Being a dad of young children means that many of the movies I watch are ones that I normally would not choose. One such movie that both Emily and Callie just love is Mary Poppins. After watching this more times than I want to count, I couldn't help but think of how similar the storyline is to where we are in youth ministry today.
- The father wants a nanny that will mold his young breed so he can focus on working at the bank. This made him completely clueless about what was really going on in their world. Over the years, I believe we have conditioned our parents to have similar feelings. Let's just dump our kids off at church and they can disciple them because I'm too busy. From the very beginning God gave the responsibility for discipleship to happen in the home.
- Even though the children wanted someone who looked nice, didn't smell bad, and played fun games, they like the "clean up the nursery" game once they saw how it worked. I truly believe that students want the discipline required for following Christ but they have never had it and don't really even know what it looks like. We have become too concerned that it won't be fun enough to keep their attention that we have gone overboard with being entertaining and relevant.
- Mary Poppins is very similar to "some" youth pastors in several ways. She was a rebel nanny who wouldn't give references, did things her own way, and stood up to her boss. She also only promised to stay until the winds changed. How many youth guys have to leave because they have run out of tricks?
- At the very end when the father has lost his job, he goes and repairs their kite. All four of the family go to the park to fly it and Mary Poppins' cane says to her that it was rude of the children to not tell her goodbye. Her cane says that they would rather be with their father than with her. Mary says that is how it should be. While they were sad when she left, their father and mother were now there for them. It should be a sad time with a youth pastor leaves, but because mom and dad are the primary disciple-maker, everything is still in place and the whole world doesn't stop until a new guy can be hired.
These are just a few similarities we can take away from this classic movie. It is just sad that we have come so far in youth ministry and yet such a long way to go. In most youth ministries across America, parents have been taken out of the equation when it comes to discipleship and the church. If we are going to see our youth ministries become healthier, I believe we must find ways to involve parents in the discipleship of their children.
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