I’m still riding a high from a meeting I had last night with
four senior high youth from the parish I serve. Not for the first time in the past year have I been left in
utter amazement at the Holy Spirit’s activity in, through and around the youth
of God’s church. It’s clear to me
that today’s youth, whether they are fully integrated into the life of the
congregation or sit on the margins (by their choice or by the choice of the
adults in the room), want to be engaged and want to be in community—but not just
a community that passively worships and participates in the greater world but a
community that embodies the mission and passion of Christ. They have a clear vision of what the
church could and should be but because that vision doesn’t live up to what “more
experienced” Christians idealize (including those of us who are “professional
Christians”[1]) or what our
traditions have been, we dismiss their contributions to the life of the
community, calling their ideas simple and their expectations naïve.
In anticipation of the feature film “Ender’s Game,” I
started rereading the book by Orson Scott Card on which the movie is based.[2] It’s one of those futuristic
utopia/dystopia stories wherein Earth has been attacked by an alien race and,
in order to combat this threat, the International Fleet recruits genius
children to train to be leaders of their space force. The idea is that these kids, who aren’t aware of what they
are even doing, aren’t limited by their fear and anxiety and concern about
“what is the right thing.” They
simply act instinctively, always pushing forward.
I read the book years ago as well as some of the spin off
stories. But it wasn’t until I
read it again a month or so ago that I realized how insightful the author was
into the way children, as a rule, work. Their thinking is pure. Their sense of right and wrong is typically, intuitively,
accurate. And I started to think,
“What if we were to allow our children to lead the church the way Ender and the
other children from this Battle School led the fleet?”
We’re hesitant to do that. After all, we know more than our kids do. At least...we think we do. We’ve done the time. We’ve been confirmed. We’ve seen more of the world. It’s like I said: Their understanding is simple and their
expectations are naïve.
Or...are they?
Maybe our understanding is cynical and our expectations are
biased. Maybe all of our “lessons
learned” have actually poisoned the truly unbiased eyes with which God blesses
children. Maybe this is what Jesus
means by “...unless you change and become like little children, you will never
enter the kingdom of heaven.”[3]
I don’t have any research or data to back this up, of
course. I would hope that
something out there exists or that people smarter than me will read this and be inspired to start some research. This is just an area tangentially
connected to my focus on becoming the church God is calling us to be. But I do have anecdotal
experience.
This past Tuesday I gathered with colleagues for a weekly
text study. This week the second
lesson comes from Galatians; “There is no longer Jew
or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female;
for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”[4]
This verse has been a central verse for a lot of work I’ve done with
confirmation age students—and they are drawn to it like bees to honey. For example: last fall I participated in a multi-congregational
confirmation retreat and was leading a conversation on the Old Testament. The question surfaced about how the Old
Testament treats women and I casually dropped this passage from Galatians as a
contrast between the subservient and property-like role women played in ancient
Israel. It stuck with the kids
through the rest of the retreat.
They even worked it into a song with the help of one of the other
pastors leading the retreat. The
song became an anthem for our closing worship.
Another example comes from the daughter of a dear colleague
of mine. Back in 2009, when the
ELCA was debating the rostering of openly LGBT pastors in committed, monogamous
relationships, my colleague’s daughter, a voting youth member of our
Northwestern Minnesota Synod Assembly, rose to speak in support of the
resolution to roster LGBT pastors.
What she said still moves me.
“The younger generation will no longer tolerate your intolerance.” I think these are, perhaps, the most
contemporarily prophetic words I have ever heard.
When I first came to Calvary-Immanuel Lutheran Parish a
little over six months ago, I planned a social outing for the confirmation age
students—so they could get to know me and I could get to know them and we could
build some community. While we
were in the lobby of the movie theatre and waiting for the film to start, I was
casually asking them questions about what they thought confirmation was and
what we should do and so on. They
nailed the “academic stuff”—we need to study the Bible and Creed and
stuff. But they also went on to
other things. “We need to plant
trees. We need to clean up the
park.” Even last night when I met
with senior high kids and we were talking about planning alternative church
experiences that would engage them more, one of the guys said, “Why don’t we
just go out in the woods? Pray and
have a sermon in the woods.” LOVE
IT!
I hear these things and I see these things and I want to
encourage more of it. The problem
is that we, as congregations, are so systematically programmed that this kind
of stuff needs to be “programmed out” if it’s to happen at all...which means
committees and commitments and how much is this going to cost and who’s going
to be responsible for what and what happens after the second time when the kids
get bored with it.[5] Too often I see older members of
congregations or of the greater church smile and nod and continue about their
business, shelving these ideas or even the young people these ideas come from
until they hit some arbitrary age or rite of passage. Talk about killing the spirit. Talk about ignoring Jesus words, “Let the children
come!” We need to let the children
come...and we need to let them bring their ideas and expectations. And we need to do something with them.
Here’s the deal, folks. We’re not experts.
Our age and our experience may give us added insight into some
things...but like I pointed out before, it also makes us narrow and cynical and
biased. We need the eyes and the
voices of our young people. We
need to engage them in conversation.
We need to gather around the table and have these conversations, trying
to see the world from their eyes rather than trying to tell them how much
better our view is because we have the right understanding of things. It’s called DISCERNMENT. Somewhere in the middle of this
conversation, we, as adults will be changed. We will also change our young people. We will both grow by learning from one
another.
We can’t ignore the blessing God has given us in our youth
anymore. Our kids are NOT the
future of our church. They are our
PRESENT. They are with us now and
we need to celebrate their contributions and not bottle them up until they hit
some ideal age like a fine wine.
The conversation we will have with our young people will
challenge us. We will be forced to
see things differently. We will
learn that some of the things we do mean nothing to them. We will discover that some of the
things we value are meaningless to them.
But what we will gain...wow!
Passion. Unadulterated
perspective. Pure hearts and minds
untainted by our arrogance and distrust of people and systems.
God bless our children. God bless us through our children. Now and always.
[1] I’m not sure
if this term “professional Christian” is unique to me or not. I’m guessing not. When you marinate in as much academic
writing and participate in as many theological and ecclesiastical (that is,
study of God and study of the church) conversations as I do, you pick up terms
of art and create terms of art with surprising speed. If anyone reading this knows the etymology of this term,
please let me know. At any rate,
I’m referring to people who are called to be teachers and pastors, to whose
judgment communities and congregations defer for fear that they themselves lack
the appropriate knowledge and insight to make an informed call or statement on
any issue. This isn’t a new
phenomenon, by the way. However,
in the United States, this seems to be a trend across the board. For example, we hire professional
tutors to help our kids with their homework (i.e., Sylvan Learning Center)
because we’re afraid to show our kids that we might not have the right
answer.
[2] If you
haven’t read this book, you really need to. Even if you’re not into sci-fi, you’re going to be amazed at
the moral issues the book tackles.
[3] Matthew 18.3
[4] Galatians
3.28
[5] This one
really bothers me. “We’re going to
invest all this time and energy into starting this new program and then the
kids are going to get bored and stop showing up and then what are we going to
do?” Well..do something else. Duh. It’s not rocket science.
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