Why youth workers sometimes need to switch off

I have a cat. At most levels she is a normal, run-of-the-mill cat. White, fluffy, purry – the whole cat-esq shebang. But she harbours a dark secret – and that is she’s a psychotic lunatic freak with macabre pastimes and dangerous hobbies.

Let me explain. Luna (the cat) hunts mice. Normal enough, right? However, Luna can bring home (and eat) seven mice a day… that we know of. If that wasn’t bad enough, she doesn’t eat the whole mouse. She eats everything but the head, which she likes to leave on our doorstep. I assume as a warning to other mice – or just as a talking point for the postman.

Luna also loves to play with string. Again, normal right? But Luna will purposely spin in a circle chasing string over and over and over again, until she becomes so dizzy, that she stumbles around drunk, and then promptly falls over.

Youth workers can be just like my cat!

Through one lens we can look exactly like every other youth worker. We play games, we teach using creative object lessons, we wear ripped jeans, and we grow soul patches. We look like we’re doing this thing ‘normally.’ But under the surface, many youth workers – including at times, myself, are self-destructive, narcissistic, people-pleasing, terrified-of-our-own-shadow nightmares!

We have to be doing stuff – constantly. Stopping and considering or even appreciating is rarely on the cards. If there’s space, we have to fill it: An empty room? Run around throwing loo roll! A quiet space? Yell loudly! A sparse calendar. Fill it entirely!

Is this you? Then you’re running hot – and you’re gonna blow!

Some of this is certainly fear-driven. We get fearful that people aren’t having a good time, or fearful that the pastor isn’t happy with our job performance, etc. Fear is a huge motivator. I think there’s another reason though and that is that we just don’t know any better.

The self-perpetuating model of youth worker burnout

Most youth work in the UK is done by volunteers, and the large majority of paid youth workers have had no formal training. For most of us, we learned youth work from ‘the guy who went before.’ What I mean by this is that many youth workers learned youth work from their youth worker – with some tips picked up from festival and event youth workers along the way.

So, if these youth workers were ‘always on’ then we’re probably just perpetuating the same poor practice. More likely, however, we only ever witnessed them in full-on youth worker mode at projects, and then assumed ‘that’s just what being a youth worker looks like.’

Then there’s a theological reason too. Since the late 1940s we’ve been reading books and attending seminars telling us that as ‘incarnational youth workers’ we’re supposed to always be on. Our door should always be open, our phone always switched on, and young people should feel free to demand our energy whenever they feel like it.

Since this time, however, and especially since the 1980s, it’s been really hard to convince youth workers to stick around for very long. Very rarely will a youth worker work beyond one contract before moving on to something else. All of the youth workers I knew from growing up are not youth workers anymore.

There’s a lot of reasons for that, but I believe there’s more than just a subtle corelation between overexertion in youth work, and time spent in youth work.

So, switching off?

Why do you need to switch off? Because you will burn out if you don’t. We know this, but we don’t really know it.

We don’t really know the importance of regular, consistent days off.

We don’t really know the importance of booking and taking holidays.

We don’t really know the importance of switching off notifications.

We don’t really know the importance of hobbies, friends, and activities away from youth work.

Those who work these things out (and so do know) are those who keep going! But even they still need occasional reminding. There are others who know the importance of these things too though, and that’s those who have already burned out.

I could have phrased it ‘we don’t really know the consequences of not…’ Consequences on our health, our marriage, our kids, our sleep, our friendships, our hairlines, or even our job effectiveness. Exertion in does not mean quality out.

So, let me just end there – using a language we can all get:

Youth workers sometimes need to switch off because they won’t be very good at youthwork if they don’t.

Food for thought.

 

Photo by Isabella and Louisa Fischer on Unsplash

Living with cancer as a volunteer youth worker

This brave and honest anonymous post has been written by a youth work volunteer who recently was given the all clear after treatment for cancer. We hope this will be an encouragement to anyone walking through similar challenges.

 

Cancer, My Youth Group & Me.

Cancer:

In August 2016 I was diagnosed with a Hodgkin’s Lymphoma which is a type of blood cancer. It meant that I had to have lots of different treatments and medications and trips to the hospital and in turn meant that my life became very isolated, quiet, and slowed down quickly.

It was an extremely tough time full of experiences and situations that I never expected to happen to me, and I pray will never happen to anyone ever again. It wasn’t a fun time. God, however, is absolutely amazing and has a pretty awesome way of restoring hope, love and joy; and bringing the right people around you!

‘The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.’ [Psalm 28:7]

My Youth Group:

I volunteer at a youth group on Sunday nights. It’s an amazing team with fantastic young people, and it is very very special to me – for multiple reasons. How they all reacted and supported me through my cancer and recovery just astounded me and made me so very very thankful!

The Sunday after I was diagnosed I talked to the team first, and then the young people. I said that I had cancer, and that I would be going on a series of treatments and medications. This would mean that I wouldn’t be able to volunteer as much as I would like for a period of time, but that when I was better that I would come back. They were all so amazing about it – and I was fully aware that they were all praying for me. This was a huge comfort!

I kept them updated throughout my treatment and was hugely comforted and held-up by their messages back.

Me:

I am 100% fine and healthy now, and I’m back at youth club and I love it!

One of my favourite teaching series that we did a while back was called ‘what makes us tick’ where each volunteer was given a session to speak about anything they were passionate about.

Part of my talk in this series was telling the whole group how their prayer and my prayer was answered at a pretty critical part of my treatment, and how ridiculously grateful I was for all their love and support! Their prayer meant that I only had to do four months of chemotherapy instead of six, which was amazing!

What I’ve learned…

Life is an adventure. Which means it can be both wondrous and fun and exciting as well as bleak and tough and exhausting. What’s amazing though is that we don’t have to do it alone. We have God but we also have people. If you’re a leader going through a tough time, then trust the people around you. Let them help. If you’re a team with a leader going through a tough time, be there for them. Encourage them and support them. Check in on them. It often means the world that people care enough to remember and send a message to just say ‘hi, hope you’re ok, we’re here and we’re praying’.

 

Photo by Hush Naidoo on Unsplash

Responding to The Game of Thrones Debate

Game of Thrones. Is it the gloves off, gruesome, grim and gristly opiate for the masses – or the fantastical story that grapples with the true complexities of human experience? Is it right for a Christian to watch it for entertainment, or perhaps missional research – or should they steer clear of it all-together?

Could this be a random cracking of the whip? Like Sabrina prompted last year, Deadpool three years ago, or Harry Potter ten plus years ago? It’s topics like these which become convergence points of fixation from both the heavy-grace (everything is permissible!) and heavy-law (not everything is beneficial!) extremes of the evangelical wings.

These debates create new heroes and villains, they scratch some deep itches, and they rehash the prohibition controversies from our protestant histories. They can also be quite sad.

We do love a good ‘what should we eat, drink, wear, watch, play, read, listen-to’ dispute, don’t we? I wonder if we would just get bored without them – what would we do without a pointy wedge issue on what we should consume? Paul said, ‘do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink’ (Col. 2:16), and Jesus said, ‘do not be anxious… is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?’ (Mt. 6:25). It’s almost as if they knew, go figure.

Without these debates, we might have to actually talk about Jesus more directly, which oddly makes us squirm just a little more than is entirely decent.

The gauntlet

A few weeks ago, British Youth for Christ National Director Neil O’Boyle wrote a post on relativism and our media consumption titled ‘why youth workers shouldn’t be watching Game of Thrones’ (GoT). The big take away was to respect the enormous amount of responsibility that comes when leading young people. It’s all too easy for them to take our actions as their permissions.

That’s a hard-hitting challenge that needs to be grappled with at every level of leadership. That’s the responsibility that any parent or leading adult has for the development of young people. Neil said:

‘I’m sure by now I have jarred you. I didn’t mean to. I guess all I’m asking as influencers and culture setters is: Are we inconsistent? And are our inconsistencies unhelpful to a younger person’s walk with Jesus?’

Even if we’re someone who likes to binge-watch Baywatch while chain-smoking – tell me we heard that? We want to fiercely pursue holiness and invite young people to join us on that journey, even if it means giving up something that we like. What Christian among us really wants to challenge this idea – isn’t sacrifice and humility at the very centre of our faith after all?

Cards on the table – I know Neil. I’m one of the 50-80 youth workers he mentioned in that article that benefits directly from his rich experience and considered example. Full disclosure: I think Neil is a ledge.

Sure, Neil’s article didn’t solidly settle in too many places. It was, after all, a gentle challenge on a hugely sticky topic. I’m suspicious that the title was actually an editorial addition, rather than Neil’s original? (Correct me if I’m wrong, Emily!). I think this is really unfortunate as that title colours the whole post, and it changes the way it reads – especially if you already have a strong opinion on the show.

The reaction

In response, Youth and Student Pastor, Alan Gault essentially wrote what is known in journalism as ‘a takedown piece’ in order to counter Neil’s view. It was a little blunt. If all I had got to go on was the tone of the two pieces, then I’d warm to Neil’s and recoil from Alan’s. The real issue though is that Alan’s article didn’t grapple with that central gut-hitting challenge from Neil about our inconsistency.

Instead, Alan reached around Neil, and clung to the title ‘why a Christian shouldn’t…’ Alan said, ‘I find the majority of reasons given by Neil to have their own problems and I find his blanket ban unnecessary.’ Which reasons and what ban? Other than the title, GoT is only mentioned once in Neil’s article, and just as an example of a much wider issue.

Alan battled a monstrous, legislative ‘They’, and caricatured Neil (as representing this force) as putting down a ‘blanket ban’ rather than carefully considering what he really wrote.

Relativism is a cultural phenomenon which goes far beyond simple moral subjectivity. Neil was calling us to consider our example to those we lead in the middle of such a vulnerable and uncertain culture. This wasn’t legislative, it was, however, a deliberate challenge.

I believe that Alan wrote a reaction to a strawman, rather than a response to an idea. It may have galvanised the GoT-loving side of the fence, and rattled those who abstain, but I don’t think it promoted any real dialogue outside the respective echo chambers.

As Christians we need to talk and listen to each other with generosity. Without this there’s no edification or building one another up in Christ happening at all. Before we get to the content then, let’s start with respecting that we’ll know each other in heaven, and disagreements should come with brotherly affection.

The thing behind the thing

What’s a shame about this is that I think Alan was on to something. Once you concede he wasn’t really responding to Neil, there were some real nuggets of gold in his post.

Alan was trying to make us think about grace. We can’t legislate people into the Kingdom, nor can we set strict universal boundaries over our growth – especially when triggers may be very different for different people. Alan reminded us about the wildly varied contexts that are involved in individual walks, the complexities of messy lives, and the primacy of the promptings of the Holy Spirit in the changing of those lives. He encouraged us to think upon the Jesus who hung out with the dregs of society. Fab! This too deserves to be grappled with, and I imagine Neil would heartily nod along with all of these things.

If Alan focused on these pieces and wrote that post convincingly, I think it might have added to the conversation here – and iron would have had a chance to sharpen iron. He didn’t, however, and it hasn’t.

What was the problem?

For me, the main issue is I think Alan’s post accidentally cheapened the Bible in favour of entertainment. I’m sure he’d be horrified that I thought that but let me explain.

Alan identified passages in the Bible that contain explicit and graphic sex and violence. He said we shouldn’t, therefore, use sex and violence alone as a reason not to watch similar content in GoT. Some of these passages were implied rather than graphic (Noah and his son from Gen. 9:18-27), and others were metaphoric rather than explicit (Song of Songs throughout). None of them were qualified or discussed and all of them needed to be given in context.

If I was marking Alan’s post as an undergrad theology paper (which it wasn’t), then I would push him quite hard on proof-texting. He selected a group of somewhat random passages that contain what he said was gratuitous sex and violence and then presented them together with false cohesion.

Ek. 23:20, for instance, needs to be read in light of Ek. 14-23: The storyline is the adulterous woman (Israel) and the lover (God) against adulterous lovers (other nations), the issue being idolatry and worship (23:49). Song of Solomon is a dramatic and intimate exploration of the love of God and the worship of His people. The Conquering of Canaan sits in a context of God’s promises to Moses and Abraham, against idol-worshipping pagan nations. The David and Bathsheba story needs to be approached in tension with Ps. 51 and 2 Sam. 12. All of these passages need to be read while keeping the Bible’s full perspective of heaven and redemption in mind. This is the unique worldview of the Bible lived out in the person of Jesus who we aspire to in all our choices today. This is not the general worldview of TV.

You can’t, therefore, just pluck stories out of the Bible for containing similar ideas, ignore the original contexts, group them together indiscriminately, and then present them as a whole to justify today’s consumption choices. That’s hermeneutically naughty! *Slaps wrist.*

Then there’s the logical issue with the argument.

Even if we grant the premise (the Bible is full of [unqualified] stories of gratuitous sex and violence), the conclusion doesn’t then follow.

I once had a young person use exactly this same argument including some of the very same Bible references to explain why it was ok for him to watch pornography. This is unfortunately what happens when you draw too straight a line between two very different things like the Bible and TV. Philosophers call this the fallacy of false equivalence.

For the argument to work as presented, we would need to assume that reading and viewing are the same thing and that both would affect people in the same way. We would need to assume the acts of sex and violence are treated in the same way in both the Bible and GoT and then assume that Paul’s call to purity (Eph. 5:3) along with Jesus’ call to holiness (Mt. 5:28) doesn’t directly apply to those racy and brutal Bible stories. Putting that another way, we would need to isolate those verses from the wider voice of the Bible. We would probably need to assume that there’s no real distinction between art and history as well. Mostly though, I think we would need to assume that both the Bible and GoT were made by the same type of creator with the same kind of purpose.

The issue here is not elevating GoT to the same place as the Bible, but rather depreciating the Bible to be comparable with GoT. This is the Word of God – it’s not just another piece of media. They are simply not comparable.

Sex and violence in the Bible are not enough to warrant viewing sex and violence for entertainment today.

Isn’t everything permissible?

Alan misquoted 1 Cor. 6 as saying ‘everything is permissible, but not everything is helpful.’ We can’t get at him too much, however, because almost everyone misquotes Paul here! What’s missing is the quote marks, but oh boy do they make a difference.

Paul is playing devil’s advocate by slightly sarcastically pseudo-quoting his Corinthian reader saying ‘hey, but I’m saved by grace, so I can do whatev, right? Who are you to tell me no?’

The examples Paul gives for this are cheating someone (v.7, 10), wrongdoing (9), sexual immorality and promiscuity (9, 18-20), stealing, getting drunk, and mocking (10). Because of these things church members were taking legal action against each other (1-6) and the terrible result was increasing division (vv.1-6, 7, 14-16).

On one side of the division there was a misapplication of grace and on the other a misapplication of law. Paul was directly addressing the issues on the first side in the beginning of his pseudo-quote, ‘everything is permissible’. It might just as well read, ‘Hey, I can steal, get drunk, and mock people, right? Who are you to tell me no?’

Alan said ‘is watching Game of Thrones permissible? Yes! Is it helpful? That is for you to figure out’. Is that a legitimate way of using this passage? Only as much as saying something like ‘is murder permissible? Yes! Is it helpful?’ A murderer isn’t barred from the Kingdom of God, but that doesn’t mean crack on.

Using a devil’s advocate quote of Paul as a propositional way for us to measure our consumption choices is altogether the opposite of what Paul was trying to do.

Yes, it’s about grace, but it’s about holiness too. The word ‘helpful’ here (συμφέρει) is exactly the same word used by Jesus in Matt. 5:29 when he tells us that it’s better (more helpful) to pluck out our eyes and cut off our hands if they could possibly cause us to sin. Thinking about Neil’s original post, it’s also the same word used in Matt. 18:6, when Jesus said it would be better (more helpful) for us to be drowned than cause a ‘little one’ to sin.

And there’s the point. What standard do we set for holiness, and what things will we sacrifice for it? Is it permissible? Sure – in the broadest possible way in that it won’t block the gate to heaven. But does it ultimately bring glory to God, unity to His church, and provide a consistent standard to His children? Do our actions – including what we watch on TV – bring the waveforms of our hearts more in line with God’s, or do they clash? Do our habits resonate with or detract from the strength and clarity of our full-throated pursuit of worship? This is the truer reading of 1 Cor. 6.

So…. can a Christian watch GoT?

I wouldn’t and I don’t. I know my issues and my temptations and by spending two minutes on IMDB Parent’s Guide I decided that it wouldn’t be good for me. I love fantastical fiction, but I decided to take a pass on this. My wife, however, is a whole other person and – although she doesn’t watch it either – her own set of triggers and values would be different to mine and these would inform her differently too. I don’t want to be overly prescriptive, therefore, although I would take some convincing that watching GoT would be actively helpful for a Christian’s walk with God. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone legally too young to watch it, which would be most of my young people.

I don’t imagine it’s an easy watch for a Christian, or a helpful watch for pursuing purity, although I concede it’s probably entertaining and interesting. I think it’s always worth asking the question: can I worship God with this? I think, in fact, that there are a few much better questions to ask than ‘should you’? (You can read an old article of mine on ChurchLeaders about this here), and we could converse together over this and other topics much better than we do.

As British Telecom famously said: It’s good to talk.

 

So you’re a bold speaking warrior for truth eh?

Tribalism is synonymous with Western Church culture. Since the early schisms, through to the modern-day denominations and networks, believers ‘of every stripe’ rally to Paul, Peter, or Apollos (1 Cor. 1:12).

I remember being a teenager, sat with my vicar in his house trying to convince him to write a reference for me to go to an American seminary. He eventually did, but not until he treated me to a detailed list of all the peripheral things that he didn’t like about the seminary – and American churches in general. None of his problems were linked to Jesus, the nature of God, or to the Gospel, but he talked like I was walking blindly into a den of vipers.

At Youth for Christ in North Wales, we make a real effort to walk with any church who will walk with us. Our contentions are that they must love Jesus and must love young people. If there is something that has a significant impact upon the Gospel, then we’ll graciously go our separate ways. There is an enormous plethora of church styles in North Wales, and many small disagreements – but they’re still filled with good people seeking Jesus.

Finding identity in who we’re against

I recently heard a joke about an industrious Christian stranded on a desert island. He built a hospital, a school, a post-office, and two churches. When rescuers found him, they asked about the two churches and he answered very seriously, pointing, “that’s the church I go to, and that’s the church I don’t go to.”

It’s almost like we cannot be who we are without finding that in the relief of who we’re not.

If we spent one tenth of the time talking about Jesus than we do about our niggling differences, then I bet we could kiss evangelistic training goodbye!

At some point we made the theology yardstick as narrow as the narrow gates of salvation (Matt. 7:13-14) – as if we somehow could work out someone else’s salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). Somewhere we decided that judgment, protection, righteous anger, and conviction should all be whacked together, indiscriminately, to mean an aggressive micro-management of doctrine. I simply cannot get over the mean-spirited Christian meme culture surrounding this.

I totally believe in Gospel surety, in clear teaching, and in exposing false teachers as dangerous to the children of God, but the Bible spells out exact how to do that, and more importantly the heart in which that should be done. (Check out this post for more on that).

Theological Surety and Bold Correction

‘Calling people out’ has never been easier with the internet being what it is. It has moved a long way from what was supposed to be a careful and loving process of church discipline. It was designed to be surrounded by gracious conversation in a sequential course of community sanctification.

I’m afraid that you’re not a plain-speaking, bold-truth-talking, patriarchal hero if you just cavalierly mash together theological clarity and bold correction – however testosterone saturated it makes you feel (#godcomplex). Iron cannot sharpen iron if one of you is carrying a machine gun!

We must learn to strive, brick-by-brick, mile-by-mile, word-by-word, and yes, doctrine-by-doctrine to learn more about who God is and how we can worship Him holistically and as a community. Worship of God should always be our motivating force.

What does your doctrine do?

That’s what proper doctrine is right? It’s not just a legislative road map, it’s a living and active set of tools to help us fall more in love with the living God. Sorry, did you think there was going to be an exam before you got to the pearly gates? Did you remember to bring your well-sharpened No2 pencil?

Does your doctrine call you to love and worship God more – or does it place you higher on your own throne?

Do your corrections of others come from a place of longing that God would get more heartfelt worship through people – or that you would be recognised as an authority?

Do you think that what God really needs is a ‘night watchman’, walking around with a flashlight and body-armour, making sure no pesky doctrinal discrepancies sneak through the cracks and into the Kingdom?

The church will keep sinking until we put down our swords and pull together.

 

Photo by Oleg Laptev on Unsplash

Are we supposed to ‘feel’ loved to ‘be’ loved?

In 1970, a film adaptation of Erich Segal’s novel ‘Love Story’ made famous the line ‘love means never having to say you’re sorry’, but it took another 34 years and an 8-year-old called Lisa Simpson to point out ‘No it doesn’t! This movie is drivel!’ Little legend Lisa.

Can you think of anything more manipulative than the classic cliché, ‘if you really loved me then you would…’? It’s the catchphrase of the abuser, the passive-aggressive turn of the knife, and the ultimate hammer blow of peer-pressure.

That little line alone has probably caused more regret and relational ruin than the entire collected works of J.D. Salinger and August Strindberg combined!

But have we made the philosophy behind this idea acceptable? Do we also judge (and sometimes flat out reject) the very existence of someone’s genuine love by our own emotive litmus tests.

If a tree falls in the woods

There is a growing trend that says perception is reality. Love, therefore, gets held to ransom by the loved. It’s measured in the eye of the beholder.

Imagine for a second that we decided that something was only food if we liked its taste. I really don’t like taste of celery, but because I don’t like it doesn’t make it not food. I really do like the taste of PlayDoh, but I don’t think that makes the neon pink putty into food, just because I have weird taste buds.

The classic is ‘if a tree falls in the woods, but no one was around to hear it, did it actually make a sound?’ It’s an interesting question, and one that places individualistic humanity over and above the reality of any and all outside experiences. It’s pretty selfish, and rather me-centric, but isn’t that just like us?

When it comes to love, we have begun to say things like ‘if I didn’t feel it right, then you didn’t do it right!’ Or more commonly, ‘unless you approve of me then you can’t really love me.’ When did approval get into this game?

There is a big difference between acceptance and approval. Whereas God might accept me just as I am, he doesn’t necessarily approve of all I am. It’s completely legitimate to have acceptance without approval. I think God probably wants me to eat celery and not PlayDoh! This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love me though.

My wife accepts me leaving my underwear on the bathroom floor, it doesn’t mean she approves of it. Helping a friend with a drug addiction needs to come with acceptance of the person, but not approval of the habit, otherwise it’s just enabling.

If I said that you can’t love me because you don’t accept me – when what I really mean is approve of me – I think I would be just a tad manipulative. I would be holding your love ransom to my subjective and emotive standard. This just isn’t fair.

What about all the feels?

The resulting subversively emerging assumption (try saying that five times faster) is that making people feel loved is exactly what we were trying to conjure up all along. Of course, it’s entirely possibly to make someone feel loved, but not actually love them at all – but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Let’s start with the goodness in this before we entirely chew the idea up and spit it out.

  • If you’re making no effort to understand the people that you are apparently loving, then are you really making an effort to love them?
  • If you’re holding people enslaved to your ideas of what they should and shouldn’t be before you love them, is it really love?
  • If you’re totally indifferent to how someone feels in response to your ‘loving’ language and or actions, then are you really sure that ‘loving’ is what you are doing?

Just saying ‘I’m loving you’ without any accountability to the person we’re loving isn’t enough. They might feel it or not feel it, but frankly we might be getting it wrong anyway.

It’s always worth taking an emotional inventory before we push too hard on the ‘but I’m misunderstood’ button. Feeling loved, after all, is at least part of what we’re hoping for when we love someone. At least it should be.

This issue goes both ways, but is the feeling the whole story? No. It’s not even on the first page.

Are we loving wrong when they don’t ‘feel it’?

If people don’t feel loved by our love, would it necessarily mean that we’re loving those people ‘wrong’, or that our love is in some way defective, damaged, or deficient? Would it be unfledged or immature?

Let’s think about this for a moment. Have you ever done a loving thing that was then unfortunately taken in the wrong way? Have you ever been genuinely loving but the one you loved took it as something other than love? If you’re a parent, I imagine you can think of all kinds of examples!

Is it loving, for instance, to make your kids eat their greens, take baths, go to school, do their homework, or turn off their xbox after fifteen straight hours of looking like a zombie? Is it loving to watch out for who they are friends with, what they’re watching on TV, or who talking to on the internet? Is it loving to sometimes tell them ‘no’ or to discipline them when they cross a line?

Are there also times when a person we’re loving just won’t remember our loving actions? Is it, for instance, loving to pick up a drunk person from the floor and get them into a taxi home if they don’t remember that you did it? What about giving money to a charity that works with street children in Guatemala. The kids might ‘feel’ loved by the direct staff workers and volunteers, but they might not feel loved by the anonymous donor.

Thinking now of this in youth ministry, is it loving to tell young people about what the Bible says, even when it flies in the teeth about what they want? Is it loving to caution them about promiscuity, drug use, lying, or disrespecting their parents? Is it loving to talk to them about sin, God’s wrath or Hell?

Of course, it matters how you do all these things, but do we really expect people will always feel loved when we love them – is that realistic of fair?

Put another way, what would happen to our relationships with these people if we kept changing what we did in order to make sure they always felt loved. Would it always be in their best interests?

What is love, really?

Many in our culture believe that love is primarily and essentially a feeling. That is its crux, basis and bottom line. Five decades of Hollywood romance has taught us this.

Love and feelings do often overlap, of course. Love can give us all of the feels! It’s a great descriptive word to use for the warm fuzzies and we often identify the feeling of ‘love’ when good things have happened. We feel love at a funeral and we feel love at a wedding – it’s an important descriptor for complicated emotions.

So, love can be descriptive, but does that make it a feeling in and of itself?

Although love can be a descriptor for a complicated set of powerful emotions, the word itself in English is historically a verb. Love is an action, it’s something that we do. Even in New Testament Greek, the four words ἀγάπη, ἔρως, φιλία, and στοργή can be both nouns and verbs, and often mean both together.

When we love someone then, we don’t simply ‘feel’ towards them with some kind spasmodic force. Feelings may accompany what we do, but they are not the whole. When we love somebody we serve them, we help them, we lift them up, we support them, we stand with them, we are present to them, and we protect them. Occasionally we might even withdraw from them.

Sometimes we lovingly do loving things for people that are best for them even if they won’t like them or recognise them as ‘love’. My wife is still trying to ‘lovingly’ make me see a dentist.

Where do ‘love languages’ feature in this?

This is a really interesting question. Gary Chapman’s ‘love languages’ books became a growing phenomenon in the Church throughout the last two decades, disseminating across Christian literature.

There’s an awful lot of important things to learn about how people give and receive love in these ideas. Understanding love languages as a part of personality types can help us communicate better with people and be more sympathetic. They are not the whole story though and need to be balanced with a much fuller philosophy of who people are and what love is.

I would strongly suggest reading about love languages but keep that in check with reading something like Don Carson’s fabulous little book, ‘The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God.’

What about God?

God tells us that he disciplines those he loves. He reminds us of this exactly because often we don’t feel loved when He does (Pr. 3:12; Heb. 12:4-12). Is God’s loving discipline somehow defective? Does God need to readdress his understanding of our love languages? Of course not!

God is love after all (1 Jn. 4:7-12), and we should never accuse Him of not being so just because we didn’t ‘feel’ it at any given time.

We hope that the people we love will always feel loved – of course we do! There doesn’t have to be a dichotomy between the two. However, one doesn’t guarantee the other. We can’t hold our own loving actions captive to someone else’s feelings.

If in doubt, we should do the loving thing, however it is taken.

 

Blogging on the Sabbath – a call to digital rest.

“If you can’t take a nap, if you can’t take a day off, heaven’s going to drive you nuts.” [Mark Driscoll]

I first heard the concept of an ‘electric sabbath’ from Rob Bell during his drops like stars tour. The idea was to have an entire digital shutdown one day a week: No phone, no internet, no email, no streaming.

For some of us, myself included, this feels like shutting down a significant portion of our lives. We are left weightless and wallowing, bumping into walls while we try to remember the basic human mechanics of being AFK (let the nerd understand).

Our digital worlds have become a significant space for intellectual, emotional and social stimuli, and as such we move around them with both personality and identity. We leave digital fingerprints.

These digital fingerprints are unique, because they have been cultivated daily – perhaps even hourly – as some form of organic representation of who we are in this parallel online word. However accurate that representation is, and however tangible we believe that world to be are disputable, but no less a reality. We have basically created an extra limb – one that pulls to us when we don’t use it.

As a blogger with a reasonable online presence, this pulls at me in the ‘waking world’ with quite some insistence.

The refresh button and revisiting the same social media walls becomes an almost unconscious activity. I’ve had whole days when I have neglected the needs of my spirit, family, and work, because my head had been firmly wired into an unguarded twitter comment.

So, I suggest a pact. Let’s give ourselves a digital sabbath. A day away from the crawling needs and desires of our digital realm. I suggest a fast, a time when we climb down from our fickle electric thrones and embrace the wholeness of the world without it.

The irony of this post is that I’m writing it on a Sunday morning. In 45 minutes, I’ll be preaching. Wouldn’t this time have been better spent by… praying, meditating, preparing, talking to my wife, eating breakfast (you fill in the gap).

Growing in closeness to God requires some care taken over spiritual disciplines like praying and Bible reading. For spiritual disciplines to work, however, they require both spirit and discipline. Neither of these can be nurtured entirely without any level of sacrifice or – put another way – fasting.

A fast is saying no to something that our body or our ego needs, in order to recognise the level of dependency that we have in God.

When you’re sat in the office and it’s nearing lunchtime and your stomach is rumbling with anticipation, but then you suddenly remember that you’re fasting, a lead weight drops. You feel a sense of loss and almost desperation. This empty longing is a growth metaphor for how we need to long for God. That’s why fasting exists. We use that feeling and turn it into prayers of dependence on and recognition of who God is – and who we would be without Him.

I have a small, A5 presentation folder that I use for preaching. I’ve had it since I was first at Bible College and saw everyone else using them. I stopped using it almost ten years ago in favour of iPads and my MacBook (the Holy Spirit comes when there’s Apple products on stage right?) Recently, however, I rediscovered my little preaching folder and started using it again.

One of the reasons I use it now is the little inscription on the front page that I put there while in College. It says:

“You have offended God infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince – and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.” [Jonathan Edwards, 1703 – 1757]

This is a heavy and somewhat brutal quote that says there is nothing apart from but God and His grace to uphold me  minute by minute. I am not my own, I was bought at a price, and it so important to me to reconnect with Him each day afresh. It’s important for me to recognise the depths from which He has saved me, and more the depths of need I have for Him each day.

That’s why we fast. That’s why we occasional withdraw.

The internet is noisy, and our digital fingerprints pull at us constantly. Perhaps a day off a week is not too much to ask to keep these things in check.

A digital sabbath. I think I might have a go!

 

 

Do we over-normalise our faith?

At the end of 2016, Youth For Christ released a piece of research called ‘Gen Z: Rethinking Culture’. One of the stand out quotes from that immense work was an answer to the question, “What is your experience of Christians”. It went like this:

“They are normal like everyone else. Their faith doesn’t change them.”

Boom! This should strike hard and resonate deep. This answer – which recurred in various forms throughout the research – says that those young people who knew Christians did not see anything distinctively Christian about them. No light, no fire, no new heart, no challenge to injustice, nothing to display the radical Jesus to a desperate and needy world. The word was ‘normal.’ Ouch.

The battle for normalisation

Over the last three decades, we’ve made normalisation the battle cry of youth mission in the Church. We’ve said that Christians are coming across too weird, and too removed from the world, and the Ned Flanders stereotype needed to undergo some dramatic surgery.

There was certainly a lot of truth in this – after all, if Jesus doesn’t work in real life for real people, then He’s just not real. Dressing up our faith in legalism or overt, unnecessary quirkiness has never been helpful. A level of normalisation has been needed. However, have we gone too far?

Youth mission resources have put an inordinate amount of energy into encouraging us to show just how normal we are to young people. How we dress, what boxsets we devour, and which words we absorb into our natural vocab. We’ve moved away from questions like ‘what does Jesus expect from your life?’ to ‘is it ok for a Christian to have tattoos?’

Now were two or three generations down the line, and our church-raised teenagers are living the Christian life that we’ve recalibrated into normality for them, I wonder if we’ve gone too far. Now their mates don’t see the radical. The normalisation process looks like it may have been too successful.

Sometimes a little weird goes a long way

We know the dangers of watering down the gospel, but the normalisation of the Gospel-carriers can be just as insidious.

Don’t get me wrong. There is certainly an level of normalisation that we’ve needed to acquire. We are people of grace, not works, and Jesus came into the world to save the world, not create a weird bubble of odd, judgemental people. And for the record… I have a beard, a tattoo, and a red flannel shirt!

However, sometimes a little weird goes a very long way. As Christians there is something inherently different and radical about us – and that is supposed to show in way that can’t be normalised without being diluted.

Jesus said in this world you will have trouble (Jn. 16:33), He tells us to let our light shine high on a stand for the world to see (Mt. 5:14-16), We are in the world, but not of it (Jn. 15:19; 17:14-16). We are citizens of heaven; travellers, and just passing through this world (Eph. 2:19; Phil. 3:20). Citizens should look like where they come from right?

We should bear the traits of our citizenship

My wife is American, living in the UK. She has recently applied for naturalised British citizenship (so please pray for her!). She will be part of the UK; able to move freely, work, vote, and be afforded the rights of all British Citizens. However, she is also naturally American. That is where she is from, what she is of. She will be in Britain, but that doesn’t mean she will suddenly loose her accent or forget the words to her National Anthem. Her character and formation are still very much the Californian girl I married. I want her to live with me in the UK, but I don’t want to ‘normalise’ the American out of her.

We are in the world but not of it. We’re not from the world – we’re not products of the world – we’re of Jesus. He gave us second birth. We are born again in Him. This makes us citizens of His Kingdom. Let’s try and look a like it.

We are a little weird…

Some of the things my American wife does (like leaving the teabag in the cup) look weird in the UK. She sounds different and dresses different. She still lives here respectfully, loves people, makes friends, works, pays tax, but that doesn’t make her less who she is. We too are called to live the traits that Jesus called us to – to look like Him and bear the image of His kingdom.

We’re not meant to look like legalistic, judgemental, controversy junkies – but we are called to be a shining like in a grumpy dark place. That will be a little weird.

We’re not meant to be socks-n-sandals, bowl-cut, technophobes – but we are called to carry the name of Jesus like food to a hungry world. That will be a little weird.

We’re not meant to see the world as enemies and heathen – but we are called to love, serve, grow, proclaim, and point to Jesus. That will be a little weird.

We really need to stop telling our kids that following Jesus isn’t weird, and that it doesn’t mean a change in their lifestyle or choices. Following Jesus is a radical thing – and that will be a little weird.

The best kind of weird!

 

Photo by Artem Bali on Unsplash

Are you addicted to controversy?

Just before Christmas I wrote a post discussing what we mean when we call our Bible a sword. As a postscript I added the thoughts below, but after further reflection – and as a recovering controversy-addict myself – I think these thoughts are worth standing on their own and expanding, which is the point of this post.

That said this is a scary post for two reasons: It boldly calls something out – which should always be done with gentleness and respect; and it includes some of the narrative of one of the biggest battles of my life – which is monumentally exposing. But God is good – and I hope this is helpful to someone.

Are you a controversy addict?

Do you desire the Bible to be a weapon? Do you try to justify rude, blunt, confrontational, quarrelsome, disagreements among brothers and sisters using theological language? Why?

Is it a buzz?

Wait with that thought for a second… do you get the buzz from being involved in controversy?

The beginning of addiction

I spent a bit of time on debate teams when I was younger. We were taught to exploit every possible weakness, and to polarise views to their extremes in order to win. Neither conversational progress, nor the deepening of understanding was the objective. Iron-sharpening-iron was not on the agenda. The objective was to win the argument – and I was very good at it.

The victories and the point-by-counterpoint take downs came with a surprising adrenaline rush that is hard to forget. I know exactly what it feels like to ’emerge supreme’ from a debate. It’s a buzz. A real physical and emotional rush.

After a while, this came with both a physiological release of dopamine and an existential sense of self worth. These two things made it incredibly addictive.

It felt good – and it made me feel good about me!

A growing issue fueled by discontentment

For some of us, this rush of ‘rightness’ and ‘winning’ can eventually change into a much healthier shape within the context of our faith. We grow more mature and nuanced, seeking goodness and edification over simply being right. For others of us though, it can subversively become the primary mover in our lives and as such becomes a true addiction.

As an addiction, it is fed by discontentment.

Things like bad church experiences, poor health, a sheltered or stymied upbringing, a consistent feeling of isolation, a sense that you are always misunderstood, or even an above average IQ mixed with social awkwardness – can all lead to a broad experience of discontentment.

This, when ‘treated’ by the balm of the rush of winning an argument, or trying to be always right, or constantly in the know, will turn that rush into an addictive defense mechanism. We become couch-commentators and pew-bound back seat pastors, stewing in our own hyper-logical, negative energy-soaked discontentment. And it goes unnoticed because we have dressed it up in the language of ‘holiness.’

This is probably the same thing that makes us want to pull people down rather than build them up. It’s the thing that makes us reach – sometimes desperately and wildly – for controversy over edification. It’s what makes us look for the problems with everywhere we go and every talk we hear. It makes us always need to have something to say, even if means slipping off to goggle, then pretending we just ‘knew’ it.

Subversively replacing ‘normal’ behavior

This need to be constantly right, smart, and winning, really can be genuinely addictive, and as when it becomes so, it can easily replace ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ human behavior and it can surround us with a self-delusional air of justification. Let’s make no bones about it, it is self-delusional, and the only people who thinks it’s normal is us, or fellow addicts.

Some of us – me included – love to poke holes in a position while building a watertight alternative. There can be some goodness in that when surrendered to God to be used in its right place. However, if this is not motivated by the great commission, moved foremost and uppermost by love for Jesus and people, and then delivered in gentleness and prudence, then it really counts for squat. It’s worse than nothing – it’s actually idolatry because we’re making ourselves out to be the thing most valued and praised.

Being right, even about Gospel truths, can become sinful and disconnected from God.

Is this you?

Think about it for a minute. Do you have fake debates in your head? Do you argue with strawman opponents when alone in the car ?

Do you feel primarily compassion or urgency when you hear something you think is incorrect?

Do you sum up huge swaths of people into tightly categorized and broadly reduced a-personal units?

Do you use social media platforms, younger audiences, and impressionable people to try out your views where they are easy to defend, edit, and impress?

Do you write people off quickly, or summarize them totally before you have a chance to be a brother or sister to them?

Bottom line: Are you on a adrenaline fueled, self-image-enhancing crusade for ‘rightness’ or a compassion-driven commission by Jesus for truth? What motivates your corrections and what focuses your criticisms? Is it Jesus, or is there something else going on?

So, what do I do?

I talk boldly here as an addict. I’ve been in the worst depths of these places and know exactly what it’s like to love ‘rightness’ more than I love righteousness. Or – frankly – more than I love Jesus. I know what it’s like to appear superior, rather than pursue humility – and I still struggle with these passions daily. I’ve been praying for God to change the shape of my heart in these areas for years – which is why I quit my debate team.

This is also why I don’t debate on facebook, don’t post thoughtless provoking memes, don’t talk politics unless its face-to-face, try to hear each position for the first time when a new person shares it as their own, and try my best to ask more questions during a disagreement than just give answers. It’s flipping hard (especially that last one), but it allows me to surrender myself and others to Jesus much more readily. He really doesn’t need me to defend Him, after all. Just love Him, love others, and pursue the great commission.

If your overwhelming passion – when you’re totally honest with yourself – is to be ‘right’, then it might be that you need to take a personal inventory and rediscover your first love for Jesus.

Or – moment of truth – it might just be that this Christianity thing isn’t what you were looking for, and isn’t what you thought it was. Think about it, does your faith primarily ignite your heart or feed your addiction? If the latter, then it’s probably not the faith Jesus gave.

Maybe you need to let Christianity out of the ego-shaped box you’ve put it in and actually surrender to the living Christ afresh… or even for the first time.

I say this very carefully, but as someone who has gotten this wrong far more than he has gotten it right. I’ve decided, however, to follow Jesus – this means I have to want Him to be praised and loved more than I want to be right. Hopefully, under His grace and leading, I can be both, but I know which way I need to balance to tip. It’s a journey – but it’s the right one to walk.

I’ve been tackling this issue personally and directly for about twelve years now – since it was identified in me. I keep cutting off heads and finding new ones but the battle is well worth it and God is so good!

If this is you – please, look it in the face and seek more of God in your life and less of you. Talk to friends, seek community membership (not always leadership), listen more, speak less, slow down, and ask God to melt your heart with His love. It will be so much better!

Thanks for reading 🙂

 

Living with insomnia as a youth worker

For as long as I can remember I have struggled with sleep.

Most nights I’ll drift off nice and easily, but then I’ll wake up at the smallest sound, and usually I’ll be wide awake by about 3am, only to have my tiredness return by 7am. This is always fun.

When I’m asleep I grumble, mutter, and grind my teeth. Sometimes I tell full-blown stories. In fact, this was one of the first things that my wife discovered just after we got married. One time, while fully asleep, I opened my eyes, leaned up on my pillow, looked at my wife and said to her:

“Harry Potter… He’s an angel… and he’s got these wings… and he flies around… but he gets really really tired about every fifteen minutes.”

With that I dropped back onto my pillow, but my wife was laughing so hard that she woke me up!

I average about four hours of sleep per night, but that’s not consistent. Some nights I’ll get two hours and some nights I’ll get ten. In fact there really is nothing consistent about my insomnia.

I’ve taken meds, tired therapies, and I’ve talked to doctors. The last doctor I talked to , however, spent most of the appointment telling me about a recurring nightmare of his wherein a giant set of chess pieces were trying to kill him. Fun, but not really very helpful. I haven’t exhausted the entire list of medical options, but I have dug pretty deep.

The thing is, I just don’t sleep well.

For the tech-heads among you, I spend far too long in REM, nowhere near long enough time in NREM, and I tend to only complete the first few sleep cycles, leaving the latter cycles (which mostly deal with cognitive function) incomplete and disturbed. It’s not good for organ recovery, and it always leaves me a little groggy.

Enter the world of youth work

Other than the shadows under my eyes, which I mostly hide with framed glasses and eye-cream, you wouldn’t necessarily know this about me. I don’t talk much about it for fear of the ‘I’ll fix it’ crowd. I’m also slightly onto the ADHD scale, and I’m rarely visibly short of energy during my youth projects. But boy do I feel tired a lot!

I think if I really had to pinpoint when this cycle of poor sleep began, it was when I had a series of operations in my early teens and spent a month in hospital, and no-one sleeps well in hospital! Not long after this I entered into the church youth work scene, first as a young person, then a young leader, and finally a professional youth pastor. It’s all I’ve ever really known.

My introduction to and growth into youth ministry happened on a parallel track to the setting in of my sleep disorder. The two grew together.

The general patterns of youth ministry are simply not well suited to someone with diagnosed insomnia. There are inconstant hours, late nights, early mornings, spontaneous events, overlong meetings, high-energy projects, deep one-to-ones, all-nighters, back-to-back camps, locks-ins, and then reports. If I hadn’t grown into youth ministry while developing insomnia, I never ever would have learned the energy management to go with it.

So what do I do / what should you do?

I honestly have no idea. I’m constantly trying to ‘work on my sleep.’ This is frankly one of the weirdest posts I’ve ever written because I have very little wisdom to give on the subject, despite actually having quite a lot of experience.

I mostly wrote this as a testimony to any other youth leaders who struggle with sleep. Hopefully it will be a little ‘you’re not alone’ post that might offer some solidarity.

I’ll say a few random things though:

  • Youth leader – take your days off, book holidays, don’t distain rest, turn off when your home, don’t be an ‘always on’ leader.
  • Insomniac – seek help, develop consistency as much as possible over sleep quantity (waking up a the same time tends to be more important than going to bed at the same time), make peace with the fact that you will just be tired. Life’s too short to care too much. Also – don’t underestimate the power of regular exercise and a good diet.
  • Managers – Be careful how much you ask from a youth leader that isn’t on their job description, and take care over which meetings you invite them to.
  • Nappers – if you nap, try to do it properly.
  • Self-diagnosers – Please see a doctor before you announce to the world you have insomnia. Some of us really do.

‘Helpful’ people – I’ve read books, talked to doctors, and probably spent more time googling than you have… probably at 4am. Please don’t try to fix me. Encouragement, sympathy and prayers are much better! Thanks 🙂

When youth ministry meets real life – an excerpt from Rebooted

Youth work is not always pretty, it doesn’t always follow the rules, it doesn’t always show up on time, and it doesn’t always play fair.

I remember getting a phone call at 6am from a local school in London to explain that a very popular sixteen-year-old boy had tragically lost his life in the night. He had been out with some friends, came home late, and – complicated by an undiagnosed heart problem – choked on his own vomit in his sleep. I was asked to attend a memorial assembly that very morning, then asked if I would stay behind afterwards to ‘counsel’ some of his friends.

I got up, donned my suit, and headed through the morning London traffic. The assembly was heart-breaking. Two thousand students, many openly weeping, a confused and unsure shell of a head teacher trying desperately to find words of comfort, and the boy’s parents, fresh from the hospital on the front row in each other’s arms. It got very real very fast. This was nothing however, compared to what came next.

Myself, a local church minister, and a school councillor were taken to a small temporary classroom outside the main hall. This had been set apart for any young person or teacher that wanted time to reflect, or someone to talk to. Students were also told that it was ok to write some messages or stories on the walls inside if that would help them.

Over the next couple of hours, we saw hundreds of students come through that building, almost all of whom left a message. By the afternoon every piece of wall, inside and outside, the carpet, the tables, the chairs, and the ceiling were covered (and I mean covered) by writing:

There were funny stories of times when friends had gone out and done stupid things together.

There were shared dreams and aspirations of what they wanted to be when they grew up.

There were heart-wrenching, deepest apologies – the guilt of which you cannot imagine.

Myself and the other two counsellors walked around like lost sheep. We tried, very carefully, to talk to some of the young people; but that’s really not what they wanted. I shared a hug with a young lad I knew from my youth club at the time, tears lining his face. I had no idea what to say and no idea what to do.

You learn about these times in college and through books, but nothing prepared me for it. I remember tangibly thinking, God please help me take my youth ministry more seriously.

Of course, this is not youth work going wrong, this is youth work working! This is youth ministry at its most pertinent. The creativity of the school gave the young people an uncommonly valuable way of moving thorough their pain as a community. It was amazing. I was there, at best, to facilitate the safety of the activities and the tone of the room. God was obviously, however, in their midst.

Youth ministry is, of course, not all lock-ins, nerf wars, and happy teenagers ‘getting saved’. There are times when real life just happens; the question is whether we have created a youth ministry context where real life is welcomed, and projects that embrace the fullness of this life – even when it ‘goes wrong.’

When the rubber meets the road and things get real, the question left on the table is ‘have I built a youth ministry that can weather this’?’ Or – even better – ‘have I developed young people who thrive in the midst of suffering?’

Life, ministry, and certainly youth work, can get very messy.

Daniel

I – according to my entire team – have a serious defect: I do not like Disney films.

This isn’t entirely true. I still have a soft spot for The Lion King, I don’t mind the new Star Wars, and I could quote Cool Runnings all day long. However, I cannot make it through almost any other Disney film – especially the ones with cartoon animals that wear hats, but not pants! My problem comes down to formula – I think they are all basically the same. This is probably where I lose some of you. Thanks for reading this far!

Each film starts off with a happy situation. Good friends, cosy family, feel-good music and glitter everywhere. Then ‘the thing’ happens. The thing could be anything that introduces a tragic separation into the film (usually the death of a parent): Mufasa is killed by Scar, Bambi’s mum meets the hunter, Dumbo is separated from his mum by the circus… after being rocked like a baby in tears through the bars of a cage, Nemo’s mum and unborn siblings are eaten by a freakish barracuda, Tarzan loses his parents, Chance, Shadow and Sassy get lost in the middle of nowhere, Cinderella is emotionally abused by her sisters, Bell gets kidnapped, Andy gives away his toys, and that whole opening scene from Up!

Once the thing happens, and all the watching children are traumatised for life, there is usually a ‘thrown far from home’ bit. This is then followed by an ‘amazing journey’ bit, a rapid race through the five stages of grief while ‘accompanied by new streetwise friends who you first thought were jerks’ bit (think Timone and Pumba, Buzz Lightyear, sassy candlesticks, a load of kitchen utensils, or a boy scout and demented Labrador). Eventually they find their way ‘back home’ and ‘find themselves’ in some existential way in the process. The evil protagonists die in a brutal way (they usually fall to their doom), and everyone lives happily ever after. The prophecies are fulfilled, the world is saved, there is sometimes ice cream or toast, and so on. Disney in a nutshell. I thank you.

Interestingly, that however, is also really the story of Daniel. A young lad, happy in the promised land, then the thing happens – which is the Babylonian conquest. He is dragged far from home, meets a ragtag group of friends, finds his way, and helps a king (somewhat) connect with God and (kinda) lives happily ever after. If I could sum up the story of Daniel in one line it would be: Trust in God, because everything else is a nightmare!

It’s likely that Daniel (alongside Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah) were teenagers because they were taken from Judah and trained to serve in the king of Babylon’s court (Dan. 1:4-6). They were also specifically called ‘young men’ in v.4.

The fascinating thing we see in these young companions, and especially Daniel, is their immense faith, and connectedness to God’s Word in the middle of a destitute world of sin and godlessness. They would not ‘defile’ themselves with food God had forbidden (1:8), they were divinely given all kinds of knowledge by God (1:17), including the prophetic gift of dream interpretation. They are also kept safe from a fiery furnace (3:6-28) and a lions’ den (6:10-23).

Throughout this whole story Daniel is able to worship his God, speak his word, and challenge the King of Babylon to do the same. Incredible!

Daniel trusted in God, and God raised him up to both speak truth and remain pure Babylon, which probably still rates among the worst cultural environments of all time. Babylon is the metaphor God uses for the Godless world that would be cast into the sea in Revelation 18:21. Young people are immensely resilient, especially when they have a firm foundation of faith and conviction.

We need to do all we can to help young people to thrive under pressure by standing them firmly upon their faith in God. We cannot teach purity, holiness, spiritual disciplines or even a passion for evangelism legalistically or abstractly. We need to continually point them back to God in the midst of tragedy, struggle and grief. We need to help them find God in the midst of pants situations. This is to objectively ‘speak God’ into where He might otherwise have been missed in the middle of the mess. Then they will be equipped in faith to thrive supernaturally.