Is GOD done with the world?

Of course not. So why do we act as if GOD is done with the church?

Preserved in amber, untouchable.

I don’t think so.

The Best Youth Program is Full Inclusion

If we look at the census data, though, we start to see a different story. We see people leaving the church or absent from the church.

The methods which always worked no longer seem to.

And we are always worried that we aren’t really engaging our youth in church.

For me, the response is really simple – and still very hard.

• It isn’t throwing money at the problem.
• It isn’t making youth take their medicine and like it.
• It isn’t dedicating a leader and a youth room and calling it good.

The only thing that makes any sense to me is to make our youth fully included in the life of the church.

And if we do, the church will flourish.

“I’m not dead!”

One of the most fitting (and macabre) illustrations of our problem can be found in a strange scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The scene is the one in which these medieval sanitation workers come to collect the dead from the street. They lift these dead bodies up and put them in the cart.

It is a strangely sobering scene of mortality. One worker dully rings a metal triangle with an infrequent, but terrifying rhythm and calls “Bring out your dead!” The scene depicts extreme poverty and hopelessness.

After a minute, a man walks up to the cart with a supposedly dead man and announces he’s got one. The man, on his shoulder keeps protesting

“I’m not dead!”

And in true Monty Python, the man and the worker try to come to an understanding about how to take this man who isn’t dead off of the other man’s hands. “Can’t you do me a favor?” he asks. Go ahead and watch it. I know you want to!

It seems like the church is fine, it is we who want to put it out of its misery.

Read A Church for All

That’s why I wrote my ebook, A Church for All. It is a short manifesto that is about helping youth engage in church, but really, it is about reimagining a more healthy, vibrant church for everybody.

If you are someone who wants to fix problems and make things better, then I wrote this with you in mind.

To get the book, just sign up for my newsletter below. You’ll receive a link to download the book, each of the articles I write as they are published, and a weekly newsletter every Saturday morning.

Are you ready? Let’s get started.