Working at New Direction Ministries, Wendy and I have an understanding. As Youth Specialist I will handle the speaking engagements to teens and youth, and as Executive Director she will handle most of the Sunday Morning preaching opportunities. This means that I will often find myself shifting around in a rock hard camp bed on the second sleepless night of a youth retreat in the middle of nowhere….but I wouldn’t trade jobs with her for all the money in the world.
I often joke that working with youth professionally takes a special kind of person…preferably one who was dropped on their head a few times as a kid. But the truth is I love working with youth because they give me hope.
I have had the repeated experience of sharing my story with youth, and having teens come up to me in twos and threes afterwards in tears. Some of them have gay friends or family members, and some of them don’t, but all of them say something similar to me:
“I’ve felt inside that how Christians treat gay people is wrong. I’ve listened to how my pastor talks about this, and something inside just didn’t feel right. I want to follow Jesus, and I am serious about what the Bible teaches…but I knew how we have been acting isn’t what the Bible teaches either. I thought I must be a bad Christian because I felt this way, but your story helped me realize that I was right!”
I must have had this conversation a hundred times in the last year, in churches all across Canada, with youth from dozens of denominations. It always makes me smile because while they are thanking me, the remarkable thing is not my story, it is that they already knew it in their heart.
I have heard a great anxiety among adults in the church that we need to do something to protect our youth. Recently I read an article that claimed that to protect our children we must find anyone, gay or straight, in our churches who didn’t agree with the author's view of homosexuality and put them out of the church! It brought to mind one of my favourite Simpsons episodes where the town riots because of the perceived danger of bears and Helen Lovejoy exclaims in a panic “Won’t someone PLEASE think of the children!” But this view tends to keep God small and our own roles in the fate of the universe overly large.
I have been hanging out with the children, and they are doing okay. The Spirit of God is bringing change. I believe that his heart for reconciliation and his Love for Gay people is being echoed in the hearts of the new generations coming up in the church. I have found a generation who are much more comfortable navigating the differences that divide us with grace. When I think about what will Bridge the Gap between the Church and the Gay community I believe very strongly that it will be our children and grandchildren that are are now and will continue to do it. I think that rather than worry about them we need to listen to them, their voices and opinions and they will lead and teach us.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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7 comments:
This is beautifully written, Brian. The young people give me a lot of hope, too.
The issue with the "get rid of everyone who disagrees with us" solution to "protecting children" is that unless you plan on keeping your kids locked up in the church for the rest of their lives, it's not effective. What's worse, is that it's counter-productive and dangerous. Those same kids are eventually going to have to go out into the rest of the world, where they're still going to meet people like me. And if they don't meet someone like me for the first time until they're in their twenties or thirties, they're not going to have any idea how to react to or interact with such people. What's more, they're going to eventually going to realize that the world they were told about in their cloister doesn't accurately portray the real world, and that can lead to all kinds of problems.
So unless you're going to keep the kids isolated forever -- even into adulthood, that solution is not going to work. And perpetual isolation has problems of its own.
That's one of the reasons I'm participating in this dialogue, by the way. I've seen people in my own communities (gay and Pagan) who seem to be choosing the path of isolation more and more. They similarly do it as a defense mechanism to protect themselves from those who may hurt them. The problem is, I find the isolation even more hurtful than learning to endure and work through hurt.
So I continue to look for and help build the better solution.
-- Jarred.
Hey Jared!
Thanks for your kind words. I will never forget the disorientation of going off to Bible college with my evangelical world view and beginning to study, only to have my assumptions destroyed not by outsiders, but by learning logic and proper biblical exegesis in a conservative setting...and then realizing how often we didn't follow the very rules that I was being taught.
I came very close to losing my faith that year, and it took the wise counsel of several of my profs to help me realize that God was bigger than my assumptions. The sad thing was watching so many of my other friends who didn't have such wonderful supports walk away from the faith in disgust and a feeling that all their years of teaching growing up in the faith had been a lie. Even sadder were the friends who facing this challenge retreated, turned of their brains and entrenched themselves in the safe communities that would tell them what to think.
But as I have spent the last 16 years mentoring young people I am finding more and more that are finding new ways to navigate these questions, and avoiding the pitfalls on either side with a refreshing resilience.
I appreciate your insights into how isolation is destructive in all communities, not just the Christian ones. Being a fantasy nut I have a larger than average number of pagan friends, and building relationships with them has been a real learning experience for me over the last 10 years or so.
One of the greatest surprises was how God has used my pagan friends to speak into my life. I remember a time when things were in turnmoil in my church and I feared being fired and what I would do. I felt like I couldn't trust any one my Christian friends in the circumstances and so was venting to my good friend who happened to be pagan. Half way through a growingly hysterical rant my friend interrupted me and said "I know this sounds strange coming from a witch...but you need to shut up and pray about this!"
I was so flabbergasted! And then we just started laughing.
Shortly after that my friend came to me for wisdom and comfort as her Coven went through a particularly ugly relational meltdown and I ruefully had to laugh as she said "see...Christians aren't the only ones with church politics!"
That friendship has been through a lot over the years. It even survived the "Do you believe I am going to hell?" conversation!
I think that friendship actually informed my thinking on Bridging the Gap on the issue of homosexuality. In that relationship I learned that respecting someones view and agreeing with it didn't have to be synonymous.
So I am really glad to see you so active here and sharing your thoughts. I think that we have much to learn from each other. God Bless!
As a high school teacher working in the public system, I agree that it's the cultural undercurrent for kids to be more socially active and aware... they're more environmentally conscious then groups in the past, more into animal rights and human rights all around... so much more aware then I ever was at their age! I can't tell you how many teens took part in the day of silence at school last year, even if they weren't gay and didn't have gay friends either... they just didn't think anyone should be bullied or discriminated against for being different and so jumped at the chance to take part to stand up for them.
Bring that over into the Christian realm, and its a definite catalyst for change... I can see that youth today aren't afraid to stand up for others, even when they disagree.
It's been a while since I've worked with youth in the Christian camping leadership programs, but from what I see even just in the youth in our church, am I wrong in thinking that more youth are bolder about their faith these days even when it's unpopular? Put that with a deeper sense of compassion for others, despite differences and WOW... it's safe to say that God's working in the younger generations and I'm excited to see how He'll use the leaders He is rising up!
And yes... isolation is NOT the way... it only adds the potential for disaster as they grow older and hit the "real world"...!! Hasn't that been the way though, isolate to protect... it still is often times. I personally would rather raise my girls to be strong rather then sheltered!
Melanie
Thanks for the hope. Kids rock.
Well this has been a really encouraging blog post I've read. I'm really encouraged about the next generation coming up.
Up until now I might have been thinking that the world was going to hell in a hand basket but maybe and this is what I'm believing that this next generation will accomplish something that our generation hasn't been able to do as of yet.
I'm watching and waiting and excited to see how the next generation will shape the world in which we live. We might not like everything we see, or agree with everything we see but I think there will be a lot of positive changes.
And one more thing ...
Jarred,
You are right ... what we're doing currently as a whole is not affective and calls for change.
Brian, so grateful to find this blog. When you came to Fraser Valley and spoke to our students, your hope in the students allowed me to be hopeful as well, so there is trickle down to adults as well. Our school still has miles to go, but thanks for nudging our community towards faithfulness in this area. I hope our paths cross again soon. Matt
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