Mark Helsel is a 17-year youth ministry veteran. He is a frequent camp, retreat, and seminar speaker who has been a member of the Youth Specialties CORE team for the past five years. He lives in Tampa, Fla., with his wife, Becky, and 2-year-old son,
I am a child of the ’80s. Especially ’80s TV. I remember growing up wanting to be a little like Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties, Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice, David Addison in Moonlighting and Magnum, P.I. all rolled into one. (I realize I might have lost some of you younger youth ministry workers at this point).
I was also watching when “Video Killed the Radio Star” aired on the first day MTV burst onto my recently hooked up cable TV. I learned how a bill became a law from “School House Rock” and, of course, sang along with “Conjunction Junction, what’s your function?” And who could forget the cartoons? Voltron, Captain Caveman, Speed Racer and the Smurfs all had a profound affect on my teen years. Finally, did you realize nobody ever got shot on The A-Team?
In the entirety of my teen years, I never can remember a pastor or youth worker helping me process this TV world I was immersed in, this Technicolor smorgasbord I was consuming. I remember hearing often about the evils of television and how it had rotted our brains, yet no one taught me how to interact with it or practice discernment while viewing it. And, heaven forbid, no one actually utilized it in ministry.
Fast forward to 2008. TV is now downloadable, available on DVDs, rentable, TiVo-able, and even streamable on your cell. The way we and our students digest TV has drastically changed. You could even make a case that, with the rise of the Internet and new media, TV’s influence in a teen’s life has declined. Yet the question remains: Can TV effectively be used in ministry? If so, how?
Can we learn something, even find stories filled with redemption and truth, from the likes of 24, Lost, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, or even Battlestar Galactica? (The new one, not the ’80s version!)
What lessons do Jack Bauer and Dwight Schrute have to teach our students?
Getting Through to the Audience
I firmly believe TV is a youth ministry tool worth having in my toolbox. I love what culture guru Dick Staub says: “The person of deep faith should be a fearless adventurer and explorer, a relentless pursuer of truth wherever he or she might find it.”
What Staub is describing is nothing new; it’s just an ancient (lost?) art. A man who never watched a show in brilliant HD or enjoyed the humor of an episode of The Office knew the importance of being a relentless pursuer of truth wherever he could find it. I’m referring to the apostle Paul. Let me set the scene. Paul enters Athens in Acts Chapter 17. This Jew of Jews, this former Pharisee, finds himself in God’s rich sense of humor, immersed in the culture of the Gentiles. It’s a culture he had avoided up until he was knocked off his donkey by the King, a culture he once would have felt was inferior to the beauty and sacredness of his own Hebrew way of life.