Recently I’ve been thinking about how much of a leader’s energy goes into 30% of the people in their community. For a youth worker, that means you’re investing lots of energy into the 15% of your kids who are doing super great and the 15% of your kids who are really struggling.
But what about that middle 70%? Who’s investing in them? They aren’t as high maintenance or shiny as the other 30% but they’re probably the majority of your kids.
Maybe it’s time to look down the list of your kids and ask questions about each kid:
How is this kid doing in their journey with God?
How could our ministry help this kid move a bit forward?
My husband is brilliant. And he reads a lot. He recently sent me this Slate article on peer pressure — the right kind of peer pressure.
Here’s the part most interesting to me as a mom and a leader: “Two recent studies suggest that Pipher’s basic observation about girls’ vulnerability to peer pressure remains true, but they emphasize that peer pressure can sometimes be a good thing. The studies examined the academic achievement of high school students and found that being surrounded by underachieving classmates has a negative effect on girls and boys—both genders feel pressure to conform to the lower standards of their peers. But the studies also show that girls are more sensitive than boys to the presence of high-achieving peers. Surround a girl with diligent classmates, and her performance will improve.”
In some ways, this is one of those times when research confirms what we might have intuitively guessed — that kids are influenced by their peers. But what’s interesting is that girls might be more influenced by peers than boys. Plus it’s motivating for parents and leaders to think about their kids’ friends and to pray and try to surround your kid with as many positive friends as possible.
Anyone have any guesses as to why girls might be more influenced by peers than boys?
Last week those of us who care about justice and seeing all people experience God’s Kingdom shalom got some bad news. According to a new analysis by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University, the wealth gap between Anglo-Americans and African-Americans has quadrupled from 1984-2007. The Institute’s analysis speculates that public policy and persistent discrimination are the potential root causes of this growing gap.
My point in this blog is not to get into a partisan debate about tax policy. But it is to point out that wealth often begets wealth. Kids who don’t have the funds to go to college are less likely to experience financial stability than those who do.
I’ve run into a few ministries lately geared toward improving the financial literacy of folks who are raised in low-income contexts. Some of them are being allowed, and encouraged, to teach in public schools. I applaud these creative leaders and cheer them on in the name of deep justice.
There are at least 8,000 reasons today to care about hungry kids. Eight thousand is how many children will die today of hunger and hunger-related causes. It’s astounding to even think about for a few minutes, let alone 30 hours.
Yet World Vision has been faithfully fighting against this reality for years, and they’ve recently begun promoting next year’s 30 Hour Famine project. It’s an opportunity to engage students in a 30-hour fast while praying, learning, engaging in advocacy, serving your local community, and raising money to end hunger. A few years back FYI developed a 30 Hour Famine Curriculum with World Vision (still a free download on our website), and we’re still excited about the potential of kids’ efforts through the Famine to lower that number and to become kids (and ultimately adults) who seek God’s shalom for all people.
Check out the Famine site and watch their new video for a taste of what it’s all about.
According to an LA Times article yesterday entitled “Teenage social media butterflies may not be such a bad idea,” we shouldn’t be very concerned about those kids who spend lots of time compulsively checking Facebook and texting their friends. As it turns out, they may be the more socially well-adjusted ones of the lot. Citing a recent study of 13-14-year-olds by the University of Virginia, the article suggests that research affirms “children most likely to spend lots of time on social media sites are not the least well-adjusted but the healthiest psychologically.” Further, “electronics appear to be the path by which children today develop emotional bonds, their own identities, and an ability to communicate and work with others.”
I haven’t read the study, and to be fair the article goes on to give more of a balance, including summarizing current studies on the actual amount of time we’re talking about—7.5 hours a day using digital media plus texting (one third of U.S. teens text more than 100 times per day). I also think this study could offer a helpful corrective to the wild fears about online activity that assume every teen will get sucked into risky practices.
Yet I think we’re missing a bigger point if we just sum up that all this increased tech and social media use is just “the new normal.” As author/pastor Shane Hipps has pointed out in books and an interview on our site, the medium always, always changes the message. It’s never “just” a change in technology, but an adaptation of the content itself into something altogether different. To quote Shane, “We are distracted by the content and miss the power of the medium itself, regardless of content, to alter our very patterns of perception.” So I’m wondering when it comes to social media use among teens (and adults), how can we offer a more thoughtful response than, “Oh, they’re doing okay after all. I guess it’s not that big of a deal”? To make a blanket affirmation that electronics are the new pathway to identity formation is missing the massive implications that has for what identity is and how it is formed.
As a positive side note, the article cites another study that adds to the mass of research affirming the critical importance of parents nurturing relationships with their kids that foster openness to sharing struggles. Cornell University researcher Sahara Byrne reinforces (according to her research as reported in the Times article), “children who think they can go to a parent with a problem — any problem — are more willing to accept parental limits on their media use and appear to be less likely to seek out trouble online. That belief, added Byrne, was a more powerful predictor of a child’s healthy Internet use than a family’s income, education, church attendance or political leaning.”
All really interesting stuff to chew on this week in our ministry teams and families…
Last year our friend and filmmaker Paul Sun created a short film that features what we hope you will find most true of us at FYI: leveraging research into resources that elevate leaders, kids, and families. We love the way this brings our mission to life and puts faces in front of some of the statistics we use.
We’re proud to announce that this video recently won two Bronze Telly Awards, a distinction given to regional and online films, commercials, and programs. So we wanted to take a moment to share our excitement and to invite you to watch the 2-minute video, for the first time or again, and pass it on to someone else today to share about FYI with a friend who may not yet be connected with us.
You’ve probably heard about dumpster diving—the subversive practice of gathering tossed goods (usually food) from store dumpsters. Some folks promote it as an act of justice towards the environment (nearly half of all food grown/produced in the U.S. ends up in landfills) and toward the poor (living more simply, consuming less, having more resources to share).
I knew about dumpster diving too, but I didn’t know that a Fuller student was creating a provocative documentary about the act right under my nose until I watched the final product recently. Dive: Living Off America’s Waste is a film created by Fuller grad Jeremy Seifert, and highlights not only some grocery stores in my community but also our American obsession with food and the incredible amount of waste that ensues. In particular, Seifert highlights the potential of store waste to care for the poor in our communities. The missing link, as it turns out, is people who make the effort to do something tangible in response. While Seifert had no success in repeated attempts to talk with corporate representatives from several grocery chains about donating expired food to local food banks or other services, he discovered that making a phone call to a particular store resulted in permission to act. The acting involved showing up at the store in person, at the right time, to get the food and then deliver it to the organization he had connected with who could redistribute that food to the hungry.
That kind of action takes effort. It’s inconvenient. It’s messy (and possibly smelly). But it’s not fundamentally hard. We may not all be called to (or agree with) dumpster diving. But as I think about tangible acts toward more just living where I am, Dive offers more than a few ideas about ways we can engage a very basic act that we’ve blown out of proportion and perspective in our culture: eating.
I’d love to hear if anyone has screened this film with a youth ministry and what kinds of conversation and action came about as a result!
Yesterday was the kick-off of the Urban Youth Workers Institute Conference, which happens to be held about 3 miles from my house in Pasadena. I love this conference – such amazing diversity and great people!
The highlight of the two roundtable sessions I attended yesterday was a theme about telling someone you believe in them. First I heard Eric Iverson, a friend I greatly respect, from YouthWorks say that when he was 14 and volunteering in children’s ministry, one of the adult leaders told him, “You’re good at this.” That was the initial seed of Eric’s current calling to full-time vocational ministry.
Then twenty minutes later in another session, Dr. Jude Tiersma Watson, my colleague at Fuller who I also greatly respect, shared that it was the encouragement of a Fuller faculty member that led her to seriously consider becoming a faculty member herself.
Our words – the way we envision what God is and COULD do through the teenagers and young adults in our lives – have such power.
Last week, thanks to an E-Update I received from the Gathering, I read this article by Bob Buford. While the article is mostly about savoring each day, and living each day with purpose, it was this paragraph that resonated with me:
“Peter Drucker, the manager guru of all time, whom I met with two to four times a year in those Halftime years, always drew me back to a single question: “Yes, but to what end?” He taught me over and over that “mission comes first,” then comes measurement.”
Two great questions: What is our mission? How are we measuring how well we accomplish that mission?
We’re wrestling with that question of measurement right now at FYI. We’re using some grant funds to assess how well we are doing what we say is our mission: leveraging research into resources that elevate leaders, kids, and families.
How about you? How are you measuring your mission? We at FYI would love to learn from you…
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been reading The Age of the Unthinkable, after it was recommended by my friend, Chap Clark.
The author, Joshua Cooper Ramo, summarizes some research conducted on college students at the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, MI. Eye focus was tracked using technology, so that when students were shown different pictures, the technology would trace where the eye focused on the picture, and for how long.
The results? American students tended to look immediately at the main image in the foreground of the picture (i.e., the tiger or the horse). Once they locked onto that central image, their eyes stayed there.
Chinese students, on the other hand, usually looked at the environment around the main object first, and were never as fixated on the central image.
Ramo goes on to imply that folks need to adopt a view of the world more akin to those of Chinese descent — very aware of the context and background and not getting locked onto something too quickly.
That’s true, but I can point to a dozen leadership/management books on my shelves that would say the opposite — that we need more focus on what’s central.
I think we need both — an ability to look at what’s in front of us and an ability to scan the environment. But let me ask you this: is one more important than the other? In our changing culture, do we need to be more aware of the environment than we used to? The Age of Uncertainty would argue for that, but I’m curious what you think…
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…
, after it was recommended by my friend, Chap Clark.