Senior High 1, 2010 Programs - Tuesday

Part 3 of the series... see the end of the article for links to the other installments.

Tuesday

I've been extremely fortunate in my programs that none of them (at least in my mind) have completely failed to come together. Though, there was the program in 2007 where we put out the idea of the properity gospel for folks to discuss and the campers thought we were advocating for it. Sometimes you have this idea that seems great in your own head, but others don't perceive it as such.

Tuesday night's program was only going to work if the campers took it seriously. We let them drive the direction of it. It was only going to be as deep as they were.

Since the theme was Faith Alive, I naturally, wanted to deal with doubt. Camp is a safe place to ask questions. I had this idea of addressing controversial questions that was inspired by a Rob Bell sermon about the Parable of the Wicked Servant.

The sermon deconstucted the parable and let you really get at the heart of what it was about, and I thought that it would make a fantastic skit to build a program around. But it really didn't end up fitting the evening as it came together. But since one of our programs is to be about parables this summer, I think I can bring it back. Nothing is wasted.

So the idea was to have the campers take some time after the speaker's session on Tuesday morning to go off and think about what questions they have about their faith. And then we'd take those questions and build a program around it. It ended up being incredibly powerful.

Opening - The Questions


I wasn't sure what song I was going to use, but once I really listened to the words to Hard to Be by David Bazan (of Pedro the Lion fame), it was perfect. 

So there was no intro, just the music starts playing and when the piano part kicks in, we manually looped through the questions to the beat of the music. The words were projected on screen and onto the floor in the middle of the room. The seating was set up in a horseshoe.

Insecurities Reading
I had three students do this great reading from nailscars.com.

My intro
Then I intro'd the program with a statement that we were going to attempt to respond, but not necessarily give answers to all of their questions. Sometimes the answers aren't easy.

I quoted Jude 1:22: Be merciful to those who doubt. And the story from Mark 9 where the man asks Jesus to "help my unbelief."

We talked about Mother Theresa, and her dark night of the soul. We aren't promised an easy life. That's not what the Christian life has to offer. Anyone who made you feel that was was misleading you.

Psalm Readings
My friend Steve Case paraphrased some of the Psalms, and we used those as examples from the Bible of someone struggling. We did Psalm 22 and 77.

Split Into Groups
Then we split into groups for discussion. We grouped the questions into themes, and assigned each group one theme to come up with a response, in addition to discussing some of the other questions. As they returned, we had Dear God by the Monsters of Folk playing. 

So I had the groups present their responses to:

• What is God Like?
• Discernment
• Unconditional Love
• Suffering
• Multiple Accounts of What Jesus Said
• Authority of the Bible
• Disagreeing with other's beliefs and evangelizing to them
• Why the Old Testament is important
• Why God doesn't just force us to love Him
• How we know that God is speaking to us

I was ready to chime in to fill in some of the cracks when necessary. In addition, I addressed some of the questions on resurrection and eschatology with some NT Wright videos and Rob Bell videos, used some resources to discuss why bad things happen to us, and then my favorite question of all that was submitted:

I'm tired of Sunday School answers and metaphors that don't give me answers. Faith is turning on the faucet and waiting for the water, that's beautiful, but it's crap unless I know what the water is, and the faucet, what I am supposed to be waiting for. I don't think even you know.

I mean... wow. That's raw honesty. I had found a great video from North Point Church that was the perfect response to that question.



We closed this part of the service with another reading from Steve Case from the Book of Uncommon Prayer. You can read it on Google, but you'll have to dig through the book a bit.

Break for an Offering

Closing
I'm a fan of a band called Manchester Orchestra. Their songs deal with faith and doubt and struggle in a real, raw way. The climax of it is the singer screaming at Go in doubt/frustration. I wrestled with whether or not to use it. It's very raw and very powerful, especially in the setting of the assembly hall.  I basically told the campers that as I introduced it:

I wrestled with whether or not to use this next video. It's a clip of a band out of Georgia that I'm a fan of, and the singer comes from a season in his life where he's wrestling with his faith, and I think at some point in our lives, we all have that moment where we wonder, where God is. God is big enough to handle our questions. We all have seasons in our lives where we feel like God is distant. Someone asked what is faith?

NT WRIGHT: There is nothing in the New Testament to suggest that faith is a general awareness of a supernatural dimension or a general trust in the goodness of some distant divinity. Nor does it suggest that some might arrive at faith through Jesus or equally through others by some quite different route. Faith, in Christian terms, means believing precisely that the living God has entrusted his authority to Jesus himself, who is now exercising it for the salvation of the world. 



Sometimes I hear songs and I know that they have to be in a program. They just have that feel. To me a creative, dramatic movement is nothing without the right music. When I first heard "Blood" by the Middle East, I knew I had to work it into a program. I couldn't understand what in the world the singer was saying except something about someone getting cancer, but it wasn't about the lyrics, it was about the feel of the song, moving from sadness to elation. The song has this amazing, joyous, crescendo.

Usually the cross is set up above the stage, hanging on the wall, but I took it down and laid it on its side at the foot of the stage [click image at right for larger version].

During the first 3:20 of the song, one by one people come up from the back of the room to the foot of the cross holding signs that say something that relates to the questions. Can't remember exactly what we had on them, but doubt, suffering, etc. They collapse on the floor in such a way to help sell what's on their signs.

Then once the song begins to build, the cross lights up and the people notice it and come alive and the cross is take up the steps we built and restored to its rightful spot.

You really have to hear the song to really get the feel for it: