Renovatus
Ren-o-vâ´-tus [n. Latin] the state of having been restored,
refreshed, revived, renewed, or renovated [pp. of renovare;
re-, again, and novare, to make new, from novus, new].

Youth ministry keeps you young. It’s a high-energy profession that can (if allowed) keep a person fit. But it can also have an adverse effect if not kept under control. Have you noticed how much food teenagers consume?

Some years ago I was speaking at a national youth event. As I mingled with the masses of high school students in a crowded hallway, I overheard a conversation. One girl commented  to another on how great one of the speakers was. The other girl pressed her to identify which speaker she was talking about. Out of frustration the first girl replied, “I don’t know his name; but he’s the short, chubby one,” to which the other said, “They’re all short and chubby!” Ouch!

That became a wake-up call for me. I realized that every time I had a meal with kids, I packed away the same amount of food they did. I determined that I could no longer eat like kids did. Sixty pounds lighter and six years later, I still guard my lifestyle regarding food.

This would seem to be the logical place to start when dealing with the deadly sin of gluttony; but in researching this sin, I found that it has a deeper meaning and a very deadly effect on the soul — more than the body — of a youth worker.

Early church fathers identified seven deadly sins and their effects on the soul. Those sins have stealth-like traits. On the one hand they seem to be obvious and somewhat easily
avoided, while on the other hand we underestimate their scope and our lack of immunity to them. The interesting thing, in my estimation, is that people in ministry are most susceptible to these sins because Satan wants to destroy the minister’s soul.

Gluttony appears to be the least disturbing and least inviting of the deadly sins. That is why we must be gravely concerned about it. As you read this, take stock and don’t be deceived because this sin is as deadly as the rest.

On the surface we could look at gluttony and identify times when we overeat. We confess that this shouldn’t  be and move on — forgiven. We just have bouts of gluttony; we really don’t eat or drink excessively.

We ignore the fact that Americans eat more in one meal than most people in underdeveloped countries eat in a day. We love youth, but we turn away from the stats that tell us that over one billion children in the world suffer from lack of nutrition.

In Niger alone over two million people will face starvation, many of them children. An additional 14 million people in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, and other countries in southern Africa will also face starvation. More than 800 million people in the world go hungry.

According to Bread for the World, 13 million children in the United States live in households where people have to skip meals or eat less to make ends meet. That means one in 10 households in the United States is living with hunger or are at risk of hunger. In developing countries, six million children die each year, mostly from hunger-related causes.

World hunger kills kids, but we don’t think about that when we’re eating our fill. We don’t eat or drink excessively? Right! I know that this is a huge guilt trip; and even as I write this, I  point to myself and realize that I am conditioned to be gluttonous more than I think. But it doesn’t stop there.

Gluttony is symbolized by food. In actuality it marks a heart that is drifting toward a selfish decadence of comfort and pleasure. Gluttony is not merely excessive eating and drinking but also an inordinate desire for self-pleasure.

Aquinas saw gluttony as an overindulgence of anything. He described it in five ways: “Praepropere, laute, nimis, ardenter, studiose,” or to have things too quickly; in excess or more  loudly than ever; too eagerly; too expensively or extravagantly; and paying a lot of attention to see that it is the very best. Those descriptors denote the “American dream.”

Gluttony reinforces the American values of instant and excessive gratification. We obsess with the desire to have the very best. What Aquinas called gluttony, we call excellence. Our priorities are shaped by an embedded, enculturated, subtle, and deadly gluttonous philosophy.

The Apostle Paul warned the church of Philippi about enemies of the cross of Christ, saying that, “their end is destruction; their god is their stomach; their glory is in their shame” (Phil. 3:18-19, HCSB). Paul wasn’t talking merely about overeaters. He was talking about people who had messed-up priorities. They rationalized their indulgence as being something great. They saw it as a bright destiny, which brought them glory. Paul’s phrase “their god is their stomach” means that they lived for their own satisfaction and fulfillment.

The early church fathers prior to Aquinas saw gluttony the same way.

They looked at this as a sin of ambition. This kind of ambition brought prosperity and power. It allowed the individual a place of status. Someone with that kind of status could afford the finest foods, so eating became synonymous to this sinful lifestyle. The glutton was one who successfully “arrived,” having all within his means to indulge anytime. The only problem was that it kept the glutton in a vicious cycle of wanting more and more. His god was his stomach.

You might be thinking that this really doesn’t affect youth workers, but just think about it. The church is gluttonous. We hold to a ministry philosophy that is fueled by American corporate values. We have come to believe that bigger is better, that more is successful, and that excessiveness is what is required for effective ministry. Shamefully, we have made our values God’s values.

St. John of the Cross illustrated this in The Dark Night of the Soul. He described this reformatting of values and harmonizing of desires for fulfillment to that of God’s desires as a spiritual gluttony. He explained that the spiritual glutton “will feel and taste God, as if he were palpable and accessible to them not only in Communion but in all their other acts of devotion.” He described their spiritual acts of prayer and devotion as an obsession for sweetness. In short, they love being satisfied and see that value as God’s value.

C.S. Lewis also recognized this in The Screwtape Letters. The demon Screwtape refers to gluttony as means of “catching the soul” and keeping a person in a “condition of false spirituality.”

I have never met a youth worker, pastor, or elder who would say that his or her church was driven by numbers. But I don’t know of many churches where this value isn’t ingrained.

We use the Great Commission to harmonize our gluttonous desires to be fat, growing churches. We change the trajectory just enough to make it satisfy us by saying something like,  “We don’t care about the numbers; but, if we’re really doing it right, God will add to the increase.”

The Great Commission wasn’t about the quantity of disciples but rather the quality of discipleship. Youth workers in small ministries fight to be bigger. They look at other churches and want to be like them. I have watched many youth workers leave churches to go to something bigger and “better.” I even had one youth pastor tell me that his church told him if he didn’t double the growth of his youth ministry by the end of the academic year, he would be fired. This came from a church that, no doubt, emphatically believes it is not numbers driven.

Youth workers in bigger churches are always striving to be bigger still. There seems to be a rush of satisfaction with ha