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because one of the popular kids had invited her. She and her friend went; I took her there. I said, ‘What’s this about?’ I walked in and checked it out and thought, All right, it’s just a modern youth church service that’s on steroids. Her friends are there; it’s all good. That’s how it started. Then, several weeks went by and she went again, and after a while, she started going more regularly. About a year ago, we talked about it. I said, ‘You get to see your friends, and maybe there’s a good message. Of course you can go.’” But John began to
look more closely at C3 and MyCity and grew uneasy. I asked John to elaborate on his trepida- tions, one of which centers around a movie, Nerve, whose leitmotif MyC- ity has utilized to gener- ate enthusiasm among its teens.
“There’s this Nerve challenge thing. The kids
play an online game like ‘truth or dare,’ except there are only ‘dares.’ In the movie it spirals out of control, where they take huge risks and sometimes get harmed. MyCity came up with their own ver-
The culmination occurred when all the kids who’d done the daily challenge as instructed did a final one at the church, and the winner got $500.” John views the chal-
lenges as an affront to
“Go through me if you want to invite her to a pizza party. I don’t want you texting my kids.”
sion. My son and daugh- ter explained to me that you’re required to do a series of ‘challenges.’ One example was when my daughter went to a friend’s house and jumped in the swimming pool with her clothes on. MyCity kept amping it up. In the next one, they told the kids to go to a shopping mall and spill their drinks all over.
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his own ethics, his sense of propriety. “I saw on Instagram
where one of the main youth pastors said, ‘If I get 200 ‘likes,’ I’m going to run on the field during a Padres game. Appar- ently, he actually did do it and posted a photo of a security guard grabbing him. My thought was, why would any adult, let alone someone associated with a church, promote run- ning on a field at a Padres game? Who says it’s okay to run on the field at a Padres game? Number one, it’s against the law; besides, it’s rude and dis- ruptive. I’m pretty sure you go to jail when you do that. Why doesn’t anybody else care? Maybe I’m just an old crank.” I asked David Chid-
dick about the hijinks for Jesus. “One of our core values is staying relevant, so we’ll take the things that are most cutting-edge today, what’s grabbin’ the teenagers’ perspective and eyes, and we put our twist on those things. One of the most popular movies for teenagers out today is Nerve. We put our spin on it to get the teenagers engaged and [be] a part of what we’re doing. We did a few different things like, ‘jump in the pool with all
of your clothes on’ or ‘fall in the middle of a public place.’ So it’s just these little challenges that we’re puttin’ them up to, and basically, it created a great sense of community where people were bringing their friends and introducing them.” Chiddick insists, “We never asked them to do anything inappropriate or rude; in fact, we encour- age them not to. The kids think it was pretty incred- ible and ingenious.” I asked Chiddick
what MyCity Youth hopes to gain from issu- ing “challenges.” “We want MyCity
Youth to be the number- one place for teenagers to be on a Friday night. In the times we live in, the church has gotten to a point where it’s pretty irrelevant to teenagers. They associate church with being boring and dead, so they associate God with that. We’re try- ing to show them, God’s not boring, God’s not dead; church isn’t boring, church isn’t dead. We’re reaching out to show you that we’re relevant. Let’s face it — they’ll never come to church if they think it’s a place where they’re condemned, hated because they’re sinners. It’s a first impression. Some kids say, ‘I thought it was lame and boring, but it’s relevant.’ It gets them in the doors of the church, and that’s where we can introduce them to Jesus and radically transform their lives.” As for the pranks
that John decries, I asked Chiddick, “So, those things happened?” Chiddick hes- itated. “Uh, what things?” While tacitly admitting some of the challenges, he stiffened when it came to the alleged incursion onto the holy grounds of Petco Park. “No, that did not happen; no one ran onto the field during a Padres game.”
16 San Diego Reader February 9, 2017
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