I was at a Steubenville Conference this past summer when something interesting happened. Following the Eucharistic Procession after the Saturday night keynote, the host for the weekend challenged the teenagers to make a stand and give their lives to Jesus Christ. He was challenging the teens to conversion – a significant change of heart.
The host led an exercise in “free praise” in which he challenged the teens to stand up and vocalize a prayer out loud to Jesus. In front of 1600 teens, this is not easy for a teenager to do. The results were interesting. Many teens stood up and – very loudly – vocalized their prayers to God. They were courageous, willing to stand out from their peers for the sake of love of Christ. They were decisive in that they wanted – in that moment – to give something more to Christ than they had given before. In a word, for some teens, there was a decision for conversion – a change of heart.
Then the rest of the crowd, following the energy of the first teens to stand up, turned. Many more teens stood up, but what happened was less encouraging.
Following the Crowd
Instead of more teens expressing their prayers to God, there were chants and hollers that followed. Entire youth groups attending the conference began chanting, “JE-SUS” or “woop, woop, Je-sus” or even “Viva Espana” (this group had traveled all the way from Spain). Youth leaders joined in and chants got more excessive.
Finally, the exercise deteriorated into the famous, “We love Jesus, yes we do, we love Jesus, how bout you?” This chant is common at youth gatherings and it always makes me cringe a little.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Jesus.
I also believe the teens and youth leaders had genuine enthusiasm and a desire to express that enthusiasm in that moment. But the invitation of the conference host was to give their life to Jesus, which is an extremely intimate and personal invitation. I really doubt that the people who were wooping, hollering and chanting were responding intimately to Christ’s invitation of faith.
What is Love?
I’ve seen entire stadiums of teens chanting back and forth about their love for Jesus. Thousands and thousands of teens screaming, “We love Jesus, yes we do, we love Jesus, how bout you?” I never believe any of them. Mother Theresa loved Jesus. The twelve apostles loved Jesus. Mary the Mother of God, loved Jesus.
The love of Jesus changes a person’s life and it changes the lives of everyone around them. How did Jesus change the world? Jesus didn’t need thousands of people professing their love for Him. He just needed twelve. The apostles, empowered with the Holy Spirit, changed the world. The apostles, upon meeting Christ, made a decision to give up everything to follow Him. They were then educated by Him, they found their identity in Him and they were empowered by Him to spread the Gospel. It all started with the encounter and a conversion – a firm decision to say “yes” to Christ.
Making Good Use of Enthusiasm
I think enthusiasm can be a powerful tool to foster conversion. But too often, I see teens and youth leaders staying on the surface of enthusiasm and not following it to conversion. It’s almost like some people would rather be cheerleaders than saints. Every time I attend a major conference, there is a lot of cheering and silly behavior. I will say that my youth group is seldom the most enthusiastic group in any room.
But when there is time for prayer, my teens always know how to enter in and meet Jesus in prayer. Enthusiasm is not the goal. Conversion is the goal. As a youth minister, when I see a teenager become enthusiastic, the temptation can be to encourage the enthusiasm. After a few years of working with teens, I have come to believe that we need to do just the opposite.
Turning Passion into Roots
Enthusiasm is fruit of an encounter with Christ.
It does not need to be encouraged because it develops naturally from the invitation that Christ gives all of us. As youth leaders, the challenge is to look past the emotion and help the teenager make firmly rooted decisions to follow Christ and articulate prayer to Him. We must teach them to respond to His invitation. As youth ministers, it is our job to help a teen navigate the emotions to find their individual decision to follow Christ. Otherwise, they stay in their emotions and never get to their intellect and will. Emotions come and go, but decisions made with the intellect and will are lasting.
In the next blog of the four part series, I will critically evaluate and discuss teaching the prayer of praise – which I believe to be foundational in learning how to respond to God’s invitation and dive deeper in relationship with Him.
I’m glad you’ve spoken up about this Everett. It is a critically important distinction that gets missed many times.
+JMJ
I think what jumped out at me the most in this article was something you may not have even intended to connect. You said:
The host led an exercise in “free praise” in which he challenged the teens to stand up and vocalize a prayer out loud to Jesus.
After describing the result, you said:
But the invitation of the conference host was to give their life to Jesus, which is an extremely intimate and personal invitation.
What the host asked of the teens was not to prove their interior conversion. He was asking for a prayer, pure and simple. “We Love Jesus, Yes We Do” may be a rather silly prayer, but it is still a prayer nonetheless. I definitely agree that we need to encourage the teens to go much deeper than that, but to say “I don’t believe any of them” is a rather cynical attitude.
There was a freshman girl who went to the Steubenville Missouri conference with our group. She didn’t want to go but her mom pushed her. After 3 days her attitude was completely changed. The enthusiasm of 3000 teens (whether manufactured or flowing naturally from their love of Christ) got through to her. She didn’t want to leave. She had the Jesus High that every youth minister encounters. A week later she came to our youth group and in the course of conversation said the following, “I would totally be a Jesus Freak but my friends said they wouldn’t hang out with me anymore.” A textbook case of the “seed falling on rocky ground”.
Some people would point to that and say, “That’s the problem! The kids didn’t have a real conversion. They don’t actually love Jesus.” But if we do that, we miss the very real change that did happen for that girl. She started out thinking that such enthusiasm for Christ was foolishness. Now she knows otherwise. The door has been opened, and I hope that with much help and prayer from myself and others she will make the lifelong commitment that Christ desires.
The point of that story is to illustrate that youth conferences, rallies, camps, etc. cannot be expected to do youth ministry for us. They are there to wedge open a door just enough for our daily efforts to begin to make a difference. It is our responsibility, not the M.C.’s, to make sure the kids get the spiritual formation and support they need after an event like Steubenville. It’s simply unChristian to look at thousands of enthusiastic teens, each on a completely different walk with Christ, and say of them collectively “I don’t believe you.”
Thank you for reading the blog. Perhaps, saying, “I don’t believe them,” is a bit too critical or cynical. However, my overall message for this blog seems to have been lost when taking one line out of context. Enthusiasm isn’t bad, it is good. As I said, “it is a natural fruit of the invitation that Christ gives to all of us. It is a tool that is useful” I just don’t believe that enthusiasm needs to encouraged or manufactured by youth leaders. At this particular moment in the Steubenville Conference, it was my opinion that the chanting was very inappropriate. The invitation from the MC was to make a choice with the intellect and the will. Instead, the teens resorted to emotions and it was encouraged by the youth leaders. And I see that time and time again working with youth ministries around the country. There is a difference between a teen who makes a conscious decision (with the intellect) to love Christ and give their life to Him and a teen who makes a decision with their emotions to love Christ and give their life to Him. The teen who makes a decision with their intellect is much more likely to follow through with genuine conversion. The teen who makes decisions with their emotions is capable of changing at any moment – as his/her emotions dictate. I am willing to bet, when this freshman girl comes to you, you will appeal to her intellect – making reasonable arguments and explanations challenging her to grow deeper in her relationship with the Lord. You will make these arguments because you understand that conversion requires more than an emotional response, that there is something that has to take root deeper than the emotions. I am willing to bet you won’t appeal to her emotions by saying something like, “remember the feeling or Jesus high you got at Steubenville. You can have that all the time!”
The chanting was simply an example to illustrate our need to look deeper – which is the actual point of the blog series. Conversion is the goal and too often, I think youth leaders encourage emotionalism without digging deeper. If you read the first blog I wrote, I explain how we are successfully attracting thousands of teens to conferences and rallies and yet, the world goes unchanged. We are losing the battle with a lot of the teens that come to these conferences (not all of them). Conversion requires more and as youth leaders, we have to dig deeper and not stay on the surface.