According to the back of the book cover, Ramo “is managing director at Kissinger Associates, one of the world’s leading geostrategic advisory firms.” I don’t exactly know what “geostrategic” means but I’m guessing it means using the world’s resources strategically. The book is endorsed by Fareed Zakaria, and I’m a big fan of Fareed’s.
Ramo analyzes what makes for an effective “revolution” today. His examples span everything from the Wii to the Hizb’allah (which I’ve often seen spelled Hezbollah).
I love this quote from page 37 when talking about the people in power who don’t support change: “Why change a system that’s working well for you?”
Good question. If a system is working well for your students, or your senior pastor, why would they want to change it? People in power, whether it be in government or your church’s leadership team, often have an inherent disinterest in bringing about change. Why? They usually have the most to lose.
How do we nudge them? I think the best way is to give them a vision for what the change would mean — for how many more people would be served by what you’re suggesting. If their lives get better/easier, point that out. But if not, then invite them to lay down their life for others — many of us follow a leader who was famous for that.
While not many teens die each year in the U.S., recent research released in this data brief by the National Center for Health Statistics (part of the CDC) uncovers some of the dominant causes of teen deaths. You probably guessed it—the leading cause is car accidents. And guys are at higher risk than girls. More breakdown and interesting stats are below:
Accidents (unintentional injuries), homicide, suicide, cancer, and heart disease make up the five leading causes of death for teenagers. Accidents make up nearly half of all teen deaths.
Motor vehicle fatality is the leading cause of accident death among teenagers (73% of all accidents), representing over one-third of all deaths to teenagers. Interestingly, they do not distinguish in the report between accidents involving teen drivers and those involving adult drivers.
Non-Hispanic black teenage males have the highest death rate compared with Hispanic and non-Hispanic white males and females.
Homicide is the leading cause of death for non-Hispanic black male teenagers, with more than two of every five deaths due to homicide.
Male teenagers are more likely to die than female teenagers at every single year of age from 12 to 19 years.
Older teenagers are at higher risk of dying than younger teenagers.
I was reminded by Fuller’s Dr. Jude Tiersma Watson last week that I’ve often used a poor metaphor when thinking about rest and self-care in ministry.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard (and probably said) that we have to “refuel” spiritually for ministry. But that metaphor likens us to automobiles, machines that are only valuable when they work, when they run well (and especially when they run fast). Scripture was, of course, written before the advent of the automobile. Psalm 1 uses the metaphor of trees to describe those who walk with the Lord:
They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.
Trees don’t produce fruit year-round. They produce fruit in season. Trees that grow by a stream grow roots deep to tap into the water, roots that both support the upward growth and continue to feed the trees through the soil and water they access and feed from. And over time, they both produce fruit and rest fruitless.
We are not in fact like cars who need refueling so we can be useful, but like trees who produce fruit in season. Though our culture and our ministries (and our own drive) may expect us to produce constantly, fruit only comes in season. That means we also must have seasons where we don’t produce, where we rest, where we experience the kind of healing that allows the possibility of new growth in the next season. Whether that means day to day (allowing ourselves to sleep at night), week to week (practicing Sabbath), or year to year (retreating, taking sabbatical breaks, using our vacation time), we are made to live in season.
Rest isn’t just utilitarian—we don’t do it just so we can be more productive when we start work again. Rest is more than that. It’s an acknowledgement that we’re not God, and that we must live as we were made—in season.
Last week during our Urban Youth Ministry intensives, I had the opportunity to listen in on a session with Dr. Cynthia Eriksson and Dr. Jude Tiersma Watson on stress and burnout in ministry. Cynthia emphasized a few things about burnout that I wanted to pass on this week:
The term “burnout” was actually developed to describe work-related stress in jobs that focus on the needs of people. In other words, burnout is connected to the question, “What does it mean to care for people?”
Burnout is interconnected with our experiences of traumatic events and the ways we absorb the traumatic experiences of others (often called “vicarious trauma). As we learned in the Risk and Resilience study, urban youth workers often experience vicarious trauma.
Burnout is marked by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization (feeling calloused towards people you care about), and a lack of a sense of personal accomplishment. When all three of these are happening to us at the same time, we’re experiencing a season of burnout.
Feeling burnout often involves feeling shame—shame that we’re not strong enough to do it on our own or not successful enough to do what we thought we could do.
Cynthia encouraged us to think about burnout as a message, certainly a message from our bodies and hearts, but also perhaps a message from God to think about this season of life and what might need to change. We may need to begin to ask ourselves questions like: What kinds of support do I need? Do I need a break? Am I talking with someone else about what I’m feeling? Rather than shaming ourselves over what we can’t “push through” on our own, perhaps we need to set the self-shame aside and ask someone for help.
If that’s you this week, take this as permission-giving to call up a trusted friend or mentor and ask them to help you make some next steps toward responding to the message burnout (and perhaps God) might be sending you.
Last August I mentioned on this blog that I was beginning a new season of developing a middle school student worship band at my church. I haven’t mentioned it much since then, in part to protect students and not make the team an agenda item for the blog. But also in part because we’ve been moving along slowly—building skill, building confidence, building an understanding of worship, building a team dynamic, and building enthusiasm. None of it happened instantly or dramatically.
In today’s E-Journal, we’re sharing an interview with Scott Rubin on middle school ministry. I really appreciated Scott’s comment about redefining what “success” looks like in middle school ministry by looking for the “little wins,” the moments where we glimpse hope that something is connecting or making a small difference. I’ve noticed that lately in my little music group. Someone feeling free enough to raise their hand in worship, someone else suggesting a new song to learn, and the group getting excited about leading the congregation later this month in all-church worship. They seem like small things, but in this context they’re potential catalysts for new growth.
What little wins can you identify this week to remind you to be hopeful in the midst of what sometimes may seem like slow growth?
It’s not just about Thailand, in case you’ve been led to believe we can distance sex trafficking from Main Street U.S.A. Despite the general rise in awareness of the global slave trade the past few years, trafficking of teenagers within the U.S. is also getting worse, according to a report in Christianity Today of grant-funded research conducted through Shared Hope International. The article (free online), titled “Sexual Slavery on Main Street,” gives this summary of what they discovered:
The survey found that many sex-trafficking victims were being misidentified and wrongly prosecuted as criminals. In some cases, the survey found, children as young as 9 years old were being sold for sex by parents or boyfriends in exchange for illicit drugs. Organized crime networks are now using sex trafficking because the risk of prosecution is so low. The survey determined that a high percentage of teens rescued from trafficking return to the system due to the strong bonds they form with their pimps.
…Researchers estimate that between 100,000 and 300,000 American children are trafficked within the U.S. each year. There is credible evidence, based on arrest statistics and field research, that sex trafficking is getting worse and that U.S. children under age 18 compose the largest segment of trafficking victims in the U.S.
Last fall the NY Times ran an insightful series on the rising number of teen runaways and the connection between runaways and sex trafficking (I blogged about it here). We need to continue to raise awareness within our own communities that this is a reality—both across the globe and down the street.
Today in our Urban Youth Ministry Certificate training, the students and faculty together came up with a great way to look at Scripture from a perspective that really allows for folks who are marginalized to identify with and see themselves in the passage (see my blog from Tuesday for more on this “theology from below”). They came up with 3 questions:
1. Where is the pain?
2. Where is the power? In other words, who has power in the passage and who doesn’t, and how does that affect them?
3. Where is the praise? In other words, where is the gospel in the passage?
I love, love, love this. I love its honesty and authenticity and it was so fun to see youth workers dive into Biblical texts in new ways using these three questions.
I am LOVING what I am experiencing, along with 30 amazing youth workers, in our Urban Youth Ministry Certificate weeklong intensives here in Pasadena this week. There’s a lot of great discussion in our Theology and Philosophy of Urban Youth Ministry class taught by Lina Thompson. Kris Rocke, whose statements are quoted below, is a guest lecturer.
Here are some quotes that have got me thinking about pain, and its importance in our growth and our ministries:
Kathleen O’Connor: The first condition of healing is to give voice to pain.
Kris Rocke: Your authority is tied to your wounds…
Helmut Thielicke: The greatest problem with the church is our inability to suffer.
Richard Rohr: if you don’t transform your experience of pain, you’re going to transmit it.
Kris Rocke: Almost on a daily basis, I use my distortions of the faith to hide from reality. And so do you.
Today’s USA Today has an article on the front page (above the fold!) entitled “Young Adults Less Devoted to Faith”. The focus of the article is a new study by LifeWay Christian Resources of 1,200 18- to 29-year-olds, 72% of whom say they are “really more spiritual than religious”. Among the 65% who call themselves Christian, Thom Rainer, the president of LifeWay, says that even those are largely “either mushy Christians or Christians in name only”. I’m eager to read the full research report and dive even further into the findings.
For those of us who have devoted our lives to ministering to kids, these findings won’t be all that surprising. But as I sat in Starbucks reading the article (thanks to Jason, the youth worker who e.mailed me early this morning to tip me off about the article, thereby giving me an excuse to hit Starbucks on the way to work), I couldn’t help but ask: what can we do to plant Kingdom seeds in teenagers that bear long-term fruit? That’s the goal of our College Transition Project and the Sticky Faith resources we’ll be developing this year for distribution in 2011. Our findings impact my own life every day, both as a parent and as a youth worker.
I’m not satisfied with “mushy Christianity”. Are you?
This week is our weeklong intensive for our Urban Youth Ministry Certificate. I love this week here at Fuller as I learn from the youth workers and faculty in the program.
Kris Rocke is a guest lecturer in the training. I had the chance to sit in on one of his lectures (better described as a discussion) yesterday on Theology from Below. Some of Kris’ thoughts are described in this article in Christianity Today so for those of you not in the training, you can still learn from Kris.
Here are a few sentences from the article to whet your appetite: “Reading the Bible with those we serve means we learn to take the stained glass off the text of Scripture and begin reading from the perspective of those who have been crushed by life. It’s an adventure in mining good news out of the holes of Scripture that the church typically refuses to climb down into.”
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…
