Mind the Gap
I've very much appreciated Jason Gardner's Mend the Gap.
It's a book that has resonated very much with my heart for the church, in fact it's one those books where you think "I wish I had written that"!

There's so much in it about how youth work may not be the only answer for the church's reconnection with younger people, about how we can be church together, and about how we ended up here.

A couple of quotes:
"The answer the church has found [to the generation gap] is not to equip the older generation to relate better to the younger but to appoint someone else to do it on their behalf" (p149)

"If we see the role of youth workers in our churches as subordinate to the role of Senior Pastor, then it seems that we're guilty of viewing children and youth as 'becomings' and not 'beings' in their own right" (p155)

"what teenagers look for in a church is a tangible fervour for God" (p163)

This will definitely make it onto my list of books recommended for churches to read when thinking about youth stuff, especially as it's from a UK perspective. Which makes me think what else would be on that list? But that's for another post I think!

Distinct?
Just re-reading Mustard Seed Versus McWorld by Tom Sine as part of getting my head round my current college assignment.
Here's a quote that you may have heard before, but resonated again with me:
"I am convinced that one of the reasons Western Christians aren't terribly effective in evangelism is that we are so much like the culture around us that we have very little to call people to. We hang around church buildings more than others do. We abstain from a few things. We aren't as hedonistic as the people around us - but we certainly keep trying" (p223)

Community?
At the risk of this blog becoming a quote repository, here's one that struck a chord today, as I tried to get into reading, whilst still feeling a bit "dentised out" after my extraction yesterday :
"Oddly many Christians find their fellow congregants play no more crucial a role in their daily lives than the people they walk past in the grocery store. They share a common experience from time to time and receive goods from the same organization but little else" (Doug Pagitt Reimagining Spiritual Formation, p28).
Speaks for itself I think. How do your or my experiences of church compare?

Passion
Found myself dipping back into Kenda Creasy Dean's fantastic book"Practicing Passion" yesterday.
Full of good stuff, why youth ministry needs to be shaped by the "passion of Christ" (and I don't mean Gibson's movie!). Why "nice" youth ministry isn't enough.
Here's a quote that hit me again:
"A passionless church will never address passionate youth. It is highly questionable whether a passionless church addresses anybody, or if it is even a church in the first place...Passion both human and divine, challenges the language of modern rationalism and ushers in a way of life that subverts the basic assumptions of an anesthetic culture with therapeutic goals" (p69)

Idolatry
Just read this thought provoking quote:
"The essence of idolatry is the identification of the reality of God with the image of God produced by a culture" (Boff, "Good News to the Poor", p17).
What is shaping my view of God?

Mission and young people
Been catching up on some reading with a view to writing some stuff.
"Young people and Mission" edited by David & Alison Booker arrived recently.
It's quite a good little volume, the chapters on relating to other faiths and uniformed organisations were especially helpful in the way they put stuff (and relating to some questions I get asked).
It's not a challenging or in depth volume if you've done much thinking around missiology and stuff, but it would be a good place for youth workers, payed or volunteers to start.

This quote appealed to me:
"Youth wokers need not only to focus on the young people they serve, but also to be advocates for change in the wider church so that young people can feel welcomed and accepted there without needing to learn a new culture first"

Big Babies
One of my holiday reads was "Big Babies" by Michael Bywater.
Its a kind of ranting polemical book on the state of Western culture.
He contends that people these days don't grow up, and that government and other agencies add to our self-absorbed perpetual adolescence. We are constantly being told what to do and being warned of danger, and therefore end up no longer thinking for ourselves. We are being watched, and mothered by the state.
Bywater also sees religion and the church as part of this controlling mechanism. In all honesty he's probably right about some part of the church at some times. But he is somewhat unfairly dismissive in my view ("We should distrust ourselves if we believe God loves us. At best God tolerates us and his self-interest is at the root of it all"p236).
He also seems to delight in swearing and using the "F***" word for emphasis, perhaps to prove how grown up he is? (my junior school teacher used to say swearing was a sign of a lack in vocabulary).

Anyway you can read most of the good bits in this Telegraph article. And this reviewer loved it!
It was an interesting read - but by the end you've got the message, and I found myself almost giving up on the book as he seemed to be going on a bit. But maybe I need to grow up to appreciate it...

Quote for the day
"In times of transition and major change we must budget for failure. We have not passed this way before, and we need to lighten up on people. We are feeling our way, learning to walk in more sensitivity to the Holy Spirit"
(Cook & Goodell, Permission Granted to do Church Differently, p46)


I like the notion of budgeting for failure, having permission to experiment.
I also appreciate the advice to lighten up on people.

Inside the Organic Church
Like every good conference, there was a bookroom at the Matrix. I picked up a copy of Bob Whitesel's Inside the Organic Church.
The book is a pretty good, short, easy to read description of Bob's journey to 12 emerging churches. 10 of the churches are US based. It's not an in depth book like Gibbs and Bolger's, but gives a good flavour, an introduction to some expressions of emerging church. My only concern is that people could read the book and look at his lessons from each church and miss the point totally by using them as a programme or way to change worship (he is very clear that that is not what he wants people to do).
One of the most helpful things in the book is a chart contrasting Institutionalization with Improvisation (which came out of his observations at Solomon's Porch).
He suggests:
"My observations led me to believe that the organic church sees effectiveness (connecting people to Christ) as trumping efficiency (doing it in the most programmatic and premeditated way possible).Thus improvisation...must be preferred over a propensity to execute things perfectly" (p118)

The Sky is Falling?!?
Just been reading this book by Alan Roxburgh as background for my next college assignment (here's the essay title: "Can an inherited church become an emerging church?"- good eh?).
The subtitle of the book is "Leaders Lost in Transition", and I found it's good stuff. He argues that the radical change merchants (he calls them emergents) and the established leaders facing changing times (he calls them liminals) need each other to face the missional challenges of our day.
Here's a couple of quotes:
"Emergence cannot be imposed form above; it is cultivated by participation. Leaders must let go of the belief that more information or more data or some new program can reestablish control and result in a desired future" (p89-90).
That in itself is so helpful - change must be about more than the leaders "selling the vision". I think that also has huge implications for youth ministry and the church, in terms of vision and participation.

Here's another, a definition of the role of leadership, especially apostolic leadership:
"The role of leaders is to cultivate environments that release the missional imagination of the people of God".

My only gripe is that I had to order it from the USA, but the Allelon shop was very efficient!

Godbearing Life

In preparing some stuff today I went back the book "The Godbearing Life".

Wow it's a great book!

"Youth ministry is more about ministry than about youth...in practice this means that when our own life catches fire, the souls of youth and our congregations ignite as well" (p17)

Bring on the fire-starters!