A while ago Fuzz Kitto told a story about a cattle farmer from overseas who visited a farm in Australia. After being there for a while the farmer noticed that, to his surprise this farm didn’t have any fences.
When the farmer asked why there were no fences to hold the cattle within the boundary of the farm the owner told him that they didn’t need fences, all they need are waterholes and bores. The land was so harsh and dry that the cattle would always come back to a place where they could get fresh water.
He drew a parallel between this kind of farming and youth ministry in Australia, that we’d often assumed that we needed fences to hold young people in our grasps when, instead what we needed were bores and warterholes for young people to come to when they need refreshment. That by the creation of spiritual waterholes we’d be creating spaces for young people to return to in times where they need to.
I’d like to offer a different image than that of waterholes and bores…
It’s another mobile-theology-inspired image that might challenge the waterhole and bore metaphor and might challenge our present youth and young adult ministry practices and understandings. I’d like us to think about mobile phone towers…
In Australia our mobile phones use two different networks, the normal GSM network and the increasingly popular CDMA network.
Both networks rely on mobile towers to be in a particular distance for the mobile phones to work, CDMA allows for clearer transmission and their towers are able to be at a farther distance from the phone, the GSM towers need to be closer for the phone to receive it’s signals. My basic understanding is that CDMA allows for about 40kms while the GSM allows for only 4 or so kms, (don’t quote me on that though).
If young people in Australia are increasingly using their mobile phones to connect with one another and the rest of society then they’re moving, or have moved to a place and time where waterholes and bores become increasingly insignificant. Mobile phone towers exist to allow people to travel from one spot to another across the city, state, country of even overseas (last night I was able to phone Steve Collins on his mobile phone… he lives in the UK and was in Sydney at the time) no longer are people needing to come together, instead they can move further apart and still be in instant connection.
I wonder if in my youth ministry I’m being called to build more mobile phone towers than I am being called to build waterholes and bores, understanding that young people will be connected to each other, to myself and the church via sms wherever they are in the world.
Understanding that youth ministry is no longer about the gathering but the connecting, that my ministry is about sending people out rather than bringing them back to my space…
I wonder what our youth ministry would look like with more mobile phone towers and less waterholes, it’d possibly be a lot more chaotic but instead of being concerned about young people coming back, it’d be about connecting them where they are, wherever they are at the time, even if they’re drinking at someone elses waterhole…