working together to navigate youth ministry well through relationships—where every teenager matters…….

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–by Dr. Jim Dekker

In my previous blog I suggest that our ministries roll on with all kinds of energy paying attention to those that convert to Christ but we pay little attention to those that convert away.  Those that convert away name our very ministries as the fuel for anti-church or anti-Christian sentiment.  These folks join the ranks of so many non-Christian voices that criticize the church but these particular voices are painful to hear.   Although it is valid to dismiss some of this with “people make their own decisions and move away from the faith”, I suggest that we are not paying attention to something else, at least to some extent.  I suggested that we give God our right hand of ‘doing’ our ministries, all the while God maybe wanting us to use our left hand as well.

First, about the criticisms:

Criticism of our ministries runs rampant whether it comes from volunteers, alumni, parents, and sometimes from secular critics that don’t know a New Testament from an Old, all of whom seem to demand we do Christianity their way.  Of course there are fools who give themselves way too much latitude of judgment over our ministries and in short, we should give them proportionately opposite attention.   Conversely I’ve paid special attention to the criticism of astute alumni and, painful as it is, I’ve discovered that often they reinterpret events in such a way that incriminates the faith.  I was once pictured as a prayerful person and now, as they look back, a Pharisee parading my spirituality of prayer in public when “doesn’t the Bible say it’s a personal thing?”.  I lived out the gospel but now I’m pictured as a coercive jerk forcing people to get saved.  I know what I did and we hated coercion back then every bit as we do now and I was actually quite sheepish about praying in public.  So what’s going on?

It’s all about perceptions and reinterpreting one’s journey.  I don’t want to sound minimizing here – we all live by perceptions and they are important.  And at the most basic level, we can’t change people’s perceptions of the past.  If they want to let a negative reinterpretation fuel their movement from Christ, who can change it?  Arguing about what really happened gets you into further mess.

I want to be really clear: We ought to work at being careful and respectful  but, as a friend of mine once said:  ”God made a big mistake.  (long pause)  He made a mistake when he designed the church with people in it.”   I don’t really believe that God made a mistake but it is true that people are unceasingly fallible and God has chosen to make His church of this kind of stuff.  The church is full of sinful people, both those that sit back and criticize and those who are dedicated to being careful and respectful.   It just looks like ministry people are never critical. Those that criticize your ministry are making a choice about what to see but it’s a common choice we all face.  Actually, let’s be real; we all could make the same decision to be really cynical right now.  So rather than tell the critics; ‘Shut up”, I suggest we all agree on the sinful presence of people in the church including ourselves and critics and deal with it. Yes, work hard at making it right (right hand of doing) but …

We are not going to sanitize the church. It’s not going to be any more holy by us trying to satisfy the critics. Nor are we going to stop them from talking about the mistakes we will make in the process of satisfying them.  I know this seems counter intuitive but it’s exactly here where I believe our ‘left hand’ needs to get to work.  It’s about being authentic in our character of submission to Christ. As leaders, we take a position of ‘fronting’ confident, happy, directed, successful Christianity.   So often we hide our submission to God in a closet and come out blazing with energy as if we’ve got the world by the tail.  If all people see is the later, how will they know that we too need forgiveness and the power of God to change us?  If we own the mistakes and not hide our submission to God, we will be a witness to God’s corrective hand in our lives.   In the face of such a dual witness (acting carefully and authentic submission to God),  the critics will also experience Christians humbly acknowledging our failings and the power of God to change a life.  At that point, there is little to say.