Discussion and Questions from Chapter 3

Sorry for the delay in getting our blog updated…we were blessed with about 500 volunteers in March! It was a wonderful blessing! Right now we’re playing a little catch up. So… Some thoughts and questions from Chapter 3…

This chapter starts out with a helpful comparison of Kara Powell’s own story of how she has taught about injustice.

First, she tried to guilt youth into addressing injustice. This worked…for a short time. Guilt-based ministry leads to short-term commitment to God’s agenda and long-term bitterness towards God and the church..

Second, she emphasized God’s grace to the neglect of God’s commands. This cheap grace ministry seemed to make folks comfortable but neglected any outreach to the community.

Where do you fall in this pendulum?

Kara Powell argues that youth leaders need to stop telling stories in the Bible and start telling the story of the Bible. Kara goes on to make a summary of her understanding of the story of the Bible.

In a paragraph, what would you say is the story of the Bible? Does your story speak to the issues of individual’s hearts? How does the story challenge individuals? Does your story speak to the social injustices of our society? How does your story challenge individuals to enter the mess of society?

Kara argues that “students’ motivation to right wrongs is directly related to their view of themselves as participants in God’s story” (p.48). What do you think of Kara’s argument? How have you seen this in your students?

Two “Justice Traps”

Kara argues that there are two traps that keep youth leaders from leading their students into deep justice.

First, youth leaders can perpetuate an “us” “them” mentality where the poor are viewed with pity and without dignity. Physically poor people are objects of our compassion rather than our brothers and sisters.

Second, youth leaders can ignore the issue of deep justice because it’s too big to tackle. What impact can I/we have anyway?

How do we escape these “justice traps”? Kara argues that we need to get students to participate (p.54)…and specifically to ask and facilitate the role of and leadership of poor students. As poor students participate and traps of us/them and the immensity of the problem are tackled head on. Poor students who lead will stand up to the us/them polarization in our groups and they will show that issues of poverty can be addressed…by the poor!

Who are some poor students in your youth group? How do you and your youth team facilitate their participation and leadership? For the middle-class and wealthy students in your youth group how are you inviting them to participate in the story of God's Kingdom?