Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRODUCTION

Vision: Engage the discontented with the compassion of Jesus Christ

Values: The values that will guide our mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ are:

The values that will guide our mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ are:

Relationship - we seek to build intentionally authentic and compassionate relationships to cultivate a community of belonging.

We're created to need relationships.

We can't live without them.

Babies who aren't held will die.

Prisoners who are left in solitary confinement eventually go insane.

God created us with an innate need for relational connection.

Relationships are the foundation of community that generates belonging.

[SLIDE] Francis Schaeffer:"Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful.

Christian community is the ultimate apologetic."

Post-Relational Youth Ministry: Beyond Youth Work as We Know It, Dave Wright and Dixon Kinser

Relationship - we seek to build intentionally authentic and compassionate relationships to cultivate a community of belonging.

On purpose, continuously and intentionally preparing, acquiring, developing, applying ourselves to and improving our relationship abilities.

Seek to build - continuously going after itIntentionally

Cultivate - Prepare, acquire and develop skill; apply oneself to improving and developing.

Francis Schaeffer recognizes the desperate importance of a Christian community that generates belonging when he notes that, "Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful.

Christian community is the ultimate apologetic."

Post-Relational Youth Ministry: Beyond Youth Work as We Know It, Dave Wright and Dixon Kinser

Dave Wright and Dixon Kinser

On purpose.

Dave Wright and Dixon Kinser

You don’t accidentally farm.

You get weeds.

Authentic and compassionate relationships - It’s our how.

[SLIDE] Authentic

Define authentic

Worthy of acceptance or belief

by Conforming to an original so we reproduce its essential features

and being True to one’s own personality or character

[SLIDE] Compassionate

Dave Wright and Dixon Kinser

To feel passion with someone

To enter sympathetically with kindness and graciousness into one’s sorrow and pain.

In a way that leads to selfless acts on their behalf.

More on this later.

[SLIDE]

What Does it Mean to Belong?

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many.

15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.

16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.

17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing?

If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?

18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.

19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require.

But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.

26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

The idea that we need belonging is not new.

Abraham Maslow: the need for belonging is so important, it's only trumped by the need for shelter, food, and safety.

Dave Wright and Dixon Kinser, Post-Relational Youth Ministry: Beyond Youth Work as We Know It

I was talking with a friend named Erin who is recovering from an addiction to heroin.

She told me that the place she felt most loved and accepted in her life was at her first Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

At that meeting the other people touched her, supported her, and loved her for who she was.

In that meeting she found hope.

Here were other people who would walk with her down a frightening road no matter what happened.

She knew that in this place she was safe.

After hearing this I was floored and thought, "Why isn't this a description of our experience of church?"

Post-Relational Youth Ministry: Beyond Youth Work as We Know It

Dave Wright and Dixon Kinser

Dave Wright and Dixon Kinser

[SLIDE] Who Belongs and Why?

Belonging means being able to say: these are my people.

Belonging means participation.

The Fallout Shelter

Belonging means giving and receiving value.

Belonging means being a member/part/element.

Belonging means being a member/part/element.

Aristotle used the word for songs.

[SLIDE]

To Whom

Body - the church body is living; we're to be alive because we’ve been made alive for a promised permanent future and eternal destiny.

Christ has freed us from the ravages of sin and destruction and set us on a path of new life/service.

Made to drink of - eating and drinking are expressions of the freedom of Jesus, tells the story of salvation (communion), drinking the water of life.

Member/part/song - elements.

Aristotle used the word for songs.

organism.

Live like we're fully alive having experienced a rebirth, resurrection, old to new.

The whole body together has an eternal destiny.

Honor - to give dignity.

Root: to lift, carry, endure, suffer, to dare, venture, be courageous, to make bold.

Suffer together - sympascho.

Sympathy.

Suffer with, among, amidst.

Standy by.

Body life, relationship - you have to be among people to be able to suffer with them.

All

Fallout Shelter.

Group of 8 chosen to start a new world after 99.5% of the population has died of radiation poisoning.

You’ve been in a fallout shelter for two months and have another 4 to go before it is safe to come out.

Food and water supply depleting faster than expected.

Only enough left for 4 people for the 4 more months you have to be in the shelter.

Half the group will have to leave in order to save the rest (and mankind).

The group has to decide who stays and who goes and give supporting argument for who and why.

The people:

Dixie: A pregnant 16-year-old white girl, high school dropoutRicardo: A 25-year-old Hispanic Catholic Priest; before becoming a priest, he was a professional carpenter for 5 yearsKim: A 32-year-old Asian female doctor (general practitioner), unable to conceiveCharlie: A 53-year-old Black male military man, recently retired from the armyJake: A 26-year-old aspiring white male guitar player; served five years in prison for fraud when he ran a con game to get some quick moneyEve: A 28-year-old white former prostitute; "retired" for 4 years; high school graduate; I.Q 140Hugh: A 38-year-old Native American male engineer, confined to a wheelchair, but still able to father childrenLisa: A 39 year-old Black female science teacher