I am a child of the ’80s. Especially ’80s TV. I remember growing up wanting to be a little like Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties, Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice, David Addison in Moonlighting and Magnum, P.I. all rolled into one. (I realize I might have lost some of you younger youth ministry workers at this point).

I was also watching when “Video Killed the Radio Star” aired on the first day MTV burst onto my recently hooked up cable TV. I learned how a bill became a law from “School House Rock” and, of course, sang along with “Conjunction Junction, what’s your function?” And who could forget the cartoons? Voltron, Captain Caveman, Speed Racer and the Smurfs all had a profound affect on my teen years. Finally, did you realize nobody ever got shot on The A-Team?

In the entirety of my teen years, I never can remember a pastor or youth worker helping me process this TV world I was immersed in, this Technicolor smorgasbord I was consuming. I remember hearing often about the evils of television and how it had rotted our brains, yet no one taught me how to interact with it or practice discernment while viewing it. And, heaven forbid, no one actually utilized it in ministry.

Fast forward to 2008. TV is now downloadable, available on DVDs, rentable, TiVo-able, and even streamable on your cell. The way we and our students digest TV has drastically changed. You could even make a case that, with the rise of the Internet and new media, TV’s influence in a teen’s life has declined. Yet the question remains: Can TV effectively be used in ministry? If so, how?

Can we learn something, even find stories filled with redemption and truth, from the likes of 24, Lost, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, or even Battlestar Galactica? (The new one, not the ’80s version!)

What lessons do Jack Bauer and Dwight Schrute have to teach our students?

Getting Through to the Audience

I firmly believe TV is a youth ministry tool worth having in my toolbox. I love what culture guru Dick Staub says: “The person of deep faith should be a fearless adventurer and explorer, a relentless pursuer of truth wherever he or she might find it.”

What Staub is describing is nothing new; it’s just an ancient (lost?) art. A man who never watched a show in brilliant HD or enjoyed the humor of an episode of The Office knew the importance of being a relentless pursuer of truth wherever he could find it. I’m referring to the apostle Paul. Let me set the scene. Paul enters Athens in Acts 17. This Jew of Jews, this former Pharisee, finds himself in God’s rich sense of humor, immersed in the culture of the Gentiles. It’s a culture he had avoided up until he was knocked off his donkey by the King, a culture he once would have felt was inferior to the beauty and sacredness of his own Hebrew way of life.

Paul had something to say, a message to share; and he understood a very important principle that merely sharing information isn’t communication. Communication means getting through to your hearers. So he headed to the one place he could figure out how to reach these people, how to “get through.” He went to the marketplace.

The Athens marketplace was the mall of its day and a cultural melting pot. It was a cornucopia of ideas, worldviews, gossip, drama and the latest “it” things. It was the place where stories were told, heroes were made, and ideas became movements. Paul drew inspiration from this place, he studied it; he tucked away its metaphors to use like finely sharpened knives that would cut to the heart of his listeners.

I’m certain he used what he learned when he shared his message with the learned Greeks, the elites of the city. In speaking to them about the “unknown God,” he said, “For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring’” (Acts 17:28). Did you know Paul was quoting pagan poetry here? These lines, found in your Holy Bible, were written as praise and adoration to the Greek god Zeus!

Get the picture?! A Jew of Jews, this follower of Yahweh, is laying down some pagan poetry to get through. Poetry I am sure he picked up in the marketplace. Poetry he picked up in their grand stories, their dramas, comedies, and sitcoms. He found truth in what their culture was broadcasting.

Using Culture for Christ

Are you doing the same? Are you a fearless adventurer looking for truth on the Tube, capturing it for the sake of the message of Jesus? Or are you combative towards culture? Maybe you cocoon from it. Worse yet, perhaps you try to Christianize culture. My friend jokes that Christians will make a Christian version of the show Lost and have a plane full of sinners and Christians crash into Colorado Springs, where they must try to survive, get saved, and publish a book for Focus on the Family.

Paul captured culture. He understood the culturally familiar was his friend, and it was the language of the people. By that I mean it is the shared experiences and stories between people. Don’t believe me? Listen to how teens talk to each other. They use lines from movies and TV shows to express themselves. It is how they communicate. Paul also understood the culturally familiar was powerful, that it could reveal to people the truth about reality, about themselves and, ultimately, about Jesus.

Reggie Joiner, veteran children’s minister and founder of The ReThink Group, which provides curriculum and resources for family time, wrote:

“Relevance is simply using what is cultural to say what is timeless. In other words, the best skill that you can develop in your ministry is understanding how to become a student, how to manipulate, how to use the culture that is around you so that you can say what is timeless.”

Using TV to Minister

So, how do you use TV in ministry? Here are some practical ideas to get you started.

* Downloading Sunday. We download entire TV shows from iTunes and show them for Sunday school. Then we use them as discussion starters. Kids are engaged because they have to look critically at shows they are familiar with. Reality shows work great for this. I would recommend you watch the show before you show it to the students for your own preparation and also for appropriateness.

* Collect great scenes. A culture- and TV-savvy youth worker is a media packrat. Collect and store great scenes from shows that speak truth and have a redemptive quality to them. Good scenes can be captured from YouTube; plus, TV content is also being provided from many of the major networks to download.

Have you watched Friday Night Lights? Well written, well shot, and well acted, it is one of the best portrayals of teens I have seen on TV in a long time. This show is full of teachable moments on a range of teen issues—it is a youth minister’s dream.

* Build a TV-show-based teaching series. We have used many TV shows as inspiration for our teaching. The MTV show MADE became a four-week series for us. We had episodes where we “made” a skater kid into a prep and even turned one student into a UPS driver. Hilarious!

I suggest looking for shows that have moments that are easily transferable to spiritual issues. Mythbusters is a great one, or My Super Sweet 16 (I think I just threw up in my mouth a little).

* Look for redemption themes. I truly believe all things long to be redeemed. I think you are seeing more and more TV shows dealing with redemption and other spiritual themes.

Lost is a redemption overdose. It’s an island full of flawed, broken people looking for some hope and forgiveness. Maybe you could start a small group of students who have dinner together, watch the show, and just talk about it. Look for shows with characters struggling with God, faith, and how to be redeemed.

Staub sums it up well.

“The culturally savvy Christian learns that communication is most effective if it starts with the stories and experiences that people know and bridges to those that they need to know but don’t. This requires bilingualism, the ability to relate the language, symbols and stories of faith to the language, symbols, and stories of culture.”

Happy viewing everyone.