American Hope

I spent three hours I can never get back this week watching the season premiers of American Idol. For those who have been living in a cave the last four years, this is the hit reality show that has made one person really famous and three others secure future slots on VH1’s “Once They Were on TV and Now They Work at the DMV.”

What strikes me above all else about this show is the sense of optimism radiating from each person on the screen. Contestants drive, fly and swim from all over the US with the hope and earnest belief that they will be the next American Idol. Several are horrible, a few are great, and only one can win. With the odds stacked against them, contestant after contestant sings their heart out to Randy, Paula and Simon. Most leave dejected, hurt, confused and defiant. The rest leave jubilant with a free week in Hollywood.

I can’t think of another experiment in which hope seems to be its own character. Along with the terrible guy from Atlanta and the superb singer from Boise, hope enters the room trailing behind each person who tries to cover Elton John’s Candle in the Wind and Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You.

However, most of this hope is false. Even an unmusical guy like me knows when someone is awful and is better suited to be a mime than an all-star performer. I don’t think I’m a natural at spotting who has the “it” factor either, but I do know that someone showing up in a Dickie one-piece or a Wal-Mart wardrobe can only hope to buy a vowel and get halfway to the “it” factor. Encouraged for years by family and friends who never told them the truth, each wannabe belts out the tune they believe they were born to sing. And, most are greeted with Simon’s “Dreadful,” or Paula’s, “You’re not what we’re looking for.”

Very few institutions do as much to encourage our young people as American Idol. Perhaps the hope is misplaced or false, and perhaps the motivation is nothing more than marketing dollars, but for a moment (albeit brief), every person who stands in line at the pre-screening arena feels like they have an equal shot at fame and fortune. The brief feeling that all of our tomorrows will be forgiven is the same hope each holder of a lottery ticket has before the numbers are read. For those few hours between purchase and Powerball, one dollar buys you hope for a better tomorrow.

Sadly, the church has narrowly defined hope to only include the afterlife. While this is an incredibly long timeframe to relegate hope to, the notion falls on deaf American-instant-gratification ears. In America, when fortunes change in an instant, where one hit makes you a wonder, and where stupid human tricks get you on TV, we don’t have time to wait for the hope that comes with the resurrection morning. If you can’t give us our hope now, we’ll go out and make our own. American Idol knows this, and is waiting in the wings.

The church can’t bankrupt American Idol, nor should it try. But it should do more in the way of encouraging our young people to capitalize on their talents and gifts while they take their turn on this spinning mass of dirt. Career choices are only praised in public in churches if those career choices take people to pulpits or Pakistan. If you want to be a missionary or a pastor, you can grab a piece of the stage and approval. But if you want to be a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker, I’m sorry. We indirectly say, “The church doesn’t value your worldly job as a call to ministry and I’m afraid all you’ll be able to do is give offering and teach Sunday School. Our next Church Idol is Susie, who wants to share the gospel and western clothing with the tribes of Mozambique.”

Because we’ve dismissed hope to the place you go after you die, and because we salute the youth who want to work in churches, we’ve once again lost relevance. To a world that is largely employed outside the ministry and to a world that finds it so hard to hope in something happening tomorrow, the church is becoming less and less a place of acceptance, encouragement and community. By limiting the highlights of one’s life to events that force one to walk down an aisle (profession of faith, call to ministry, marriage), the church misses out on the myriad of other events that define who we are (random Tuesday coffee with a friend, bank error in your favor, healthy babies). By trying to define the moments that define us, the church is like a Spanish dictionary in Russia – irrelevant.

I would love to see churches in general and youth ministries in particular get to a place where benevolent community is more than a wish. I would love to see an institution that can be like American Idol – brutally honest when necessary, but offering hope to all who dare to dream. I love working with youth because no other demographic has the hope and the dreams that young people do. And when you get several in a room together, sharing their hopes and dreams, watch out – you may just walk out of that room an eternal optimist.

Bringing these young people to a place of openness and charity is not easy and cannot be accomplished with a lock-in or a pizza party. It can only be done by someone who genuinely believes that hope is for the here and now as well as the sweet by and by. It can only be done by a group of people who earnestly desire to cultivate an appreciation for exploration and discovery in young people. Like American Idol, each young person needs to be listened to, and needs a chance to sing the song they believe they were born to sing. Youth ministry in the future will be about people harnessing the raw power of young dreams.