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Today we’re sharing a guest post from FYI author and research team member Meredith Miller, reposted with permission from her blog earlier this week.
My role for the past year has been working with college students at Pepperdine University through our Volunteer Center. One theme we cover with our student staff in fall training is not-so-deep service vs. deep justice, from Deep Justice in a Broken World. One of the contrasting pairings in the framework is:
Not-so-deep service is an event. Deep justice is a lifestyle.
Not two weeks after we covered this concept, our office hosted a one-time service event. And it wasn’t just any one-time service event. It’s, well, big.
1,400 participants broken in to 90 groups, working with 70+ partners, traveling into our community on 23 school buses, 9 huge vans, and 9 shuttle buses big.
And then we had to stand in front of the student staff and explain why we do it. Why this is not, in fact, a total contradiction from what we just said. This can be tough, especially when you consider that our team is newly forming and newly engaging in social justice. They care about serving, about people and helping the poor, certainly. But deep justice? That’s still fairly new territory for them.
I do believe there is a place for one time events in social justice work, provided we attend to a few things:
- The work for the day should be determined by your non-profit partner and their greatest needs. On Skid Row, for instance, there is actually not a lot of need for food servers, because of the popularity of that opportunity. Let them decide how to put your group to work, so that you’re really meeting one of their needs. Which leads me to…
- Work with a good non-profit partner. Find an organization that is on the ground full time, and who does their work well. Ask them if they’d consider hosting your students for the day, and have them spend a some time explaining their mission and work to the group before diving into the tasks. We often just want to get to work, but rushing can dishonor the expertise of those who are really in the field and the community they serve.
- Use it as a spring board to recurring, consistent service. In the case of our event, we close out with an In-n-Out lunch and an ocean view. But the central component of the post-service event is a volunteer fair that features over 15 ongoing service opportunities. Hundreds of participants make a commitment to serve again. And if they do it again, and again, it does indeed start to become a lifestyle.
- Bookend your experience. A day of service is only as effective as the meaning participants draw from it. So have enough conversations before and after the day to set up your students for success. Talk about themes of partnership. Ask what they think it feels like to do that work full-time. Focus on everything that happens when you are not there, rather than everything you think you accomplished on their behalf in a few hours. Which lead to my final thought…
- The organization is the one doing you a favor by hosting you,
just as much as more than you are helping with some extra hands. It can be a serious hassle to have a one-time group. They need to be trained on the work, supervised by representative from the organization, and may not share the values of the partner. Bringing an attitude that they are lucky to have you is destructive on multiple levels.
What types of things have you done to leverage one time service opportunities towards a full-time deep justice lifestyle? What questions do you ask your group, or what types of projects do you select?
Or are you part of a host-organization? If so, what else do you wish a one-time group understood?
Our friend Lars Rood from Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas Texas, just came out with his first book titled, Youth Ministry on a Shoestring: How to Do More with Less. While much of the book deals with the financial side of being a youth pastor, there’s a lot of practical content about being more efficient in ministry.
One of the topics Lars writes about is the “buzz” that we can generate as youth workers. Stories are valuable resources that we need to use productively and wisely. When people ask how we’re doing, we typically have a story to tell what’s going on.
We live in a narrative culture. People absolutely love good stories and no doubt you’ve felt the pressure to have something good to reply with. Harry Potter didn’t become a billion-dollar franchise simply because the special effects were great. It was memorable, personal, and transformative.
When starting to change the youth culture of your church, you might see more failure than success. This is often the experience of youth workers who participate in our Sticky Faith cohorts. Are we supposed to just bury the bad and only advertise the good?
Stories don’t always need to be successful in order to be used. Lars points out that our failures as youth workers can be just as powerful and effective. These stories don’t always need to be about the successful, winning teams.
Scott Cormode of Fuller Seminary writes, “The first duty of a Christian leader is to provide a Christian perspective, an interpretative framework for people who want to live faithful lives” (from Making Spiritual Sense). Sometimes that perspective is about how bad things are.
And that’s okay. Use the current story to change tomorrow for the better. Be efficient in your narratives.
As we tell the readers in Sticky Faith, “You have more power than you think to bring about change through the stories you tell.”
Every year Group magazine’s Rick Lawrence unpacks the results from their surveys of students who participate in Group’s summer work camp experiences. Last year they collected data from 23,000 teenagers about their faith and practices. Group published results and reflections on the data in December (you can see a pdf of the results online), but I came across this article again in my files this week as the data relates to time with God.
The good news is that two out of three spend time with God once a week or more in some form of “set-aside time that’s just for fueling your relationship with God.” Most of them see the importance—even necessity—of some kind of time like this, indicating an internal motivation as opposed to feeling shamed or coerced by leaders or parents into doing so.
On the not-so-good news side, kids only seem to know how to talk at God during that time. Nine out of ten “talk to God in prayer,” two out of three also “tell God about my own needs,” and an equal number “tell God about the needs of others.”
Two out of five who set aside time to be with God listen to God during that time. A little over one in three reads the Bible during part of that time. One in five says they receive guidance from God about issues and concerns.
Rick’s assessment—and I agree with him—is that kids are “dependable mirror-images of the adult Christians in their lives.” They tend to see us as leaders and parents talking at God (telling God things, asking God for things) rather than listening to God or interacting in any other form. In this way we have ignored a huge chunk of Christian tradition and wisdom from the psalms about ways we can interact with God in prayer.
With that in mind, how are you teaching and modeling prayer that isn’t only about telling or asking? What ideas do you have for others who care about teenagers and their spiritual formation?
So last week, our family enjoyed a day at Disneyland. And lucky for us, so much of the world was back in school that we didn’t have very long lines after rides. So we went on ride after ride after ride. We went on Thunder Mountain four times in a row!
After every ride, as we were walking toward the exit, we would turn to each other and say, “Wasn’t that great?” “I loved the part when we went down fast.” “Did you see the rattle snakes?” And often, “That was awesome.”
What was interesting was that we had all done the ride together. We had all experienced the same thing. And yet what we wanted–and really needed–to do was share about it afterwards.
I’m participating in a Theological Forum in a few weeks at the upcoming National Youth Workers Convention. One of the questions the panel is supposed to address is the role of youth ministry. So I’ve been thinking about that, and spending some time reflecting on how so much of youth ministry is making space. Making space for God to work. Making space for teenagers and adults to respond.
As our family kept re-living our rides together verbally, I thought about how much of youth ministry is like that. We give kids the chance to re-live what they have experienced. Whether that’s their day at school, their fight with their step-mom, or the short-term mission trip they took this past summer.
Debriefing events is important. Talking about them with others is part of how they become real to us.
So our kids are still not back in school. They start tomorrow, September 8. So we have been enjoying this last week when most of the world is back in school as our chance to hit amusement parks. Notably Disneyland and Raging Waters (a water slide theme park near Pasadena). With only 5-10 minute lines for rides at both places, it’s been one of the highlights of the summer.
I did Autopia with our 5 year-old, Jessica. I have so many fond memories of Autopia, especially before I was able to get my own driver’s license. The feeling of power that came from driving as a 13 year-old; I can almost taste it now.
With Jessica, I did the gas pedal (she was too short to reach it) and she did the steering. Or rather, she let the car steer itself. Which meant that the car bumped along drifting to the right, until it hit the cement island running under the center of the car with its left wheel and then bounced violently back to the left. Jessica, deciding to turn the wheel AFTER (and not before) we hit the cement island, would then jerk the wheel to the right, thus repeating the process. So we were basically like a pinball, bouncing left and right through the course. We laughed and laughed. The more violent the jerking back and forth, the more we laughed.
Here’s the leadership lesson: Jessica corrected the steering wheel AFTER it was too late. She had no ability to perceive the drift of the car until it was too late. And then by steering, she actually did more harm than good.
How true that is for us as leaders. We often have no ability to perceive drift. And then when we correct, our helping actually hurts.
As I was laughing with my husband about what happened, I told him that I wanted to write a blog post about it. And then I thought about 3 questions that Chap Clark and I encouraged leaders to ask in Deep Ministry in a Shallow World:
1. What type of transformation is God bringing about now?
2. What is creating space for God’s transformation now?
3. What is hindering God’s transformation now?
These are good questions to ask yourself – at any time. Like now. Before it’s too late. And you overcorrect and do more harm than good.
Just about every time we at FYI talk with someone new about Sticky Faith, they ask us, “So what’s the bottom line? What are the most interesting things you’ve learned?”
Well, we wrote a few books to fully answer those questions.
But we wanted to give you a brief summary of some of what we found most surprising from our 6 years of research. Feel free to share this blog with other youth leaders or parents. By the way, we encourage you to share about Sticky Faith not just with parents and leaders of teenagers, but also with parents and leaders of children and emerging adults. One of the promising conclusions we’ve made is that it’s never too early nor too late to start building long-term faith in kids.
In their book Resident Aliens, Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon discuss the issue of youth Confirmation within their tradition.
Realizing that youth are pouring out of their church at an alarming rate, they examine the yearly process. It’s decided that assigning mentors to the students in the Confirmation process is part of the solution. Hauerwas and Willimon conclude the story by saying, “The church needs to see that one of its greatest resources is its ability to bring generations of disciples together.”
I can’t help but recognize Sticky Faith in other books I read for Fuller. As this book was written in the late 1980′s, it’s interesting to see the problem that Sticky Faith addresses has been around for much longer than I realized… Longer than a lot of youth workers have been alive!
So much of Sticky Faith is the result of decades of action, inaction, and the separation of adults and youth. Because of this, it will take even longer to change the direction and culture of ministry. Since many youth workers are under 30, there’s one aspect we can’t forget when cultivating Sticky Faith:
We need patience.
And as I eat a lot of my meals cooked in the microwave, download music instantly, and talk to my friends and family thousands of miles away without delay, I have to realize that Sticky Faith is different. It will simply take time to see in my students, church, and most importantly… in myself.
One of the big lessons we’ve seen proven over and over in our Sticky Faith Cohort churches is the power of story. Fuller’s Dr. Scott Cormode works to hammer home with cohort church leaders that nothing replaces the power of a story, well-told, over and over again, when we’re trying to be agents of change in our organization.
In this Harvard Business Review post, Peter Guber, business expert and former CEO of Sony Pictures, adds to that wisdom the power stories have to overcome fear. When we are threatened by change (or as Scott likes to say, we don’t actually fear change but the loss the change represents), a story of hope can draw us beyond fear into purposeful action forward. Here’s a snapshot of Guber’s thoughts:
As a leader, you cannot eliminate fear, abolish uncertainty or avoid the prospect of change for your company. But you can leverage these emotional navigational stakes to your greatest advantage by telling a purposeful story to all your stakeholders.
What stories do you need to tell this week—to yourself or others—that can fly in the face of fear?
There’s no shortcut to lasting transformation in your ministry. While we wish we could offer a foolproof “six steps to the perfect youth ministry” or some other pithy plan, it’s just not gonna happen. In fact, please let us know if we get that grandiose in our claims.
One of the incredibly fun parts of our work the past two years has been facilitating the change process in 28 inspiring churches through our Sticky Faith Cohorts. These groups share in a year-long journey with other church teams all exploring how to more faithfully practice ministry in ways that buoy lasting faith in students.
Today we’re sharing a video we’ve made with the help of our friend Paul Sun that we think really gets at the heart of the Cohort experience. We’d love if you would take three minutes to hear these stories, and if they spark something in you and your team, head on over to our Cohort page and fill out an inquiry form to be part of the next group, starting in January 2012!
Recently the CDC released a report on “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance” (sounds top-secret, doesn’t it?) focused on teen sexual health. The report zeroes in on 9th-12th-graders who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
On basically every measure the CDC evaluated, gay teens scored higher on their participation in risk behaviors (according to the report, “behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries, behaviors that contribute to violence, behaviors related to attempted suicide, tobacco use, alcohol use, other drug use, sexual behaviors, and weight management”) than their heterosexual peers.
In other words, these kids are at high risk for harm. “Disproportionate” risk, as the report concludes. Unfortunately, a report like this doesn’t do anything other than report on data analysis. If we’re paying attention, we have the opportunity to consider how this kind of data might shape the way we do ministry.
Most of us who serve in youth ministry or interact with teenagers in other settings know kids who are struggling with their sexual identity. And while we might intuitively know that this struggle can lead to experimental behaviors of various kinds, this recent study is a wake-up call that many of these kids are exposing themselves to a number of health risks. The Marin Foundation discovered that 86% of gays and lesbians were raised in the church—meaning they are right in front of us. Age 13 is the average age for feeling same-sex attraction—again, they are right in front of us.
And while they are right in front of us, kids who wonder about their sexual identity often feel isolated. In fact, there are probably more kids than we realize in our range of influence who are wondering right now, “Am I gay?”
FYI team member Irene Cho wrote a helpful article a couple of years ago on learning to have healthier dialogue about sexual orientation with teenagers who are questioning. Given the CDC’s recent findings, it’s a good time to re-read those thoughts and start up some conversations.
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