G. Mark Sumpter

Loss of Connectional Influence

A point about family and church nurture

Both institutions—the family and the church—have suffered from the loss of multi-generational connectional life and thus, they have seen the diminished influence within their respective spheres for covenantal nurture.

For the household, on one hand, there is the Christian man who gives up too easily as he swims upstream against a family-unfriendly way of life in North America. Work outside the home fragments the family. The current against this man is strong. In this giving up, he abdicates his charge to oversee and direct the nurture of his children. This man has the inclination to turn to the professional specialists of the church who stand in his place regarding household training. This man’s view of the family is weak. On the other hand, there are men who are self-conscious about the biblical mandate regarding household nurture. These men, in the name of a zealous mission to maintain control of their family, have the tendency toward their own kind of isolationism. In a spirit of watchfulness, they can overly isolate their children from both the younger and older generations of the church. This man’s view of the local church is weak.

G. Mark Sumpter

The Church as Pace-Setter in Caring for Young People

“If youth ministry is really about saving kids from the acidic culture (which is bad) then youth ministry can easily slide into the wing of the church that ushers kids into conventionality. In other words, youth ministry is doing a good job when kids act and look conventional (happily religious). It could be argued that it was this driving need in light of a new radical youth culture in the 1970s that motivated parents to financially support a youth worker in their local congregation (not just at the denominational level)—they wanted someone with the expertise to make their kids conventionally religious kids (that showed this by being ‘good’).”

From web article by Andy Root Is Youth Ministry Working Too Well? Is it Making Kids too Conventional?

Root’s point is well-taken. Youth Ministry is not alone in promoting conventionality; any form of evangelical ministry can be about promoting a gospel that provides a better option for men, women and children. The last thing we need in our age is more option-preaching and teaching.

But there’s more. Is Youth Ministry working too well at rescuing youth from the evils of cold North American culture because it’s a follower of the other institutions that have concerns for the physical, educational, social and emotional well-being of youth instead of being a pace-setter for them?

One of the reasons I was drawn to this article by Root is that it interacts with Chap Clark’s book, Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers (Zondervan, 2004).

When I re-read portions of that book recently, I was caught up short on how little the nature, calling and ministry of the local church was presented. That is, even though Clark develops in his book the acute need for acceptance, belonging and purpose that young people have, and how so often they are trying to communicate to older generations that frequently ignore them, he seems, whether intentionally or not, to marginalize the church’s central function of being the guide for all other institutions that are involved in the care and nurture of youth.

Clark spends time on matters of place and institution. He identifies the locations where youth socialize and interact: peer groups—he calls them clusters—and sports teams, school, the family, and two or three other places. Each of these spheres have a role for nurture and care. The church gets Appendix A at the back of the book.

Throughout the book, Clark genuinely breathes with strong systemic vision in his way of offering assessment of need and how to go about meeting that need. Youth live systemically. They intersect with and walk in the warp and woof of various institutions. Clark reaches out to institutions across the youth-world landscape; he’s to be applauded—his zeal is contagious about calling adults to care for hurt students of today’s America. But if the standards for that care get underscored in the realms of education, social interaction, mentoring by athletic coaches and so on as the pace-setting standards, we’ll end up nurturing conventionally acceptable kids. The work of restoration regarding those who are hurt requires the Savior of the world (John 4, the woman at the well), and being brought into the life and faith of person-to-person discipleship in the church. The church must get the attention as pace-setter of all other institutions, especially when we’re talking about relationships: the care and nurture of hurt people.

In this way, Christ’s church must get Youth Ministry’s attention. Until that prodigal son, Youth Ministry, comes home he will waste away in the pleasures of a Gospel-less life. Teens will get help, but still will hurt.

G. Mark Sumpter

Beyond Youth Ministry in a Box

Is the church training young people to do hard things?

“Our point here is that youth, popular culture, and the electronic media, largely under adult supervision, have interacted in such a way that young people have been reduced to passive consumers of culture. Most youth do not significantly shape culture around because they are too busy consuming the prefabricated electronic visions from Vancouver or Hollywood. In this situation we cannot reasonably expect youth to contribute much to wider society—they neither know how nor are inspired by personal experience. Imagine, by contrast, a home or school or church that genuinely encourages young people to interact with adults to determine what media products they will listen to and watch. To put the matter more directly, consider how young people might mature if they acted in and on the world rather than simply consumed it. Some adults might think this is a rather chilling suggestion. Potentially at least, it threatens the alleged sanctity of adult society. However, once we concede the fallenness and limitations of adults, what is at stake becomes still clearer. And so does an important lesson: youth must have freedom as well as resources and support in order to contribute meaningfully and lastingly to North American culture.”

From Dancing in the Dark, Quentin Schultze and other writers, p. 11 [Eerdmans, 1991.]

I still come back to Sunday worship; I want to keep beating Paul’s order about this for our instruction and training. First, worship (Romans 12:1-2); then, next (Romans 12:3-13:8): giftedness, service, ministry, contribution to society, peacemaking, honor and duty in civics, and genuine love for others.

Where will our young people be trained to do hard things? In and through a faithful public worship service.

Maybe the author can be paraphrased a little, “to put the matter more directly, consider how young people might mature if they acted in and on public worship rather than simply consumed it…youth must have freedom as well as resources and support in order to contribute meaningfully and lastingly to North American public worship.”

G. Mark Sumpter

Christian Parents, Church Youth Workers Stay at It

The Bible relays the story-line of redemptive history showing that God ordinarily achieves His purposes through weakness; His tools are the weak—particularly, children and youths (see His method with weak men at 1 Cor. 1:18-ff.). They topple the mighty (Psalm 127:4).

From the Old Testament, there’s young Joseph and the nation that is dependent on him; then the ruddy David and his slingshot before Goliath, and you also have the very young Josiah and his reforms—to name but a few. God showcases this work of weakness, and the trajectory arcs over into the New Testament with the work of weakness in the provision of the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of His people. He is the hope—the child of promise—the One upon whom all the saved are dependent (Luke 2:25–32).

The banner theme from the Bible, “God’s strength is made perfect in weakness,” routinely strikes the chord of hope, promise, strength and fruitfulness because the older generation waits on the weakness of the younger one. In this way, the older must serve the younger.

Parents, pastors and youth workers should keep stepping out in hope and confidence for they are the ones rightly aligned with God’s message and method when they’re busy in the discipleship of the younger generations.

God has put His signature on the kids of the kingdom; they are the ones through whom the Lord meets the world head on. Through children, by those underneath, wisdom, the fear of God, is vindicated.

G. Mark Sumpter

Christian Smith in Soul Searching

A Few Statistical Notes on American Teenagers

I can remember back 2005-06 plowing through about 3/4 of Smith's book on the massive survey of Protestant young people.

With our young people,

23% are NOT sure about the existence of miracles

33% definitely or maybe definitely believe in reincarnation

41% disagree with the statement that people should practice only one faith

Smith concludes: For a tradition that has so strongly emphasized infallibility or inerrancy of the Bible, the exclusive claims of conservative Christianity, and the need for a personal commitment of one's life to God, some of these numbers are astounding. He summarizes that the local church is at fault. Our distinct impression is that very many religious congregations and communities of faith in the United States are failing rather badly in religiously engaging and educating their youth.

See Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford Press, 2005).

G. Mark Sumpter

Mike Yaconelli Speaking in the Early 1980s

Avoid the Homogeneity Tendencies in Youth Ministry

Yaconelli tells his listeners:

“You need to take the young people on a water skiing trip; but you also need to take them to the local historical museum. Yeah, that's right.

You need to the take high school students water skiing, and you need to take them to the ballet. Yes, I said, ballet.

You say: Mike, you'll only get three kids to the ballet.

I say: That's right. The three kids that need your attention and care that you wouldn't otherwise minister to. Those three kids will show up.”

Yaconelli goes on to say things like: Refuse to plan things only designed to reach the jocks and popular kids at church. The church and your thinking about the youth of the church needs to avoid homogeneity. We're not all the same. Homogeneity breeds a maintenance mentality. We do things because we do things; we reach students the way we've always done it.

Wise words on youth ministry in the local church.

G. Mark Sumpter

Something's Missing in Baucham's Hot Book

Voddie Baucham Jr. provides a great guide for parents and families on courtship, but...

I have read most of the 2009 publication called What He Must Be...if he wants to marry my daughter...

On page 17, brother Baucham writes,

“I believe God has spoken rather decisively in his Word about what our daughters should look for [in a man for eligibility for marriage]. Moreover, I believe there are some non-negotiables that our daughters must be looking for. There are some things a man simply must be before he is qualified to assume the role of a Christian husband. For instance, he must be a Christian (2 Corinthians 6:14); he must be committed to biblical headship (Ephesians 5:23ff.); he must welcome children (Psalm 127:3-5); he must be a suitable priest (Joshua 24:15), prophet (Ephesians 6:4), protector (Nehemiah 4:13-14), and provider (1 Timothy 5:8; Titus 2:5). A man who does not possess---or at least show strong signs of---these and other basic characteristics does not meet the basic job description laid down for husbands in the Bible. Moreover, as a father, it is my responsibility to teach my daughter what these requirements are, encourage her not to settle for less, and walk with her through the process of evaluating potential suitors.”

I like the list. Essentially, Baucham's book elaborates on this list. As I say, I've read well into the 75% range of this book, I am not quite finished with it. Our family, too, has plowed in bits and pieces of this fine book.

But it fails at one super key point. The man that Baucham wants for his daughter manifestly needs---based squarely on the Bible---to be a submissive man.

I am ready to be corrected by his readers. Does Voddie explicate the vital importance of a man to be under authority, to be under elders? I cannot find anywhere in the book where the man needs to be a professing believer under the care of local elders.

Go out and buy five copies of the book. Give them away. It's an excellent work, but it's bad pizza on the topic of men being under authority. The book needs revision, re-working on the subject matter of church membership.

You show me a man who's growing in his ability to follow in the steps of godly elders, with attitudes and actions showing that he's ready to be corrected with their meek and faithful counsel--and then actually heed it, and I will show you a man who's a potential candidate for my daughter.

The first vow a man needs to make before God and witnesses is the vow to be under the care, counsel and discipline of an eldership. That's numero uno.

When he shows that he can follow, then he's growing as a man ready to lead.

G. Mark Sumpter

Jonathan Edwards With Adolescence on His Hands Too, Part II

A Form of Adolescence found in Early 1700s New England, way before Stanley Hall’s 1905 “Adolescence”

Also from a bit earlier in the book….

“Edwards’ most lengthy exposition in his catalogue of vices had to do, predictably, with the indulgences of the young. The fault lay first with all parents. Family government and education, the keystone of the old Puritan social system, had fallen badly in decline. Parents, he observed, were reacting against what they felt were too strict upbringings.

The most notorious result was the ‘amazing’ impurities tolerated among the young in recent years. Not only was lasciviousness encouraged by nightwalking and similar frivolities, but New England parents allowed practices of ‘bundling’ in which parents allowed young people to spend the night in bed together partly clothed…

...Bundling, which was supposed to be a way of getting acquainted without sexual intercourse, did not always work as advertised. Pregnancies before marriage were rising dramatically in New England. Even in well-churched Northampton, where premarital pregnancies were rarer than in some parts of the region, the figure had recently risen to one in ten first children born within eight months of marriage. Premarital sex was commonplace. Even when it resulted in pregnancy, so long as the couple married, there was no longer much stigma involved.” pp. 130-131

From, Jonathan Edwards—A Life by George Marsden, Yale University Press, 2003

G. Mark Sumpter

Jonathan Edwards With Adolescence on His Hands Too, Part I

A Form of Adolescence found in Early 1700s New England, way before Stanley Hall’s 1905 “Adolescence”

“The social conditions for young people in western New England had become trying. Families were large, five to nine children on average. During the seventeenth century the town of Northampton had distributed open land to sons as they came of age. That practice, plus scattering tracts and maintaining meadows for common cultivation, had provided a strong economic base for the communalism integral to the Puritan cultural ideal. But after 1705, there was no more land available in the township except some distributed in 1730 to encourage a new settlement at Southampton, about eight miles away…

…With no new land available, young people were living with their parents. While that did not necessarily cause economic deprivation—farms might prosper from having extra family laborers—it did change social patterns. Young people were postponing marriage about three years longer than had their parents, so there the average age of marriage was about twenty-eight or twenty-nine for men and twenty-five for women.

Young people from their mid-teens until their late twenties were likely to be in this in-between situation. They lived in villages with communal structures, but they were not as likely to be participating responsibly in the community as their grandparents had at the same age…

…As Edwards’ sermons against frolicking made clear, unmarried sons and daughters were under the authority of their parents, but—not surprisingly—parental rule was hardly working as he would have liked. For many young people, the official expectation that they postpone all sexual activity until marriage and the disparity between that standard and their actual sexual practices helped to create a sense of guilt…” pp. 158-159

From, Jonathan Edwards—A Life by George Marsden, Yale University Press, 2003

G. Mark Sumpter

Incarnation-Driven Youth Ministry

All Stages and Ages of Human Maturation, Duly Noted, Come Under the Saving Life of Jesus Christ

One argument for the church to maintain her stance in naming teens, teens; or to address them, treat them and seize upon ministry to them as youths, rests on the fact that, Jesus, in assuming a human body and living out His own life, came to accomplish His saving work specifically for them.

Adolescents are touched by His own adolescence.

We may abuse the realities and matters of the identification of the stages of human maturation, as seen in infants, children and youths, on up to young adulthood, and so on, even up to aged folk, but the reality of Christ’s own physical, social and intellectual development reminds us that there’s import about each stage of life, and that merits attention of ministry aimed at the varied physical stages of specific persons and groups.

Listen in to the old Princeton theology professor Benjamin Warfield as he dovetails commentary with the early churchman, Irenaeus:

“In this perfect development of Jesus there has been given to the world a model for every age, whose allurement has revolutionized life. He did not, as Irenaeus reminds us, despise or evade the humanity he had assumed; or set aside in his own person the law that governs it: on the contrary, he sanctified every age in turn by himself living his perfect life in its conditions. “He came to save all by means of himself,” continues Irenaeus, “all, I say, who through him are born again unto God—infants and children, boys, and youths...He therefore passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants; a child for children, thus sanctifying those who are of this age, being at the same time made to them an example of piety, righteousness, and submission; a youth for youths, becoming an example to youths, and thus sanctifying them for the Lord.”

Ministry in various forms to children, youths, collegians, young marrieds, older singles, etc., etc. is life and ministry according to the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Warfield finishes: “During the course of his life begun with this ideal childhood, Jesus came into contact with every stage of youth development, and manifested the tenderness of his feeling for each and his power and willingness to confer blessings upon all.”

We refer to them in varied ways: students, adolescents, youths, or young people. Ministry to, with and by them—the church’s teens—helps to preserve and promote the person and work of Jesus Christ and His saving life.

G. Mark Sumpter

Children and Youth---Whose Responsibility?, Part 1

On the Idolatrous Over-Correction Nowadays of Some Family Integrated Ministry

There's a timely, well-meant correction, generally, on the part of some brethren nowadays about children, youth and family ministry. Hats off to our brethren. Amen and amen.

I stand with them—1) they have biblical concerns to trounce the entertainment-oriented contemporary expression of youth ministry; 2) they have theological drive to deputize and dispatch children and youth to do hard things, calling our kids to take up the mantle of ministry-charged service in the kingdom of God right now, not when they reach their 20s and 30s; and 3) they have practical cultural sensitivity about standing firm and standing together as today’s family in our broken world; for men in the home, it means entering into and persevering with the masculine mandate to be dominion dads and taking up the yoke of child nurture.

Who can find fault with such reforms?

It’s not these reforms, necessarily, that summon watchful attention. It’s when these reforms are cloaked in over-correction about the role of parents.

Here’s the particular danger for some: it’s the separation of church and parents.

What God has joined together, let not man separate.

In the name of recovering parental responsibility for the nurture, discipleship, and training of their children and young people, parents can be misled into the vulnerable spot of isolation from the wider body of the local church; and ironically, this is the very thing that we’ve been cautioned about regarding our children and youth for the past 25-30 years. Separating children and youth off from the Body of Christ by excessive youth group programming, we’ve been learning, is a no-no. Parents must be cautioned about this same mis-application.

Family training in isolation from the biblically-designed, grace-filled, and grace-dependent relationships of the whole of the church signals danger--an invitation to idolatry of the biological home.

What kind of isolation is meant? There can be isolation of parents from the church when they believe that faithfulness means: 1) being the primary ones to do the Bible and doctrinal teaching with their children and young people, and 2) being the ones, solely, to have responsibility for other things like: hosting social events, service projects and evangelistic ministries. When its family integration in these kinds of expressions—with parent-dominant, often parent-exclusive ministries, then we’ve lost sight of the very important doctrine of The Parenthood of All Believers.

The 16th century Reformation churchman, Martin Luther, recovered proportion about all having access to God, not merely the Roman Catholic priesthood. What he called The Priesthood of All Believers might also be connected to the doctrine of The Communion of the Saints.

The Westminster Confession of Faith 26:1 speaks to this:

All saints, that are united to Jesus Christ their Head, by his Spirit, and by faith, have fellowship with him in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory: and, being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other's gifts and graces, and are obliged to the performance of such duties, public and private, as do conduce to their mutual good, both in the inward and outward man.

In the Body of Christ, there’s the way of grace with the communion of relationships within the whole of the church. Grace is a gift for every-generation life and ministry. This grace of The Parenthood of All Believers and The Communion of the Saints can be seen by the multiple generational expressions of life and ministry with multiple-callings on hand, varied-marriage and family situations involved and the manifold-gifting of people and their experiences deployed and employed. It’s the church and her needful role as Mother and Household with the children and youth of our homes.

Variety, rightly seen in God's design of this every-generation stewardship, leads to awe-ful, majestic, and grace-promoting glory before God. It’s a God-ward thing. It makes us dependent on Him, not man.

As a father, I have to trust in God for His work in and through the church, the whole of the Household of Faith.

Trust in God about such things reminds me of the Bible’s signature imperative: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.”

G. Mark Sumpter

Movements and Youth Ministry

I think it was George Marsden in his Fundmentalism and American Culture who wrote of the intellectually well-grounded men of Fundamentalism who lived with a seeming paradox between their pessimism from the reality of seeing the loosening of the grip of the gospel in the church and American culture, and with that loosening grip, being tempted to give in and give up after seeing things getting worse and worse, and yet on the other hand, the radical, visible and ardent devotion of giving themselves with sweat, tears, time and money to the forward-looking, long-haul, multi-generational establishment of institutions, e.g. the Bible Institute and Bible College movement.

Why did these Christian fathers of the 19-teens and 20s, 30s and 40s live this way? These men gave themselves in spite of all the ecclesiastical and cultural discouragements and they did so in earnest because it typified the movement mentality that churchman so easily fall into.

When the church marginalizes herself with a neglect of faithful worship and preaching, she starts to grow arms as voluntary associations, groups and movements. If the church will not be who she is supposed to be, and if she will not do what she's supposed to do, then groups surface to the top. Something has to get done!

The movement mentality sports an episodic look. Movements come and go based on episodes in church and cultural life. Cultural episodes dictate the rising and falling of movements.

Youth ministry often falls right into step with movements; it is comfortable being an arm of the church. It's a group attached to the church, but not very church-like. As an arm, youth ministry becomes a cross-cultural ministry. She targets an age group and a language-group.

The paradox found in Fundamentalism plays itself out in youth work in the church. If the church has lost its grip on faithful worship, the gospel and discipleship, she starts to grow arms and she starts to forge ahead with institutions. It's a movement that gets fueled and fired up. In this case, the movement of youth ministry built the institution of a youth group. Youth groups have their wholesome and rightful place but they need to be church-like.

G. Mark Sumpter

Front Door Youth Ministry

Front Door Youth Ministry accents the importance of public worship for discipleship for covenant children, youth and their families. It means that our worship elements of singing, prayer, preaching, reading of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments all express a nuturing role in their discipling influence so that each one, great and small, enthrone the Triune Lord with worship from body and soul. In America, it's been the black church that has led the way in Front Door Youth Ministry, and largely it's been the choir that's been the practical training vehicle for this. You look around at evangelical African-American churches on the US landscape, and you'll note that their choirs have most faithfully served as the means through which every-generation worship is offered. It's young and old, skilled and less skilled, wiser and less that lead the way, and it's the choir that's winsomely modeled the make-up of the church. It's worship-based, front-door ministry. For the past three or four generations in our country this has been the youth group of choice for our black brethren. Here, too, our brothers have much to teach us.

G. Mark Sumpter