On Oct. 23-25, the North Hills RPC in Pittsburgh, Pa., sponsored a series of events featuring Dr. Walt Mueller, well-known speaker on youth culture from a Christian perspective. Dr. Mueller is the director of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, the author of many books, and a graduate of Geneva College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. The talks on youth culture were held at two public schools, a Christian school, and in two churches.

One of the coordinators of the events, as well as a roundtable speaker, was North Hills associate pastor Martin Blocki. Recently the RP Witness interviewed Pastor Blocki about this series of events and its results.

What did you hope to accomplish with these events?

Martin: We had several goals. We as a church try to have a regular pattern of outreach opportunities for the congregation. And we hope to bless the larger kingdom. If we can offer things to the larger Christian community that will bless and equip the saints, we see that as a positive thing. It’s a great chance for people to see that “here’s a church that’s interested in the community, interested in people, interested in loving people, interested in teaching and encouraging the saints.” That can become a very attractive thing for people toward the church. We are interested in evangelism; we are interested in providing opportunities for our people to invite coworkers, friends, neighbors, family members, to something that would be beneficial and interesting and helpful to their associates.

Why focus on youth culture? How did you decide on that topic?

Martin: It reaches back three or four years. The evangelism committee was discussing possible speakers, possible events, and Dr. Mueller’s name came up. We tried to make the arrangements to contact him and he was booked two years in advance. The type of work that Walt is doing is of interest to parents. We live in a troubled culture where people are looking for help in terms of raising their children and, frankly, church people are naïve as to what’s going on with their kids. In our churches we have people who home school, who send their kids to Christian school, who send their kids to public school. But we’re not safe from the culture just by home schooling. The larger culture comes to us in a plethora of ways. Honestly, I was naïve about what’s going on in contemporary youth culture.

Early in God’s leading us toward this event, I made contact with the Alliance Against Highly Addictive Drugs here in Allegheny County. I went to one of their meetings. My jaw was on the floor at the things I was hearing about what the kids in the schools are doing, the kinds of parties they are going to, etc. Christian parents need to be aware of what the culture is bringing to our kids. Bringing Dr. Mueller here appeared to be a topic that would be of vital interest to parents, whether they were Christian or non-Christian.

Why did you structure the events the way you did—several events of different types?

Martin: Originally we were thinking much smaller. God really opened up doors with the Alliance. We were working on planting the new work in Gibsonia, prior to our calling of Jeff Stivason to be the church planter. We were trying to find some way that we could get the name of the church out in that portion of the county. I had a meeting with the superintendent of schools, Dr. Manley, and we talked about networking. He put me in contact with Dr. Al Wille and Debbie Kehoe of the Alliance and suggested I go to their meeting, I did. We started talking about bringing Walt in and how that would work with their efforts in trying to educate parents and kids in the public schools. They got very excited about it. We had been talking about trying to go into the public schools themselves, so we set up a public lecture for Thursday night. Then they started talking about a training program they had been doing with eighth grade students, and how Walt could be used as a second tier of that. So a number of the things that happened ended up coinciding with their goals. Then we worked with Sam Siple and he was excited about bringing him to Eden Christian Academy. We obviously wanted to have our own public event, so that was what we reserved for Saturday. We met with people at Coalition for Christian Outreach and they were pretty excited so we put together the training event on Friday afternoon. It turned into a really big deal, and I don’t think we were originally planning on that. He ended up speaking at six different venues and giving ten different presentations. God just kept opening up opportunities.

It was a difficult road to navigate working with the public schools and not wanting to compromise. We wanted to make sure that Christ was proclaimed. We wanted to make sure that we weren’t capitulating to the stipulations of the schools. Not that their understanding of separation of church and state is right—it’s not. But it’s what they labor under. I remember meeting with Debbie and Al Wille and putting on a piece of paper “bait and switch.” I said, “This is what I am not going to do with you. You need to know that if we’re doing this, we are coming from a Christian world view and it is how we will speak.” They said, “Fine,” so we didn’t feel fettered. I was particularly pleased in the resource fair to be the last person on the panel to speak and to be able to talk about biblical truth. We need to quit playing games with relativistic thought. The real heart of the matter is addressing Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. This is something I prayed a lot about. I wanted to make sure that we were able to speak clearly and boldly and to proclaim Christ.

Did you get any feedback in those secular venues?

Martin: Friday morning after I spoke, I went back to Debbie and Al and asked them what they thought. Debbie looked at me and basically said, “Are you kidding me? I was in tears.” So she was quite moved by it. And one of the things I am excited about is that, because of carefully working with them and trying to be very transparent and honest and maintain a standard, they’ve come to trust me. They’re talking about future events that they would have where they would bring me in to be their faith-based speaker (I don’t particularly like that term). And they know the stipulation is it’s unfettered; there’s no muzzle on my mouth. I think I have a viable relationship with people in the community and have developed trust. These are people who honestly care about kids but who don’t have the final answers. They don’t have Christ.

What else would you say is a positive result of the events?

Martin: At the resource fair we wanted to make sure that valid Christian ministries were represented, so that there would be people doing serious work offering serious answers and serious resources that were explicitly Christian. We decided, kind of at the last minute, to set up a prayer booth. We weren’t expecting many people to go by the booth. We were quite amazed but I think there were 25-30 people who left prayer requests, some of them with some pretty serious needs. That was a place that we got response—from people who were touched by the fact that we were there doing this and cared enough to be doing it. We told them that we would pray for them and we asked for permission to contact them in a couple of weeks. We are just now getting to that point where we are starting to phone them. Pastor Metzger sent letters, and now we’re phoning these people that were on this list. We don’t know yet whether God will bring someone to the church or not. We are somewhat convinced that when churches do outreach, even if it’s not a direct fruit that we see, God brings people through other doors. Some of our members who were there are earnestly trying to raise their children in a godly way; they’re interested in having more work with these kinds of current issues. It poses problems in terms of how the material is presented and what the best context is to handle it. I think it’s potentially a positive thing, but we don’t have it figured out yet.

Have you learned some things as a congregation about how you would do future events differently or encourage other congregations to do them?

Martin: We’ve learned that talk is cheap. In other words, Dr. Mueller’s name carried a certain amount of weight in the Christian circles. That got people excited, and there was talk of help and participation and partnership, but it didn’t materialize in the way we might have hoped. So, if a congregation is going to do this kind of thing they need to be really sure that the vision is shared and that the people are going to follow through. As we’ve reflected, we’re not prepared to do this type of event of this magnitude again, at least in the near future. We’re thinking smaller. We’re thinking, “Can we figure out an event that would be significant and helpful in terms of teaching, training our people that grew from the bottom up?”

Are there other aspects you would like to mention?

Martin: Earlier you asked, “Why would an RP church do this?” I think we need to be thinking bigger than our own four walls. I’m in the RP Church because I’m convinced of its distinctives. I’m convinced of the Reformed theology and the truth and the power and consistency of the Reformed position. And we’re just going to sit on it? It drives me nuts how we as a church apologize for our positions instead of going out and saying, “These are beautiful, these are biblical; come join us. Come see and experience the power and the beauty of what we have.”

One of the things I’m most excited about is the continuing working relationship with the Alliance Against Drugs. They have already booked Dr. Mueller for next year. The last discussion I had with them was that they were going to try to invite representative people from different constituencies of each of their member’s schools. There are about 25-30 schools that are members of their consortium. They would invite administrators, guidance counselors, parents, and a sampling of teachers. Each school would send 15-20 people to hear Dr. Mueller’s presentations. They would envision having breakout sessions, and they’ve talked to me about being one of those speakers. That was what they called faith based, but, in their understanding with me, is my opportunity to be completely unfettered to proclaim Christ and to bring biblical answers to the problems that are being addressed by the Alliance.