Theology Blog

What does it mean to be a Christian? What is truly the story of faith, the good news? Last night at youth group, I gave a “salvation/good news message.” It was the first time in many years that I had the opportunity to do that and I really wrestled with it. My kids in youth group do not know the story, some get it, others do not, some have never heard it. For many, confirmation has been the means of salvation/connecting with the good news. the thing that I wrestled with in my preparation was how to share the good news. What did i really believe about the good news and how do i communicate it? thats why I am looking forward to wrestling deeper in this course with this issue. I hate how it has been packaged in our modern world as some sort of transaction. I am disturbed that the good news has been reduced to “fire insurance” and made to be about heaven and hell, because there is way more to it than that…we do not think enough about this life! I have not liked how the evangelical world has manipulated that word to mean something other than the true meaning (sharing the good news of Jesus) and making it about a set of beliefs and behaviors. the postmodern context has changed how we need to communicate the message as well. All this said, I do not think the truth has changed, but how do we go at this…and in this case, how do I go at it in a way that teenagers understand. I wrestled for weeks. I could not get something down. when I finally did the day before, I still felt unsettled. Then I settled in. Once I got up to talk, I started sharing—and I was way off script. It was a good thing…a holy spirit moment, and that perhaps told me the most about how we do this–that it is not about us or what we prepare, and that it is never told the same way, just like all good stories. I shared that there were pieces to the puzzle. It was about what we believed, because Jesus is irrelevant if we did not believe, but that there was more to it than that. Yes, it is about relationships, but a relationship with someone you do not believe in…and we are created to be in relationships. We need God. I also shared that even that is not quite the whole puzzle. We need transformation, and we can believe and be in relationship and have nothing be different, and if that is our case, what is the point? So that was the start of my conversation with the youth. I am not sure what they thought, or if it even will result in some change, but we need to keep telling the story.