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Reflecting on some of the most popular posts on our site for the first half of this year, it was interesting to me that this article by Kara on “Help for Stressed Out Families” has been so popular.
It’s based on research that suggests the stress parents carry is transferred into their kids. And that parents are largely oblivious to the stress their kids feel.
Summer brings new rhythms, but not always less stress. My kids just (finally!) wrapped up school this week, and while we’re excited for the break, we also know that some of the stress of school will be transferred to other things (navigating travel, camps and other situations with new kids, etc.). A good friend of mine was at work past midnight last night fighting to meet a deadline, and I was reminded again that for many parents, work stress continues full-force throughout the summer.
If you’re a youth worker, you know that summer can actually be one of the most stressful seasons of the year. One youth pastor I was on the phone with yesterday is flying to Haiti today leading a team of students and adults. Not exactly a non-stress situation (though potentially wonderful and transformative). If you are navigating your summer ministry schedule while also being a spouse and/or parent, you might already be longing for school to start up again!
So maybe it’s a good time to review this article, and consider the action points below:
- Which finding of the Stress in America study is most surprising to you?
- On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being “highly stressed”), how stressed are you?
- Using the same scale, how stressed are your kids? Reflecting upon the data indicating that parents are often unaware of their kids’ stress, would you like to revise your answer?
- Which of the suggestions made in this article would be most helpful in your family?
- What can you do to reduce your own stress this month? How could you create more space for family “downtime”?
So this is the third and final day of our video shoot for the Sticky Faith parent curriculum. Come January 2012, we will be releasing 5 pretty cool sessions of DVD curriculum through Zondervan Publishing geared to help families and churches develop deeper faith in kids.
The first two days have been fantastic. The team that flew here from Michigan is off the charts. We’ve had a blast, and done some pretty cool experiments, like me driving a minivan & talking on camera at the same time (it’s harder than walking & chewing gum). We’ve been working on this curriculum for the last few months and so far, it’s going even better than I expected.
Last night after 12 hours of shooting and re-shooting, we were done for the day. Our kids are at my dad’s house this week so I called them just as they were going to bed. Our daughter, Krista, said she wanted to talk to me about a problem. She then proceeded to ask me questions about how she handled a situation with one of her cousins. She was wondering if she had done the right thing. After talking through her various options for a few minutes, she said to me, “I love talking with you, mommy.” (Yes, I know that once my kids hit adolescence, it won’t be always be so warm and fuzzy, but I’m basking in the glow of those sorts of comments now.)
As I told Dave later about my conversation with Krista, I told him that those 4 minutes were the best part of my day. Isn’t it interesting that the high wasn’t the more glamorous video shoot (yes, I even had a make-up and hair person for the day) but the 4 minutes talking about a problem with one of the 4 people I care about most in the world?
I’m learning myself that much of Sticky Faith stems what happens in those 4 minute windows. Those windows are often the “highs” of my days.
Like you, I’m a busy person. But as my husband and our FYI team would tell you, this seems to be an even more busy season than normal. Maybe that’s why this Christianity Today article on how our busyness is actually laziness really hit me. Our spinning around makes us seem busy but we’re missing out on the most important work. In the article, Carolyn Arends quotes Eugene Peterson’s comparison between slothfulness and busyness.
Peterson: Sloth is most often evidenced in busyness … in frantic running around, trying to be everything to everyone, and then having no time to listen or pray, no time to become the person who is doing these things.
A little later in this short article, Arends points out the most important job for humankind:
The mandate can be stated even more succinctly regarding my task as a human: Pay attention to God. If I don’t, I’m guilty of spiritual sloth, no matter how hard I’m working. In truth, there is an inverse relationship between how overwhelmed I am doing things and how much energy I can give to being attentive.
Even as I write this blog, it’s tempting to think that I’ll slow down during my actual vacation time this summer. That’s when I’ll be able to pay attention to God.
I don’t want to give into that lie that it’s only on “vacation” that we can slow down. For one thing, those of us who are parents know that “vacations” are not quite as relaxing as they were sans kids. For another thing, I spent the vast majority of my life not on vacation.
I hope you are as encouraged and nudged by this reminder as I have been.
Yesterday I had the chance to celebrate Father’s Day with my dad, as well as with my husband and kids and lots of other relatives. Every year I am aware that Father’s and Mother’s Day can be very painful days for folks struggling with fertility issues, folks who have lost their parents, or folks who are estranged from them.
I thought this infographic on Father’s Day was pretty interesting. I was especially struck by the history of Father’s Day and how it was one person’s idea in an effort to honor her own widowed father who took care of his six children in the Civil War.
Here’s a thought: what if those of us in ministry encouraged kids to also do something special for their fathers next week – the week after Father’s Day? And maybe marked it in our calendars to do something special for fathers in a few months also?
I’m a fan of Father’s and Mother’s Day but part of the problem is that it can make it seem like we ‘ve checked “honoring our parents” off the list and don’t need to think much about it until the following year. What if we in leadership did something different with our own families – what if we surprised our own moms, dads, step-moms and step-dads with a special card or by taking them out for coffee? And what if we shared those stories with our students so they caught a vision for tangibly honoring our parents on more than just 2 out of the 365 days each year?
Honoring our parents isn’t just a good idea; it’s one of the Ten Commandments. How can we help teenagers experience the spirit of Father’s Day year round?
This article that appeared in yesterday’s YPulse Daily Updates (a great source of youth culture information with free updates) highlights the ways marketers target moms and dads differently. Apparently marketers tend to make kids’ moms the primary target. This article talks about how dads are very influential in certain types of family purchases (i.e., those related to entertainment). Another article a few days ago talked about the influence of dads in kids’ food choices.
Reading these got me thinking: how should we think about partnering with kids’ moms differently than with kids’ dads? Believe me, the LAST thing I want to do is perpetuate stereotypes. I spend much of my life trying to counter certain stereotypes folks have of women in leadership, or of moms.
Nonetheless, it does seem wise in our efforts to partner with parents to think about if moms and dads would prefer different types of communication from us, or different modes of communication, or different topics of training. Maybe in your context, the needs and perspectives of moms and dads are so similar that it’s fine to just lump them together. But maybe in your context there are some differences worth teasing out.
Last week I read this Harvard Business Review post by Jodi Glickman about the importance of generosity in the workplace. The proposition, early on, is that “generosity can make your career.” While the “end” in mind in this piece is advancing yourself through being generous to others, there are some great principles and ideas for becoming a generous person toward multiple ends, including honoring Christ in the way you serve your colleagues.
In ministry environments, this can be tough. Too often churches and nonprofits operate out of a scarcity mentality: we don’t have enough resources (money, people, time, etc.) to get the work done. So if I give away any of those resources (the ones under my control) to serve someone else’s goals, my own goals might go unmet.
Here’s the basic gist of Glickman’s proposition:
Generous people share information readily, share credit often, and give of their time and expertise easily. What comes across is a strong work ethic, great communication skills, and a willingness and ability to collaborate. Leaders and managers who are generous engender trust, respect and goodwill from their colleagues and employees.
When we show a strong work ethic, become better communicators, and make collaboration part of our DNA, we strengthen the people around us to do their jobs better. I think part of the secret here is viewing resources in abundance rather than scarcity, including the resources we tend to be stingy with (our own time, skills, and stuff). Could it be possible that we have enough, right now, to do what God has called us to do right now? If so, how could that free us to give generously of ourselves to fulfill that collective calling?
Or to say it another way, what if ministry workplaces became the model of living and working generously with others?
Today we’re inviting you to do one simple thing: follow @stickyfaith on Twitter.
As we move toward the release of multiple resources this fall through stickyfaith.org and in print, following @stickyfaith is going to be your best source for ideas and tools to transform your ministry with teenagers for years to come.
We truly believe that Sticky Faith is a movement. A movement that is just beginning. Will you join the movement today by following @stickyfaith?
PS: We’d love it if you want to take the NEXT step of passing the word along to your friends! Retweet, encourage folks to follow, or link to this post. Thanks!
Last week we released our June E-Journal, and one of the resources we shared is a video you can use this summer with high school graduates headed to college. The premise of the video is “What you need to know about faith in college.”
In our College Transition Project research the past six years, we’ve heard over and over that many students (6 out of 7 in our study) didn’t feel prepared for taking faith to college. We know a 2-minute video isn’t going to solve that problem, but we do hope it can spur some conversations between youth leaders or parents and students this summer.
Faith doesn’t have to take a nose dive the first year of college, but it WILL look different. Between getting connected to a church and campus ministry, finding grace in the midst of mistakes, and navigating new friendships over the first few weeks and months, faith can get lost in the mix of all that college life demands.
Here are a few questions you can use to follow up with a student this summer in response to this video:
- When you think about the vision you have for what your faith will look like the first few weeks and months of college, what comes to mind?
- Derek suggests that college is a calling to prepare us for further calling. How does that mesh with your understanding of how faith is part of the college experience?
- When you think about the kinds of friends you hope will surround and support you in college, what kinds of people come to mind? What would you want to be true about them? How will you go about finding them? What do you think friends have to do with your faith?
- New doubts and questions about faith can spring up those first few months of a new experience like college. What do you think you’ll do when those questions arise?
- How can I pray for you and your faith as you head to college?
And here’s the video again:
OK, so I realize I’m pretty behind on my blog reading. Here it is June 10 and I’m citing a blog from June 1. I almost didn’t do it because it seems so “last week”. But it’s such great news I couldn’t resist.
Kurt Johnston from Saddleback Church (maybe you’ve heard of it?!?) posted this great blog last week on what their church is doing to integrate kids into the rest of the church. We love hearing these stories since they so resonate with our Sticky Faith research. As I told Kurt in an e.mail a few days ago, I am so thrilled with his ideas.
Of the many things I liked about this blog, here are a few of my favorite:
- We are going to eliminate much of the “competing activities”. We currently do a whole lot of “youth versions” of things such as a youth version of our membership class, a youth version of missions trips, a youth version of deeper learning bible studies etc. We are going to take a close look at these and determine which ones we can eliminate and jump on board with the ones offered for adults.
- We are going to creatively look for ways to get our students to actually attend an adult service on a somewhat regular basis! The older the students, the more effort we will make. So we will work extremely hard to get our college kids in the adult services, work sorta hard to get high schoolers there, and work a little bit to get our junior highers there.
So I’m curious: what ideas do you have to shorten the bridge between your kids and your church? We at FYI love to keep learning from you. Your creativity inspires us.
So on Tuesday, our whole FYI staff had the chance to do a day of strategic planning about the future of FYI with a handful of youth leaders we think not only rock but “get” our mission. We invited Mark Oestreicher to facilitate the day. I’ve known Marko for a long time; he was my colleague and boss for years when we were on staff at the same church, so it was a special joy to be back in those sorts of brainstorming meetings with him.
We’ll be sharing more about the results of that strategic planning day in months (or maybe years) to come, but in the meantime, I have thought about this recent post by Marko a number of times. In it, Marko invites us to plot our various roles and activities along two axes: will (which seems to mean our enjoyment of something), and competence.
I’ve thought about those two axes a number of times. As leaders or parents, I think we’d learn a lot by this sort of analysis. Maybe we’d realize areas we need to concentrate on, or eliminate. Perhaps we’d get a vision for ways we can and should invite others to join or help us.
And if it’s not obvious from this blog post, this sort of exercise in and of itself is in my personal “high well” and “high competency” quadrant, so I’m going to be a bit biased for sure.
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