One of my
favorite theological topics has always been eschatology, or the study of end things. You
can imagine my excitement when I discovered one of the theological panels was
entitled, “What does eschatology [end things] have to
do with Youth Ministry?” I much anticipated the opportunity to dialog with many
great thinkers in youth ministry as I entered the room.
Personally, I have always prided
myself on thinking about youth ministry through an eschatological lens. It is,
in fact, one reason I named this blog, “redeeming creation.” When I first kicked off this blog after I was done
with seminary, my vision was to write about the hope of a God who loves and is
working to redeem his creation. Since I beginning the blog, I have struggled to
maintain consistent writing due to a lot of professional transition and focused
time needed within my own ministry.
While at Good Shepherd Lutheran
Church, I have learned about myself and youth and family ministry, as well as
my vision for ministry in general, and my vision continues to circle around my
hope for the God of a Kingdom of hope to break into the lives of families and
teens and to reveal his promise and grace. I believe that only when God does
this can communities, families, and individuals be transformed.
Over the weekend at the NYWC, God
reminded me of a forgotten truth: eschatology does not have just a little bit
to do with youth ministry, it has
everything to do with youth ministry. As Chap Clark, professor of Youth Ministry at
Fuller Theological Seminary, points out, today’s teens are in a different place
than any other teenage generation has ever been. They
live inside of what Clark calls, “the world beneath.” In this world, teens
struggle to find themselves amongst the pressure placed on them by adults in
their lives, peer pressure, consumerism, and uncertainty of hope in the future.
Take a
student of mine for example, who we will call Jim*. Jim
lives in a single parent home where he struggles to get by as he works to find
what it means be an individual. He feels pressured by his parent to do
everything and be as good at everything as his older brother. Therefore, he participates
in all the sports he can as he tries to meet his parent’s expectation. When he
is not doing sports, performances, or whatever else his parent has planned for
him, he does his homework. Many nights, he stays up past midnight to just get
enough done to maintain his B+ average. Other nights, he feels like he has to care
for his own parent, who seems stuck in a place of lament toward the family’s
life situation.
Jim is
stuck in a world where everyone is telling him what to have hope in. His parent
wants him to have hope in his educational future telling him that if continues
do participate in sports and gets his grades up, he will get into that name
school. His coaches tell him that he is angry and does not try hard enough, so
now his playing time has been cut. Jim and the opposite sex really like each
other and he sometimes finds hope in superficial relationships and in things he
knows should be reserved for marriage. He comes to church when he can, but if
you ask him, he will tell you that church is one of the only places he feels he
can be himself. He will tell you there is something about the community that is
just “different.” Yet, recently Jim has started to question whether God exists
or not because he struggles to see God at work in his world, family, or even
personal life.
As I sat in
the theological panel on what eschatology has to do with Youth Ministry, I
could not help but think of Jim and how far too many of my youth group students
are just like Jim, whether their parents realize it or not. Many of today’s
teens are without hope, and the adults in their lives—even faithful Christian
parents—tell them to place their hope in things that will pass away.
There is
this eschatological idea that has been sold by “pop-Christianity,” that I refer
to as “left behind” theology, or dispensational theology in which God deal with
humanity differently depending on the specific time period creation finds
itself. The
issue with this eschatology is that it believes that most important question
that a person can answer is, “If you were to die tonight, where would you go?”
The issue with this type of eschatology is that it only deals with a small part
of the problem. It only offers kids a future hope; it does not offer an
eschatology that provides identity, calling, and hope now.
The Kingdom that Jesus preached is
far bigger than a kingdom that only exists in some future reality; it is a
Kingdom that is here now, but not yet. This type of Kingdom is different for
four reasons: it gives them hope and grace now, it becomes a part of who kids
are now, it calls kids to a purpose, and it encourages kids to see and stand in
hope today.
Hope
For many reasons, adolescence can
be one of the most hopeless times in a person’s life. Many teens deal with
struggles that no one should deal with from problems with parents who turn to
them for support in the midst of heartache, issues with abuse or bullying from
their peers, and/or the pressure put on them by the adults in their
communities. With all of this on the shoulders of today’s teens, many of them struggle
to maintain resiliency in the face of these issues. The beauty about the
kingdom of God is that it not only provides hope in the future, but also
provides hope in the present.
Look at the ministry of Jesus, wherever
Jesus was, he provided hope and grace to those entrapped by evil, death, and
sin. By casting out demons, healing the sick, raising the dead, and forgiving
sins, he demonstrated the reality of the Kingdom here on Earth. At the end of
his life, Jesus shows true hope when he overcomes death, evil, and sin in his
resurrection. In ministry we are called to preach and demonstrate the same
message of hope and grace that God shows throughout the ministry of Jesus.
People need to hear a message of hope and grace demonstrated through a Kingdom and
love that is bigger then whatever binds them.
When God breaks into the life of a
person, God fills him or her with the Holy Spirit. God gives his Spirit to his
followers so that they might live out the Kingdom of hope now. Before Jesus
resurrected up into heaven, he brought his disciples together and promised that
his followers would be “baptized in the Holy Spirit.” This is why Paul states
in Romans 5, “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been
poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
As followers of Jesus, we have been given hope not only in the future, but hope
now, hope in whatever these teens are going through and grace to rescue them
from whatever might be holding them back from God.
Identity
The key
struggle of adolescents is “who am I?” The grace and hope that they find in
Christ offer them an answer to that question. Instead of telling kids that they
are just a soul that needs to wait around for Jesus to come back, eschatology
calls kids to see themselves as redeemed children of God now, not in some future
reality. This eschatological reality should affect the way they begin to define
themselves as they figure out how their identity as a child of God works within
their personal gifting and calling.
Constantly, I try to reiterate to
kids that they are foremost a child of God, not just a brain, an athlete, a
basket case, a princess, a criminal, or a John Hughes high school stereotype.
There is nothing they can do or not do, that will take this identity away from
them. God has given them this out of grace and love, not as a result of their works
or abilities, a vastly counter-cultural message in today’s world of create who you
want to be by your own work. Today’s
teens need to know that their identity is not based in what they do or fail to
do, but in God holding their identities in his hand now and forevermore, not
just in some future reality whether Christians “rapture” into heaven or students
get into their dream colleges.
Calling
Since teens have been redeemed by
God’s grace, they are then called by God to live out their identities as children
of God now, not just in the future. Martin Luther talked a lot about calling
and gifting. He believed that everyone was not only called and gifted to serve
God as priests within the Kingdom of God, but also that each person had a
specific calling that worked alongside the passions and career that each person
is called into. As David Kinnanman points out in You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving the Church and Rethinking
Church, many young teens and emerging adults do not see how their faith
connects to their careers and/or interests. Therefore, when they enter into
post-high school life or career training, they are no longer connected to their
faith because they have not been taught how their faith has shaped, called, and
gifted them. Training
teens that as they grow, God desires to use them to manifest his Kingdom by
providing them with specific gifts that work within their individual passions
and career calling. When teens begin to understand this reality it helps them
see how their faith goes beyond themselves and high school or middle school.
For instance, I had a conversation
with a high school senior last year who has the desire to be a fashion
journalist. In fact, she got into one of the best journalist schools in the
nation and will likely see her dreams fulfilled. One Sunday she admitted to me
that she did not think God would want her to go into her long-desired career
because it was “too worldly.” After asking some pointed questions and
processing with her, she began to see her passion for fashion and journalism in
a new light. She saw how God might be able to use her future career to manifest
God’s kingdom in a way that no pastor ever could. Further, she began to see her
own gifting and passions that were given to her by so that she can use them for
his Kingdom throughout her career.
Pictures of Kingdom
Hope
During the NYWC theological seminar,
someone asked the question, “what happens when teens can’t see the hope God
gives them?” Amy Jacober, youth ministry writer and academic, had some great
suggestions, but I think she really hit home when she encouraged the audience
to invite kids to imagine hope now through pointing to what she called,
“unexplainable holy moments.” These are the moments when you are sitting with a
group of kids and everyone just starts laughing for no reason or when you are
out surfing and you cannot explain it, but the sunset is extra beautiful that
night. In those moments of life, she encouraged us to point to the glimpse of
the coming Kingdom that might be showing through in this “unexplainable holy
moment.”
Amy also encouraged us to stop and
point out where God is or has moved in times of hope during camps, mission
trips, or retreats. As Andrew Root explains in the book Theological Turn In Youth Ministry, these moments can be pictures of
the hope to come. For instance, I always have teens tell me at the end of
mission trips or camps, “I do not want to go back to real life. It is so easy to
follow Jesus here.” Others have said to me, “I just wish I could serve God
every day like this.” It is in these moments that the Kingdom of God is
manifesting itself in a concrete way in the lives of adolescents. When this
happens we are presented with a perfect opportunity to explain the reality of
the now, but not yet Kingdom of God. We can tell teens that in those moments God
is providing us with a small glimpse of the hope to come. Even better, God
desires to continue to work through you when you get “down the mountain” to
show his Kingdom of hope to others as you continue to live life as you have during
this week at camp or on a mission trip.
We things get really bad, Amy
suggested that the best thing we can do is to come alongside teens and provide
hope for them when they are hopeless. This looks a lot like something that
happened within one our youth group’s middle school small groups a few weeks
ago. One of our girls had been a victim of bullying at school. During small
group, she could not hold it in any longer, and she broke down crying. As I
came out of my small group, I looked over and saw one of our High School
volunteer leaders, partnering in leadership with an adult small group
volunteer, with her arm around the crying middle school student. The high
school student sat there for forty-five minutes as the middle school girl continued
to cry. I talked with the girl’s mom about what her daughter was dealing with
at school and helped coach the mom on how to address the situation with her
daughter’s school. At this time, the high school volunteer said nothing and
continued to let the Middle School girl cry. In these moments, this high school
girl provided hope to a middle school girl who felt hopeless.
Sometimes, the best thing we can do
to minister to teens is to be there for them as they struggle to find the hope
that God gives in the midst of a messy world. When we do this, we become a
concrete, incarnate picture of a God who provides hope and healing by empathizing
with his creation’s suffering. At the same time, we are providing a picture of
a God that will completely heal his people through wrapping them up into his
Kingdom.
The End
Jesus made
many beautiful promises to his people. The best one was the promise that the
Kingdom was here now, but not yet fulfilled. It is essential that the church helps
today’s teens see that the Kingdom of God is here to provide them with a new
identity, calls and gifts them to manifest the kingdom, and offer them hope.
This is why our eschatology has everything to do with youth ministry, it
provides and call teens to the hope promised to them in Christ.
While not
every topic on this blog will deal directly with eschatology or even youth
ministry, the vision of this blog is to reflect, think, and write about what
God is doing in my life and teaching me about ministry and the unfolding of his
Kingdom in the world. I hope you will join me this year as I re-launch “Redeeming
Creation.” May God bless you and reveal to you his Kingdom of hope that you
might be a vision of God’s hope to those without in the world.
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