Adam McLane

Immigration and Youth Ministry

The Problem

U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimates that since October 2013, 66,000 children and teenagers have crossed the U.S. border without their parents, most of them from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They’re escaping gangs, street violence, and extreme poverty in their countries and usually coming to meet family members who live here.

source

A Reasonable Response

Mark Lane told KGTV that he was moved to help a family fleeing violence in Guatemala after his 5-year-old son asked why residents in Murrieta were blocking buses of refugees from entering their town.

“He asked me why the people were mad at the buses and I was like, it’s 2014 … why do I have to explain to my 5-year-old why people are mad at the buses when really they’re mad at the people inside of the buses ’cause they’re brown,” Lane explained.

Through Border Angels, Lane found a mother, teenage sons, and a 23-year-old daughter who fled violence in Guatemala when gangs threatened to kill one of the sons for not joining.

source

The Question

How is it that youth ministry is not engaged with what’s going on around issues of immigration impacting teenagers in their community?

An owner of a fish market is engaged… but youth pastors aren’t.

Let that sink in.

It’s not a San Diego thing.

It’s not a big city thing.

It’s a people thing.

It’s an everywhere thing. 

The greatest growth opportunity for youth ministry right now is for youth workers to become advocates for teenagers in their community– regardless of social status, legal status, church affiliation, gender preference, political affiliation.

Want to impact your community? Want the Gospel to flow through your church body and into the veins of your neighborhood?

In a post-Christian society people need to experience good news before they can hear the Good News of Jesus.

I long for the day when it’s normative for youth ministries to meet the relevant needs of teenagers in their community. I long to see youth ministry truly become Good News in the Neighborhood.

I don’t think youth ministries struggle to engage teenagers because Jesus is irrelevant or some other cultural excuse. I think youth ministries struggle when they aren’t good news to teenagers in their midst.

Good news is electric. It’s magnetic. It’s viral.

Good news is unstoppable.

Posted

in

by

Adam McLane

Tags:

Comments

4 responses to “Immigration and Youth Ministry”

  1. uthguru Avatar
    uthguru

    Steve Holt Adam, This peaks my passion and interest because I grew up in El Paso Texas and served as a youth pastor there for 13 years. I’m happy to say that I’m the Executive Director of the Boys & Girls Club in West Cheter/Liberty and already have had discussions with our national president on how to reach and serve these teens. Adam… this is the problem with church life, youth pastors (not all of them, but some) get so wrapped up in their little microcosm (whether on purpose or by accident) that they don’t see the overall sociological ramifications of things that are going on in the world of teens. Thanks for the artcle, I hope we all hear the call! Attached is the press release our president put out!

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/…/Border-Crisis-BGCA…

    Reply
    1. Adam McLane Avatar
      Adam McLane

      Why do you think the church isn’t responding to this crisis? (at large. I know some are)

      Reply
  2. rossreichel Avatar
    rossreichel

    Hey man! Thanks for this post – It’s a pretty good mix of a lot of different issues I’m pretty passionate about!

    I’ve found that this specific issue has a few points of tension – I hope you don’t mind tricky questions!

    Whenever immigration is brought up within the church, there are two main points that always rise to the surface: God loves immigrants, regardless of status, and we should too. And God wants us (believers) to abide by the laws of our country.

    Any thoughts on how to react when those two values seemingly contradict one another?

    Reply
    1. Adam McLane Avatar
      Adam McLane

      @ross – I think the latter (the law question) can be a mask. In general, people on the political right extreme who tend to bring that issue up are also for not obeying lots of laws, just ones that they don’t like. Such as, finding a loophole in the Affordable Care Act for religiously owned for-profits to not cover birth control. Or “fighting” for the right to carry a concealed weapon in a public place. Or taking tax exemptions they might not really be allowed to take, etc.

      Likewise, they wouldn’t self-police themselves by giving themselves a traffic ticket… but they expect someone to deport themselves “to obey the law.” (Or worse, vote to pass laws that make life so untenable that people will move, as was the case in Alabama and Arizona.)

      I find people who use the legal reason for not supporting people here illegally just aren’t thinking about it from the other person’s perspective. (I don’t know if they even know who exactly they are talking about, it seems many have dehumanized the whole thing to an issue.) They don’t think about the reality that led to that person (in the case of undocumented minors, a child) to flee for the US. They don’t think about what they’d do if they could move somewhere to make a better life for their family. And, in the case of Dreamers, I find that they just haven’t thought about people who were brought to the US as little kids for whom this is their home. They simplify it down to “well this is the rule of law and that’s that.”

      I don’t look down on that perspective, I more often see it as a perspective of privilege. They see things the way they do because it isn’t them. And these exact same people will and do flip on a dime when the person being deported is their next door neighbor or their daughter’s best friend. Laws are based on societies mores, right? So to change the law, society has to become exposed to different social norms.

      If we take it a step further, as I’ve written about before, it’s interesting to me that people want prices to be cheap but are also against illegal immigration. As if that pound of strawberries wasn’t picked by someone without status? What about that $199 TV they bought at Costco or that iPhone? Were those people paid what they’d expect to be paid? Probably not. Again, it’s easy to bring up “well, that’s the law” and not ask the real questions of morality/fairness/justice.

      Reply

Leave a Reply