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October 21, 2008

Youth Workers Make a Difference

We all have those days when we wonder if the work we do with kids makes any difference. Here is proof that it does.

– Warren Buffett is one of the richest men in the world. In The Snowball, his new 960-page biography, Buffett talks about the impact of the church on his upbringing. (During the dull moments of meetings, Buffett would calculate and compare the life spans of the people who composed the church’s hymns.

– Richard Foster is rich in other ways. Thirty years ago, Foster’s Celebration of Discipline introduced many of Christians to the riches of spiritual formation. In a recent interview in Christianity Today, Foster said: “My conversion came as young teenager.” He added: “Youth for Christ was prominent in that.”

So, the next time you are wondering about your impact, pray that God will multiply your work with kids.

Politics Youth

The 2008 presidential election has generated unprecedented attention, including increased interest among young people.

Here are three things to consider:

1) Polling place safety
After an elderly man driving to a polling place last February struck a young girl outside her school in Massachusetts, the district decided to cancel classes on Nov. 4, the national
Election Day, to avoid similar problems.

Is your school or church a polling place? If so, what safety procedures are you putting in place to protect students? (For more, click here.)

2) More college students leaning left
More college students are leaning left on issues like abortion and gay marriage. Traditionally, conservatives have blamed liberal professors for liberal students. According to UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, the main influence on students is fellow students, as well as left-leaning peer groups. (Click here for more information.)

3) Activity: Compare the ads
This campaign has set new records for political advertising. Here’s an interesting, non-partisan activity you can do with your group to help them be more critical about ad content.

A) First, record ads from both sides of a particular campaign or issue (for example, one McCain ad and one Obama ad). Play the ads in your group. Then go back and assess what you have seen.

B) Discuss: Are the claims in the ads factual? This doesn’t mean they are necessarily accurate or inaccurate. Rather, are the claims being made statements that can be judged on a factual basis, or are they judgments?
For example, when a McCain ad says Obama voted 94 times to raise taxes, this is a fact-based claim. Ditto for when Obama ads say McCain voted 90 percent of the time with President Bush.

C) Replay the ads, and separate the factual claims from other claims that deal less with facts but focus more on issues like character, fear, etc., such as McCain ads linking Obama to radical William Ayres, or Obama ads linking McCain to Bush.

D) Then check out the facts given in the ads at sites like http://www.factcheck.org/ or at the candidates’ sites. Remember, your goal is not to encourage students to favor one candidate over another, but to increase their skills at separating fact from innuendo, and checking statements that claim to be factual.

Speaker Jarrod Jones’ new book on the impact of porn and sexual immorality is being offered as free download.

The book, 13 Ways To Ruin Your Life–A Practical Guide for Guys, is available here.

Jones is a graduate of Samford University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has spoken around the world at churches, conferences, retreats, camps and public school assemblies. His other titles include The Backward Life: In Pursuit of an Uncommon Faith (Revell/Baker), as well as Worship, which he co-authored with Joel Engle.

Mixed-Up Song Lyrics

This has been a serious issue of the eJournal. So, to lighten things up we offer the following quiz featuring mixed-up song lyrics:

Can you match the ’80’s artists to the following misheard lyrics?

1. Sweet dreams are made of cheese. a. Tears for Fears

2. Rock the cat box. b. Madonna

3. Sell me fries, sell me cheap little fries. c. Eurythmics

4. Hollandaise, salivate! d. Fleetwood Mac

5. Sewing machine of love. e. The Clash

More of this wackiness can be found:

• In the book, Hit Me with Your Best Shark: Misheard Lyrics of the 1980s (Sasquatch Books; November 2008; $12.95) by Charles Grosvenor Jr.

• Or at Grosvenor Web site, AmIRight.com, which features 100,000-plus reader-submitted misheard lyrics and other trivia.

Here’s a fun activity: Work with your kids to create your own lists of misheard lyrics from recent songs.

YouthWorker Journal TOOLS Review: The Script: A Hip-Hop Devotional Through the Book of John
Fred D. Lynch III
Institute of Black Family Development/Moody Publishers, 2008, 353 pp., $16.99
www.moodypublishers.com

YouthWorker Journal reviews more than 60 curriculum products, books, CDs and movies in each issue. Our November/December issue features a review of the latest resource from Fred Lynch, a popular speaker and author on youth topics.

The Script seeks to be “a new kind of devotional,” and it succeeds. It presents passages of John using contemporary hip-hop language. The devotional is accompanied by a CD in which Lynch also speaks in this style.

Devotional activities that follow the reading do everything they should do. The Script asks students to be real, vulnerable and transparent with God. While the devotional activities will pull kids in, the Scripture paraphrase may make them a little suspicious of the source.

For students reading and hearing the Word of God in the language many of them speak every day may find it strange or too different for Scripture. My students believed the language to be too “informal and regular.” It wasn’t “holy or righteous enough.” This lent itself to a great conversation as to why we expect God to speak so much differently than we do, which would make a great introductory conversation.

— Reviewer Annie A. Lockhart is a doctoral candidate at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.

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Thanks for joining us for this issue of the YouthWorker eJournal. See you next time.

Sincerely, Steve Rabey, YouthWorker Journal editor, and our entire crew