Hello, friends. Like most of you, we’re about to hit our busiest stretch of the year. Joel is at Jr. High Summer Camp, Sara’s going to be in Africa for three weeks and I leave a week from today for a 12-day stint in Bolivia.

In light of our crazy schedules, we’re taking a two-week break from the show. We’ll be back on July 10th with another great (though Sara-less) show. See you then!

Hello, friends. We’re all pretty busy this weekend, so we weren’t able to record at our regular time. We’re gonna try to record early next week, but there’s a chance you just may have to go a week without the YH podcast. Hey, give us a break, it’s free!

Thanks for your patience!

This week we talk about the end of ysmarko, killing your summer programming and books that shape your thinking on youth ministry.

Picks of the Week:

• Josh – Tough Topics, Ministry Questions, Animoto (non-profit link)
• Joel – Ministry Threads, J. Staton Designs

You can now subscribe to Youth Hacks on your Amazon Kindle.  It costs $0.99 a month and includes a 14-day trial period. We’ve sold more more Kindle ebooks than dead-tree books through our affiliate accounts, so we know we’ve got some Kindle-owning readers!

Subscribe here.

I’m very excited about Tough Topics, the brand new iPhone app from Youth Specialties. It’s a great way to carry discussion starters with you wherever you go, and I really dig the ability favorite discussion starters that you find most useful.

What really gets me excited is the trend that (I hope) this represents: great youth ministry content on brand new platforms. If anyone can do it right, it’s YS.

App Store link.

• Cultural Legacy and Mitigated Speech – Thought-provoking post on the implications of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” in the church world.
• Define Your Goals and Don’t Suck – This is a great battle cry for our team at the moment.
• Thoughts on Mark Driscoll (While I’m Knitting) – Since Mark seems to be my second favorite topic these days (just behind Fireproof)
• Tell Stories – I think story-telling is an essential skill for all youth workers, and this post does a nice job of illustrating that story-telling is a superior way of communicating information.
• Two Elements of a Great Presenter – Seth Godin raises an interesting point here…although I think the respect could be a challenge for youth workers from time to time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how youth workers (especially those of us in conservative, evangelical churches) approach gay, lesbian and bisexual teens in our communities.  I’m considering recording some interviews on the topic for upcoming podcast episodes, but I want to share some initial thoughts and questions here.

I think that youth workers have a unique perspective on homosexuality in the church. Here’s what I mean:

1. For us, it’s personal. When someone mentions homosexuality and the church, my first reaction is not theological or political, but personal.  I picture the faces of students in my community who struggle with their sexual identities, have been hurt by homophobia in the church or have simply left because they didn’t feel like they belonged.  We minister in highly relational contexts that make it nearly impossible for us to remain detached in this discussion.

2. We have unique positions of influence. We minister to teens just as their sexual identities are emerging. The experience that gay, lesbian and bisexual teens have in our ministries will probably largely determine their relationship to the church for the rest of their lives.  Additionally, we are modeling behavior for every teen in our community, and the way we respond to gay, lesbian and bisexual teens will not go unnoticed.

3. We often live in tension. We youth workers tend to be younger and more liberal than our communities at large, but we also generally work under the authority of leaders who are older and more conservative. This can lead to a great deal of theological and philosophical tension.

Our experience is unique and important to the conversation at large, and it leads to me a lot of questions. How do we approach gay, lesbian and bisexual teens in our community?  How is our approach influenced by our theology?  How is our theology influenced by our experiences?  How does our responsibility to teach doctrine interact with our to our responsibility to love teens?

If you have thoughts, questions or suggestions for upcoming discussions, please share them in the comments.  I’d love to hear your story and perspective in this matter.  Additionally, I’d greatly appreciate it if any of you could direct me to writings on homosexuality and youth ministry. I’d like to hear what people smarter than me are saying.  If you’d like to influence the direction of upcoming podcasts on this topic, here’s your chance!

A recent post on 37signals’ “Signal vs. Noise” blog cites an interview in which Quincy Jones talks about Michael Jackson’s classic Thriller album.  When making the record, they created “polaroids” or rough recordings of 600-700 potential songs.  They kept what worked and trashed what didn’t.  As Tom puts it, “That way, failure is cheap.”

Our youth ministry team has spent a lot of time creating teaching series lately (I know, hypocritical, right?) and I think that this is a really interesting model for curriculum creation.  We tend to get an idea for a series, spend a ton of time building it and then execute it our services.  Sometimes the series are great, and sometimes…not so much. I think that this approach would be a great way to weed out the bad stuff before we make a heavy investment of time and resources.

Plus, I just kind of dig the idea of equating our youth ministry curriculum with Thriller.  But maybe that’s just me.

I’d love to hear of other areas of ministry where this approach would be useful.  If you’ve got ideas, share them in the comments!

I recently watched Fireproof, the most recent Sherwood Pictures joint, so I could discuss it on the Youth Hacks Podcast. I don’t feel like I was very articulate on the show (although I was quite verbose.  Sorry, Sara), so I thought I’d make up for it by sharing some of thoughts here.

So here’s a quick and dirty rundown of Fireproof, from my perspective.

The Good

1. This film is a remarkable achievement for a local congregation. Sherwood Baptist starting making films in 2002 with $20,000.00 dollars. A short six years later, they’ve produced three feature films and  Fireproof is among the most profitable films ever made.  Regardless of whether you think local churches should be making movies, they’ve certainly done something special here.

2. It’s community made. The cast, extras, and many of the crew members are volunteers.  Local individuals and organizations pitch in to help, and Kirk Cameron, the biggest star in the film, worked for free.

1. It’s helping people. No amount of criticism can take away the fact that there are people who’s marriages are better because of this film.  I’m certain there are others who have come to Christ because Fireproof as well.

The Bad:

1. Its a tract. Fireproof is a tract wrapped in a passable story.  Its not a great story that also communicates the viewpoint of the filmmakers.  It serves the same purpose as a tract, or a youth group drama: to create a dramatic scenario that proves your message.  Its a fiction constructed around an agenda.

1. It’s poorly made. The writing and acting just aren’t very good. The characters are one-dimensional, and a few moments are just plain laughable. I hate that bad art has become the calling card of the American church. I think that some of these problems are indicative of the filmmakers lack of experience, and some are symptomatic of the tract approach: when you’re trying to make the story fit your message, its hard to make it not come out stilted and unnatural.

3. It has some strange implied-messages. This is the same problem that I had with “Facing the Giants.”  The overt messages (love your wife, give your life to Jesus, don’t look at pornography) are great, but the implied messages are, in my opinion, problematic.

In Fireproof, we’re presented with two couples: a christian couple, who seem to be happy and thriving, and a non-christian couple, who are on the brink of divorce.  In order for the couple to save their marriage, they have to become Christians.  Implied message? Christians have great marriages and non-Christians have terrible ones.  That’s just not the world we live in.  I know of many non-Christians with great marriages and many Christians with terrible ones.  Films like this give life to the false notion that becoming a Christian makes your problems go away.

Additionally, Fireproof overtly claims multiple times that without Jesus, you can’t really love your spouse.  Friends, if we want to win people to Christ, telling them that they don’t love their wives may not be the best approach.

In conclusion, Fireproof is an excellent example of the kind of Christian art that I don’t like: christian propaganda wrapped in a mediocre shell.  The next time I want to watch the gospel told on film, I’ll just watch Harry Potter.