Sunday, February 11, 2007

Accepted

We watched the movie Accepted this weekend. It was a pretty good movie. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's a movie about this group of kids who start a fake college because they weren't accepted into any real colleges. It started off as a small ploy to get their parents off their backs, but it turned into a much bigger deal than this. It became a college full of rejects. On another note, I'm in a class this semester called Models of Youth Ministry. It's pretty much a class which discusses different models of youth ministry (surprise surprise) and helps us to figure out our own philosophy of youth ministry. Now, to tie this in with the bit about the movie...I like the model of the college in this movie for youth ministry. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all the stuff that goes on in this movie should be involved in youth ministry. In fact, most of what goes on has no place in youth ministry. What I am saying is that a youth ministry should be a place where every kid feels accepted, where every kid has a chance to experience God for themselves in their own unique way. Youth ministry has become so instituionalized (like the rival college in this movie). To those on the outside, many youth ministries can look like special social clubs where they will never be accepted. There's not always something wrong with the typical youth ministry, but that's not where God's leading us. God's leading us to something out of the ordinary. We're not sure exactly what this is going to look like, but we know we want it to more closely resemble South Harmon Institute of Technology where everyone is accepted, rather than the stuffy, institutionalized Harmon University. much love becky