the image in ourselves and others

youth ministry is always, or i think "should always", include a mixture of same and new. there is a need for a regular, dependable rhythm of connections among students and a need for innovation and unfamiliar territory. there are times when i am very excited about the new ways we are exploring as we seek to become better students of Jesus. our mentor program was one of those exciting moments, inviting adults from various walks of life to invest in the lives of teenagers by providing "presence". another venture which i am truly excited about is our focus on sunday nights, entitled "the path project". this is an adventure in moving beyond learning what Jesus said/did, to doing what he said and did. we are intentionally taking the teachings and commands of Jesus out of the classroom.

our first segment of "the path project" deals with value/worth in ourselves and in others. later we will investigate Jesus' teachings on generosity, hospitality, humility, justice, sabbath, and forgiveness, and this first segment provides the foundation for those experiences.

i think we struggle a great deal with 2 parts of the story in which we find ourselves. we struggle with "getting" 2 concepts, often referred to as the imago dei and the missio dei. the imago dei is the idea that we, along with every human, bears the image of God. that there is something about us which reflects that "identity" into the world. there are differing views on how this plays out, but the underlying awareness is that when we are most like our "created selves" we represent certain things about Creator God.

Our focus on value and worth hits on this idea of Imago Dei. We will be discovering Jesus' teaching that we should respect, love, care for all of the human family, without respect to their ethnicity, language, age, gender, or behavior, simply because they were created with inherent value. they are worth those things because they were made in the image of God, and to treat them unkindly would amount to missing that likeness in them.

there is a second aspect to this teaching. Jesus says we are to love God, and we are to love our neighbor, as we love ourself. this says that not only are others made in the image of God, so are we and we should treat ourselves with love and respect. 2 things which God grieves: us thinking more highly of ourselves than we should (treating others with disdain) and thinking less of ourselves than we should (treating ourselves with disdain) this is incredibly important for adolescents as they live in constant doubt of their worth. messages from magazine ads, the locker room, and the classroom sometimes drown out this message from Jesus, and they struggle with believing that they are worth love, care, and kindness for themselves.

the path project is our way of holding up the "invitations" of Jesus to live a certain way. our first segment will deal with why we should live this certain way. everyone is valuable, everyone is worthy. this will become an umbrella under which we will find the other teachings of generosity and hospitality, justice and forgiveness.

we encourage you to embark on this adventure as a family.

"Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." - the good news according to Matthew, a student of Jesus