'Meaningful' Youth Ministry

How do you do 'meaningful' youth ministry?

After a long day of work in the Houston humidity and heat the nearly 100 middle school youth gather together back at the church. As I sat in the back of the room tonight I thought on this as I watched minute after minute of programmed time go by. First it was the video, then the skit, then more video, then a slide-show, then small group time. Coffee break for me. Now we're back together...testimonies (if you can even call them that), then a short talk--which tonight was actually just the reading of a devotional book (i'm pretty confused about that one)--then communion time. Now the kids are dancing and will be for a little while longer. They will sleep a bit tonight and then get on a bus and head for Dallas to spend the day at Six Flags Over Texas.

So is this youth ministry? I don't know what these kids leave with. I'm sure a lot of them leave with that warm, fuzzy feeling that we call 'God'. Granted, this is a Methodist church and who knows what anyone believes here anyway, but I still get this pessimistic feeling about the whole thing.

I have the day off tomorrow so maybe I'll try to write some more about this. I have to go play babysitter for a few more hours...

peace

I'm back...but tired

I'm back from the mission trip. Good trip. 170 High School students. lots of fun...

I'm too tired to think or write, but hopefully i will soon.

This is all I have now, the last paragraph of Simply Christian, by NT Wright:

Made for Spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world. It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning. That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God's new world, which he has thrown open before us.