Before becoming an officially #ordained minister a little over a year ago, I actually had a lot of previous experience doing youth ministry. In the early 2010’s I spent *a lot* of time with high school students at a church in Edina and another in Minneapolis. (Fun fact: the one in Minneapolis is the church Prince attended as a kid and at which he later got married. Basically what I’m saying is that I have a lot in common with Prince, but you already knew that.)
In Minneapolis I even launched a weekly youth group that I named “OMG.” (See attached flyer if you have a time machine and would like to join.) I hadn’t thought about it in a long time, but a former OMG participant commented on one of my recent sermons, and it brought back a lot of memories.
One of these memories is an email I received early on from someone in the church. This person objected to the name OMG, worried we were breaking one of the Ten Commandments by taking the lord’s name in vain.
Fortunately the church staff totally had my back, and I sent an email back about why I disagreed and why we were keeping the name.
Later on, after the group had been meeting for awhile, I heard whispers that a few parents were concerned because we weren’t using Bibles. I don’t know where this commandment we were breaking came from, but I’m guessing not the Bible since the Bible doesn’t refer to itself.
I don’t ever remember any of these concerned adults asking me about the content of what we were discussing or what activities we were doing and why (which I would’ve totally loved to talk about.) (And fwiw, we were talking about stuff in the Bible.) I would’ve thought that would be more important or interesting than the name of the group or if we physically placed Bibles into kids’ hands, but I guess not to some.
These memories stand out to me because they’re such perfect little examples of why so many people are turned off by church. Church/religion is widely seen as simply a collection of rules and esoteric customs to follow so a person doesn’t go to hell when they die. And for many, it’s probably comforting to have a math equation for getting into heaven. However, I think if this is all someone is focused on, they’re missing out on a lot. For me, that's really the least interesting part of it all.
I understand Jesus to be a revolutionary. I understand God to be all-powerful. It would be pretty lame of them if they spent any of their energy getting offended by little things that affect no one. And so I don’t believe they do.
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If any of this resonates with you, I’d love to talk. Please feel free to send me a message, even if we haven’t spoken in years. I’d love to hear from you. I’m your pastor now, after all! (And thanks to those who have reached out in the past couple weeks and encouraged me to post more.)
Hey, maybe if there’s enough interest, we can start up another group. I’m always looking for reasons to eat more cheap pizza.
~Rev. Matthew R Houchin #Ordained Minister
