juniorhighpastor.com

Media Clips for Preteens

When I first started at my church, I had no clue what I was doing with preteens. I remember first walking into a sunday school class on the first day and thinking "these students are KIDS"! It was a big moment for me though, because I slowly warmed up to the idea of preteen ministry, and have learned to love it.

One thing that is POWERFUL for preteens is video clips. It's a rare occasion when I give some sort of message that doesn't involve at least a clip at the beginning to introduce something, or a 3 minute clip to really drive home a point. However, with preteens being preteens, you are rather limited with what sort of movie clips you can show them. However, here are some that clips I've shown with the topic and have worked really well.

Toy Story - friendship

The Lion King - selfless sacrifice

The Incredibles - family

Kicking and Screaming - letting sports control you

Wall-E - serving the community

Hannah Montana - Being genuine

Up - life is a journey

Shrek - openness

Finding Nemo - home

AND MORE...

Pop culture can be a great vehicle for displaying biblical and Christian truth and meaning, but at times it must be challenged and cultivated. Make sure you aren't doing yourself more harm than good with showing a "good clip" that needs a lot of time to explain why we as Christians can't think or act like that!

the future, what would the bible look like?

This is a pretty cool glimpse of what things might look like in the near future. There is a bit of hype here but still pretty cool.

Living Magazine Cover & Spread - Outside Magazine from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

Twitter? Facebook? Myspace?

A few years ago, all the youth ministry buzz was around connecting to students through social networking devices. At the youth ministry conferences, you could attend sessions on "Building Your Ministry Through Facebook" and other such "connecting points" with students. It seems as though that balloon has been deflated. I wonder why?

Well I think I know why. I think the bottom line with social networking devices and teens is they use them because they are there, but deep down that is not the sort of community they are looking for.

Andrew Zirschky, a PhD candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary who is focusing his studies on teens and technology says that a total embrace of technology to be "incarnational" is not a true theological response. It's not theological because it tells us nothing of ourselves, God, and the world. It simply provides another vehicle to communicated and "connect".

Andrew goes onto to say that was students really long for is not connection, rather it is communion. Communion that is exemplified in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and expressed when Christians are gathered.

This is a reality that I think is important to sit with. Instead of embracing technology, perhaps we should be more thoughtful and listen to what is happening to understand what God might be doing in it. I do believe that through social networking sites like Facebook or Myspace, God is using the culture to remind us that there is shallow community being built out in the world. What we as the Church can cultivate is deep community.

Have you thought about the "theological reasoning" behind why you use social networking sites? Is it good or bad theology?

Instapundit

Guess what your kids are tweeting. They are on Facebook and My Space, but not on twitter. Any guesses as to why?

WHO’S DRIVING TWITTER’S POPULARITY? Not teenagers. “Just 11 percent of its users are aged 12 to 17, according to comScore. Instead, Twitter’s unparalleled explosion in popularity has been driven by a decidedly older group. That success has shattered a widely held belief that young people lead the way to popularizing innovations.”

via pajamasmedia.com

Why Video Games Make Me Nervous

I sometimes sense that I'm not the "normal" twenty-something male because I don't play video games that much. Perhaps in some sense I'm not the normal youth pastor either. That is not to say that I don't do it at all, but it's definitely a once or twice a month occurrence for me, and it's usually a computer game.

This video is a video about a kid that FREAKED OUT because his mom cancelled his "World of Warcraft" account. As you can see, it's pretty...well...almost demonic looking.

I have a lot of concerns about how video games (and most other technology) seem to have a death grip on students' lives and imaginations. Some will challenge this video and say "oh they totally staged that" and claim it's falsehood. To me, even if it was staged, it wouldn't matter. I still think it illustrates video games' potential death grip on students' lives and imagination.

If you have video game units in your ministry, how thoughtful are you regarding the impact of those units on their experience in Christian community?

Reading Culture for Discipleship

I read a phenomenal book last spring entitled Culture Making by Andy Crouch. It's a pretty dense read, but I highly recommend it. Crouch illustrates a vision for the purpose and meaning of culture and promotes a balanced understanding of the role of culture in the Christian community.

Crouch gives four C's that have been pretty typical of Christians in the last century in terms of culture: copying, critiquing, condemn, and consume. Crouch then proposes two more C's to be added to the list for the Church in the 21st century: cultivate and create. Pretty magnificent that he was able to find words that all began with the letter C! I will do something similar regarding my "reading culture" paradigm with junior highers in a little bit.

As much as Crouch envisions for the Christian community in the 21st century by way of cultivating and creating culture, he doesn't deny that we should sometimes critique and potentially condemn elements in our culture. But, in order to get to any of these places I think it's important that we learn to "read culture" for the sake of discipleship.

This afternoon I had the honor of going to see the new movie Post Grad with some junior highers. I happened to land a spot in a row of 8th grade girls, which merits a whole other blog post about strategies for not losing my mind when they are laughing about the strangest parts of the movie. All throughout this movie, I could sense that there are "redeemable" elements to the story itself, and that in the pursuit to create meaning through this movie, the writers and director were able to communicate value and virtue that the Christian community could use to point people to Jesus.

I have a very simple strategy for "reading culture". It has 3 L's actually, so I don't quite get to join the ranks with Andy Crouch and his 6 C's, but I'm getting there! It's Listen, Locate, Link. It's a pretty simple paradigm, and it lends itself to be pretty agile in conversation with junior highers.

First you LISTEN to whatever the cultural "text" is saying. Well that just involves eyes, ears, and the memory to track with what is going on in the cultural text. 

Then you LOCATE what is significant and what is attempting to be conveyed in the cultural text. In the movie Post Grad, the basic idea is that often time we are making plans about where we are going in life and the journey that we are on that sometimes we forget the people and community that is with us on that journey.

Lastly, we LINK it to God's revelation and Christian tradition. This is where you can take the "located meaning" in many different directions. Off the top of my head, I talked about how at our church, we are DOING a lot of great things in the community through service, but we must never forget who we are doing it with and who we are doing it for. 

I love talking with junior highers. They usually are able to see things that I don't see, and can "enlighten" me to subtle pieces of the story that I may have missed and were pretty important. That's just a testimony to the importance of cultivating an intergenerational faith community that listens to ALL generations NOW in God's story in their community. But then again, that merits a whole other blog post :)

helping the units keep up with their kids in tech part 1

Last summer I geeked out a little and actually waited in line at the local Sprint store the day the Palm Pre was released. I have been using a Palm Pilot since 1998, and have always had one in my pocket. I have had palm phone since about 2004. The Pre is great, not perfect but the coolest phone I have had, evah!

The other day I downloaded a twitter app called Twee. It has tons of cool features I suppose iPhone users have had for awhile. One the neato! factor is finding tweets within a certain amount of miles from where I live. Of course I had to check this out. I set it to a range of 10 miles and let it connect to the intertubes to download “nearby” tweets. Like magic I am seeing tweets appear. But how do I know where they are you ask? I click on there user name and a link appears that when clicked opens up a google map with their location. Now some people just put what city they are living in. But others allow there phone to input the lat and long of where they live! Wow.

So of course now I am clicking on every single person especially if they have some interesting tweets. I live really close to Tynedale House and Christianity Today so I am seeing some tweets coming from there. Than I begin to notice some annoying tweets. Like the person who tweets about 7 times in 8 seconds! Uh yea, a teenager! So I see one particular Miley Cyrus fan post something, I click on it, see the map, she (assuming it is a she but could be a he, no it must be a she) lives right around the corner from me.

Woah.

Remember when your Dad told you never to tell strangers your address on the phone? This is much worse. Not only are teenagers giving them their address but there profile pictures let anyone see who is there.

I am guessing 9/10 parents have no idea there kids are posting tweets about their daily lives and actually letting the world know exactly what the tweeter looks like (assuming they are using a real pic) and where they live.

Tweet: Yea my parents are gone, finally I can do whatever I want for the next six hours until they come home after midnight!

Not good.

Your a youth pastor. You know this happens. One of the things we do at WBC is have regular parent trainings. Often we tackle technology and culture. Parents don’t have the time to keep up with all things tech. This is a great oppurtunity to engage parents in approproate ways to teach their kids about technology and its dangers and greatness.

And hey why not have a little chat with Jane and John about that last tweet they sent to the world!