shadow gospel, the

Group, Nov/Dec 2004 by Lawrence, Rick

YOUTH MINISTRY MINUTE

I think we have a Peter Pan problem in youth ministry. Remember when Tinkerbell's pal leaped through Wendy's

5j window into the night sky, leaving his shadow trapped inside? In much of today's church community, we've functionally shoved the gospel of Jesus out the window and propped up its shadow as the real thing.

Last spring I invited Christian Smith, lead researcher for The National Study of Youth and Religion (www.youthandreligion.org), to spend two days with 50-or-so youth leaders at one of our twice-a-year Youth Ministry Summits.1 I've served on the study's Public Advisory Board for the last three years-it's the biggest, baddest research project ever targeted at teenagers' religious beliefs and behaviors. Christian and his team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill plan to release the results of this massive study in January.

Christian told our Summit participants that the early study results reveal a deep misunderstanding of the gospel among teenagers. An overwhelming majority of teenagers say they believe in God, but they're flat clueless about basic gospel distinctions. Two examples of the shadow gospel they're learning:

1. Prayer is the cover charge for admission into God's candy store. Do you believe that "the harder you pray, the higher God jumps?" A lot of Christians do. When Time Magazine asked Meagan Gillan, spokesperson for the Presidential Prayer Team, what the group would do if John Kerry were elected, she replied, "If that's the case, we'll just have to pray even harder." Her comment fairly represents what many teenagers (and adults) believe about prayer-it's a discipline we must muster and master to get God to do what we want him to do.

But gospel prayer is nothing like an arduous task-that's akin to reminding my wife that I deserve a back rub because I I made the sacrifice to talk to her for a while. Um...that won't fly at home-mine or God's.

We model the shadow gospel when we pray only at certain times, with certain words, in certain places, in a certain tone of voice. As a result, kids learn that prayer is primarily rote, coercive, and administrative.

Jump-starts: Model new ways to pray that are primarily relational. Fill your retreats with surprise "prayer pit stops" that focus more on listening than talking, or stop in the middle of your talk or activity and have kids tell God what's going on in their hearts, or plan prayer activities that teach kids to offer something to God, not just take something from him. Consider using Thorn and Joani Schultz's new book The 1 Thing (Group Publishing, Inc.) as a practical guide for building a friendship filter into all your prayer activities.

2. God is the great "Mr. Roarke" in the sky. If you're more Boomer than Buster you'll vividly remember Mr. Roarke-Ricardo Montalban's white-clad, inky-voiced god figure on the '70s TV hit Fantasy Island. With cheery-but-firm benevolence, Roarke solved his island visitors' problems and made their dreams come true-exactly the way most kids expect God to act.

One of Christian Smith's major takeaways from the NSYR is this: "A large proportion of American teenagers seem to be functional Deists: They believe in a God who exists and created the world, but-other than being 'on call' in times of stress or need-that God is not particularly involved in the world or their own personal lives in a very meaningful or important way."

This Roarke-ian influence shows up in some of our favorite youth group worship songs. In "Above All," the "hook lyric" at the end of the chorus is "Like a rose, trampled on the ground/You took the fall, and thought of me/Above all." When Jesus "took the fall," was he really thinking of us "above all"? The shadow gospel says "yes," but not the Gospel of Jesus. Jesus said, "For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me" (John 6:38). It was obedience and love for his father that drove him to the cross on our behalf, not our innate specialness.

Jump-starts: You can seed in kids the idea that our role in the kingdom of God is to serve the king-not access a spiritual ATM-by engaging your teenagers in missions work, service projects, studies on the spiritual disciplines, evangelism, and book studies that focus on authors such as C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and George MacDonald (particularly his fiction novels).

It's our job to wad up Peter Pan's shadow and toss it out the window, then invite the real thing back into the house.

RICK LAWRENCE has been editor of group for 17 years.