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Alchemy, in part, entails physical experiments involving destroying the subject, extracting its essence and re-forging it as something stronger, more whole.

What would postmodern church-alchemists look like? Church structural experimenters who break down the institutional church, extracting its essence and re-forging it for our time as something stronger, purer, more whole.

Hmmm. Looks like I just self-inherited another label.

Any other Church-Alchemists out there?

This is a shout out to my good buddy Dave who reminded me of this song today. My wife and I used to listen to it all the time but it has sat idle in the “non-played” cellar of my iPod. So I cranked it up again today on my way home from work and the words resonated with me, especially the line “But the places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I’ve learned.” What resonates with you?

Painting Pictures Of Egypt by Sara Groves

I don’t want to leave here
I don’t want to stay
It feels like pinching to me either way
The places I long for the most
Are the places where I’ve been
They are calling after me like a long lost friend

It’s not about losing faith
It’s not about trust
It’s all about comfortable
When you move so much
The place I was wasn’t perfect
But I had found a way to live
It wasn’t milk or honey
But then neither is this

CHORUS:
I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt
Leaving out what it lacked
The future seems so hard
And I want to go back
But the places that used to fit me
Cannot hold the things I”ve learned
And those roads closed off to me
While my back was turned

The past is so tangible
I know it by heart
Familiar things are never easy to discard
I was dying for some freedom
But now I hesitate to go
Caught between the promise
And the things I know

BRIDGE:
If it comes too quick
I may not recognize it
Is that the reason behind all this time and sand?
If it comes too quick
I may not appreciate it
Is that the reason behind all this time and sand?

Something changed and someone forgot to tell me…or I just wasn’t listening.

For a period of 16 years (1991-2007) I pastored teenagers, in one form or another, in a local church. For 15 of those years, the youth ministry looked like your typical youth ministry: A Sunday morning meeting (worship), a midweek meeting (outreach), small groups, missions trips, camps, fun monthly events, occasional local missional stuff. The core focus for outreach was students inviting friends to the midweek gathering, where we played games followed by a message, or the fun events. During the 90’s, this worked well in getting students into the doors of the church. However, as time passed, youth were responding less and less to our attempts to be cool and fun.

This really became evident when we moved to the rapidly growing and affluent area of Folsom. The attitude was almost like, “Why should I come to your church fun-event when I have self-access to anything you could offer?” The world of fun and entertainment are at literally at their demand. Everything that worked before was not working now. This fact drove me and our leadership team to really begin looking into what was going on. It really caused us to ask deep, tough, and penetrating questions. What emerged took a lot of courage to embrace.

See, the youth ministry model we were working with was basically developed in the late 30’s, early 40’s, by Jim Rayburn. Jim created Young Life and introduced a radical approach to reaching youth. He would gather them into a living room, play outrageously fun games and then have a short Bible/Jesus talk…very entry level, very fun. It worked. But initially the church scoffed…“Games, in church?” As the success of Young Life soared and teens were being reached, the church came around and embraced this new paradigm to reach teens. And they have been using it ever since…for 60+ years!! But think of the 1940’s…no TV, no video games, no laser tag, no bounce houses, no MP3 players, no computers (you see where this is going?). So when Jim comes along to offer something fun, they ate it up. But a lot has changed over the past 68 years, including teenagers. And if our goal is to help create disciples and followers of Jesus, what we were doing was failing miserably. Unfortunately, as times change, history repeats itself and churches are again slow to let go of ineffective tradition…“No games in church?”

But what do you do when all your experience and training is no longer effective or relevant? Well, after you initially freak out, you begin to ask really important and frightening questions. What are we doing and why are we doing it? Is it working? What should our primary focus be? What is it that teenagers are screaming for? And you get really honest. You also begin to ask questions of others and listen, because you are no longer an expert. So that’s what we did and this is what we found.

Teenagers are very spiritual and want the church to be the church, not a recreation center. They want a place where they can be real with God and with others. They want a safe place where they worship and express their heart to God. They want to have a place to ask questions and express doubts and disbelief without fear of judgment. They want a community that encourages and helps them live out love and justice (they REALLY are into justice issues).

We also found that we were busy doing a lot of things poorly and doing nothing well…so we decided to simplify and focus. We also heard that we needed to stop doing a bunch of things and then asking God to bless them, and begin to get real with God, focus on him through worship, and ask “what does it mean to live out love?” In a sense, as a group, we felt we needed to seek him first and let him add “all these things” instead of us adding all these things and maybe seek him if we had energy or time afterwards.

What emerged from all of this? A place called Fusion. We stopped doing everything and focused all our attention on creating a safe place of community, expression, spirituality and worship. We brought in about seven high school students to help dream and create such a place. And dream they did. They transformed a drab classroom into a sacred place for worship. They wanted it dark. They wanted it at night. They wanted art, and candles, and journals, and a prayer wall, and stations to pray at, and a couch, and a thick carpet, and freedom, and track lighting, and, and, and…and I thought, “How are we going to pay for all this?” No fear, within two weeks a check was written to the youth ministry for $5,000. We met weekly to dream and roll up our sleeves to create the environment.

Then we began meeting.

What did God do there? He met them and they experienced him. He listened as they expressed themselves deeply to him and each other. He watched as they created artwork as a form of worship. He wept as they wept. He smiled as the facades came off and they trusted him more. He joined the community as trust was built.

How did they respond? “I have never experienced God before like I do here.” “I really sensed his presence.” “It is good to slow down and be quiet…to be alone with God and you thoughts in a sacred atmosphere.” “I like the freedom and lack of control.” Students began inviting friends (to a quiet, spiritual, worship gathering). Teens not associated with religion or God began to come. One graduated senior wrote later, “I really miss Fusion, it was such a great time to slow down, and really be one-on-one with God. My relationship with Him really grew during those Sunday nights. It’s amazing how God can put something in my life for a short term, and really have it make an impact.”

One of the special things for me was picking up the community journals at the end of the night and reading them alone in silence. These were ‘public’ journals that the students could write in at any point during the evening…and oh did they. I would read pages and pages, sometimes laughing, but more often weeping at what I was reading. These students were very deep, spiritual, and spoke to God very openly and honestly. Those silent 15 minutes became holy for me.

Unfortunately, I had to say goodbye to the dream of Fusion and to the community that was being built. Within six months the youth minister position was eliminated due to budget cuts.

But experiencing the fruit of Fusion, I have been ruined for the better. Jennifer, my wife, often asks, “It worked for teens, but will it work for adults? Is this something they are looking for as well?” Good question. I tend to think they are. How about you…what do you think?

In the future, I will periodically post some of the Fusion journal entries (withholding names and specifics) under the heading of “Fusion - The Memoirs”. Be looking for them so you too can be blessed.