A Short History of St. Caffeine, the Father of Modern Youth Ministry by Steve Case

Youth ministry has always been around. Some believe Jesus himself was a youth minister working with a group of teen disciples. Paul worked with a young man named Timothy. As long as there’ve been churches, there’ve been people who’ve been assigned to work with the young people.

Modern youth ministry as we know it began back in the late 1400s (modern youth ministry being defined as meeting with teens on Wednesdays and Sundays and showing up for early 15th century soccer games). The earliest known records indicate that a man called Matthias was the first to implement many of the practices we now call youth ministry.

Born in 1412 in Constantinople, Matthias discovered at an early age the joys of coffee. His father owned a fishing business, and the two would often spend long nights together out on the boat. Matthias would consume generous amounts of coffee and tell stories to keep his father and the other fishermen awake. (This began the long-held practice of youth talks for people who aren’t really listening and always seem on the verge of falling asleep.)

It was in his 18th year that Matthias had his heavenly vision. God told Matthias to go and preach the gospel but to preach it really fast. Armed with a change of socks, a septem/ undecim travel mug and a large bag of coffee beans, Matthias set out and was soon able to preach sermons in four minutes flat. Noticing that his sermons tended to attract a younger crowd, he began to work teen slang into his sermons—ceterum concitare, puer (Latin for “what up, dude”).
In seminary Matthias was excused from many of the normal studies after his teachers learned of his desire to work with youth. Knowing that Matthias wasn’t destined for “real” ministry, his teachers assigned him to “individual studies” (i.e. working to keeping “those kids” out of the sacramental wine).

Matthias began many of what we now consider to be common youth ministry practices—such as taking teens to other towns without permission parchments, use of unapproved language while driving the fifteen-passenger horse and cart, and spilling coffee on the Fassbinder memorial dirt floor.

It was during a winter retreat in 1434 that Matthias left the coffee too close to the fire and burned his tongue. Matthias attempted to cool the drink down with fresh cream and snow. Since Matthias was unable to speak clearly because of his burned tongue, his students could only call the drink what they thought they’d heard their leader call it. “ Frapp-a- Cino”—which at the time was Latin for “Wow, this coffee is hot.” Upon sharing this drink with the youth, his group was able to accomplish ten times as much work on the summer mission project and thus was considered to have performed his first miracle.

A second miracle that was reported but never documented stated that Matthias once took some dough, tomatoes, and goat cheese and fed more than 100 teenagers. This miracle wasn’t considered during the canonization process, not because his faith was questioned, but because of the sheer amount that teenagers eat, the miracle was deemed improbable.

The people of the towns were so grateful for Matthias’ chemicallyinduced enthusiasm and brevity that they kept him supplied with enough coffee beans and fresh cream to warrant him staying in each town for about 18 months. This attracted the attention of Pope Starbuck the Fourth who dispatched a group of cardinals to “calm the boy down.” The cardinals met in committee and offered to help Matthias plan out his five-year goals and maintain his office hours, but the young priest refused.

Long respected by young people who eventually became older people, Matthias was eventually canonized Saint Caffeine after his death in 1512, after which he was promptly ignored. He was buried in 1514 when his corpse finally stopped vibrating.

Home

Well, we're home. I'm sad the conference is over, but now we both have the daunting task of decompressing after all this information.

Below are the pictures, but here are the highlights for me:

-- Getting to experience Mike Yaconelli via a video retrospective in the first session. David and I are so new to YS that we really never knew anything about him. Wow. What a powerful message. His wife, Carla, still runs YS and hosted the sessions, and she was great. I love her. Got to talk to her at the end of the conference... she was so gracious. We gave her a LJG CD.

-- Rob Bell, who spoke about owning truth wherever we find it, instead of constantly classifying things "Christian" and "secular." He made the point that if "the earth is the Lord's and EVERYTHING in it," we shouldn't be surprised if we hear a secular humanist speaking what sounds like God's truth. They live in God's world. Sometimes people who don't know God can stumble onto His truth, too, so we need to stop being so dang exclusive and close-minded. It was so good. So good.

-- Chap Clark's session on "Six Longings of Today's Kids," Oh my gosh. What an amazing, eye-opening class that was. I understand why youth culture is so different now than it was when I was a kid, and I see my students in a totally different light now. I am so glad that this was my first seminar, and it served as sort of an intro into everything else I heard this week.

-- David Crowder's worship leading for the majority of the week. It was great to see him for an extended period of time. Although I must admit that 3500 people jumping up and down during "Sing Like the Saved" was a little scary... the floor was literally bending so much under the strain that even the chandeliers were swaying! It was awesome. I figured corporate worship is probably the best of all ways to die, so it was all good.

-- Jeff Johnson, Brian Dunning, and John Fitzpatrick. Wow. Beautiful, almost liturgical celtic worship music. Brian and John flew in from Ireland... a piper and a fiddle player. It was gorgeous. I wept.

-- Stephen Iverson, who led us in a Taize-style prayer service. I am intrigued by Taize style prayer. Want to learn more about it. It is very contemplative and involves singing the prayers/scriptures in a short, meditative way (each "song" is 4 lines, max) and then silence. Again, I wept. I used to be really into the quiet, contemplative, meditative prayer, and my life has been such that I have totally forgotten about what that was like. Iverson and Johnson both served as agents to remind me that that has been missing and needs to be restored in my spiritual life. It has been water to my soul this week to just be still before God.

-- Jars of Clay! Omigosh. What a show they put on. I love them for their musicianship as well as for their incredibly deep, un-CCM lyrics.

-- the verse that was the theme of the week, which is expressed so beautifully in The Message version of the Bible: "Dear, dear Corinthians, I can't tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn't fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small but you're living them in a small way. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!"

I am refreshed, renewed, and have a whole heck of a lot to process from all the classes we went to. It's good to be home.

awwww.... yeeeah....boyeee! It's me with my homies, Grits. Bling bling, bay-bee!

Jars 0f Clay were exceptional. It was my first time to see them... I wished they would have played longer. They were impeccable.

Crowder performing...

Punky and his hero, Andy Hunter. Look at Punky's beaming smile... he talked about meeting Andy Hunter for days. He's still carrying around that autographed CD everywhere. Cute.

Mike Pilavachi was one of my favorite General Session speakers. While he talked, Andy Hunter did the DJ thang under his message. It was cool. And Mike is so engaging.

Ted and Lee... another drama team. Very good.

Punky and David Crowder. No one looks like Crowder.

We brought Punky to the Saturday night session so he could see David Crowder and Andy Hunter. This is him and me two-stepping to David Crowder's rendition of "The Dance." Very funny.

Carla Yaconelli interviews people in youth ministry each night... if you get pulled up on stage, usually that means YS is going to majorly bless you in some way. This couple gave up great jobs to go into full time ministry, so YS gave them all sorts of resources and a weekend away just to help them out. Very cool.

The Skit Guys. These guys were amazing. I went to their class on starting a drama team at your church, and it was superb. I can't wait to get started!

look at my sleepy face! It never left me during the conference.

tired but happy

I have intended to blog during the conference but there's just been no time!

It has been non-stop information overload, but it's been awesome. I'll post some pictures later.

David has been going to an intensive course with Doug Fields, the guru of youth ministry, and has been learning tons.

I have been to sessions on counseling teens, getting a drama ministry started, reaching kids way outside the church, and today I'm going to Steve Rabey's session on ancient mystics.

And now I'm outta time... I'll post the whole deal tonight.

Broken

I broke my fast today, as planned. God's grace is so beyond amazing. This fast went really quickly... and I didn't really struggle this time much, except for last night when I was making pizza for David and David and it smelled soooooooo good! I just had to pray through it. God sustained me.

So today, all I could think about was my Chipotle Corn Soup that I make every fall. I decided I'd break with that since it's soup... and I made homemade bread too. Yum. I am a happy camper.

This was good though. It's cool how God meets you and speaks when you are still enough to really listen. I learned a lot about prayer this time... I realized that I have become really timid in my prayer life... that's such a weak area in my busy world. But I was watching Joyce Meyer on Tuesday, I think, and she said something really profound yet very simple: she said, "Prayer allows us to be violent against the violence of Satan in our lives." I love that. She went on to say that he will do anything he can to stop us from praying -- distractions, making us sleepy, deceiving us into believing that our prayers really aren't all that effective, etc.

I feel that I have been lulled into sleep regarding prayer. It's always last on my list of things to do, and it should be first. "You have not because you ask not." Well, there ya go. My version of prayer for awhile has been "firecracker" style... sending up the quick little short prayers throughout the day when I need it or when I think of it. And those are okay, but I really feel like I need to make a concentrated effort to spend more quality time in prayer communing with God. It's a privilege.