{"id":1198,"date":"2018-09-20T19:11:15","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T19:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/?p=1198"},"modified":"2018-10-10T21:52:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T21:52:49","slug":"youth-pastor-helps-students-immerse-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/2018\/09\/20\/youth-pastor-helps-students-immerse-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"Youth Pastor Helps Students Immerse in the Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent data shows 40\u201450% of Millennials are leaving the church. This includes kids that faithfully attended youth group and went on missions trips. Does that weigh on you and shape the way you do youth ministry?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Definitely. James Emery White in his book Meet Generation Z<\/em> unpacks what the world might look like to the first generation of young people born into the post-Christian era (1995\u20142010). For this generation it will be crucial that we get the Bible right\u2014that we stop treating it like a user\u2019s manual or reference book. I\u2019m hesitant to give my students a reference Bible because I want them reading the story, not just looking up verses on what the Bible says about anger.<\/p>\n

Immerse represents a new approach to reading Scripture. What caught your attention and attracted you to it?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve really bought into the concept of full meals versus Bible nuggets. And the book club model is perfect for young people. We don\u2019t give them enough credit. If we invite them to read the Bible and express their opinions honestly, they\u2019ll respond. We have to stop trying to control the conversations or thinking that honest opinions are dangerous. We\u2019re starting to use the book club model for more and more of our conversations.<\/p>\n

Can you share a little about the group\u2019s experience?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

We only had pre-production scripts, but there were some immediate takeaways. For me personally, I found myself reading more. I\u2019d read for a while, and because there were no chapter breaks inviting me to stop, I kept reading. It was only when I finished that I realized I\u2019d read the equivalent of four or five chapters.<\/p>\n

For the young people, the text was less intimidating. And reading whole books was a new experience. When we finished reading Mark, one of the girls said, \u201cIs this actually the Bible?\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to our group experience, I had a serendipitous experience with my nephew who\u2019s a junior in high school. Our families were on vacation together and he saw me reading a book about the Bible. I was just finishing the book and offered it to him. But he said he\u2019d actually never read the Bible himself and thought maybe he should read it first. By this time I had a published copy of Immerse: Beginnings<\/em><\/a> and asked if he\u2019d like to read it. That began a summer-long conversation. At one point he said to me, \u201cSometimes God seems to be the antagonist in the story. The people are building these cities but God steps in and messes things up.\u201d<\/p>\n

On another occasion, he expressed annoyance that the story of the construction of the tabernacle was repeated four times! Later he softened and remarked that it must have been very important. Here\u2019s this junior in high school, seriously reading the Old Testament and going from annoyance to insight.<\/p>\n

Anything else you want to add?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s sobering that 85% of young people today believe the church is hypocritical (I think I got that from the book UnChristian<\/em>). I don\u2019t blame them for this. This is more on us\u2014your generation and mine. We\u2019ve put stumbling blocks in front of them. This is why I\u2019m a fan of Immerse\u2014reading the bigger story and the more authentic conversations. The Bible isn\u2019t Google! We\u2019re definitely using Immerse more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent data shows 40\u201450% of Millennials are leaving the church. This includes kids that faithfully attended youth group and went on missions trips. Does that weigh on you and shape the way you do youth ministry? Definitely. James Emery White in his book Meet Generation Z unpacks what the world might look like to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1240,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions\/1240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}