Fasten Your Seatbelts...We're In For A Bumpy Ride

My friend Adam The Lutheran recommended a book that I've listed on the left on the topic of youth ministry. I started reading it on Labor Day. So, yeah, this is in the freakin' introduction:

"Teenagers are quick to point out the oxymoron in passionless Christianity, quick to smell danger in suppressing their emotional range, quick to question faith that fails to register on the Richter scale, and quick to abandon a church that accomodates such paltry piety. Not only does a church without passion deform Christian theology, it inevitably extinguishes the fire behind Christian practice as well. In short, without passion, Christian faith collapses. And young people know it--which may be why most of them are not spending much time in church."

You want some more?

How about this:

"In 1993, a Rolling Stone headline asserted: 'If the symptoms are rapid increases in teen deaths from murder, suicide, car crashes, alcohol and drugs...The Disease is Adolescence.' But adolescence is not the 'disease.' Rather, young people reveal society's fault lines, including violence, despair, technological dependence, and poverty, precisely because they are so sensitive to the tremors of culture."

One last one:

"My guiding conviction is this: If the church is to make sense to adolescents, then our ministry must be predicated on passion--the Passion of Christ, the passion of youth, and the passionate faith that is made possible when these two things come together."

So, yeah...I only read the introduction and all synapses are firing. I really enjoy it when a book lives up to the billing. I'll keep you informed.