Last week I talked with Sam Coleman, a youth worker in our Urban Youth Ministry Certificate Program who works with Young Life. Sam shared about the great experience he and his team of leaders had with 33 kids at a recent summer camp.
I love how strategic Sam and his team are being with their camp follow-up. Their goal is that they meet with each of the 33 kids in the first two weeks after camp. That way they can help each kid make sure that what they learned at camp isn’t completely erased by life back home. It reminded me of our own FYI resource, Deep Justice Journeys, that has highlighted the importance of meeting with kids after a short-term mission trip.
I love the specificity and immediacy of this goal. What follow-up are you doing after your camp?
If you’re a youth worker or parent who stays on top of teen online trends, you won’t find any surprises in this week’s report from McAfee (the virus-protection software folks) about adolescent behavior called “The Secret Online Lives of Teens.” It doesn’t reveal any new “secrets” despite its title.
But if you’re new to the discussion, or know of other parents who could use a quick update, this is an interesting primer about teen online behavior. It is, of course, from a retailer of online products, so the bent is toward safety. The important point is that discussions between parents and kids are encouraged. Consider passing this on to parents and students this week and suggesting dialogue between the two groups — What seems accurate? What seems off-base? What’s under-reported? What can we learn?
When we cultivate friendships with those we serve instead of just seeing them as recipients of our giving, it can get awkward.
Some of the implications of befriending the poor are uncomfortable, even embarrassing:
Our patterns of consumption become hard to hide
Our possessions become more visible
Our assumptions about people who are poor get turned upside down
Our primary commitments are exposed, and they may not turn out to be what we think or say they are
In other words, there are a lot of reasons to keep distance between ourselves and those who are poor. Many of them have to do with avoiding the fact that our lifestyles are hard to hide from friends, and much easier to hide from strangers.
So why not just keep the poor strangers? Many of us can recite Jesus’ response to that question in Matthew 25 (“Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did not do for me…”). As Chris Heuertz and Christine Pohl remind us, friendship with Jesus is at the core of this question.
Jesus offers us friendship, and that gift shapes a surprisingly subversive missional paradigm. A grateful response to God’s gift of friendship involves offering that same gift to others—whether family or strangers, coworkers or children who live on the street. Offering and receiving friendship breaks down the barriers of “us” and “them” and opens up possibilities of healing and reconciliation.1
Friendship offered out of gratitude to God doesn’t need to provoke guilt or shame for what we have (or don’t have). At the same time, if we’re going to let people get close enough to be friends, we have to open ourselves to the possibility that it might get uncomfortable. That sounds a lot like the incarnation to me.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been reflecting on Chris Heuertz and Christine Pohl’s new book Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission, which is centered around the question: If we put friendship at the center of our concern for the poor, what might change? Chris speaks out of his experience as the international director of Word Made Flesh, a community “Serving Jesus among the poorest of the poor” across the globe. I have high respect for Word Made Flesh and for my friends who serve with them.
One of the issues they raise is particularly poignant for those of us leading short-term mission trips this summer. The authors note, “Our friends are not projects or personal embodiments of a cause, but partners in community” (p 38). As such, we have to take care to evaluate our own practices. To what extent do we tend to turn people we meet on trips into projects or representatives of causes?
One test they propose is to ask what our friends on the margins would think if they read our support letters or saw our presentation to the church back home? Sometimes we write or share in ways that are “shockingly transparent—about other people’s lives.” Recounting our tendency toward travel voyeurism, Heuertz and Pohl challenge:
Imagine how you would feel if your worst moment (a day when bad hair, no sleep and difficult circumstances combined to make you look terrible) was photographed and then displayed during Sunday morning worship (p 39).
In contrast, what if we put together our follow-up letters as if our new friends were reading along? What if we shared in the congregation imagining they were guests in our audience? Better yet, if it’s feasible, what about inviting some of those folks to actually come and be present for that sharing?
In a day when “to friend” has become a verb referring to a virtual activity, grounded explorations of friendship seem like refreshing reminders. I recently found one of these reminders in Chris Heuertz and Christine Pohl’s new book Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission.
Based out of work with some of the most marginalized and impoverished people around the world—many of whom are sexually exploited women and children—Chris and Christine explore a simple question: If we put friendship at the center of our concern for the poor, what might change?
This opens the door to all kinds of follow-up questions: “What difference does it make for mission, discipleship, and the church when friendship with people who are poor is a central dimension of our lives? What is the impact on those with whom we minister? How are we changed? What if the resources they have also meet our needs? What if in sharing life together as friends we all move closer to Jesus’ heart?” (p 10, 19).
Recovering the humanity and basic dignity of everyone involved helps redefine the roles of “giver” and “receiver” in a new kind of mutuality under the more central relationship: friend.
Nearly one in three Americans doesn’t know a single neighbor. You know, the people who actually live near you kind of neighbors. None. Another third know “some” and 24% know “most” of the people who live close to them.
Yet, in a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project group released recently, a significant correlation was found between knowing neighbors and having face-to-face talks around community issues. Those who aren’t talking face-to-face about community issues seem to, in general, not be talking at all. When analyzing the use of various forms of technology/media to discuss community issues, the study found that very few access other platforms to interact with neighbors on community issues (or at all, really).
What stands out to me is that justice in our communities is directly related to awareness. And when we aren’t having conversations about the issues, we’re not likely to be aware of the issues or collaborating toward possible solutions. Further, when we don’t know our neighbors in the first place, it’s so easy to ignore community concerns altogether. Living in a moderately-high-crime neighborhood, I see this play out all the time. There are folks who slide in and out and don’t get involved, and others who know everyone on the block and tend to be really aware of the latest news. The latter are more likely to start conversations about how we can make a difference.
But the first step is taking time to learn names. That’s inconvenient and takes effort. To 1 in 3 of us, it’s not worth it. Which one are you?
In case you were wondering, science still agrees that drinking alcohol is bad for teenagers. Specifically, teen brain cells (still growing, especially in the areas of judgment and critical thinking) can be damaged by alcohol consumption, particularly binge drinking.
But it may seem as though parents’ influence has waned in the debate over how teens make drinking decisions. According to research at Penn State, this is a false perception. This NPR report by Michelle Trudeau highlights that and other research that basically agree: parental rules matter.
When she tracked parents’ rules in high school about drinking across the leap to college, Penn State researcher Caitlin Abar found, “Parents who disapproved completely of underage alcohol use tended to have students who engaged in less drinking, less binge drinking, once in college.” The opposite was also true: parent permissiveness about teen drinking in high school is a significant risk factor for later binge drinking.
The rules matter. Parents who didn’t let their kids drink at all in high school had the most protective effect, even in college.
I’m not surprised that parental influence matters, but I admit I was a bit surprised that holding no-tolerance rules in high school led to less drinking in college. Researchers attribute this to internalization (the “rule” becomes part of who I am—it’s not just my parent’s rule but my choice about how I live). But plenty of us know kids who drink in the face of rules, or who strictly avoid alcohol in high school and then go for it in college. This article by Krista Kubiak from our College Transition research team gets at some of those internalization dynamics. But what do you think? In the midst of helping parents become more understanding of teen development and social dynamics, do we sometimes insinuate that they shouldn’t actually set clear boundaries and stick to them? Because if we are, research would prove us wrong.
Beginning in early adolescence, kids experience a common feeling that they have an imaginary audience—a very real sense that “everyone’s looking at me.” I remember how painful that was, especially given how much time I spent on my hair in the late 80′s.
The new question has become, is that audience actually imaginary?
New research highlighted in recent articles like “Stupid Teenage Tricks, for a Virtual Audience,” wonders aloud if the perpetual availability of online and mobile self-broadcasting is also boosting risk-taking behaviors. In other words, are teenagers taking more risks because they can post their outcomes online, or are we just able to see more of this stuff because of new media? Researchers like Dr. Megan A. Moreno, an adolescent medicine specialist at the University of Wisconsin, are observing:
For kids in middle school, a really normal part of that is the perception that you’re on stage, and that everybody is looking at you. But for kids today it’s a different world they’re growing up in. It’s a world where there really is that audience.
Research continues to affirm that risk-taking is biologically inherent to adolescence. This Futurity article notes that the brain’s neurotransmitter system is hardwired to reward kids for risk-taking because it might turn out well (you know—fun, exciting, and maybe someone will watch it on YouTube and I’ll become the next viral sensation).
Case in point this week: Abby Sunderland’s attempt at world-circumnavigation (and critiques like this one of the parental responsibilities of risk-taking “superkids”). The grand irony, of course, is that we’re all watching her. And the fact that her boat’s mast was snapped by 25-foot waves in a remote ocean storm—leading to a highly-publicized search-and-rescue mission—means she is receiving even more of a “real” audience to reward her efforts than if she’d made it around the globe without a glitch.
So what do you think: How does the shift from imaginary to “real” (even if virtual) audience impact adolescent risk-taking? And what kinds of conversations can we have with kids about it?
Last week I had a chance to chat for a few minutes with Reggie Joiner from reThink. I’ve gotten to know Reggie a bit this past year and impressed with his passion and his creative thinking about “orange” ministry (“yellow” stands for the church; “red” stands for the family – how can we bring the two together to make “orange”).
Reggie returned recently from Haiti. I’m hearing about more and more folks going to Haiti. That’s probably a good thing. But when I asked Reggie how the trip was, he said parts of it were discouraging given how far that nation has to go in its rebuilding. I told him I had been invited to go to Haiti with a short-term mission agency but couldn’t make it work with my schedule. He said, “Folks going there really need to make sure they go with folks who know what they are doing and can speak the language.”
I thought immediately of the important work done by Dave Livermore, the Executive Director of the Global Learning Center at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. Dave’s a good friend whose writing on Cultural Intelligence has helped FYI and me personally understand the importance of really getting to know the cultural you will be serving, and making sure that you are doing work that is truly helpful.
For you doing a short-term mission trip this summer, have you asked — really asked — your host what they need? Have you really listened? And are you willing to set aside your own agenda for the needs of the folks you are serving?
I spoke about Deep Justice Journeysat a church recently. One of the youth ministry volunteers approached me afterward. I could tell by the questions she asked during my presentation that she really cared about justice and was wrestling with what it looked like with the students in her small group, as well as her own kids.
She started the conversation after my presentation by telling me, “I’m a staunch conservative, and I’m concerned that what you’re talking about with justice can rob those who are poor of their own personal responsibility. Yes, we need to be compassionate, but I try to teach my kids that they have their own responsibility and they need to be hard workers.”
She raised a good point, one that I need to think about a bit more. Without making any sort of political statement, I think that each of us needs to ask ourselves: Is our justice work giving folks we are trying to help the chance to contribute to their own betterment? And then there’s a flip side question: are we showing compassion and empathy in the justice work we are doing?
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…
, 30. [