Wednesday, April 26th, 2006
I’m using William Grimbol’s book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Spirituality for Teens, for a session on youth spirituality in Adelaide next Thursday.
William Grimbol is pastor at Shepherd Island Presbyterian Church, New York, and for some years has worked with young people in the area through a youth centre.
Grimbol writes the way he talks - a bit like Robin Williams, if the online sermon reviews are to be believed.
I like Grimbol’s grappling with spirituality a way of experiencing life. He says that spirituality is all about awareness, being fully awake to life, mainly noticing. Spirituality, Grimbol writes, frees you to see deep into the universe that exists outside and inside, looking deep insisde yourself, others, the world, the earth, and even God. Spirituality, he says, is a vision of the best you can be, the best we can be, and the best the world can be - heaven on earth.
Spirituality, Grimbol reminds us, is not becoming less loving and more indifferent or hostile. It is not about becoming less forgiving and more judgemental, less tolereant and more intolerant, less open-minded and more rigid in your thinking, less willing to change or compromise and more inclined to be fixed in one position, less willing to make a mistake and more inclined to have to be perfect, less humble and more self-righteous, less fascinated by life’s many mysteries and more certain that you have it all figured out. As I read this section I couldn’t help thinking of the movie, Saved.
Grimbol offers some very practical approaches to spirituality for teenagers. There’s material on learning to recognise the language of the body - paying attention to lumps in the throat, goosebumps, tears, dumbstruck feeling, breathlessness and so on. He introduces the language of artistry - learning from the masters, experimenting with creation, claiming mistakes.
He goes on to explore spirituality through the five senses - vision quest, listening to your life, smelling like a rose, getting in touch, and developing good taste.
Grimbol finishes with an examination of spirituality as living the longings for home, calling, life to the fullest and forgiveness.
Tags: Faith Development, Spirituality, William Grimbol, Youth Ministry
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Friday, November 18th, 2005
This last week the Generations in Conversation course took a look at Tony Jones’ book, Postmodern Youth Ministry, published by Youth Specialties and Zondervan, 2001.
Exploring cultural shift, cultivating authentic community and creating holistic connections.
The first thing we noticed about the book was the layout. There’s more white space than most books - which gives the reader more scope for engaging with the text that’s there. We found ourselves engaging with bites, quotes and vignettes rather than attempting to read the chapter from start to end. There’s an element of randomness to the selection and placement of graphics. There’s a strong connection with the feel achieved by Douglas Coupland in his first edition of the novel, Generation X.
The second thing we noticed was the interactive nature of the book. Tony gave his manuscript to colleagues and included their responses in the end product.
Contributors were Rudy Carrasco (Urban Onramps & Harambee Ministries), Brad Cecil (Axxess), Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill, Seattle), Dan Kimball (Vintage Faith), Brian McLaren (Cedar Ridge), Sally Morgenthaler (Sacramentis), Doug Pagitt (Solomons Porch), Kara Powell (Fuller Theological Seminary), Leonard Sweet, Pete Ward (Kings College London) and Mike Yaconelli (died in October 2003).
Tony’s blogging over at Theoblogy and The Emergent Theological Conversation. He’s studying towards his doctorate in practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and is part time National Director of Emergent USA. He’s the author of three other books, Read. Think. Pray. Live., Soul Shaper, and The Sacred Way:Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life
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So what’s Tony saying about postmodernity and postmodernism? He says that Gen-Xers are the cusp generation in relation to postmodern values. The Millennials however are studying in an environment with ‘full-blown, no-holds-barred postmodern thought”. He points to the postmodern ethos being displayed in the work of song writers, television and movie producers and advertising executives. That made a lot of sense when we considered the nature of the television advertising we’d been looking at. The Three “We Like Music” ads and the XBox 360 “Jump In” ads seemed to flow from a postmodern approach to narrative rather than linear product obsession.
Tony gives an ‘incomplete in-progress’ list of values of emerging postmodern culture versus the values of the modern/Enlightenment era:
1. Experiential rather than Rational
2. Spiritual rather than Scientific
3. Pluralistic rather than Unanimity
4. Relative rather than Exclusive
5. Altruistic rather than Egocentric
6. Communal rather than Individualistic
7. Creative rather than Functional
8. Environmental rather than Industrial
9. Global rather than Local
10. Holistic rather than Comparmentalized/Dichotomized
11. Authentic rather than Relevant
In response we wondered how much we were seeing a ‘versus factor’. It seemed to us that there was more a shift of focus and emphasis. For all the focus on ‘communal’ we were seeing as much individualism as ever in the ways that people made decisions about their futures. We could see evidence of global and local going alongside each other. Perhaps we needed to factor in the approach taken by Leonard Sweet in which he combined global and local to make glocal. What would the other ten look like if we did the same?
We liked Kara Powell’s thought:
“It would indeed be terrifying to worship a God we could figure out. The enigmas, mysteries, and antinomies of God are what make him God. Without these, he would be just a very cool guy.”
Hmm. We had to find a decent dictionary (online) to find out what antinomies meant. It refers to several laws or constants that are held together even though they may seem to contradict each other.
However we noted that many young people we were dealing with did not fit into the fascination with mysticism, acceptance of ambiguity and comfort with diversity associated with postmodernism. One workshop participant talked about the hunger for concrete approaches to God, life and everything. In another post I’ll explore the connection we made between James Fowler’s stages of faith work and the emergence of postmodern values.
Tony finishes by saying that ‘Relational’ remains as a constant. He writes that “there is new room in our faith for experience, for mysticism, and for mystery. We can recover the story as the great conveyer of truth, and we can use it to great effect just as Jesus did. We can welcome people into a journey instead of getting them to assent to an oversimplified version of the gospel and recite a three-sentence prayer.”
True.
Tags: Postmodernity, Theology, Tony Jones, Youth Ministry
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