Juvy Christianity

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

Mike Abendroth here. What do we have going on today? No Compromise Radio YouTube channel,

NoCo90. We've got, what else? Israel, February 17th, next year.

Get fed online, October 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th. What else?

I think I told you the story where my son put one of my books, Things That Go Bump in the

Church, co -authored with Archer and Yawn, on the book table at Master's College bookstore and then they thought it was selling so fast, it was on the display table of recommended books and Luke just put one on there and then they put the stack up, 10 books, 15 books,

I don't know, 20 books. See, there's a way to go about this. I think it was two weeks ago

I got a check in the mail from my other two books, six months sales in the

UK between Jesus Christ, Prince of Preachers and the Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus and it was a $48 check, which

I thought was pretty good because I've received one pound, 80 pence before and I've cashed every one of them.

I know friends, they won't cash those. I think you should. All right, what else?

Youth ministry. I mean, I want to have fun, youth ministry. I think there's a way to train other men in the church to come alongside with some of our youth.

I'm not extreme family integrated. I'm not extreme kind of homeschool mentality when every youth group's rotten and awful.

You have that approach and I don't think you're considering discipleship. I don't think you consider body life.

I don't think you consider much except maybe Amish romance novels, but of course this is not no compromised radio ministry.

This is like, this is nice radio today. This is, you know, have a couple steroids and talk for 24 and a half minutes.

And so youth ministry, the way we've tried to arrange our youth ministry beginning last year is similar to women's ministry here at the church, at Bethlehem Bible Church.

And that is, I just would watch my wife with the ladies and she would disciple some of the ladies by, let's go, you know, talk to a shut in somebody that's, you know, sick or had surgery.

Let's go do a service project. Let's go have a coffee. Let's memorize some verses. Let's read this book.

Let's go have lunch. She'd do a variety of things. And it was more than just, let's sit down, there's a formal teacher and a formal group of students.

And there's nothing wrong with that. I like to incorporate that. But so I think pretty much the way it works now is for both youth and ladies, you would do, you know, one week there'd be, let's get together at somebody's house.

Let's have a parent open up the home. And of course all the parents can come along as well. And let's have some food and let's have a message.

So last night I gave a message around the fire. It was about 30 minutes from the Bible. I'll talk about that in a minute.

And then the next week you get together and you do a service project and you paint and you chop wood and you do what else, you know, you go to the rest home, you evangelize and just learn how to serve together.

And I could have a lot of fun just serving in those kinds of capacities together. And then there's another time you can just get together, hang out, have dinner.

Maybe somebody gives a testimony or something and kind of just chill. And then the next week you take it off, then repeat.

So something like that. So the ladies know they'll have a lunch one week. They'll be formal teaching the next week. There'll be a service project the next week.

And so I don't know where the family integration people wouldn't like something like that, but that's not what

I'm after. So I was getting ready to teach the youth and of course I want to teach them the Bible. And it was the first night.

And there's a lot of our young people who know the right answers. I could ask them about imputation. I could ask them about tulip.

I could ask them about all kinds of things and they would know the right answer. Yet I'm afraid some of them aren't born again.

Some of them would want Jesus as Savior. I don't want to go to hell. I mean, who doesn't want to go to heaven when they die?

No sane thinking person. But I want to live my own life for a while. Sow my wild oats, have some freedom, have some autonomy, have some independence, and I'll serve

Jesus later, you know, when I'm older. So I didn't want that mentality. I wanted to try to strip away any self -righteousness, make sure that we then would have to have the righteousness of another

Christ Jesus to cover us. You got to cover your imperfections and your sins somehow and self -righteousness fig leaf isn't large enough.

And I've heard fig leaves are kind of itchy, kind of scratchy. But I was thinking about youth ministry and then

I was going to do Wretched Radio and I thought, well, what do you do for games? And when I first got to the church here, it was a maybe biblical message, sin and death of Christ, resurrection, repents, believe.

But there was a lot of other shenanigans that would go on. And you know,

I remember walking in once to the sanctuary and this was not like an overnight thing.

This is just like a regular deal. And so the kids, at least some of them were painted their faces with peanut butter.

And then the other ones were throwing cheese balls to see if they could get their cheese balls stuck on the face of the kid that had the peanut butter on.

And I don't know how that works with, I don't know how that works with peanut allergies and stuff like that.

But I was just pulling up some games that people play for youth ministry to kind of make it fun.

And so then I was talking to Joey on Wretched Radio. He said his favorite one was Snot Put. And so Snot Put is a game that, you know, it sounds bad, but it sounds super funny, doesn't it?

And it is a game where you get some big, you know, 55 gallon kind of garbage bags, big garbage drums, garbage cans, garbage liners, whatever they're called.

Not a liner, but you know, something, some tub like that. And you get a bunch of Cheerios.

By the way, I'm not recommending you do this at home. You get Cheerios, and then Cheerios go up the nostril. And then kind of with a surfer kind of, you know, you plug one nose with your index finger, pushing it down on the side, and then try to get the

Cheeto out. No, not the Cheeto, sorry. That would be a fun game too. See, unless you had those flamin' sizzlin' hot kind, you know, those limon con chile or something, chile con limon.

So, anyway, I just thought, you know what, snot put. I guess there'd be a time to do that.

I don't know when, but we don't need to do that for the kids. Maybe there's a Saturday game day or something,

I'm not sure. And then there's another game I found online, stomp. You stomp on people's feet, and the last one with their feet not stomped on, you know, wins.

You've got one that was guzzle a gallon of milk. Make sure you get the parent's permissions for forms filled out first, and have a bunch of garbage liners, because, trash liners, because they're going to be vomiting everywhere.

There's all these kind of games that you could do. Dunking for, you know how you bob for apples?

You bob for ho -hos in milk? And I mean, it was just one thing after another, after another.

And again, I want you to know, I'm not against games.

I'm just against games in light of Bible teaching. I'm against games to draw the kids in, and then, you know, sucker punch them with the

Bible. And I thought, you know, where's that book that came out a while ago? This is exactly what this book was talking about.

And I went and found the book. The Juvenalization of American Christianity, by Thomas E.

Bergler. The Juvenalization of American Christianity.

When American Christianity turns juvy. So you know, we all know about juvy haul and all that stuff.

This is a book put out by Erdmann's, and he,

Thomas Bergler, in 2012 published this to my students at Huntington University.

And so here's what he says. Juvenalization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescence become accepted as appropriate for Christians of all ages.

It begins with the praiseworthy goal of adapting the faith to appeal to the young, but it sometimes ends badly.

I think it ends badly more often than that, but sometimes ends badly with both youth and adults embracing immature versions of faith.

And so, you know, you do want to make Christianity appropriate for all ages, but then all of a sudden, what do you do when these youth grow up?

And then they want the same thing in the main service. He goes on to say, page five, at the same time in the 1940s and 50s, he saw the birth of the teenager, in quotes, unlike the more diverse youth of previous eras, teenagers all went to high school and all participated in a national youth culture increasingly dominated by the same music,

TV shows, movies, products, and cultural beliefs. Of course, not every young person fit into this pattern, but enough did to reshape both the teenage experience of growing up and adult perceptions of that process.

The story of juvenalization is a story not of sinister plot or of noble crusade, but of unintended consequences.

And there's where I think he's so insightful, unintended consequences and unquestioned assumptions.

For their part, young people try to figure out ways back to be good Christians and make a difference in the world while still fitting in with their peers and have being fun.

Youth groups prove to be key laboratories of religious innovation because church leaders needed to compete for teenage loyalty against an increasingly powerful and pervasive youth culture.

He goes on to say in practice, adults' fears usually faded and what worked in youth group was eventually accepted in the church as a whole.

And it is so true. Last night I was watching Church by the Glades, and there's a new series about fish.

And so this next few, these next few statements aren't always true, but often are.

And so the typical church that is man -centered and it's kind of a seeker sensitive type of deal, they have about six to eight weeks, four to eight weeks for a new series.

And with that new series, there's a theme, there's graphics, there's all the social media and advertising and tying in the theme and it is put together like a well -oiled machine.

Now, is there time ever to do a series? Well, of course, but this is just standard. This is par for the course for these churches because it all feeds upon itself.

To me, it's when Jesus isn't enough, when exposition, when lectio continuum, verse by verse exposition sequentially isn't enough, then let's figure out something else.

I don't know how much time they waste doing all the figuring out, but I call this kind of preaching sweater vest preaching because, you know, you put the sweater vest on and you have these six to eight week deals.

So I was watching Church by the Glades, and they have a new series about fish, and there was a bunch of dancers.

I thought they were maybe Taylor Swift dancers or Beyonce dancers, except you can always tell that they're not those kind of dancers.

Oh, yes, they still had skimpy clothes on, tight clothes, spandex on, but how did

I know they weren't those kind of dancers? Because they were bad. They were a bunch of wannabes that could not excel in the world and they're going to try to excel in the church.

And they were singing some awful song about fishing, and then the man who calls himself the pastor comes down and stands on top of the fish aquarium and says a few things and comes down to the bottom of the stage and welcomes the campuses.

And I thought it was kind of interesting, this part. Welcome the campus over there in Charlotte, campus over there in Hartford.

I mean, I'm making up the cities. I'd assume this is, you know, somewhere down in Louisiana or Florida someplace.

Florida's my guess. Church by the Glades, not in the Glades. And, you know,

Gentle Ben stories are going through my mind. And then he said, well, they've got a couple other campuses and they're the prison campuses.

And they are the, there's a male incarceration place and a female.

And then they get the live stream and all that stuff. So, I just was thinking about Juvie.

And that was exactly what I thought. Church by the Glades, Juvie. Club by the

Glades. To give one example, in the book,

Thomas Bergler says, consumerism and juvenilization reinforce one another.

People who know who they are, who think carefully about purchases, who exercise self -control are harder to persuade to buy products that they don't really need.

In contrast, impulsive people who are searching for a sense of identity, who are looking to salve their emotional pain, who desperately crave for the approval of others, and who have lots of discretionary income or are willing to spend as if they do, make ideal consumers.

In other words, encouraging people to settle into some of the worst traits of adolescence is good for business.

Wow. I mean, that's just in the first few pages. Adolescent Christians see the faith as incomplete unless it is affecting them emotionally.

So, that's on page 12. That's so true today. I'll talk to many people, and unless they feel some emotion, which translated,

I hate to say this, but I will, is a beat with a drum or a bass guitar and peppy music.

Hands go up for all those. I feel the spirit. I feel the volume, the decibels.

But if it's a minor key, and if it's a song, you know, Sacred Head Now Wounded, then the hands don't go up so much.

You know, if it's a lament, not so much. If it's peppy, happy, clappy, that's like a new youth group stuff.

Happy, peppy, clappy, snot put. My girls are like, dad, snot put? It's not funny.

And so, you are immature, and then you think emotions, that's the key.

I need to be affected emotionally. That's what I'm after. That's priority. And it's just immature.

And so, we do this in youth group, and then we're just into the church. This is what we're supposed to feel, but we're not feeling it, so we have to go find a church that does it.

Youth groups must compete against an appealing array of sports teams, clubs, dances, and other adult -sponsored activities.

And it is so true. You have only seven nights in a week, and most don't go to church on Sunday night.

That's a dinosaur. So, they think at least they have that night open. Got to have enough sense to have two nights to stay at home or something.

And then the other nights, what do you go compete with? And what's fun? What's exciting? What's cool? What's happening?

And so, churches want to do whatever they can to get the people in.

Just one other quote, and we're going to leave it at that. A vision for spiritual maturity. Why should anyone care about juvenilization?

Early in my college teaching career, I asked a group of my students, what does a mature

Christian look like? So, I'll ask you the question. What does a mature Christian look like?

Now, start thinking about youth ministries, and are they helping us get to that place?

The author says they dislike the question and resist answering it, resisted answering it.

Instead, they said, I don't think we ever arrive in our spiritual growth. We're not supposed to judge one another. No one is perfect in this life.

Sadly, Thomas says, these evangelical college students did not believe that Christian maturity was either attainable or desirable.

The churches that had nurtured these young people well enough to get them to pursue a college

Christian education had not managed to inspire them with a biblical vision of spiritual maturity.

Unchecked juvenilization does tend to undermine Christian maturity over time. Only by learning from the victories and defeats of the past can we hope to achieve spiritual maturity in our individual lives and in the corporate lives of our churches.

And only intergenerational communities of people devoted to mature Christianity can build seawalls high enough to hold back the tide of juvenilization that has now risen high enough to threaten us all.

So, if you have a youth ministry at your church, and those leaders there teach your children the

Bible and who Jesus is, and they teach expositionally, they teach faithfully,

I hope you come alongside and encourage them. I hope you, as a parent, say to yourself, it's not mainly the pastor's job to teach the

Bible to my kids. It's not mainly the youth guys' ministry to teach my kids. I'm supposed to be teaching my kids.

I need to teach them. And I need to teach them life is more than emotions, and life is more than consumerism.

And here's what I need to think about properly. I mean, parents do it other places,

I guess. I guess they do. You know, you eat M &Ms all day long. Today, I learned that I think there are pumpkin spice

M &Ms that are out now. I mean, what's the world coming to? It's pumpkin spice stuff everywhere. And there's,

I don't know, probably pumpkin spice potato chips. I saw there were some cappuccino potato chips. I don't think

I'd like those. The sriracha ones, I'd probably like. Waffles and gravy, I almost said.

Waffles and maple syrup. Speaking of Juvie stuff, this is a tangent, but hey, it's my show.

Kim was gone, taking the other kids to college and stuff, to Juvie Hall. And so I had the two girls with me.

Maddie's 15, Gracie's 13. I just wanted to do something together and hang out. I'm not the best cook. But you know, you watch

MasterChef long enough and you got to give it a try. And when I was in California with Boo Yon and Pat Abendroth and Luke Abendroth, we went to,

I think it was called Half and Half or 50 -50. They make these burgers. It's in Pasadena, Pasadena. And they put 50 % bacon and then the rest ground beef.

And so it's got a good flavor to it. I mean, can't you just taste that now? Yum. And so Luke got a shake.

And the shake was with ice cream, maple syrup, and with a thick cut bacon.

I mean, really thick cut. One piece blended in and then one piece a little colder that was jammed in like as a garnish.

And some salt was probably in there and some milk, you know, to make the malt. And then they give you the malt thing because it doesn't all fit in the cup.

So you feel like you're getting extra. That was like the best thing I ever had. I could not believe it was so good.

Maple syrup and bacon and ice cream. I mean, just put together. So maybe that would make a good potato chip.

Who knows? But when Maddie, Gracie, and I made them the other night, the kids first looked at me like, you know, I don't know about you,

Dad. It's kind of the juvenilization of, you know, Daddy Mike. And I got some good bacon, thick cut from Trader Joe's, as thick as I could get.

I didn't know where else to kind of get it. The best bacon I've ever had in my life was with Eric Mason's group there.

I think it's now called Sovereign Redeemer Church, Redeemer Church, somewhere out in the middle of Hoboken, Kansas.

Eric, where are you again? Hugano, Huganot, Hugeno, I don't know.

But there were some farmers there and some other guys and they made this bacon. It was so thick. I just thought, man, this is good.

I should be on the Atkins right about now. So anyway, what does this have to do with anything?

I want to teach my kids more than just cooking. And of course, I need to teach them. Here's where I was going.

You can't just have ice cream all the time. So parents are smart enough for that. But they're not smart enough to have the youth group deal.

It's a fun youth group. It's exciting. It's this, it's that, it's the other. And if that's the only reason your kids go to youth group is because it's fun and exciting, then what are they going to do when they don't think worship is fun and exciting?

Because they think fun is peppy. They think fun is pixels, THX, Dolby Sound, whatever the new nomenclature is, new lingo.

Versus I get to learn about who this God is. And I'm around other people who are teaching me.

And I particularly, I like their lives. They're not Jesus, but to some degree,

I'd like to imitate their faith, right? That's a biblical, that's a biblical thought.

It's wrong to say I'm the message, but it is right to say the message has affected me. And now

I want you to see my faith. And I want you to remember my faith. That's Hebrews chapter 13, isn't it?

Remember your leaders. Remember how they lived out their faith. And of course they're going to waver.

They're going to falter. They're going to sin. So then he says in verse eight of Hebrews 13, remember Jesus Christ, the same today, yesterday, and forever, yesterday, today, and forever.

That verse has nothing to do with speaking in tongues were around then. Now they're going to be here as well.

Charismatic churches love Hebrews 13, eight. But you watch your leaders, imitate their faith, do what they do as long as it's righteous.

And the, when they don't live up to the Bible, then you need to remember

Jesus Christ. He's the ultimate leader. He's the shepherd of the church. He purchased the church.

He loves the church. And we have young people now who need to be taught about this

Jesus. D .A. Carson is right. When one generation assumes the gospel, the next will deny it.

Keep teaching them the gospel over and over and over. I have some good news for you.

You can be forgiven. I have some good news for you. Even though you think you don't need a savior because you're not some murderer, you 16 year old kid in your heart, you've hated.

So you do need forgiveness and you're wicked because of Adam's fall and the imputation of Adam's sin and consequently your own.

And even you, yes, you, self -righteous you, you need a savior. And so we're thankful to teach our children about the good news of Jesus Christ.

Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.