NYWC: Atlanta - Friday Morning

I woke up early Friday morning after a short sleep (I watched the Arizona State / Oregon game) and headed off to my Critical Concern Class. We had three more hours of instruction.

Critical Concern Class

There were two importan themes that we covered during class; along with the project of building our "dream church". The areas that we covered were cow hunting and youth ministry in 2020.

Sacred Cows of YM

These are the cows that they believe need to be destroyed:

1. 3 Step Methods (pat answers for everything)
2. Fear, Guilt, and Presuure Evangelism
3. Consumption Gospel
4. One-Eared Mickey Mouse (having ym disconneded from the church)
5. Numbers driven youth ministry
6. Christian Ghetto (Bubble)
7. Defending Western Culture Values ( can I hear an .. amen ? )
8. Relational Youth Ministry

Note on # 8: What they were "warning" was doing so much one-on-one that there is no communal between individuals (connecting)

Youth Ministry in 2020 (Probably)

1. Programs to People (it is about people not programs)
2. Compartmentalized to Holistic
3. Shallow Spirituality to Deep Theology
4. Attractional to Missional Attractional
5. Centralized to Decentralized
6. Orthodoxy to Orthopraxy
7. Agenda Driven to Serving
8. Individual to Communial Individual
9. Separists to Collaborators
10. Church Building to Campus / Central (neutral ground)
11. Proclaiming to Guiding
12. Salvation to Way of Jesus
13. Surface to Broken Places

The Critical Concern was a great way to begin the convention. In the near future, I am going to try to break down the future of ym (13 points above) in a posting group. There are a few of them that I want / need to expound on for my own sake.