Consider a Conversation with Young Adults

A little over a week ago, the Iowa Annual Conference hosted "A Conversation with Young Adults". This day-long event involved two keynote speakers--Dr Bruce Birch and Bill Lizor--and a panel of young adults who both offered questions and feed back to the keynote speakers and took questions themselves. I'm still processing the day, and I think I took away some good thoughts. I would welcome your thoughts as well.

Bruce Birch - considering YA ministry as "Babylonian Exile"
Bruce walked us through the biblical narrative of the Bablylonian exile--especially from the book of Jeremiah (29:4-11). He likened the church to the arrogant people of Jerusalem before the exile--"Peace, Peace when there is no peace". Then the people in exile needed to rediscover how to be the people of God. Bruce had a wonderful phrase for this "the vocation of the people in exile must learn to be singers in the midst of non singers". And these singers use their "memory" of what God has done to offer a fresh "vision" of what God will be doing.

Bruce reminded us that after the exile, the Jewish religious landscape looked very different--some people did return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, while most of the people remained in Babylon or elsewhere. And out of the exile, new traditions took hold--the synagogue is one of these.



Bill Lizor - considering YA ministry as Wandering and Dreaming
Bill talked us through his thoughts on YA ministry: "Young Adults have come. Young Adults have gone. Young Adults will come again." He talked about how unhelpful the Prodigal Son model is for churches--in that it assumes that the church is the gracious parent who welcomes home the long-lost son.

Bill suggested that a better biblical paradigm is the intersection of two stories: Jacob the Wrestler and Joseph the Dreamer. Both of these are life-journeys where the people are radically transformed, experience the grace/presence of God, and somehow grow in their relationship with God and others. At the heart of Jacob's story is the passage where he wrestles with God: he is physically transformed, he receives a new identity, and he receives a blessing. And Joseph dreams--has a vision of what God is doing--but it takes quite a while and life experiences for that dreaming to make sense. So Bill suggested that faithful life happens in the intersection of "wrestling" and "dreaming".

What is helpful to you about these paradigms? Are there other paradigms you think are helpful for considering YA ministry?

Peace,
rc