Irene Cho, our awesome FYI teammate, let me know last week about a new show on MTV called “If You Really Knew Me”. I semi-watched the first episode online last week, but it’s official premier is tomorrow night, July 20, on MTV at 11 pm (check local listings to confirm time). It’s an hourlong show that focuses on helping real life kids move past the labels we tend to use to categorize others (i.e., jocks, nerds, cool kids) and try to see what is really inside the person. The first episode focuses entirely on one high school in California of 320 kids.
I somewhat felt like I was watching the “Oprah” show as I watched – in a good way. Real life kids were confessing real life pain and making real life apologies to each other. And the show gets pretty real (my apologies for my overuse of the word “real” in this paragraph) – dealing with a girl who is pregnant, an African-American kid who is assumed to be good at basketball because of his skin color, and a kid who doesn’t even feel like he can walk into a certain building at his school without getting teased or bullied.
Much of the show focuses on “Challenge Day,” which is a day of large group discussion about self-esteem, repentance, and friendship. What I wish MTV had done was come back to the school the week after Challenge Day, and the week after that, and the week after that, to see if all the tears and pledges to be different on Challenge Day stuck for the long-term.
Nonetheless, this is an interesting show to watch with teenagers so you might want to check it out. Youth leaders could make a whole lesson out of one episode, especially if paired with Biblical texts about community. One caveat: like most shows I watch, I was multi-tasking while I watched it, so I can’t vouch that it’s entirely appropriate for your youth ministry. You definitely want to preview it yourself first and make sure the language is OK in your setting.
We’ve long worried about overweight adolescent girls and depression. While our culture’s obsession with thin and the reality of peer insults remain, a recent study from Penn State actually points to two other groups who are more at risk for depression.1
Instead, it’s girls who think they are overweight but aren’t who have higher risk of depressive symptoms. What they see in the mirror is fat; but the scale doesn’t measure up. For “realists” whose perceptions match reality—for example, overweight girls who know they’re overweight—the presence of depressive symptoms was far less.
The other group experiencing distress about their weight is underweight boys. While the report doesn’t list reasons, we can draw from a long-standing concern that no one wants to be “the little guy” amid cultural images of muscular and athletic bodies. As former FYI writer Matt Westbrook pointed out several years back, this is a concern we don’t often take seriously enough.
A good reminder that while reality is important, perception tends to rule kids’ (and adults) thoughts and feelings.
This dataset included responses from over 12,000 teens and included the participants’ actual weight; whether they thought they were under, over or about the right weight; and their scores on a questionnaire that identifies depressive symptoms. [↩]
Today marks the launch of admissions for our Urban Youth Ministry Certificate. I’m re-posting below some thoughts I’ve shared previously about the program because we’re still just as excited about this unprecedented training!
When we launched our Urban Youth Ministry Certificate training program four years ago, it represented an unprecedented training opportunity — graduate education specifically for urban youth workers, packaged in a 6-course certificate completed mostly through distance education over the course of two years. For the first time, urban youth workers could attend seminary without leaving their ministries or their cities. For the first time, custom-tailored graduate education was available that was created by and for urban youth workers. In our development process we interviewed urban leaders from across the country, hosted focus groups, and developed original research out of what we heard as we crafted a program from the ground up.
Today we launched applications for our sixth cohort, to begin in Spring 2011. Over the past few years we’ve been improving the program, conducting multi-level assessment and sharpening our delivery of this groundbreaking training. We are so, so excited to share with you what God is doing through the Urban Youth Ministry Certificate program offered through the Fuller Youth Institute, whether you’re in urban youth ministry, know someone who is, or simply care about what God is doing in the city.
Take two minutes to watch this video featuring Lina Thompson, one of our faculty members, share about her passion and vision for what takes place in each cohort of this program:
One of my favorite things about the neighborhood where we now live is the communal space where all the kids play.
It’s an experimental urban mixed-income project made up of townhomes and rehabilitated historic homes, and the design includes a few courtyards that have become the hub of excitement for my kids. The most-asked question on any given day (especially in the summer) goes something like, “When can we play outside?” followed by “Can we ask (insert the name of any favorite friend of the day) to play?”
One of the things I love about that is the ways this communal outside play fosters creativity. The neighborhood kids are forever dreaming up schemes of all sorts—spy plots, bug hunts, weddings, school, and the like. Sometimes they’re a little too ambitious with their creativity, in fact, and we’ve had to shut down some over-the-top plans.
This recent article from Newsweek highlights the importance of such play in kids’ lives. While IQ scores have been going up with each generation, creativity scores are now falling among American kids. The most serious decline is among K-6th grade kids since 1990. Yes, that means our youth groups (and younger staff/volunteer teams) are impacted by this decline in creative thinking. The authors point out:
Preschool children, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day. Why, why, why—sometimes parents just wish it’d stop. Tragically, it does stop. By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. It’s no coincidence that this same time is when student motivation and engagement plummet. They didn’t stop asking questions because they lost interest: it’s the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions.
As we face our own students in ministry this week, let’s be sure we’re not just another place where questions get squashed and information gets pushed. Let’s also not settle for the entertainment backstops that fill time and space like so much other unimaginative fluff in kids’ lives. Instead, what if youth group becomes the place where creativity is unleashed, where questions are welcomed, and where God’s Kingdom dreams are dreamed?
A recent study is calling attention to the trouble kids have with paying attention.
This Futurity article summarizes research at Iowa State on both elementary and college-age students. The gist of their findings: More than 2 hours per day of screen time (defined as television and video games) for either group was connected with higher attention problems. In fact, those watching for over 2 hours per day were twice as likely to be above average in attention problems a year later.
It’s astounding to me that they didn’t include computer screen time (or phone screen time) in this study, but apparently this is the first longitudinal study attempting to explore video gaming and later attention problems. In other words, we still know very, very little about the long-term effects of extended play (in this or other areas). According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study earlier this year, average combined media use for kids is over 7.5 hours/day (way, way more than 2 hours!), and only 30% of kids say parents set rules for their media use.
A longer article from the research team was published in the July edition of the professional journal Pediatrics. It’s available online here.
A couple of weeks ago in my church, a whole family was baptized. Mom, Dad, and three kids. It was incredible.
As I’ve been reflecting on what made it so memorable, what stands out most is the way that shared ritual now becomes a powerful part of their family’s shared story. I’d bet few us regularly remember or celebrate our baptisms after the fact, in spite of baptism’s significance. Yet for this family, that moment is indelibly written into not just their individual faith journeys, but their collective family journey.
We can’t all be baptized at the same time as our kids, and that’s not the point of mentioning it here. But perhaps we can think of ways to create meaningful rituals together that become part of the faith language we share and story we tell. I know a family who has “baptism birthdays” each year where they remember their kids’ baptisms with a special family meal. In our own family we regularly try to share the Lord’s Supper as part of a meal together.
Rituals shape us in powerful ways, in part because we share them with those who are closest to us. What rituals are shaping your family? What about the families of students in your ministry?
I don’t know about you, but I get uncomfortable when people talk about raising money for ministry. It raises my heart rate. It rubs me the wrong way.
Maybe it’s because those words—“raising money”—get it all wrong. When the focus is on the bottom line—getting cash—we miss a host of opportunities. We miss the opportunity to cultivate a relationship with donors that honors their humanity as much as their gift. We miss the opportunity to connect kids who are served with the generosity and sometimes sacrificial offering represented by those gifts. And we miss the opportunity to deepen our faith by trusting God and others to be in the process.
I appreciate the way Larry Acosta shares about fund development relationships in this workshop we’re sharing in this month’s E-Journal. It’s an hour and a half of listening, but it will be time well spent if any part of your job is related to giving, asking for, or receiving money for ministry.
And I’m curious to know: What words and images help you get beyond the stigma of “raising money” in ways that make you and others feel more connected?
You may have noticed that we seem to care a lot about rest and self-care around here.
You’re right.
We care a lot because as we listen to youth workers from around the country, in urban, suburban, and rural settings, we continue to hear that most folks aren’t resting well. We don’t make time for it. We don’t know how to stop. And as a result, we suffer—not just our bodies, minds, and souls, but in our ministries too.
This month’s E-Journal features the start of a new 4-part series on rest by veteran youth worker and FYI Advisory Council member April Diaz. We’re excited to share these resources with you to add to your Sabbath-keeping toolbox, because it matters—perhaps more than just about anything else you do in ministry.
So take some time with this first article, then shut down your computer and go find a place to put it into practice! We pray you’ll make time in the midst of summer chaos to truly rest.
I had a great meeting with an urban youth leader last week who is leading an after school program with kids. There are 3 foci for the after school program: tutoring, mentoring, and enrichment. The first two foci require adults who will invest in kids on a long-term basis. But the enrichment part of the ministry gives adults a chance to volunteer for a shorter-term commitment.
Adults who have skills in the area of art, dance, cooking, or creative writing can volunteer to “enrich” kids lives with ten weeks of lessons. By this ten week commitment, adults who couldn’t volunteer 52 weeks/year can still impact kids.
Obviously, kids need adults who will invest in them every week for the long-haul. But in creating a constellation of adults who care about kids, I love this creative, more short-term way to connect kids with adults. It’s an important piece of the intergenerational web that we have seen make a real difference with kids.
Doug’s got some great insights on how to help students share their faith. He mentioned that instead of asking college students, “How are you doing at sharing your faith?”, he’s found it more effective to ask, “Where is your friend at?” (pardon the bad grammar). That way, the focus isn’t on pointing your finger at your own students, but rather on helping them think about what God is doing in their friend. The focus is on the spiritual state of the friend, not an assessment of how your student is doing.
This shift is subtle but important. I imagine our students would be sharing their faith more if we invited them to think more about what is best with their friend.
One of the things that is heartbreaking to me, and I’m guessing you too, is how poverty is such a vicious cycle – so hard to escape. An article in the Washington Post a few days ago…
and have recommended it a number of times. I haven’t read his newer book yet called 
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