In my last post I talked about the reasons that led me to plan our weekend retreat the way I did.  So here is what we actually did.

On Friday night I presented to the students the 10 stops on the transformation journey as given in the book Maximum Faith by George Barna.  I described each one as I walked us all through the 10 stops.  My suspicion, which I think did prove true, was that the majority of the students on the retreat were lingering around stop six: Spiritual discontent.  I described stop 6 this way:

Stop 6 is where you start to feel like church isn’t doing it for you anymore, you start to ask some hard questions within yourself about faith and God and religion and how does it all fit in.  It seems like everything you hear or experience at church you have heard before…  “If this is all the church has to offer then I’m not sure I need it”

 ”Prolonged Period” you know what this means… that most people are in this stop for a long time.  Once you are there we fight moving to the next stop, no one likes to be “broken”…  Some people give up the fight and either settle into stop 5 and stay there for the rest of their life or leave the church, and maybe even their faith, all together.

 During that “fight”, we tend to point a lot of fingers, pass the blame or the responsibility, and ask some really honest and really good questions.

We then watched the popular internet video “Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus”.  I then connected the video and it’s content to the transformation journey; pointing out some of the Biblical flaws in his reasoning and also confirming some of his honest and true questions.  My first main point of discussion was how religion and church are not the same thing and how we need both of them to help us through this journey.  Religion can only get you to stop 5, while the church has varying roles through all 10 stops.

The second point of discussion was centered around the concept of self-righteousness and how we have to be very careful not to become exactly what we are speaking out against.

I then gave a challenge for the students to honestly ask themselves and God what stop they are on and gave a challenge for the weekend based on the stops.

Saturday I did not speak at all.  During chapel times I gave them a scripture to meditate on, some journal questions, and 45 minutes to go off by themselves and seek God with all their heart.  We then came back together and I read aloud a narrative story based on the passage they had just read, then we sang a few worship songs.  That was it.  The two scriptures I used were John 7:53 – 8:11 and John 3:1-21; times Jesus dealt with religion and self-righteousness.

I was amazed at how much of the conversation during free time and fun activities was centered on the scriptures.  Saturday night we sat in a circle, sang a few songs and discussed what God had done or showed them.

Several of the students literally used their free time that night to pray for each other and share their experiences further.

I feel like it was one of the more Spiritually significant weekends of my entire youth ministry career, and I basically just got out of the way and let God work.  Here are two things that God taught me this weekend that I hope is helpful for you.

1. People need permission to struggle

I told the students that if they were in stop six to see it as a growth step forward, not as a bad thing.  To ask God their honest questions because God is truth and truth has nothing to hide and is not scarred of their questions or struggles.  Somehow we have created this facade that says everything has to be perfect all the time in the church and if we struggle something is wrong.  The church doesn’t always have answers, but God does, and only He can transform someone.

 2.  There are more people in stop six than we realize

One of my leadership students, who is a senior in high school said to me this weekend, “people in stop six are the ones that graduate their faith, I am in stop six and I don’t want to do that.”  The better we get at children’s and youth ministry the quicker these kids get to stop six.  A freshman in high school also shared that he was already in stop six.  The issue this presents us as youth workers is that it is nearly impossible to program brokenness.  Which is exactly the challenge we face, how can we walk through stop 6 and 7 with these students? Especially if you work with Sr. highers this is a huge question you must answer.  I hope we can figure it out together because I need your help with this one.

As I continue to seek God about what He wants me to do in youth ministry, I feel more and more drawn to changing the paradigm we have created.  I think this is at the core of it.  I think discipleship needs to be a whole lot less about us and programs and a whole lot more about them encountering God.  What do you think?