Somebody Save Me: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church Dean, Kenda Creasy I was glad. I was glad when they said to me let us go to the house of the Lord! Or as Eugene Peterson puts it, “when they said Let’s go to the house of God, my heart leaped for joy!” and this morning that is exactly my sentiment as we come together we have been preparing and planning and praying for this event for a long time and it is just a joy for us to welcome you. Welcome to the Passionate Faith Bible Youth and Culture conference here at Seattle Pacific University put on by the Centre for Biblical and Theological Education. Let me extend as well a special welcome to any students, faculty or staff that are here and President Eaton. All of you we extend a warm welcome. So glad that you can join us and we anticipate a moving of God’s spirit as we come together to hear from him this morning. We have a few, just words and then we are going to move right into worship. I want to invite Dr. Les Steele to come and give you a welcome on behalf of Seattle Pacific University. Dr. Steel is our Vice President for Academic Affairs and following him we will move right into worship led by Taylor Neal and the Gospel Ensemble. We are so glad you are here and God is here with us. Thank You Celeste and good morning to all of you and welcome to Seattle Pacific University. That is official now since it was my role on the agenda. This is a great conference. This is one of the first fruits of a larger conference of the centre of Biblical and Theological Education. This is one of the great things that is happening on our campus that grows out of our already interesting academic work around youth and culture and Bible and scripture and theology. And it expands that work. A few years ago we had Chris Smith on campus who kind of opened our eyes to issues of Biblical illiteracy, theological illiteracy. And this is really a centre that grows out of that funded by the generation of the Murdock Foundation and we just look forward to great things both in terms of these types of conferences but also in terms of the resources you will find on the web and amongst our faculty and staff. So welcome on behalf of the university. I trust that it is an educative and wonderful time for you as well as a time as a time of wonderful worship this morning. Thanks for being here. Good morning, my name is Doug Strong, I am the dean of the School of Theology here at SPU and again I welcome you, especially our students, faculty and many guests who are with us today. It is an honor for us to be able to be here and especially for me to be able to introduce to you Kenda Creasy Dean. Kenda and I go way back. We have had the privilege of knowing each other I would say my blessing for getting to know her for a long time. And what we found in these year is that we both have a crazy sense of humor that we seem to have this uncanny way of being Wesleyans way fairs among Presbyterians. And also this similar concern conviction that Seattle Pacific University Transcriptions there seems to be a disconnect between what we have experienced in God and what we hope for of the church and yet what somehow unfortunately doesn’t seem to be experienced in many of the places where we have seen the church inactive. And so what I of course we could talk a lot about Kenda’s credentials but what is most important for me about her is the way in which as she says in her book, she wants to see and for all of us to have the quest for a passionate church. My guess is that is a common quest. It is one that draws us to be here today. It is one that compels us to go into ministry to all the world. And so it is true that Kenda is professor of Youth and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary that she is probably the leading voice on theology and youth ministry today in this country. More importantly than that is her desire for God to be present with us and to help to shape us into the kinds of people that would make better disciples of Jesus Christ for the sake of the reign of God. It is in that spirit that I am very pleased and excited to welcome to our campus Kendra Creasy Dean. Well thank you, this is a blast to be here and part of the reason it is a blast is because there are so many people from all these different corners of my own world that have somehow converged in Seattle. I understand that is a common experience for people who come to Seattle. They somehow never leave. Anyway, it is great to be here and thanks especially to the marvelous working Celeste who is the absolute most organized person I have ever worked with in my entire life to get this together so thank you. I know we are setting up the theme this morning for what is happening the rest of the day. So pray with me. Gracious God, rid me of myself and help me get out of your way. In Christ’s name we pray. If I were going to ask the first story that comes to mind for most American young people, a story about somebody getting saved. What might you name? Some of you might name Twilight, the way Edward is always rushing in to save Bella and of course the soundtrack leads with the song called hurry up and save me. Somebody might say Heroes. If you watch that show you know that the first season’s theme was Save the Cheerleader, Save the World. Nobody really knows what that means but by the time the third season had rolled around and it had morphed into Save Ourselves, save the World. Some of you might name Gossip Girl or Sex and Money Equals salvation sometimes. And sure enough the music video for the show feature for the show features the Crows song Sometimes Salvation. Some of you might even mention Glee where the theme every single week is how we get saved with a little help from our friends so that we Don’t Stop Believing. But probably most of you would name the mega salvation myth in American culture which has withstood almost 900 comic books, six movies, ten TV series, 18 animated shorts and yes, a Broadway musical: Superman. Now if you have watched Smallville sometime in the last nine years you know that the theme song is anybody know? Somebody Save Me. And I just happen to just look up the season finale is coming up next week. You know what the name of that finale is? Salvation. Smallville of course is about Clark Kent’s growing up Seattle Pacific University Transcriptions years. First as a teenager, more recently as a young adult who is learning about who he is and who he belongs to and what on earth he is doing on this planet. It is a quest that the church calls vocation. And like all adolescence, Clark has to come with terms with changes that he can’t seem to top. He doesn’t quite understand, changes in his body that he can’t seem to stop. Watch this clip from the first season. It is the first time where Clark’s parents have seen save anybody. You might recognized those of you who aren’t regulars will recognize Clark’s fathers one of the Dukes of Hazard. Watch. Ok. Well there is a scene were this happens, ok? Who are we? Who do we belong to and what on earth are we doing on this planet? Now in Christian tradition our call from God and our salvation in Jesus Christ, are inextricably linked. Superheroes have come a long way since the Superman myth was introduced by two Jewish teenagers for their school newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1930’s. but the Superman myth reminds you that salvation and location go together. Kal-El the name of Clark Kent when he is back on planet Krypton means “voice of God” in Hebrew. But when young people do not hear the connection between vocation and salvation made to the church. Pop culture is very happy to offer them alternative saviors instead. Now to be clear despite all the Jesus imagery in Smallville and other Superman stories; Superman is based on Moses as some of you know, not on the story of Jesus. So we have to be careful here because Superman is not or Jesus is not, superman is not God is a cape or something. To be saved is a phrase that we abuse so much. Margret Brown Taylor says that too much education will make you jumpy just even using it. But you can’t talk about either teenagers or about Christian location without talking about salvation. And as we will see, the church doesn’t give teenagers a story about God’s salvation, they will gladly find a salvation story someplace else. Of course Superman does have a problem right? And that is what Kryptonite.