Reading Time: 9 minutes 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.
Greg Stier
Posted inReligion
I Love Evangelicals’ Predictions About Evangelicalism’s Future (LSP #162)
Reading Time: 10 minutes Today, Lord Snow Presides over what evangelicals’ predictions about the future reveal about themselves.
Posted inReligion
The Fantasy Youth Evangelists Sell Pastors (Doesn’t Ever Happen)
Reading Time: 8 minutes 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 to slow down Christianity’s decline. To make sales, he offers his customers various promises about […]
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Counting the (False) Costs of My Teen Zealotry
Reading Time: 8 minutes 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.
Posted inReligion
‘Counting the Costs’ is Music to Authoritarian Ears
Reading Time: 9 minutes 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.
Posted inReligion
Greg Stier: Mobilizing a Child Army For Jesus
Reading Time: 9 minutes 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.
Posted inReligion
Greg Stier’s Reframing Game: Basic Gaslighting
Reading Time: 9 minutes 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.
Posted inReligion
How Greg Stier Thinks Teens Will Save Christianity
Reading Time: 7 minutes Today, let’s examine Greg Stier’s first piece of advice to the tribe — and see how well it works with reality.
Posted inReligion
Greg Stier, Teen-Ministry Huckster, Thinks Teens Will TOTALLY Save Christianity
Reading Time: 8 minutes Hi and welcome back! The self-serving pandering of toxic Christians will never, ever stop amusing me. A recent case in point: aspiring evangelist Greg Stier wrote a recent post on Christianity Today. It insists that today’s teens will totally for sure rescue Christianity from its decline. It’s such a hilarious example of a tryhard promoting himself that it […]
Posted inReligion
Soulwinners: Score More Jesus Sales In This Pandemic!
Reading Time: 8 minutes Hard times really separate good people from bad apples. That rule applies double with Christians, it seems. Lately, naked opportunism plus a complete lack of compassion has brought to light some truly awful apples in a really competitive field! Today, I’ll show you how some of those awful apples plan to use a global pandemic to score themselves some extra Jesus sales.