For many years I have enjoyed a favourite turn of phrase that I can only say in certain company, and sadly it fits most aptly when talking about church in the UK: the idea that ‘you cannot polish a turd.’ Yes that’s right. Let it sink in. I feel that we have become enslaved in many ways to the structure and trying to dig our way out of the ‘haemorrhaging’ of young people, and all we have achieved is to stem the flow and make an acceptable hash of mending something that is essentially …broken.
We keep trying to find new and innovative ways of doing the old things. I like new. I like change. But we don’t need new wineskins for old wine. Sometimes youth ministry is guilty of wrapping up our old message and trying to present it to young people under false pretences. Let me tell you something you hopefully already know: young people these days are sick of a lack of integrity – they smell it a mile off; in politics; in any form of ‘authority’ and definitely in church. Communicating a message is not the way to preach the gospel anymore. We are still thinking about what we want to communicate and how we can do that, rather than what the young people want to or are willing to hear. There’s still far too much ‘modern’ preaching to ‘postmodern’ young people. This needs to stop. We need to put ourselves in their shoes more – what makes a difference to them? How would you want people to reach out to you if you were them?
For a long time I’ve been wrestling with this question: how do we reach ‘post-moderns’ if they can’t be preached at? Well, we just live. Let God sort it out. Your line manager might accuse you of being lazy and not preparing sessions! But I firmly believe we need to do less to achieve more. How do young people influence other young people? They just live together; they catch things off each other – good ideas go viral and bad ones get ignored or mocked. You know what? God can take the criticism – we don’t always have to be right – or even heard. Just listen.
What we are becoming is like a jilted ex-girlfriend (or boyfriend). We can’t handle that the world isn’t bothered by our message and so we’re desperate for affection from young people and people in general in order to ‘win’ them – but it just makes us look embarrassing. It’s a turn off. What we really need to do (and I think we all know this deep down) is just to stop striving to ‘win’ people, and just enjoy people. All people. And life. Any people. And enjoy living – have interests and hobbies! You are part of what God is trying to reach too! Stop having a ‘God slot’ at your church based youth group and just meet to be together (yes I know your stakeholders won’t like that) – they will love it and you will find they grow at the same rate in their faith.
We’ve been so concerned with being in control and trying to work out the formula for Church, but it’s not like gravity or relativity - it doesn’t have an equation. There is no blueprint. So all we end up doing is restricting the Holy Spirit from doing his work and building us as a movement of Jesus followers. We need to learn to trust the Holy Spirit more. If we are not regulating and controlling the Church it is not going to disappear or go up in smoke. God is able to steer his people through. Let’s stop trying to build church. Let’s not even try too hard to plan a revolution; most revolutions are reasonably spontaneous anyway. We just have to get so dissatisfied until it spills over into creativity and new forms of expressing Church.
None of this will happen while we continue doing Church the way we have. I’m all for a ‘mixed economy’ but in very many cases what I would love to see is people going ‘cold turkey.’ JUST STOP GOING TO CHURCH! It would be great! Wean yourself off worship services, being told what to think, and being consumeristically provided for, in terms of community, ideas and emotions. If we had to live without church we would soon quickly find out what we really needed from church and we’d quickly take the initiative to make it happen. Natural leaders would emerge. Problems would happen. Mess would occur. But if we were seeking and trusting I think it could teach us what we need to learn.
Once we are free of the trappings of how we have been doing things I believe we will see glimpses of how to just follow Jesus – a social movement of people who get a value change deep inside somewhere – who want to do things in their community because they are a community-minded people not because secretly it may give them a way to evangelise to people who see them do it.
It’s probably a bit like one of those Hollywood movies where the ruling ‘utopia’ world is destroyed, or earth gets hit by a meteor, and underneath it emerges a dirty, humble but determined race of people who are motivated by their values not by the ruling ideology or political class. My point is not a judgement on the ‘ruling utopia’ but on what emerges when it falls apart. They might have to eat rats and scavenge to stay alive for a few years but they have survived the apocalypse and can start rebuilding the world based on truth at last. The ‘church’ of Jesus was a bunch of wild rebels gathered around a cause and revolutionary teachings that had power from God (as you know) – it was not at all a polished institution. It grew to become a social movement, which then ordered and structured itself and eventually became an institution.
The Church institution (with all its good points, worth, tradition, and well thought through meaning) might need to crumble and die and allow a new humble, broken thing to emerge. One where it’s not about building a structure bigger and better than the world can, but is counter culture in that it pervades and is contagious – people meeting to worship and pray together because they just have no other idea what to do with an overflow of powerful emotions! A group of people modelling passion and hunger to know God more and to reflect him in the world. In this we would give our young people something special. If we can give them hunger, curiosity and inquisitiveness then I would argue that this is so much more important than knowledge, facts and theology. I’ve long been an advocate of not praying ‘God fill me up!’ but rather ‘make me hungry for more of you!’ It’s the old ‘give a man a fish’ analogy, but we still haven’t quite got it in discipleship. We need to give people skills, give them motivation, give them safe environments and community – not give them knowledge or sign them up to our way of thinking. Then we can all explore and work it out together and your job changes from being an expert to being a useful facilitator on a journey all of us are on.
This may all seem a little depressing …or ridiculous to many of you. That’s fine – personally I’m drawn to adventure and I know not everyone is, but hopefully if some people charge ahead pioneering and making all the mistakes then the wisdom learned gets filtered and purified on its way down to the main core of the Settlers beavering away faithfully. It’s like Haute Couture filtering down to the high street: we need bonkers people challenging our status quo (so find those young people in your church – or probably outside the edge of it - and yes try to keep their feet on the ground but learn from them passionately). Often in churches the bonkers Pioneers seem to be the youth workers!
Personally I like the mess that’s coming. I no longer love prophecy and predictions of big revivals like when I was a teenager. I predict mess and failure and hardship for the Church – but in it, green hardy shoots of integrity that cannot be killed even by the harsh desert sun.
Joel Toombs is a writer, mentor and youth worker. He is also the author of a World War One novel - find out more at www.rocketfuelHQ.com/joeltoombs
