Hey everybody this is Steve, and apart from being the host of “Be the Bee,” I’m
also the Director of Y2AM: the Department of Youth and Young Adult Ministries, and the
Office of Camping Ministries, of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.
Earlier this month, I got to present on the state of youth and young adult ministry at
our Clergy Laity Congress in Nashville.
And I wanted to share those thoughts with you at home, so you can have a better sense
of where we’re coming from when we make our blogs and podcast and videos.
Because, if you’re anything like me, you love Christ and you care about the Church,
and you’d like to bring the Gospel to as many people as possible.
As a young adult myself, someone who was raised in the Church, I can tell you firsthand that
youth and young adult ministries are something we haven't quite figured out yet.
In large part, perhaps, because the world has changed (and is changing), in ways we
don't quite understand.
Over time, it seems that less and less of our young people choose to remain engaged
with the Church.
The Barna Group recently found that 60% of young American Christians fall away from Church
as they transition from teenagers to young adults.
I share this with you today so you can have a better sense of how seriously I take this job.
As Director of Y2AM, I need to acknowledge all of this.
I need to acknowledge, and repent of, the missteps we've made in the past so that we
can shape youth and young adult ministry efforts
in a more healthy, productive, and most importantly, Christ-centered direction.
On the bright side, the past two years have revealed something: Y2AM has proven to be
pretty good at reaching, not simply youth and young adults, but Orthodox Christians
of all ages.
And even non-Orthodox who we’ve helped bring to Christ.
We've been offering a comprehensive set of videos, podcasts, blogs, retreats, lectures,
workshops, and training.
And of these, perhaps the best known resource we offer is "Be the Bee."
"Be the Bee" has become an important mainstay of youth and young adult ministry, used in
parishes, camps, and homes across the Archdiocese.
It's remarkable how widely loved the series has become; one Metropolis survey found that
70% of Sunday School programs use "Be the Bee" in the classroom.
But that's not all.
"Be the Bee" is viewed by youth, young adults, not-so-young adults, and parishes around the
world.
Parishes and community groups in the United States, in virtually every canonical jurisdiction.
And Canada, the United Kingdom, Greece, Cyprus, the Netherlands, South Africa, Nigeria, Mexico,
and Argentina.
And those are only the countries we know are watching.
I can't even begin to summarize the incredible feedback we've received about the series.
And the most amazing part is that it’s having a real impact in people’s lives.
Young people are seeing their relationship with Christ in a new way.
It's affecting the way they prepare for church services and participate in them, the way they relate
to their families, the way they relate to their communities.
In others words, it's more than "infotainment," a video to simply watch and then set aside.
It's inspiring change and growth in the lives of our parishioners and their families.
And it's not simply benefitting our Orthodox parishioners.
Protestant pastors have actually quoted "Be the Bee" in their sermons.
And people from a variety of backgrounds (from Catholics and Protestants to outright atheists)
have actually converted to Orthodoxy because of "Be the Bee."
I could offer you many, many stories like this, from people all around the world and of all
different ages and backgrounds.
And all of this raises a simple question: "why?"
Why are resources like "Be the Bee" making a positive difference?
Why is the work of Y2AM making a positive impact in people’s lives?
First, we have to remember that ministry is an act of translation.
And we're inspired here by some of the great saints in the Church.
Take the Three Hierarchs: Sts Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom.
These 4th century saints were fully immersed in the thought and culture of their time.
They were fluent in Hellenistic philosophy and art.
And it's because of this, because they truly were in the world (yet not of it) that they
were able to preach the Gospel to the Hellenistic Romans of the day.
Or taks Sts Cyril and Methodius, who were also translators (though in a more literal
sense).
They translated the Scriptures and services and, in doing so, laid the foundations of
Christianity in places like Russia, the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Poland.
All of these saints, in their own way, understood how the people of their day and in their culture
thought, so they could preach the Gospel to them in ways those people could understand.
Ministry, at every level, is essentially an act of translation--expressing the eternal
Truth of Christ and His Church in the language, forms, and culture of the current era.
If we can't understand people, and be understood by them, then we have no hope of helping them
find Christ in their lives.
Because this is at the core of translation in the Church: not simply expressing ideas
but helping people to encounter God, to see Him at work in their lives.
So first, we need to remember that ministry is translation.
Yet to put this into practice, we need to do what the Three Hierarchs did.
We need to understand the thoughts and needs of the day so we can best determine how to
bring Christ into the lives of our friends and neighbors.
How to reveal Christ in the lives of our friends and neighbors.
How to reveal Christ in what we sometimes call the secular world.
Yet to understand how, to really understand what we mean by the phrase “secular world,”
we need to take a quick walk through history.
And I'm guided here by a great book: "How (Not) to be Secular" by James K.A. Smith.
It's a book I highly recommend to all of you.
You see, the word "secular" today doesn't necessarily mean what it used to.
There was a time when "secular" was simply a category, a sort of division in the world.
Priests had sacred jobs; butchers and bakers and candlestick makers had secular jobs.
There was a line between sacred and secular, but not a division because the transcendent
was part of everyone’s life all the time, no matter their role in society.
Smith calls this framework Secular1.
But later in human history, particularly after the Enlightenment, "secular" took on a different character.
It began to be synonymous with "rational" or "objective" or "neutral,"
We began creating secular spaces free from the biases and influence of the sacred and religion.
Things like politics and science became secular pursuits and secular spheres, neutral spaces
for rational thought.
Smith calls this Secular2.
For this all to happen, there needed to be a subtraction, a gradual retreat of the sacred.
The sacred was removed or subtracted from science as we learned that, for instance,
the sun isn't a celestial god, but simply a giant ball of really hot gas.
It was removed from politics as we put aside faith in divine right and anointed monarchy,
and instead made room for democratic debate and government-by-expert.
And this secular dynamic, this subtraction story, has been a part of our expectations
for so long that it still shapes our understanding of the world, and our vision for ministry.
We buy into the hostility between faith and reason, between Church and science,
and we take our stand to stop the subtraction.
So everytime someone wants to take down a Nativity scene from a town hall, or take down
the Ten Commandments from a public courtroom, we push to stop it.
We push to stand up for the Faith against creeping secularism.
We paint the story of our youth in these same terms.
The dominant explanation we have for why young people fall away from the Church is that they're
corrupted by the culture.
Good kids get mixed up with the wrong friends, or they end up going to a liberal school that
shakes their Faith, and the next thing you know they're gone.
We believe that the culture is removing faith from the hearts of our kids, just like it's
removing crosses from public spaces.
It’s why we often structure our resources, our programs, even our sermons upon the foundation
of being on the defensive, of preparing ourselves on the “inside” for an attack from the “outside.”
It’s why we arm our youth with facts about the Church to prepare them to defend themselves
against the secular challenges of the secular world.
The trouble is, it’s not really an accurate analysis of the postmodern world we live in
We need to be the voice of Christ in a changing world.
And this shift in mindset, in the meaning of that word “secular,” is one critical
way that the world has changed.
Because this subtraction story doesn't actually characterize the secular world today.
Instead, Smith observes that we live in a much more muddled world that that.
While fundamentalist atheists and fundamentalist theists both exist, they are rare and on the margins.
The great mass of us are caught in middle, stuck in what he calls the cross pressure between faith
and doubt.
Even if we believe the same things as our parents and grandparents did, even if we believe
the very same thing as the first generation of Christians did, the conditions for that
belief have changed.
What we see is that belief and unbelief are fundamentally contested and contestable.
So that people who have instincts towards belief are also plagued by doubts.
While even those who have instincts towards doubt are haunted, we might even say tempted,
by belief.
So even the most pious among us experience doubts; if nothing else, when we are sick,
our first instinct is to call the doctor rather than pray or seek a blessing.
And even the most doubtful among us experience the temptation of faith, to stare into the
emptiness and yet somehow find something spiritual, something transcendent, something greater
than ourselves and our merely physical experience.
There is a scarcity of certainty and an abundance of choices in our current era, which Smith
calls Secular3.
The consequence of the cultural dominance of choice is that religion becomes primarily
a matter of self expression.
It's not about determining what's right or wrong: it's about determining what's right
for you, what’s true for you.
That’s why Smith describes this world of virtually infinite choices, where you are
free to do anything and believe anything, as the "Age of Authenticity."
Because all that really matters is that we are being “real,” “honest,” and “ourselves,”
while not interfering with anyone else’s pursuit of authenticity.
This is why “tolerance” is the supreme moral good of the day and why “intolerance”
is the only real sin.
And this is the key we need to realize about ministry.
For the most part, our ministry efforts still operate in a Secular2 framework.
We seek to communicate Orthodox perspectives to our young people so we can inoculate them
against the corrupting influence of the world, and prevent the subtraction story from continuing.
Yet that's no longer the world in which we live.
Our young people are not in danger of having their faith subtracted.
They're not in danger of falling into a pseudo-objective, faux neutrality.
Even when this seems like it’s true on the surface, the deeper truth is that no matter
how much they seem to flee the Church, they're actually still quite haunted by spirituality
and the desire for a transcendent world that's greater than themselves.
Our task, as Christians in the 21st century, is to understand that we are in this Age of
Authenticity and adjust our efforts accordingly.
We must admit that people are on a quest, not for truth or transcendence, but a search
for their authentic selves.
And this requires us to change our approach.
We can no longer focus on merely communicating Orthodox concepts.
We can longer allow our young people to be passive recipients of data, of Church perspectives
and morals and expect that this will prepare them to go on the defensive.
Instead, we must make them active participants of ministry from a young age, while they acknowledge
that they (and we) are caught in the cross pressure between faith and doubt.
We must harness the creativity and desire behind the drive for self-expression and self-discovery,
simultaneously using it and challenging it to help young people discover that they can
only truly be themselves in union with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, through the
crucifixion of their false selves.
We must move from an information-based model of ministry to a transformation-based model
of ministry.
And we must no longer see doubt as the obstacle to faith, but rather as the very location
where real ministry takes place.
And this, in a nutshell, is why “Be the Bee” has resonated with so many people.
You see, it's a gross oversimplification to think it speaks to people simply because it's
video series, or because it's cool or modern.
No, "Be the Bee" resonates with people because we've openly admitted and wrestled with doubt,
while consistently ending in a place of faith.
Because we frame every episode around speaking directly to the viewer, inviting the viewer
to actively wrestle through a question with us.
Because we frame the question in a way that is authentic, speaking to the the real and
lived experience of the viewer through our own real and lived experiences as speakers.
And, because every episode involves action on the part of the viewer.
Every episode is a call to repentance, to make the choice to follow Christ, even if
it's something as simple as sharing the video and announcing to the world that "yes, I, too, am
an Orthodox Christian."
"Be the Bee" works because it's the Gospel message translated for people in a Secular3 world.
It's the story of a regular guy, openly wrestling with his doubts and questions of faith, and
choosing to identify himself as a follower of Christ.
And it invites people into that journey, to not simply be passive recipients of ministry
but rather active participants and co-workers in ministry.
Active people who are finding their true, authentic selves in Christ and reinforcing
it in their choices and actions.
There's much more that can be said, and we're currently putting together a course to help
Church workers better understand the deeper questions behind ministry.
Look for that in the next few months.
For now, I simply want to communicate this one basic idea to you: over the past few years,
we've found that, when it comes to ministering to youth and young adults, approaching ministry
as an act of translation, translating the Truth specifically for a Secular3, age is
what is working.
And I think it is the challenge of Y2AM and every single department and parish of our
Church: to acknowledge the changing world as it really is so that every single resource
we create for our people has the reach and resonance that, by God’s grace, “Be the
Bee” has thus far proven to have.
Simply by speaking the cultural language of our day, we will reveal Christ to be present in the
lives of so many more people.
It’s time to recognize what is truly having a transformational impact and build on it.
Because we can, and will, make ministry better.
Thanks for watching.
If you haven’t yet, check out our two video series, “Be the Bee” and “The Trench.”
If you’d like a bit more on choosing Christ in a changing world, check out a talk I recently
gave.
You can either click the screen or find links down in the doobly do.
And if you’ve ever enjoyed one of our videos or podcasts or blogs or retreats, I really hope you’ll
consider becoming a supporter of Y2AM on Patreon.com.
As little as a dollar a month can help us as we try to make ministry better.
Visit Patreon.com/Y2AM for more.
Thanks again, God bless you.
And remember to Be the Bee, and Live Orthodoxy.