"...shoulder its New Testament responsibilities to go out into the world and entertain all nations."

If only even that was given as a rationale! Clearly, however, such a "ministry" is not meant for the lost, but for those of us Christians who need more recreation than 50 hours a week of TV, cinema, sports, and video games. After all, if we can't have fun at church, where can we?

Have we been had?

I know Burrell had an extraordinarily frivolous approach to his last missions conference, but I have to admit I have a hard time believing anybody could seriously talk about a Church Recreation Pastor. A Christian would not actually contemplate such a thing unless he was on magic mushrooms.

Do you think Burrell might have meant it in jest?

“Serious recreation” provided the waterslide footage which was looped by the enemy on cable news outlets on the day of Dr. Falwell’s homegoing.

How progressive for a conservative, although the only thing he's being progressive about is the explicit title. One church I attended growing up certainly had a minister of recreation, but he was listed in the bulletin as "Youth Pastor." "Minister of Recreation" would definitely have been more accurate.

I had another youth pastor who actually took his position seriously. He prayed with us regularly and set up a system of mutual accountability that has had an impact on my life far into adulthood.

From my limited vantage point of American Christianity, the serious youth pastor is unfortunately the exception. And I'm guessing most churches won't need to add personnel if they want to follow Burrell's lead--they can just add the title "Minister of Recreation" after the current Youth Pastor's name.

Todd: I'm not sure. It would make quite a modest proposal if it was written a few decades ago.

It is possible Burrell was jesting and I missed it, but I still don’t get that impression even after multiple readings.

After reading Whirled Views (which I take to be a wonderfully appropriate title) I also read some discussion of the fantasy camp for church entertainers sponsored by the Majesty Gang. These taken together with our informal list of fundagelical frivolities and assorted church merriments, it seems entirely consistent.

The ongoing theme here has been that fundagelicals must tell us they are serious because we would not otherwise know it. They engage in the sort of behavior, and then offer a defense of that behavior, in a way that tends to discredit the claim.

I don’t just say this to be mean. If someone wants to be taken seriously, it seems fair to inquire what the term means to him. And we begin to see why men like Augustine, Edwards, Tozer and Eliot never had to remind us how serious they were.

American Christianity is falling apart. Whether you consider the heads of the ETS and NAE, or leaders of movements like church growth or Emergent Church, or notable fundamentalist professors, presidents, functionaries or the signatories to the perennial Resolutions, you come away with the sort of disordered intellectual life which can in no way be explained as a coherent idea any more than it can be considered as a useful movement. What we see here are movements and defections from movements.

We refuse to admit this to ourselves. The only loyalty these movements can continue to demand is a loyalty to “an idea”, but the closer one examines the idea, the more alienated one becomes.

My wife and I discussed this while driving through Texas and Louisiana. We already survived one attempt to distinguish between movement and idea; the statement took a form similar to this: “I identify with historic fundamentalism, not the factious squabbles and institutional rivalry fundamentalism has become”. Those of you who lived through those days will have some notion of how successful that bromide was.

Dr. Delnay recently spoke about how the Keswick movement and the fundamentalist movement passed like two ships in the night, each failing to consider the course set by the other. I think the point is well made. Even in a more general way, I cannot begin to count the number of self-identifying neo-evangelicals who can wink at any abomination they see going on under their own roof out of a profound rejection of what fundamentalists did and continue to do.

Where is the separatism in fundamentalist schools performing The Importance of Being Earnest? I want an answer to this question, otherwise we are not talking about separatism at all.

For those who wish to be honest with themselves, this situation has to be fixed. People who are serious about church and worship cannot just plaster a label like “conservative” on their entertainments and presume their own goodness. They are actually doing more harm than good in blurring necessary distinctions for the next generation.

This is the time to be good, not just talk about how nice it would be to be good.

The point blackmamba made is a good one. Visit any church today and see what goes on, what is permitted, among “the young people”. It is The First Recreational Church. We have got to admit to ourselves that Burrell’s Church Recreation Pastor is just yesterday’s Youth Pastor with a slightly revised job description and a bigger budget.

I spoke some time ago with a typical DTS evangelical; a representative pastor and DTS adjunct professor. He wanted to know where I stood, so he asked if I considered myself an evangelical. Something in my eye must have cued him because he finished the question by opining that the word doesn’t mean much anymore.

This is not just the problem of evangelicals. This is the problem of entire societies who refuse to use the right words to say the right things.

The idea-movement juxtaposition I never fully resolved. It seemed to me to be a pithy splitting of hairs to save the last vestiges of the past's wrong turns.

What was the "idea" in the first place? Wasn't it supposed to be a loose fellowship of fellow separatists. It seems that the idea was essentially separation. The movement was fundamentalism, and she has birthed several illegitimate children - all sons of a perverse woman. Somewhere the culture of the movement hijacked the idea such that the movement now equivocates on its raison d'etre.

As has correctly been underscored by people much more experienced than myself; the recreation pastor is an old idea. I remember sitting in a Systematic Theology class in college (c. 1988),when a youth pastor leaned over and whispered: "I don't need this stuff. I'm going to just be securing game equipment, gym rentals, pizza, and pop." Dewey would have been so proud to hear his idea uttered at a Bible college.

If things ever do get sorted out (and I don’t think they will be), all will have to decide what they mean by the terms they use.

It is no coincidence that Weaver spills a lot of ink in dealing with this issue.

Neo-evangelicals have dismissed every prudent restraint in the name of what I shall nominate the most brutalized metaphor of Scripture, “salt and light”. Here is a movement preaching orthodoxy and social action; it knows it isn’t orthodox and it is staggeringly ineffective at social action. It has been thirty years since Roe v. Wade—and that was a bad law.

Neo-evangelicals couldn’t abolish slavery if they were promised cotton candy and free tickets to see Barney the Dinosaur.

Fundamentalists hid revolting misbehavior behind a pious claim of separation and forever perverted a legitimate practice and a necessary virtue. "Separatism" is, like "national security", now a shredded fig leaf. Fundamentalists do not separate over things the historic churched regarded as the very hallmarks of piety, but they certainly will splinter over cockamamie dress codes and hermeneutic novelties like prohibitions on interracial dating.

[By the way, does anyone in this audience have a copy of the pamphlet published in defense of that policy?]

And these are not insignificant things; social action and separation are their own shibboleths.

The movements themselves spoiled the ideas. All that remains are the poses and the sound-bites.

The idea or spirit of a movement offers more of an ideal - than the gritty nuts and bolts that compose the movement itself.

People foul up everything.

So what are you saying? our loyalty is to a pretty, theoretical idea forever at the mercy of a renegade movement? that those of us who affirm a proper role for separation should quietly accept the movement’s abuse of it?

How do I explain to St. John that separation from the world can now include church hoedowns, recreation pastors and comedies of manners written by blasphemous reprobates?

When ought the good man leave a movement that has been unfaithful to its ideas?

When there are no people in the movement to foul it up?

For what it’s worth, my shoe-gazing post was being spit-shined while yours was being posted. My post barely addresses exlibris’ thoughts, and was never intended to address your valid points – since I was unaware of your post.

That being said, I hate people: they foul everything up (present company excluded).

Oh, not at all!

Present company included. We all foul things up, not just our enemies. That is why some of us seek to be informed by those who’ve already thought through these things. And it is why we oppose the glib innovations of our contemporaries and their contempt for the permanent things.

Today’s church is as arrogant and presumptuous as the world it mimics.

I wonder if Aiden would have made a good Recreation Pastor.

Dissidens (I'll defer from using your real name)...

I'm not generally inclined to respond to much of the slanted drivel you post here, but in this occasion, I'll make a singular exception...

You were so completely off base in your description of and understanding regarding our missions conference theme and strategy, I thought it impossible that you could out excel your propensity for jumping to the worst and most cynical conclusion possible. But your complete failure to try to understand, perform even rudimentary research or see anything outside of your sad little paradigm has plumbed a new level of inaccuracy in this case.

The "Recreation Pastor" at our church is the title assigned to the man whose responsibility it is to coordinate an outreach and discipleship ministry to those in our community who are unconverted and as likely to place their kids on one of our athletic teams as they are to sign them up at the local YMCA or City League. Over 1,000 kids a year play in our varied sports activities. Fewer than 50% are from our church, school or a Bible-Preaching church for that matter.

Once assigned to a team, they are coached by a trained, converted coach whose responsibilities include presenting the Gospel, teaching a weekly Bible lesson, instructing in Christian sportsmanship and inviting them to one of several opportunities where the Gospel will be presented including an end of season banquet or event and a Sunday where we acknowledge the recreation participants.

Our church has many families who have trusted Christ because they enrolled their children in one of our recreation programs. Our church members frequently hear me say that "The day I go to one of our recreation team functions and find it inhabited only by Northside folks I will discontinue the ministry and ask people to join up at the YMCA instead to build relationships with people who need to hear the Gospel." Our ministry has a large day school with multiple athletic facilities that are unused throughout the week on certain days. It is on these days we use them for evangelism and discipleship -- thus demonstrating a better stewardship for the resources with which God has entrusted us that if we left them empty. Our Recreation Pastor does not coach, prepare the fields, officiate or sit in the stands eating peanuts. He witnesses, invites people to church, ministers to families who have no church or pastor (yet), trains coaches and parents and many more aspects of ministry.

You may not agree with the approach...but at least don't mischaracterize it. It has nothing to do with recreation as a goal. The goal is and always has been in each of our ministries -- from the missions conference to the rec ministry -- presenting the Gospel of Christ without watering it down so that the unsaved will repent, trust Christ and experience genuine converstion. Those who know me at all (and you don't) know that I am an unflinching opponent to pragmatic, CGM-inspired entertainment posing as ministry. I'm deadly serious about preaching the Gospel, discipling the Believer and fulfilling the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

As usual, your cynicism has blinded you from the truth.

You were so completely off base in your description of and understanding regarding our missions conference theme and strategy, I thought it impossible that you could out excel your propensity for jumping to the worst and most cynical conclusion possible.

Well now I am totally confused! Do you mean to tell me the Captain Jack Sparrow wasn't really saved? Someone please help me. Pirates III is soming out soon, and I don't think I could go in good conscience knowing Captain Jack wasn't a believer.

Dan, I think you have just proven Dissidens’ point when he noted, “They engage in the sort of behavior, and then offer a defense of that behavior, in a way that tends to discredit the claim."

I certainly don't presume to speak for Dissidens, however, I will note that it was your characterization on your own blog, that left me with a very negative view both of your choice of a pirate theme for your recent church missions conference and your selection of a church recreation pastor (your own term, not Dissidens'). Cynicism had nothing to do with it, and, for the record, neither did Dissidens. You did this all by yourself--we just read what you wrote.

So thanks for explaining to us how you are deadly serious and all, pirates and recreation pastors not withstanding. I guess evangelism covers a multitude of sins???

Dan, thank you for describing the duties of the Church Recreation Pastor.

What did Dissidens say that "mischaracterized" this?

Thanks for that explanation, Pastor Burrell.

Unfortunately it doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know. I grew up in evangelicalism and watched them ride this tired old nag.

Seeing how spectacularly it has failed for them, I'm curious to know how it will succeed for you?

1. What makes you better than evangelicals? and

2. What is your precedent? Can you point to a recreation pastor in the New Testament? Was there a Recreation Church Father? Was there a Recreation Apostle?