Think Tank

Martin Saunders

Description

God, the Great Storyteller, chose to communicate with us through story - in fact a great library of stories, filled with heroes, villains, sex, violence, intrigue, sacrifice and redemption. The Think Tank gives young people an opportunity to explore their world through stories, and to relate it to the incredible story of the Bible - perhaps for the first time. Here are 100 stories designed to provoke discussion, followed by penetrating questions which relate the stories to biblical bedrock. The stories are in four parts: WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT? - Unbelievable stories, all absolutely true! INSPIRING INDIVIDUALS - Stories of celebrities, public figures and other people of note making a positive difference. WHAT WOULD YOU DO? - Ethics explored through stories, many based on real events. TALKING MOVIES - A major bonus: 25 movie clips that pack a punch with young people, and all the background and questions you'll need to facilitate discussion around them. This updated edition brings refreshed material that will speak to today's young people.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780857217516
• Langue: English

Extrait

Text copyright © 2010 Martin Saunders This edition copyright © 2016 Lion Hudson
The right of Martin Saunders to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Monarch Books an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England Email: [e-mail] www.lionhudson.com/monarch
ISBN 978 0 85721 681 6 e-ISBN 978 0 85721 751 6
First edition 2010
Acknowledgments Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan and Hodder & Stoughton Limited. All rights reserved. The ‘NIV’ and ‘New International Version’ trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790
Cover design: Todd Oliver (www.toli.co.uk)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
SECTION A: Would you believe it?
A1 False prophets
A2 Smoking
A3 Watering down the story
A4 Making judgments
A5 Gender roles
A6 Connectivity
A7 Ecology
A8 Bearing the name
A9 Sacrifice
A10 Freedom
A11 Creativity
A12 Sin
A13 Marriage
A14 Perseverance/dreams
A15 Answered prayer
A16 Righteous anger
A17 Drugs
A18 Wisdom
A19 Money
A20 True value
A21 Remembrance
A22 Adultery
A23 Self-image
A24 “Crime” and punishment
A25 Luck
SECTION B: Inspiring individuals
B1 Courage
B2 Life and death
B3 Generosity
B4 Ambition
B5 Domestic violence
B6 Character
B7 Money
B8 Activism/slavery
B9 Perseverance/disability
B10 Dreams
B11 Conservation
B12 Entrepreneurship
B13 Patience
B14 Kindness
B15 Responding to need
B16 Forgiveness
B17 Turning around
B18 Friendship
B19 Fashion
B20 Humour
B21 Doing what’s right
B22 Money/talent
B23 Adventure!
B24 Pushy parents
B25 Sabbath
SECTION C: What would you do?
C1 Racism
C2 Online friendship
C3 Profit versus poverty
C4 Horror movies
C5 Enemies
C6 Toxic relationships
C7 Gangs
C8 Suffering
C9 Peacemaking
C10 White lies?
C11 Torture/justification
C12 Celibacy
C13 Capital punishment
C14 Revenge
C15 Slimming
C16 Euthanasia
C17 Masculinity
C18 Charity
C19 Cheating
C20 Homosexuality
C21 War
C22 Laziness/divorce
C23 Abortion
C24 Respecting authority
C25 Cyber-bullying
SECTION D: Talking movies
D1 Speaking up
D2 Lasting love
D3 Free will
D4 Standing up
D5 Repentance
D6 Life choices
D7 Spiritual gifts
D8 Unrequited love
D9 Honouring parents
D10 Death
D11 Redemption
D12 Justice fatigue
D13 The end of the world
D14 Sexual abstinence
D15 Deceit
D16 Change
D17 Relationships
D18 Disappointment
D19 Wisdom
D20 Revenge
D21 Faith
D22 Gifts and talents
D23 Innocence and responsibility
D24 Prayer
D25 Love
For Joel and Naomi
Preface
Eight years is a long time in youth ministry. When I wrote the first edition of The Ideas Factory , the first of my two books of discussion starters, the economy was still looking pretty good, we’d just welcomed over 2,000 youth workers to a dedicated national event, and there was an air of optimism all around.
Quite a lot has changed since then.
The financial crisis, and ensuing recession, has had a devastating impact on the sector; certainly in the UK, and probably a lot further afield. Churches decided that the first cut they would make would be the youth worker; others merged the distinct roles of youth worker and children’s worker together in a sort of crazy cost-saving fudge. Christian organizations had to radically downsize their staff numbers; some disappeared altogether.
Outside the Church, the story was even more brutal. Youth work roles melted away in many towns, often leaving no youth services available to the young people left behind. One major British city replaced all of its statutory youth work provision with a one-off £1 million grant fund for the voluntary groups that would have to stand in the gap. That money is of course long gone; the need remains and has indeed intensified.
Although voluntary groups (of which faith-based organizations such as churches make up the vast majority) have been relied on to fill these huge sinkholes in provision, they’ve not always found financial support easy to come by. That’s been especially true for Christian organizations, especially those that list the promotion of the Christian faith as an explicit aim.
So while the needs of young people haven’t lessened, our ability to meet them has been seriously undermined by the financial picture. And while a sort of recovery may mean that churches find the pressure on their coffers slowly easing, the continuing commitment from the governments to austerity and funding cuts suggests the burden on the voluntary sector is only going to increase.
That’s not necessarily bad news of course; local communities and councils will increasingly look to the church as a provider of youth and children’s activities. It is, however, something we’re going to have to get our heads around, and fast (for a basic guide to setting up church-based youth provision, check out my book Youth Work From Scratch ).
The seismic shift in the financial picture isn’t the only change we’ve seen. In a related story, the number of people leaving youth ministry appears to hugely outweigh the numbers incoming. The workforce seems to have dwindled; the major youth ministry events in the UK are now attracting closer to 500 youth workers – a long way now from 2,000. That’s educated anecdote for now (although at time of writing, Youthscape is currently undertaking a major piece of research into the numbers of youth workers and young people involved in the UK church – check out www.youthscape.co.uk for details) but there’s no doubt that while the numbers of people enrolled in youth ministry training courses has fallen dramatically, we’ve also seen many youth ministers – both local church workers and higher-profile national specialists – leaving the sector. Many of the older heads have moved on; there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of new blood coming in… in employed terms at least.
What this almost certainly means is that youth ministry is becoming slowly de-professionalized, and in many places being handed over to volunteers. Again, this is not necessarily bad news, provided those volunteers can be found, envisioned and trained properly. Indeed, as a reader of this book you may well be one of the new emerging army of volunteer youth workers. Hello if so. Hooray for you. You’re the cavalry!
At the risk of sounding gloomier still, we’ve also seen a change in the cultural temperature since the beginning of the last decade. In the past, most young people grew up in homes that were either sympathetic to Christianity, or else at least ambivalent about it. Now my seven-year-old returns from a playdate to tell me that her friend’s parents have been explaining why her faith is nonsense. Many children grow up in atheist homes which make them suspicious of the church’s motives when we try to engage them.
It’s no surprise then that we’re also encountering young people who have fixed (and antagonistic) views on Christianity earlier too. The New Atheist and secular humanist movements are beginning to have a powerful impact on young minds; the questions we face from young people are often harder, better researched and designed to trip us up. Again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing; rather a young person who wants to engage on the question of faith than one who simply can’t be bothered.
So a lot has changed. And this heavy combination of blows to youth ministry’s gut can feel pretty hard to take. It’s not all bad news though as I’ve suggested, and it’s not All Change either.
For a start, and most importantly of all, we still serve the same unchanging, everlasting and undefeatable God. He’s not finished with young people, or with the church that seeks to serve them. He is at work in our communities, schools and families in ways that we can’t see and might never know. His mission is unrelenting, whether we choose to join in with it or not. And when we do, amazing things continue to happen.
In the last few unsettling years I’ve heard stories of near-revival; of the power of God breaking out among a group of young people. I’ve marvelled at the transforming lives of the young people in my own church, some of whom are among the most incredible world-changing, dead-to-self, hope-drenched wonders I’ve ever encountered. And I’ve watched as in the UK the Soul Survivor youth festivals have continued to attract over 20,000 young people every Summer, and each year more than a thousand of them make a commitment to follow Christ. Stop and read that again, because it’s easy to skip over that extraordinary figure. Even in the context I’ve described, over a thousand British teenagers are choosing to put their hope in a man who lived, died and rose again 2,000 years ago. Jesus isn’t dead, and the faith of his followers isn’t either.
God hasn’t changed and our message of hope hasn’t changed either. We still believe (don’t we?) that God loves young people totally and unconditionally; that he longs to be in relationship with them, and that he wants to transform and redeem the hardest parts of their lives. We are still the hope people, the Good News people, the Resurrection people; even if at first glance th