The final senior paper post

April 29th, 2007 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0) |

I spent a good portion of this semester working on my senior paper and finally turned in the final draft on Friday. It went through several drafts and I worked closely with an academic adviser to clean and tighten it up. The title of the paper is Toward a Postmodern Youth Ministry: An Examination of Postmodern Youth Culture in Conversation with the Emerging Church.

I am presenting a distilled version of the paper this Tuesday, May 1 at the Research Symposium for Senior Recognition Day here at school. If you’re a student at Luther and you’re interested, it’s at 10:10 in the King room on the second floor of the Union.

I’ve also uploaded the paper and would love to hear some feedback. You can download it here (PDF, 197kb). It is seventeen pages total, but just think of it as reading a chapter in a book. If you read it, you can leave me feedback via commenting on this post.

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed to have articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader. If you don't have a feed reader, you can always sign up for email updates and have fresh content delivered daily to your inbox.

Technorati tags: culture, emerging%20church, postmodern, youth%20ministry
Categories: Academics, Emerging Church

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

No trackbacks/pingbacks yet.

Comments

at first glance i thought that your post title said “the final senior paper LOST” and i was about to leave you a really apologetic comment. on the contrary, i’m thrilled to hear that you are done. congratulations on graduating. do you have a job yet??

Posted by molly on April 30, 2007

so i just read your paper and i have to say that it was the best thing i could have done instead of my Alg 2 and US History homework.
Also, if you have a ceremony, when it is? bc i want to have my dad see Luther and i figured what better excuse to come up then that?

Posted by Katie on May 1, 2007

Dang dude! That is a sweet senior paper. It is extremely well written and organized. I can tell you put a lot of hard work and thought into it. CONGRATS!!!! Hopefully you feel the weight of the “senior paper” lifted off your shoulders? Any other pressing finals or things to finish before Wednesday, May 16th?

Posted by Shawn on May 2, 2007

You don’t have to answer all of these, but might stir some thought and response, but I have bunch of questions for you after reading your paper…

(1) What is the gospel?
(2) How do you define the Kingdom of God?
(3) What is God’s mission for the church?
(4) What is God’s mission in the world?
(5) What must one do to be saved?

Also,

(6) What are the five major companies you refer to on pg. 3?
(7) If the church is not to embrace consumerism, how would you suggest it is to conform to a consumeristic philosophy such as postmodernism?
(8) What is the unified goal that modernism was working forward to (from pg. 6)? Is it the same goal as postmodernism?
(9) What constitutes a faithful member of the kingdom of God (from pg. 8)?
(10) How is theology itself postmodern (from p. 9)?
(11) What is God’s mission (from the bottom of pg. 10)?
(12) What is the purpose of programs in churches from lines 4-10 on pg. 11?
(13) What is your definition of salvation (from bottom of 14)?

Brother, this sentence is a little troubling to me, “Kingdom theology is not a rejection of the cross; it is a reinterpretation in which the good news is not Jesus’ death and resurrection but rather that the kingdom is come. pg. 14″ What is the kingdom you’re talking about? The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is good news because He propitiated God’s wrath from us if we believe in Him (Rom 3:23-25; Heb 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 4:10) it is because of Jesus work in His life, death and resurrection that we can be saved, right? I think a reinterpretation in this way is a poor hermeneutical approach to the text you’re referencing.

Also, you said that the most important thing to impart to youth is the overarching story of the Kingdom of God pp. 15. I don’t know what that means. That we can live in a loving community? What about the forgiveness of sin in faith and repentance?

In Christ,
Noah

Posted by Noah Braymen on May 2, 2007

Congratulations, Jake! I started reading the paper later last night and to be honest…. I did not finish. My eyelids won! That’s not a sign of the interest of your paper but more so of the incerasing demands put on choir directors during this part of the year. Take care and God bless, man!

Posted by John H on May 3, 2007

Hi Jake, I found your site through your profile at flickr. I look forward to hanging out and digging around a bit. Good job on your paper. Postmodernism and it’s implications towards ministry is a huge topic and you covered a lot of ground quite nicely. I agree with Noah about the statement regarding Kingdom theology. If it had read “it is a reinterpretation in which the good news is not ONLY Jesus’ death and resurrection but rather that the kingdom is come.” I would not have had a problem with it. While i agree that there has been a misplaced focus on life after death (while neglecting to teach the importance of Kingdom life in the here and now) I believe that this must be a “both/and” situation.

grace and peace, jimmy

Posted by jimmy on May 3, 2007

Check me out…I did it, my own blog

http://tkchiaramonte.blogspot.com

Posted by katie on May 4, 2007

Hello Jake!
I haven’t seen anywhere on this site on how to contact you directly.
So, I have decided to simply post a comment with my e-mail and such.
Hey man, I’d like to get to know you more you seem like a pretty awesome guy.
As far as I can tell you are in the West Des Moines area.
Well, I should introduce myself and tell you how I found you here I guess.
I go by “Ace”. My name is Jayson Frye.
I own and operate AceFrye.com - have had it since 2003.
At any rate, I found your site through a series of things.
I think the first thing I found it through was Stone Web Design. From there, well, I found this. My introduction to Stone was through snooping on the web to find other Christian web developers. Obviously, I found my people.
The other thing that I have noticed, which is mainly why I decided to say hello, is you mentioned you were a counselor at Hidden Acres. I’ve attended there quite a bit actually. Last year was my last year as a “senior”.
Well, I will leave you with that and you can hit me back at any time.
I’m always checking my e-mail and have a pretty rapid response.

–JPF–

PS: That paper was great to read - thanks for sharing it!

Posted by Mr. Ace Frye on May 6, 2007

Dude — that’s basically the Senior Thesis I was going to write next year for Kenda Dean @ Princeton - only mine is potentially going to be around 60-70pgs. So, a little longer ;) I look forward to giving yours a read.

Posted by Adam Walker Cleaveland on May 8, 2007

Hey, Mr. Bouma! I just read your paper and although the deed’s already been done, I’ll post some comments in case you plan on submitting it to other places…

One: you should define nationalism, as it means different things to different people. There’s disagreement, apparently from “Jaywalking” clips I remember watching on Jay Leno’s show, amongst U.S.-based folks on who the first president was. So, you can probably imagine what type of answer you might get from someone when you say “nationalism” to them…

Two: you mention how teens today spend an ave. of 2 hrs. online per day and that this removes them from the community…also you mention that chat rooms, blogs, and cell phones are the way youth communicate with each other today. Were telegrams and snail mail any different mediums?
Thomas Jefferson received, if I recall correctly, an ave. of 6 personal letters a day…he responded to each and every one of them and this would’ve taken a substantial amount of time. Would this process somehow remove him from reality?

Three: you talk about “information sources” and how what’s fact/fiction is getting blurred…do you believe more outlets for news will give greater chance of “the truth” being heard, or less outlets?

Four: it’s mentioned somewhere we’re in “a new era.” Aren’t we always in a new era? A coined phrase I think is overused and misses the true definition of that phrase.

Five: in places where a culture has reached a national consensus, isn’t there always going to be questions at the individual level which will always be posed? That is, how did the consensus come to fruition: by people questioning themselves, “looking for that home” so to speak.

Six: I’m not totally sold on the use of imagery. The Bible that’s used today is void of pictures/visual images, so why do we need to go about using more of them? The pictoral image of Jesus found in Europe and North American (minus Latin America) is that of a white man…the Bible doesn’t include a painting of Jesus so who’s to say which picture/artist’s representation is correct?

Just some things…hope things are well!

Posted by Drew Lietzow on June 5, 2007

Your writing style is good as well as your intent, take time to read the comments and rethink things in all of the posts there is very good content in them. I believe that there's the element of "Speaking the Truth In Love which permeates the posts.

I'll leave you with Four things for you to think about

In regards to:
"Emerging churches are experimenting with dialogue, shared storytelling, and picture shows in place of traditional sermons.

Whatever happened to "Go into the world and preach the gospel…"? If you take that out then the church is dead, the Pastor isn't doing what God directed for him to do. Some supplemental things are great, but not as the primary source which has to come from teaching and preaching the Word of God.

In regards to:
"Kingdom theology is not a rejection of the cross; it a reinterpretation in which the
good news is not Jesus’ death and resurrection but rather that the kingdom is come. This theology – like many theologies – has profound implications."

Gospel = Good News and it's extracted in translation from what was written under divine inspiration. It's never up to man to create philosophical processes without regard for "The very Words of God." Talk to your Pastor and ask him the meaning of the word interpreted as Gospel in English.

* The⋅ol⋅o⋅gy
/θiˈɒlədʒi/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [thee-ol-uh-jee] Show IPA
–noun, plural -gies.
1. the field of study and analysis that treats of God and of God's attributes and relations to the universe; study of divine things or religious truth; divinity.
2. a particular form, system, branch, or course of this study.

This definition is a secular definition and under point 1. it wouldn't allow for the Postmodern Theology to be applicable as a theology. Under point 2. is probably where the thought process comes from, but it's not Biblical Theology since it is only founded on the Word of God and contextually. When studying the word we need to consider the life and times when they were written. The application for today can result in a systemic method of implementation, but not a true theology.

If you read the comments from everyone thoroughly and re-evaluate it'll help you to develop a more rounded focus. Thanks for sharing your paper it challenged my perceptions and I trust that this constructive critique will benefit you and challenge your perceptions as well. :)

Incidently your paper should get a good grade since there were no mechanical errors that were picked up on, your command of the English language is very good, and you put a lot of thought into it. I'm wishing the best for you!

* BibTeX Bibliography Style (BibTeX)
@article {Dictionary.com2009,
title = {Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)},
month = {Mar},
day = {02},
year = {2009},
url = {http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theology},

Posted by jstratford on March 2, 2009

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

The final senior paper post

Subscribe via RSS

At the movies ↴

Popular Posts

Elsewhere

Literature

On the ipod

Categories

Photos

Miscellany