Of late, we’ve been checking out the hilarious, utterly-lacking-in-self-awareness ramblings of aspiring youth evangelist Greg Stier. Obviously, his target customers, youth ministers, value and adore All Things Youth Ministry. However, youth groups in white evangelicalism aren’t actually very effective at their stated goals. Today, I’ll show you the fantasy — and the reality — of youth groups.
Today, Lord Snow Presides over what evangelicals’ predictions about the future reveal about themselves.
Hi and welcome back! Lately, we’ve been talking about an evangelist named Greg Stier. Like many similar evangelists in his market, he sells his products not to teenagers but their parents and pastors, who grow more desperate by the month Read more
Richard T. Hughes thinks he has finally nailed exactly what went wrong with white evangelicals. Yes! He knows exactly how they became the control-lusting tribe of racists and tyrants they are today. And you will be very, very happy to know that he’s also identified an easy solution to this problem! Today, let me show you the problem Richard T. Hughes has identified — and the solution he offers in turn.
As we reviewed evangelist Greg Stier’s three totally-surefire teen evangelism strategies, many of us got angry and saddened — because we’d been exactly the teens he’d have considered major successes. For many of us, though, his strategies caused us only immeasurable grief — first and foremost because evangelists lie freely about exactly what the costs are that we should be counting. Today, I’ll be counting the costs of the zealotry that Greg Stier desperately wants to push onto unwitting evangelical teens.
Before I get into the harm his suggestions do to children, I realized I needed to explain a popular Christianese concept: counting the costs. This phrase figures prominently in Greg Stier’s work, and it certainly did as well in my own life when I was evangelical. Today, let me show you this Christianese phrase, how it’s used, and how it manipulates the unwary into groups and behavior that will only harm them.
Evangelicals don’t ever catch this essential disconnect between their fetishization of innocence and their ruthless attempts to exploit that quality. And millions of children have paid the price for that exploitation.
Today, we’ll cover his second suggestion: emotionally manipulating teenagers with reframing. I’ll show you how reframing works (or doesn’t), and then we’ll see how successful his use of it has been for him.
Hi and welcome back! Last week, we had a really good time mocking evangelist Greg Stier for idolizing Johnny Lawrence as the villain of the new show Cobra Kai. But the comparison has stuck with me ever since I heard it Read more
Today, let’s examine Greg Stier’s first piece of advice to the tribe — and see how well it works with reality.