Cutting, one of the many types of deliberate self-harm, is a present reality in most of our youth ministries. Studies show that between 14-39% of adolescents have had at least one incident of deliberate self-injury. ¹  Because of the hidden and shameful nature of self-injury and the real physical damage that occurs, it can be difficult to understand and scary to help. Yet the prevalence of self-harm means we need to become more equipped to care for these kids.

Defining Self-Injury

Self-injury is often misunderstood because it seems counterintuitive and mysterious, so it is important to understand what it is and what it is not. Self-injury can be defined as the intentional harm of one’s body tissue through socially unacceptable behavior, normally in reaction to psychological crisis, and without suicidal intent.²  To break that definition down further:

1. It is not socially acceptable behavior. Self-injury excludes socially acceptable self-harm such as piercing, tattoos, violent sports, and high-risk behaviors.³
2. It is not due to mental impairments. Self-injury should also not be confused with the self-harming behaviors of those with mental impairments such as schizophrenia.
3. It is not suicide. Although self-injurers may be suicidal, self-injury is not a failed suicide attempt. Instead, many youth describe self-harm as an “anti-suicide”, using self-injury as a coping mechanism to actively avoid killing themselves.⁴  Kids who cut are trying to overcome their physiological distress with self-injury, choosing to self-injure rather than self-destruct.

Although cutting is the most common form of deliberate self-injury, teens may also harm themselves through severe scratching, burning, banging, hitting, hair pulling, inserting objects under their skin, or by using a combination of these behaviors.⁵  Self-injury can occur anywhere on the body, but common areas include the arms, hands, wrists, thighs, and stomach.⁶

Who Self-injures?

It could be easy to assume that one sub-group in your youth ministry is more at risk for self-harm than others, but self-harm is not limited to one gender, race, socio-economic group, or age. It is just as likely for the “emo” girl to be a cutter as the “jock” guy, and we have to be careful not to make assumptions about who might or might not be cutting.

Many assume that self-harm is mainly an issue for girls, but studies show that 20-50% of self-injurers are male. Males are more likely to burn or hit themselves in self-harm than females, which may be less likely to be noticed than the telltale cuts more often exhibited by girls.⁷  Self-harm is also present among all ethnic and racial groups, but some studies suggest rates are higher among Caucasians.⁸

We tend to think that if students are functioning well in the obvious areas (school, sports, general health), they are doing fine.  However, kids can be fully functioning, and may even appear to be thriving, while keeping a deep secret of self-injury. We cannot assume that only the students who appear to be struggling externally are at risk for self-injury.

Warning signs of self-injury include unexplained cuts, scratches, or bruises, long sleeves or pants in warm weather, refusal to wear a bathing suit, or a collection of possible self-harming tools and bandages. Mood swings, changes in relationships or school performance, difficulties in handling emotions, and withdrawal can also be warning signs of self-injury.

If you are worried that a kid may be self-injuring, one of the best steps you can take is to intentionally create a safe place where they can share and let them know you are available to them.

The Cycle of Self-Injury

Self-injury can be very difficult to understand. For many, it seems nonsensical for an adolescent to cut himself or herself in an effort to get better. Yet to a kid in the midst of the cycle, self-harm may be the most logical coping mechanism for the pain or distress they feel.

Dr. Dale Ryan, Professor of Recovery Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary, presents the following cycle of self-injury.⁹  This cycle reflects the psychological dynamics of many kids who self-injure and can help youth workers and parents understand the process of self-harm.

Emotional Suffering. Adolescents who self-injure may experience emotional suffering that emerges from various sources. Traumatic incidents in their past, difficult home or school lives, issues with friends or boyfriends/girlfriends, abuse, depression, low self-esteem and self-loathing, stress, perfectionism, or addictions can all lead to emotional suffering.

Emotional Overload. Emotional overload occurs when the emotional suffering becomes too great for the adolescent to cope. There is a buildup of tension, normally from feelings of depression or anxiety.¹⁰  Teenagers may feel angry, anxious, frustrated, depressed, hopeless, or hostile. This emotional overload can lead to dissociative episodes, in which students feel detached from reality.¹¹  They lose their ability to identify, understand, or articulate their emotions, making it difficult to cope with them.¹²  Turning inward, the overload can lead to increased self-hostility and a sense of losing control.¹³  Some kids alternate between feeling numb and feeling overloaded.

Panic. All of this can lead to panic. The kid may feel rising anxiety, not knowing how to stop the hostility or bring himself or herself back to feeling reality.

Self-Harm. To stop the rising panic and anxiety, the next step may be self-harm. As one self-injurer describes: “I injure myself to try to calm down, to try and escape the painful memories of my abuse, to try and take control of my emotions, to try to feel safe, to stop the nightmares and day-mares, to try and feel.”¹⁴  For some, cutting the skin is a symbolic opening through which the tension and panic they feel can escape.¹⁵  For others, self-injury gives them a sense of control over the pain that they feel, turning overwhelming emotions and psychological pain into physical pain that can be located and controlled.¹⁶  Others use self-injury to break the dissociative episodes and bring them back to reality. ¹⁷

Temporary Relief. Researchers have documented a sense of biological and/or psychological relief that comes immediately after incidents of self-harm and can last up to 24 hours.¹⁸  Adolescents experience a very real relief when they self-injure, which makes self-harm seem like an effective coping mechanism. But the relief is only temporary and leads back into the cycle of self-harm.

Shame/Grief. Self-injurers feel guilty about incidents of self-harm and their inability to stop themselves. These feelings of shame and grief contribute to the emotional suffering of the adolescent, thus continuing the cycle.

How We Can Respond

Finding out about kids’ self harm can be both shocking and frightening, and it’s certainly overwhelming to think about how to respond appropriately as a youth worker or parent. If someone tells you about self-injury, here are some practical tools to help you respond:

• Do not judge or overreact. Many adolescents keep self-harm a secret because they are afraid of being judged. If you find out that someone in your youth ministry is self-injuring, stay calm and manage your own anxiety. Do not react with panic, shock, anger, or crying. Don’t accuse the adolescent of cutting to get attention or to manipulate others. Overreacting, threatening, scolding, self-blaming, or making negative comments will only increase their feelings of guilt, isolation, and panic, likely causing them to return to the cycle of self-injury.
• Be understanding and empathetic. Self-injurers need to know that they are not alone and that someone understands and validates them. Let them know you care about them, respect them, and still think positively about them. Know that self-injury is a symptom of deeper problems in the kid’s life and try to understand the issues that are leading to self-harm.
• Acknowledge the severity of their distress. Self-injurers report that the most helpful thing that you can do is acknowledge the depth of their pain and its impact on them.¹⁹  Take them seriously and let them know you see their pain.
• Encourage them to verbalize their feelings. Self-injurers want someone to listen to them and help them talk about their emotions. Self-injury is itself a form of communication, and letting the adolescent talk without fear can help mitigate self-injury. Learning to articulate emotions can also help break the dissociative episodes that lead to self-harm. Be an active listener, giving the adolescent space to talk about why they self-injure and how it makes them feel. Ask questions, but be careful never to sound accusatory or force them to share.
• Make yourself available. In a survey of self-injurers, 81% said that it was helpful to know that someone was simply available to assist them if they needed it.²⁰  Ask how you can be helpful. Work with the student to set up a network of caring and understanding adults that can be available to them when they feel like they may self-injure or when they need help.
• Never try to control their behavior. Reports have found that taking away self-harm tools, forcing kids to reveal new self-injuries, or threatening them with punishment all make self-injury worse.²¹  Forcing a self-injurer to go to professional help against their will is also harmful and will increase their stress and likeliness to self-harm.²²
• Work on harm minimization and alternative coping strategies. Studies show that it is better to work towards lowering the amount of harm rather than trying to stop it altogether.²³ Talk together about alternatives to self-harm that they might be able to use, such as holding an ice-cube in their hand until it burns or calling a trusted adult.²⁴  Help them consider minimizing harm by not cutting as deeply or burning as badly.
• Be aware of other issues. The negative emotions that lead to self-harm often lead to additional unhealthy coping mechanisms like eating disorders and substance abuse.²⁵  Other harmful factors may also be leading to the self-harm, such as depression, suicidal tendencies, anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress, or a history of abuse. We need to be aware of other possible issues and deal with self-harm as part of a larger network of problems. Ask them about other ways they cope and the different sources of pain and anxiety in their lives, being watchful for other issues that may be harming them.
• Work with family and friends. In a study of self-harming adolescents, friends were perceived as being the most helpful and parents were perceived as being the least helpful in dealing with self-injury.²⁶  Since the self-injurer may have turned to friends first, we need to make sure those friends aren’t overwhelmed and are encouraging their friend to get adult help. With the self-injurer’s permission, help educate the friends about self-injury and how they can be supportive. Finding out their son or daughter is self-injuring can be devastating to a parent, causing them to overreact out of fear, shock, anger, or self-blaming. Help them understand self-injury and the ways they can best help their child. Cornell University offers great resources for talking to the families and friends of self-injurers at www.crpsib.com.
• Encourage professional help or advice. Unless you are a trained counselor, encourage the adolescent to find professional help. If they do, remain in an active role in the adolescent’s life and be supportive of their recovery. www.self-injury.com can help with referrals to professionals.

Preventing Self-Injury

Self-injurers normally self-harm for the first time around age 13 or 14, meaning many of us are involved in the lives of youth during an influential timeframe.²⁷  By being a caring and supportive community to kids, our youth ministries and churches can help prevent self-injury from starting in the first place. Here are a few ways we can work towards prevention:

• Create a safe space for sharing and honesty. One of the greatest things we can do in youth ministry create a safe place where adolescents can share about the pain, stress, and tough situations in their lives. Focus on building relationships between kids and adults and creating an open environment where students know they can be honest and accepted.
• Model healthy ways to cope with negative emotions and overwhelming situations. Help kids learn how to handle their emotions and stress in positive ways. When conflict, anger, or frustration occurs at youth group, work together to find healthy coping mechanisms. Be open about the ways that you cope in your own life.
• Teach theology that values the body. Self-injurers sometimes believe that their bodies are sinful, using self-injury as a form of punishment or penance for sin. Let students know that they are made in the image of God and that their bodies are part of God’s good creation for God’s worship and service. Be careful of theologies of sin that could lead students to believing that their bodies are disgusting.
• Encourage a healthy body image. Make youth group a place where kids can feel good in their skin. Serve healthy food and have options for all levels to get involved in physical activity. Talk with youth who are struggling with body image or putting others down. For more ideas related to girls and body image, read See Jane Deal with her Body.
• Educate co-workers, volunteers, and parents. Work with other adults in the church to create a community where kids are embraced and supported through tough stuff. Equip adults with ways to respond to self-injury before they are confronted with it.
• Communicate hope. Finally, when ministering to an adolescent who self-injures, be hopeful. Most adolescent self-injurers who receive help and support do not become lifelong self-harmers. ²⁸  There is hope and healing for these kids, especially within a supportive church community where they are allowed to share their hurts.

1. Statistics for self-injury widely vary because of the hidden nature of the condition and many adolescents’ fear of coming forward. Best estimates put rates of self-injury in adolescents between 14-39%. Matthew K. Nock and Mitchell J. Prinstein, “Contextual Features and Behavioral Functions of Self-Mutilation Among Adolescents,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, (vol. 114, no. 1, 2005) 140-146.
2. K. Ryan, M.A. Heath, L. Fischer, and E.L. Young, “Superficial Self-Harm: Perceptions of Young Women Who Hurt Themselves,” Journal of Mental Health Counseling (vol 30, no 3, July 2008) 238-239.
3. Though expert Dale Ryan points to these other behaviors as evidence of a culture that glorifies self-violence.  Listen to his seminar on self-injury at  http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/2009/06/dale-ryan-interview/.
4. Jacqueline Mangnall and Eleanor Yurkovich, “A Literature Review of Deliberate Self-Harm,” Perspectives in Psychiatric Care (vol 44, no 3, July 2008) 177.
5. 70% of adolescents that self-injure cut themselves, and most have used multiple methods. E. David Klonsky and Jennifer J. Muehlenkamp, “Self-Injury: A Research Review for Practitioners,” Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session (vol 63, Nov 2007) 1046.
6. Klonsky and Muehlenkamp, “Self-Injury: A Research Review for Practitioners,” 1046.
7. “Although the prevalence of DSH is unknown, it appears to be fairly common, and most episodes are unreported,. It seems to affect males and females equally, although females are more likely to seek help or to be discovered.” Armoando R. Favazza, Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 206. Some studies have found that rates are about equal between men and women for self-injury, with females more likely to cut themselves and males more likely to burn or hit themselves. Klonsky and Muehlenkamp, “Self-Injury: A Research Review for Practitioners,” 1047. Other studies have found that up to 80% of high school self-injurers are female. Karen Conterio and Armando R. Favazza, “The Plight of Chronic Self-Mutilators,” Community Mental Health Journal (vol 24(1), Spring 1988) 22-30.
8. Klonsky and Muehlenkamp, “Self-Injury: A Research Review for Practitioners,” 1047.
9. Dale Ryan. Self Harm: Helping Adolescents Who Hurt Themselves. Lecture, L.A. Youth Ministry Network, Pasadena, CA. March 2009.  http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/2009/06/dale-ryan-interview/
10. Mangnall and Yurkovich, “A Literature Review of Deliberate Self-Harm,” 179.
11. Mangnall and Yurkovich, “A Literature Review of Deliberate Self-Harm,” 180.
12. Klonsky and Muehlenkamp, “Self-Injury: A Research Review for Practitioners,” 1047.
13. Mangnall and Yurkovich, “A Literature Review of Deliberate Self-Harm,” 180.
14. Mangnall and Yurkovich, “A Literature Review of Deliberate Self-Harm,” 181.
15. Favazza, Bodies Under Siege, 204.
16. Ryan, Heath, Fischer, and Young, “Superficial Self-Harm,” 241. Klonsky and Muehlenkamp, “Self-Injury: A Research Review for Practitioners,” 1049.
17. “…feeling generation is another term that can be used to refer to the antidissociation function of self-injury. Reasons sometimes identified for self-injury include, ‘to feel something even if it is pain,’ ‘to feel real again,’ or ‘to stop feeling numb.’” Klonsky and Muehlenkamp, “Self-Injury: A Research Review for Practitioners,” 1050.
18. Studies have measured the cortisol levels in self-injurers, a hormone associated with stress levels, and found that cortisol levels generally rose in the period before self-harm and instantaneously returned to baseline levels after self-harm. Mangnall and Yurkovich, “A Literature Review of Deliberate Self-Harm,” 181.
19. In a survey of self-injurers, 86% said that the thing they perceive as most helpful is someone acknowledging the severity of their distress. Ryan, Heath, Fischer, and Young, “Superficial Self-Harm,” 244.
20. Ryan, Heath, Fischer, and Young, “Superficial Self-Harm,” 244.
21. Ryan, Heath, Fischer, and Young, “Superficial Self-Harm,” 244.
22. Ryan, Heath, Fischer, and Young, “Superficial Self-Harm,” 246.
23. Mangnall and Yurkovich, “A Literature Review of Deliberate Self-Harm,” 182.
24. Cornell University’s Research Program on Self-Injurious Behavior offers resources on alternative coping strategies at http://www.crpsib.com/.
25. “There is also reason to believe that self-injury often co-occurs with eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia. Disordered eating behaviors such as binging and purging may be prompted by negative emotions comparable to those that tend to precede self-injury…. Individuals suffering from substance disorders are more likely to self-injure. Self-injury and substance abuse both involve causing harm to the body physiologically, and therefore similar psychological processes may underlie the behaviors.” Klonsky and Muehlenkamp, “Self-Injury: A Research Review for Practitioners,” 1048. “Behaviors associated with SSH often co-occur with such mental health disorders as generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), BPD [Borderline Personality Disorder], and antisocial personality disorder…. In general, those who engage in SSH often struggle with depression and anxiety.” Ryan, Heath, Fischer, and Young, “Superficial Self-Harm,” 240-241.
26. In this study, coaches and religious leaders were perceived as being neutral in their helpfulness. Ryan, Heath, Fischer, and Young, “Superficial Self-Harm,” 245.
27. Klonsky and Muehlenkamp, “Self-Injury: A Research Review for Practitioners,” 1046.
28. Klonsky and Muehlenkamp, “Self-Injury: A Research Review for Practitioners,” 1046.

The liminal experience of being outside of your comfort zone and growing tremendously during your trip is all but forgotten and the rich soil of community that was cultivated among the team members on the trip has quickly dried up due to the scorching demands of the day once you return.

As the days turn into months, you talk less and less to the team members that had become like family. When you do run into each other, an exchange of memories and smiles occurs, but deep down you long that God was still doing amazing things through each of you, “like God did on that trip.” Over time, you resign yourself to the lie that only on mission trips do amazing things happen and you, like many others, start living mission trip to mission trip.

It doesn’t have to be like this. There’s more than just living mission trip to mission trip.

So, how do you transition from just going on mission trips to ongoing missional living?

By leveraging social media we can help students go from a one-time mission trip to a multiplying movement of missional living.

Adding upon the foundation that I laid out in Leveraging Social Media to Build a Mission Team, in this article I will outline necessary goals that can be taken after a mission trip to ensure ongoing transformation in the lives of your team, but more importantly, the continuation of the work that God has started in and through them.

With a proper theological and sociological mindset, social media can help you and your ministry accomplish these goals:

1.       Enable the team to remember their story

2.       Gather the team around their mission

3.       Provide a sea of communication

4.       Facilitate ongoing and collaborative learning

5.       Invite people to join what God is doing in and through the team

Though technology and social media is always evolving, today Facebook is the most popular social networking site among teens. For that reason, the practical applications within this article all occur within a Facebook Group.

Goal #1: Enable the team to remember their story

The Hebrew word for remember is found 233 times in the Old Testament.¹ The ability to remember is a critical attribute in our relationship with God, especially as we become bombarded more and more with distracting messages and anti-Gospel stories daily. In the same way that the Israelites constructed monuments to remember what God had done in a particular place, social media provides the materials to construct an ongoing memorial to what God did during your mission trip. Photos, videos, and discussions of the trip can be constantly added, creating a living, breathing memorial that enables the team members to remember their story.

Social media is the perfect environment for this as research shows that many adolescents first started using social media in order to capture, modify, and share personal photos and videos.²

Practical Application:

• Set a goal to comment on 5 posted pictures from the trip each week. This will create a culture that remembers.
• Create a discussion thread entitled, “Remember when…” and let the fun begin.

Goal #2: Gather the team around the mission

The idea of “gathering” might seem strange to some if it does not occur at a specific physical location and time. However, social media has redefined the concept of “gathering.” In fact, some research has shown that the lack of physical proximity can actually help rather than hurt the team.³  A paraphrase of the old adage, “absence makes the team grow stronger,” is more than a trite cliché. When understood and harnessed, it can be extremely powerful because “gathering” can occur with great frequency and consistency when it doesn’t rely on the ability to line up the schedules of all team members.⁴

By changing the mindset from the “mission trip” to the “mission of God” as the center around which the team revolves, you will enable kids to transition from just going on mission trips to ongoing missional living. There needs to be a transition in focus on what God did on the mission trip to what God is currently doing through your lives now.

Practical Application:

• Create a new group that students can join that focuses on ongoing missional activity rather than just the trip they went on. Specifically, the name of the new group should not be the location of the mission trip but rather a vision of missional living. (For example: Mexico 2009 becomes Loving Others 24/7)
• Post a short video or written devotional each week that recalibrates the team around the mission of God. Encourage dialogue around it.

Goal #3: Provide a sea of communication

While the internet has been often called a “sea of information,” social media has enabled it to become a “sea of communication” as well. Much different than a pipeline, a sea has neither a single starting point nor a unidirectional flow. It is vast, dynamic, and much more powerful than a pipeline. Letters, phone calls, and text messages are all one-way pipelines of information. Social media enables everyone to be the catalyst for communication, thus opening up a dynamic and powerful dialogue that is as vast as the sea.

This concept can actually allow small groups of people who communicate through social media to produce more results than large corporations who communicate through top down communication pipelines because social media allows groups to work faster, smarter, more creatively, and more flexibly. ⁵ Your role, as leader, is to create the sea. As Seth Godin says in his influential book Tribes, “Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate. They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as opposed to commanding people to follow them.”⁶

Practical Application:

• Provide weekly discussion questions that revolve around living missionally.
• Enable students to be able to post their own questions and discussion topics. (Within a Facebook Group this would mean making each student an Officer rather than a Member.

Goal #4: Facilitate ongoing and collaborative learning

It has been said that “leaders are learners,” so this curve has to begin with you. It is essential that you create an environment and culture that values ongoing learning. The emerging generation that has grown up with the Internet is arguably better primed to be lifelong learners because of the imme­diacy and breadth of information the Internet offers.⁷ A sea of knowledge is capable of being explored without having to leave home. Research has shown that this has dramatically “lowered barriers to self-directed learning.”⁸  Take advantage of it.

The key, however, is being a facilitator rather than an authoritarian teacher. Through facilitating ongoing and collaborative learning, students will learn much more than information, they will learn how to lead. Research has revealed that “online groups provide an opportunity for youth to exercise adult-like agency and leadership that is not otherwise available to them.”⁹

Practical Application:

• Post free excerpts from some of the great curriculum resources from Fuller Youth Institute (One Life Curriculum will give you a year’s worth of material) or the action/advocacy resources from International Justice Mission (Prayer Guide for the Abolition of Slavery could be a 5 day prayer opportunity).
• Create a discussion thread entitled “What I’ve Been Learning” and publicly encourage students whenever they share what they are learning.

Goal #5: Invite people to join in what God is doing in and through you

What happened in Vegas shouldn’t stay in Vegas. If you partnered with a local church in Sin City and served alongside them for a weekend, it shouldn’t remain a mere moment in time. There’s a huge difference between a moment and a movement. Movements occur when people talk about what happened, when ideas spread within the community, and when others join in. All of a sudden, something bigger and more powerful than your mission trip begins to multiply and spread. On the internet, this is described as “going viral.” When something goes viral, it spreads like an epidemic. Let what God did on the trip and is continuing to do through you go viral.

Practical Application:

• Make your ongoing missional group open and invite others to join the movement. (Because you are most likely working with minors, use discretion in creating an open group. While there are great benefits in helping students value being part of a community that is open, it must be tempered with the need to protect students emotionally as they are vulnerable in their online sharing. You can still keep the original mission trip group private as I suggested in a previous article in order to protect the potentially sensitive material that the students posted.)
• Regularly share with the entire youth group (or even better: the entire church) what your team has been doing locally since you’ve returned from the mission trip.
• Allow the movement to become bigger than the mission trip and bigger than you.

Great Facebook Groups that are already doing this:

Often, it helps to see what’s working and what’s not before diving right in and leveraging social media for a specific purpose. Explore these sites, make observations, and contact the administrators if you have any questions or comments. Learn from other people’s journeys and remember that you have much to offer as well. We need your voice and your perspective to contribute to the ongoing discussion of how we can better serve God in each of our specific ministry contexts.

Mission Year - A yearlong urban ministry program focused on Christian service and discipleship.

I Am Second - A movement that started in Texas that revolves around the premise that “I am second” and “God is first.”

Heart Support - User submitted content to encourage conversation, help, and education on the subjects of addiction, depression, eating disorders, self injury and suicide.

Action Steps:

1.       What have been some of the greatest hindrances in helping students live beyond just mission trip to mission trip?

2.       Of the 5 goals listed above, which one resonates the most with you?

3.       Of all the practical applications suggested, which do you believe would be the most effective in your specific ministry context?

1. Strong’s Concordance.
2. Mizuko, et. al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. 2008
3. Majchrzak et. al, Can Absence Make the Team Grow Stronger? Harvard Business Review. 2004.
4. Majchrzak et. al, Can Absence Make the Team Grow Stronger? Harvard Business Review. 2004.
5. Majchrzak et. al. Can Absence Make the Team Grow Stronger? Harvard Business Review. 2004.
6. Seth Godin, Tribes (New York: Penguin Group, 2008), 23.
7. Mizuko, et. al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. 2008.
8. Mizuko, et. al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. 2008.
9. Mizuko, et. al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. 2008.

I was certainly familiar with these types of late-night calls and thought little about it as I scheduled to meet her for coffee the next day. I prepped for the potential issues that could be on her mind, as she was a good student but had some issues with her parents and also with feelings of not quite “fitting in.”

When I picked her up, she was quiet and pensive (which wasn’t abnormal), but she was also nervous, which was definitely unusual. On our way to the coffee shop, we chatted about trivial things for about two minutes when she suddenly confessed, “I think I’m gay.”

The next three seconds were perhaps the longest of my life.

Of course I’d been aware that one day I may have this discussion with one or more of my students. I also was never a youth pastor afraid to talk about sex, since I knew few kids were getting guidance from home. But I did wonder if the feelings of fear and panic I was experiencing during those three seconds were similar to what happens to parents when their children ask their first questions about sex.

As I gathered myself and began to talk with her about her thoughts and struggles, I can only hope that I handled the situation well…hope. I did have the wisdom to take her to a park instead of the coffee shop so we could talk more freely. But beyond that, I was at a loss for what to do.

The Lonely and Marginalized: Jesus’ Way

When Jesus was eating a meal at Levi’s house, the Pharisees questioned why he ate with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus replied, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). When criticized for eating with “sinners,” Jesus declared that people in need were at the center of his mission. He came for those who needed to hear of his saving grace and experience his love and compassion. These were the ones consistently marginalized in society; the rejected, the lonely, and the isolated.

Today there are few groups with whom Jesus would be so harshly criticized for eating than those in the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) community. But as the societal pendulum swings very swiftly toward greater openness to homosexuality, we as the church need to accept that it’s a growing struggle among more and more of the kids in our youth groups — and implement some tools to help us respond.

The Marin Foundation Research: Building Bridges to the LGBT Community

In his presentations across the country — and in his newly released book Love Is an Orientation¹  — Andrew Marin shares his journey and dedication to help the church build bridges to the LGBT community. The Marin Foundation’s research is the largest national study of the LGBT community regarding spirituality and religion.²  It explores spiritual and religious acculturation within the LGBT community, and has found that nearly 86 percent of gays and lesbians state that they were raised in a denominationally based Christian church from ages zero to 18.³  That number is likely surprising to many of us.

The research also shows that 73 percent of LGBT people leave church once they “come out”.  When asked why they left the church, here’s what the research revealed:

• 17% - The church’s stance on homosexuality
• 16% - Religion is distrustful, deceitful, and hypocritical
• 15% - Not interested in attending church
• 12% - Disagree with general religious doctrine apart from homosexuality
• 10% - Do not believe in God or a higher power

When asked what would influence them to return to the church, respondents indicated the following:

• 62% - Nothing
• 18% - Patience and time
• 7% - Religious community showing a “non-judgmental environment”
• 2% - Support of family/friends
• 2% - Feeling “God’s love”
• 1% - If they were able to understand the teachings

Three findings seem especially significant and encouraging:

1. 86 percent of gays and lesbians have grown up in Christian churches, which means that there’s the potential that they have some basic knowledge of God and perhaps a context for a relationship with God.
2. Although 62 percent said that nothing could influence their return to church, that still leaves 38 percent who’re already open to considering a return to faith.
3. By a 10 percent gap over other options, the greatest influence that could bring someone back to faith is believers showing patience and giving them time. Along with that, not one person surveyed reported that an influential factor for their return to faith would be the church teaching that “it’s okay for me to be gay.” Instead they hope for the church to be a “non-judgmental environment.”

Implications for Your Ministry

Additional research has shown that the average age for experiences initial feelings of same-sex attraction is around 13.⁴  What can we do with the knowledge that some of our students are discovering these feelings while they’re in our middle and high school ministries?

1. Be okay with tension. Marin states that one of the essential elements that helped him put his bridge-building framework in perspective was a reflection from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as he was in jail in Birmingham, Alabama. King wrote, “I must confess that I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly opposed violent tension my whole life, but there is a type of constructive, non-violent tension which is necessary for growth.” ⁵

Such tension could be something that we’re not used to dealing with in our ministries, especially when it comes to the subject of someone struggling with being gay. But we have Jesus to look toward as our greatest example of one who dealt with tension with both love and conviction. Jesus always reached out with compassion to the sinning person without validating (and sometimes not even mentioning) the sinful action. We see evidence of this in accounts such as the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11), the woman who was married to five men (John 4:7-30), and the tax collector who wished to get a closer look at Jesus (Luke 19:1-10). Jesus showed these people unconditional, non-condemning love in a way that made them desire know him more.

2. Authentically listen. Many of Marin’s talks are themed “Elevating the Conversation.” This is one of the first things we need to let our students know we’re willing to do. But how do we elevate our conversation without the notion that we’re pressuring our kids to live perfect lives, free from struggles, questions, or mistakes? The Marin Foundation research shows that 70 percent of gays and lesbians agree or strongly agree that “religious groups are too forceful.”⁶  But how do we teach the ways of Christ without appearing overly dogmatic and judgmental?

The most essential part of a two-way conversation is listening — which is a problem for us youth workers, as we often tend to talk too much. Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made as a youth pastor was assuming that my kids’ relationship with God was strong because they were able to recite excerpts from my sermons. Over time I’ve learned that transformation didn’t happen in those kids regurgitating the correct responses but rather in the ones to whom I truly listened about what was going on in their lives. When we listen, we help prevent our students from hiding their problems, doubts, struggles, and questions.

3. Ask the right questions. When we look at how Jesus communicated throughout the Gospels, we see that many times he was asked close-ended questions but gave open-ended responses.⁷  In fact, he only responded to closed questions three times with straightforward answers to Pontius Pilate at the end of his ministry.⁸  Rather, when asked for his opinion, he usually refrained from giving a direct here’s-what-my-teaching-is-and-what-you-should-be-thinking answer. He often changed the conversation by reframing the question and asking his conversation partner a question in return. In this way, Jesus walked people through the process so that there was ownership in their following because he elevated the conversation.

When it comes to talking with kids about being gay, we should have the same goal. Because the struggle of being gay could be very difficult and intangible for kids, they may initially ask closed questions with the desire to get concrete answers. But as youth workers, we’re looking for continual transformation in their lives, and that means walking with them through the process.

My student probably wanted a simple answer and solution when she initially came to me and said she was struggling with thinking she was gay. However, it was important for me to remember that my job wasn’t to simply give her the “right” answers but rather to first listen to her struggle and guide her through the process by asking open-ended questions. If I’d just given her simple answers, I might initially feel that I “fixed” everything because she’d walk away with solutions — but that doesn’t mean transformation happened in her life.  I needed to help her process everything by listening more and asking questions — by elevating the conversation. That actually gives me more opportunities to share Scripture and truth in ways that will likely be more fully accepted.

4. Embrace the process. As we continue to elevate the conversation while our kids journey through this difficult struggle, we can be reassured by God that salvation and sanctification are neither our job nor our responsibility.

We can remember the words of Rev. Billy Graham when he came under fire for counseling President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. When asked why he was counseling Clinton, Graham said, “Because it is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, it is God’s job to judge, and it is my job to love.”⁹  We must remember those words. We’re called to display unconditional love to every person we encounter in our ministries. Jesus brings change through the process. Our kids who struggle with feeling gay will likely feel lost and lonely through this long struggle. We need to make sure they feel that Jesus is the one who will never abandon them no matter what.

Elevating the conversation means longevity, trust and faith. As you and I give kids time to process, we trust in God’s wisdom and have faith that the Holy Spirit will do God’s work.

Elevating Kids’ Conversations with Each Other

In the midst of the messages students are hearing about being gay, it’s imperative for us to help not just our students who struggle with being gay, but also our non-gay students, so they can develop a greater witness to their friends. Here are a few suggestions:

• Pray together to become better witnesses for Christ to all people, and in particular those in the LGBT community.
• Help students recognize that it’s safe to dialogue about each other’s differences with a month-long series of discussions on engaging differences in general, such as other nationalities, cultures, faiths, and socioeconomic statuses. This will help students have a safe space to ask questions, as well as share openly about their concerns, fears, and experiences. Students will begin to understand what it means to have open dialogues with those who may be different in some way from them.
• Try role-playing a conversation with students, pretending you’re a friend who feels attraction to someone of the same sex. Give them opportunities to practice listening, asking open-ended questions, and help them develop responses that communicate openness to conversation and prayer about this struggle. (Be prepared for some of your students initially being very uncomfortable and possibly reacting with smirks and laughter. If they do, stop and debrief their reactions by honestly discussing any anxiety or discomfort they might be feeling.)
• Lead a discussion in which you ask your students to imagine a youth ministry in which students felt comfortable discussing all of their struggles — sexual and otherwise. What words would you use to describe that youth ministry? What would we have to do to become that youth ministry? What changes would we need to make to become that youth ministry?
• Involve parents in some of the practices of listening and open dialogue so that kids and parents can practice these conversations at home. Be sure to give clear instructions about the importance of process and that the purpose of the exercise is to learn how to improve communication, not necessarily to convince anyone of a correct answer.
• Also have parents dialogue with each other so they also can have a safe place to ask questions and role-play conversations with their own children about struggling with being gay.
• For kids who wrestle personally with being gay, above all else keep the channels open for conversation. I wish I could say that I have a “miracle” story to share about the kid who shared her struggle so openly with me. I can only say my miracle story is that she continues to talk with me through the process of questions, doubt, and growth. Through it all I carry the words of Jesus that he’s here for those who hurt, and I remember that my primary job is to love. With God’s grace, the miracle of my story is that God is willing to continually use me to be a part of her life process.

Here’s to more miracles in all of our ministries.

This article also appears in the May/June issue of The Journal of Student Ministries.

1. Andrew Marin, Love Is an Orientation (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, May 2009).
2. The Marin Foundation research has surveyed nearly 2,000 national participants ranging across all 50 States.
3. Andrew Marin, Elevating the Conversation, Presentation, November 15, 2008.
4. R.C. Savin-Williams & K.M. Cohen, “Homoerotic development during childhood and adolescence,” in M. Diamond & A. Yates (Eds.), Sex and Gender: Child and adolescent psychiatric clinics of North America (Philadelphia: Saunders, 2004), 529-550.
5. Letters from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963, www.mlkonline.net/jail.html.
6. Elevating the Conversation.
7. Closed questions only require simple “yes or no” answers. For example, if someone were to ask, “Is being gay a sin?” then most likely they’re putting feelers out to see where you stand. Once you answer with a simple “yes it is,” then the conversation is over, and they’ll label you a certain way or say “Ha! I knew that’s what you would say! I don’t want to talk with you anymore.” In contrast, an open-ended question in response continues the dialogue-e.g., “In what way is being gay a different sin from any other sin?” This would open the dialogue to discuss Romans 3:23, James 2:10, or Matthew 7:1-2. Your ultimate answer may be the same, but open-ended answers leave room for process.
8. Elevating the Conversation.
9. Sandra Chambers, “The Legacy of Billy Graham-A Faithful Witness,” Charisma Magazine, July 2005.

You’ve mapped out excellent training sessions, you have plans for each meeting with resources to carry them out, and you want to maximize every moment when your team of students and leaders come together. You carefully cover team building, spiritual formation, cultural understanding, testimonies, logistics, and even a theology of missions during the months leading up to your trip.

However, when the training sessions are completed and as you step into the car, van, or plane on your way to your mission destination, a nagging thought arises in the back of your mind: “did we do everything we could have done to build a healthy team?”

If you maximized the time when your team was face to face and when they were apart, then the answer is yes.

But chances are you, like many of us in youth ministry, put 100% of your time and energy only into a handful of face to face training sessions.

How is it possible to maximize training when your team is apart?

This is where the power of social media, when understood theologically and sociologically, can be leveraged in order to build a healthy missional team.

Marshall McLuhan, a sociologist from the 20^th century, defined media as “an extension of our humanity.”¹  Shane Hipps, a successful advertising executive-turned-pastor and author expands upon this and writes, “All forms of media (i.e., any human invention or technology) extend or amplify some part of ourselves. They either extend a part of our body, one or more of our senses, some function of our mental processes, or some social process. “²  In practical terms this means that eyeglasses extend the ability of the eye to focus, telephones amplify and extend our voice and ears, and Facebook and MySpace extend our ability to interact on a social level.

In many ways, this helps us understand one of the newest media inventions available to us: social media.

Wikipedia, a form of social media that relies upon input from millions of users to build the largest encyclopedia in the world, defines social media as “activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction.”³

Social media has dramatically changed the cultural landscape through its ability to extend almost all of our senses. We can see, hear, and talk with people on the other side of the globe through social media. Organizations have picked up on this and are now leveraging social media to sell their products. Universities have recognized the power of social media and have created entire degree programs that can be completed from the comfort and convenience of your home computer. As we travel farther and farther into the 21^st century, social media is becoming an integral part of everyday life.

However, it is essential that we have a proper sociological and theological understanding of social media before we jump right in. Hipps warns, “Understanding media as extensions of ourselves is crucial in understanding media, period. When we fail to see media this way, we become overly enamored, giving them the power to make us slaves to our own creations.”⁴

With a proper sociological and theological understanding, we can extend and enhance our ability to train a team for an upcoming mission trip through the use of social media.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, “some 93% of teens use the internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction - a place where they can share creations, tell stories, and interact with others.”⁵

With a large majority of teenagers also using social media, extensive research is being done from many angles. The MacArthur Foundation launched a five-year, $50 million digital media and learning initiative in 2006 to help determine how digital media are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.  Within this project, a three-year collaborative ethnographic work entitled the “Digital Youth Project” has gained much attention.

After interviewing 800 youth and young adults and conducting over 5,000 hours of online observation, one of the most significant findings is that “When teens are involved in friendship-driven practices, online and offline are not separate worlds - they are simply different settings in which to gather with friends and peers. Conversations may begin in one environment, but they move seamlessly across media so long as the people remain the same. Social media mirror, magnify, and extend everyday social worlds.”⁶

Furthermore, despite the adult perception that teenage online activity is a waste of time, researchers argue that, “new media forms have altered how youth socialize and learn, and raise a new set of issues that educators, parents, and policymakers should consider.”⁷  Instead of dismissing online activity entirely, adults have the opportunity to explore new ways of teaching that promote peer to peer learning and self-directed exploration. Youth not only need us to be present in their learning but they welcome it as research shows that “adults can still have tremendous influence in setting learning goals.”⁸

SETTING LEARNING GOALS

In Kara Powell and Brad Griffin’s new resource Deep Justice Journeys, they provide a holistic method for taking students through a transformational journey before, during, and after a mission trip. Before the team departs for their trip, there is an essential stage called Framing. It is during this stage where a student’s emotional, mental, spiritual, and relational capacities are formed.

Typically, this happens during the traditional training sessions when the team building, spiritual formation, cultural understanding, testimonies, logistics, and theology of missions are covered. However, we will explore how social media can be leveraged in order to enhance these four areas of formation during the Framing stage leading up to a mission trip.

Emotional Formation

Michael Bischof, the founder and executive director of Souleader Resources, describes emotional formation as “a process that begins with bringing the emotional parts of one’s being into conscious awareness and focus.”⁹   Emotional formation is easily missed because it is an “inside-out” process of formation rather than an “outside-in.”

Jesus understood that what “forms” a person is not always an external influence that works from the “outside-in.” We get a glimpse of this in his interaction with the scribes and Pharisees as recorded in Mark 7:20 when Jesus says, “What comes out of a person is what makes them ‘unclean.’” The Apostle Paul also recognized the role of the Holy Spirit in this “inside-out” transformation of Godly character by using the metaphor of fruit growing from out of a plant for everyone to see in Galatians 5:22-23.

Like a gardener that cultivates a plant’s environment for its fruit to spring forth, it is essential that we cultivate an environment where emotions on the inside can come out in healthy ways. However, during face to face training sessions, there is not enough time for true emotional formation to occur. In fact, the larger the group, the harder it is to facilitate an environment in which each student’s emotions can be shared and addressed in person.

Yet in the midst of the limitations of group gatherings, social media can be leveraged to facilitate emotional formation through the use of private groups on social networking sites such as Facebook.¹⁰

Practical Application:

Facilitate dialogue through a private discussion board on topics that will evoke emotional responses such as:

• What are you most excited about regarding this mission trip and why?
• What are you most nervous about regarding this mission trip and why?
• What are some emotions that come to mind when you picture yourself on this mission trip?

Mental Formation

According to the research cited above, youth are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults through the process of self-directed exploration. For some, this may be an uncomfortable departure from the style of mental formation that occurs through formal learning institutions such as high school and university that focus on goal-directed learning. We, along with formal educators, will have to shift our focus from being “dispensers” of knowledge to being “guides” in the search for knowledge. Acting as guides that provide formative input as well, we can help navigate youth as they learn from their peers and their own exploration.

Paul reminds us in Romans 12:2: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” As leaders, we have a limited amount of face to face time to influence mental formation. However, as we have seen above, social media not only extends the amount of time available for mental formation, it magnifies the content of mental formation through the network of peer-based learning.

Practical Application:

• Choose a book such as Deep Justice in a Broken World by Chap Clark & Kara Powell or Submerge by John Hayes and have the team read a chapter a week and post their favorite quotes and why.
• Ask students to research the country or people group they will be serving during their mission trip and have them share and discuss their findings with each other online.

Spiritual Formation

If media is an extension of our humanity, then it can be argued that media is an extension of our spirituality. As we saw above, “online and offline are not separate worlds …social media mirror, magnify, and extend everyday social worlds.”¹¹  In the same way teenagers can interact with friends online and offline, they can interact with God online and offline as well.

Paul reminds us that, unlike Moses who had to wear a veil to hide the fading radiance on his face after experiencing God’s glory, “We all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”¹²  Spiritual formation is an ongoing process, and to assume that it can only occur during face to face training sessions is to view training sessions in the same way the Israelites viewed Mt. Sinai: THE location where transformation occurs. However, because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, transformation can occur in ANY environment.

When done right thoughtfully, social media can be leveraged to facilitate spiritual formation.

Practical Application:

• Have students share passages from Scripture that they have been wrestling with and why through the discussion board. As a leader, this can be a great venue to facilitate and guide their spiritual growth.
• Have students work through a different spiritual discipline each week and have them post and interact with their experiences through the discussion board.

Relational Formation

Recent research has found that loneliness is as harmful to your health as cigarette smoking and obesity.¹³

We were created for community.

While we understand there to be a God-shaped void in humanity, there is also a human-shaped void that God chooses not to fill. This is apparent throughout the whole of Scripture but most notably in Genesis 2:18 when God says in reference to Adam, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”

Stanley Grenz writes, “Community…is central to the message of the Bible.”¹⁴

Because face to face interaction does not equate to a true sense of healthy community, relational formation has to be intentional and it must extend beyond the face to face training sessions in order to be effective. Social media is extremely powerful in this regard because, at its core, it is an extension of social interaction.

Practical Application:

• Post students’ testimonies (video or written) and ask students to read and interact with another student’s testimony each week.
• Allow students to post prayer requests and praise reports
• Facilitate a relational formation exercise online through a live blog or chat room

Some Unexpected Results

Having navigated through the process of leveraging social media for intentional purposes over the last couple of years in youth ministry, I have learned some unexpected things along the way. My understanding of incarnational ministry has been broadened as I’ve entered into the lives of youth not just on their campuses but also wherever they login to Facebook and other social networks. I’ve been surprised by the level of vulnerability that youth go to when they are online because of the inherent anonymity that they are afforded while typing away alone at their computer. In a sense, the glass bottom of my boat has been enlarged, allowing me to see more of the “world beneath” that Chap Clark describes as the adolescent world that few adults are allowed to see. Finally, quiet students that wouldn’t open up in person have communicated openly with me online. As social media continues to morph, I will have to adapt as well in order to lead and shepherd effectively.

I want to close with a post from one of our high school students who will be traveling with us for the first time to Kenya and Uganda for a mission trip. As leaders, we now see him with new eyes as he has revealed the depth of understanding and compassion that we had overlooked in person because of his shy nature.

The Pharisees and leaders during Jesus’ life thought very highly of themselves. They were in tune to the rules that God had set forth for them so much that they skipped over one of the most important ones: loving the poor and oppressed. The common story of the Good Samaritan shows this in a very bold way. The leaders of Israel deemed the poor as less important than whatever their task or objective was. As a result, the rich minority prospered while the poor struggled to get by. It seems that we are seeing much of the same thing in America. We as a people have forgotten those struggling with poverty in our very own nation. The poor are neglected and the materially wealthy, including me, hoard our wealth and spend carelessly.

We will not be able to build salvation communities amongst us if we look to build from the top down. We must build and care for the bottom first as they are first in God’s eyes. I know that I have not done this in my life. I have not cared for others as I should…especially the poor. I praise God for the opportunity to serve on this group with the rest of you and I hope to be stretched so that I can make a difference that is lasting and as I do this I hope to see change in myself. - Garrett, Age 15

ACTION POINTS:

1.      What resonates the most with you as you read this article?

2.      What forms of social media do you and your students currently use on a regular basis?  Which of them could be used to expand your team formation opportunities?

3.      What other forms of peer based learning have you experienced that would thrive through the use of social media?

4.      Which spiritual disciplines would be enhanced by the nature of social media? Which spiritual disciplines might be limited?

1. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1^st MIT Press ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press), 1994.
2. Shane Hipps, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 35.  See “Technology Matters” for more about Shane’s work.
3. Social media (2009, March 13) In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:17, March 13, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_media&oldid=276943552
4. Shane Hipps, 35.
5. Lenhart, et. al, Teens and Social Media, Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2.
6. Danah Boyd, Lead Author, “Friendship.”: Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, Forthcoming).
7. Mizuko, et. al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. 2008.
8. Mizuko, et. al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. 2008.
9. Michael Bischof, Holistic Formation (Part 3): Emotional Formation - The Most Neglected Area of Growth. Souleader Resources, 2006, 1.
10. While I have chosen to share practical examples using Facebook because this is the most popular social networking site today among adolescents, there are many other forms of social media that can accomplish the same things as Facebook. However, for those who choose to use Facebook, I believe it is essential to maintain a safe and controlled learning environment, especially as we work with minors. To do this, create a closed group within Facebook and invite leaders and students on your team to join. It is within this closed group that tremendous formation can occur in between face to face training sessions without any unwanted watching.
11. Danah Boyd, “Friendship.”
12. 2 Corinthians 3:18, TNIV.
13. John T. Cacioppo, William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (New York: Norton & Company, 2008), 93.
14. Stanley Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 23-24

If you’re like most of us in youth ministry, where do you turn when you need money to fund your service events? Your students’ parents.

Who do you assume will transport your students to and from your justice work? Their parents.

While it’s great to have the financial backing of your students’ families, and we all love those families that let us borrow their big SUVs for service events, deeper justice will come only when we view parents as more than just checkbooks and chauffeurs.

One of the best ways to partner with parents in deeper justice is to empower them through good communication. Let’s take some time to think about how we can most effectively engage with parents BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER a mission experience…

Before: The Pre-service Parent Meeting

We encourage you to schedule a 90-minute meeting with students and their parents near the very start of your pre-service events and training meetings. Make sure you set a warm and friendly tone by arranging your chairs in a circle and offering adult snacks (meaning more than a bag of crushed tortilla chips and some stale M&Ms).

There will invariably be students whose parents cannot (or don’t want to) come. Please let these students know they are welcome to invite another adult, and if that doesn’t work out, you can play the part of their parent for the evening.

At some point in this meeting, make sure you provide a thorough description of your work’s logistics, including:

• Why you chose this place for your service
• Your partners (any agencies or churches with whom you’re working)
• What you’ll actually be doing during your justice work
• Food and lodging arrangements
• Funding needed and the amount each student/family is expected to contribute
• Fundraising strategies and how students and families are expected to participate
• Transportation
• Safety precautions
• Medical release forms and insurance (health or otherwise) needed
• What students need to bring with them
• A schedule of additional meetings both before and after your service

Here are some other ideas to incorporate in your BEFORE meeting with parents:

1. Share Dreams

Before the meeting begins, hang four large pieces of poster paper along the walls of your meeting space. Write one of the following four headers on each piece of paper:  Kids’ Dreams for Themselves, Parents’ Dreams for Themselves, Our Dreams for Those We Serve, and Our Dreams for Our Family and Our Church Family.  Then as part of your meeting, incorporate an exercise where parents and kids both get to write on the sheets of paper.  Close by sharing and praying about those dreams, and keep the papers for your post-trip meeting.

2. Covenant Together

Create a parent covenant handout that includes some of the following categories.  Ask parents to support your team by brainstorming ways they would be willing to provide:

• PRAYER SUPPORT (e.g., committing to pray daily for my student’s justice journey; inviting others to pray on their own or join with me for particular prayer times)

• LOGISTICAL SUPPORT (e.g., driving my kid to meetings; trying to avoid schedule conflicts with meetings)

• FINANCIAL SUPPORT (e.g., give a certain amount of money before, during, or after my student’s service work)

• COMMUNICATION SUPPORT (e.g., staying on top of communication from the youth ministry; sharing my own thoughts and concerns directly with youth ministry leadership)

• POST-SERVICE SUPPORT (e.g., helping my teenager figure out how to be involved in justice work at home; engaging in justice work as a family)

During: Simple but Strategic Ideas That Engage Parents

While your energy during your actual service will be focused on your kids and the locals you’re serving, don’t make the all-too-common mistake of neglecting parents. Here are a few simple but strategic ideas to engage parents during your service work:

1. Encourage parents to gather together to serve in your community while your team is serving elsewhere. Then be intentional to have parents and students share about their experiences afterward.
2. During your service experience, invite parents to meet together at your church or a home to pray for your group regularly-maybe even daily.
3. Create a voice mail account with an outgoing message that you (or a student) change with daily updates and highlights.
4. Depending on the technology you have available, provide a forum in which students can send e-mail to parents and vice versa. Or designate a contact parent who will receive e-mails and pass them on.
5. If you have video-conference technology available, invite parents to come together and “call” your group so families can reunite through video.
6. Consider inviting some parents to come along as leaders (check with their kids first to gauge how comfortable they are with this).
7. Create a team blog or video channel in which you load daily photos and reflections, and parents can comment with prayers and encouragement.

After: The Post-Service Parent Meeting

When meetings for parents are held after a service experience, many youth workers find that few parents attend-and those who do come are usually the parents who are already committed to the type of conversations you’re hoping to facilitate. (In other words, they’re the ones who least need such a meeting.)

Given that, it’s tempting to give up trying to engage with parents after the service. Please resist that temptation.

Consider the following ideas for engaging parents after the activity:

• Give some time for students to write letters to parents during your initial debrief and mail those letters to the parents with an accompanying letter from you that celebrates all the Lord (and the kids!) did.
• Invite parents to some, or all, of your ongoing transformation activities after your justice work.
• Schedule a local parent/student service activity in which your students and their families can serve side-by-side.
• Give each parent a copy of any media presentations (e.g., videos, slide shows, PowerPoint presentations) you make.
• Plan a one-hour post-service parent meeting.  If you followed the pre-service parent meeting suggestions, you saved the four sheets of poster paper full of students’, parents’, and families’/church family dreams.  Have students and parents find their writing/drawings from before the trip and comment on how those dreams matched, or didn’t match, what really happened.  You could also have families share these reflections together.

Want to share more ideas about engaging families in justice and learn from others who are doing the same?  Check out this article on the FYI site,  join the discussion on the FYI Facebook Group discussion board, or leave a comment below!

A few years ago, this passage caught my attention. I was on a sabbatical, a time of Sabbath rest after years of intense urban life and ministry. But unlike the tree above, my leaves were withered. I was worn out, my joy was gone. This passage caught my attention because it promises that this tree gives its fruit in season, while its leaves do not wither. My expectation of myself, and the expectations I see around me, is that we are productive and fruitful all the time.

No wonder we feel worn out.

We were created for rhythms. All of God’s created world was created with rhythms. God created night and day. God created in six days, and then God rested. The ocean tides rise and fall, the leaves fall in autumn and then are reborn in spring.

Modern life gives few reminders, but we humans used to go to sleep and get up with the sun. Life followed the rhythms of the agricultural seasons. There were seasons of planting and harvesting, but also seasons when the ground would lay fallow (empty), as in the passage above.  Fruit grows in seasons, not constantly or instantaneously.

Now we live in a 24/7 city. We can be plugged in all the time, and we are expected to be fruitful year-round.  In this article we will look at ways that we can create life-sustaining rhythms even in a city that never stops.

Rhythms of Action and Contemplation: The Mary/Martha Pendulum (Luke 10:38-42)

I love Martha. I think she gets a bad rap. She was just doing what was expected of her, caring for the needs of Jesus in the way she knew how. She was extending hospitality, providing welcome to visitors. Yes, Jesus said that Mary’s way was the better way. But most of us know we are way more like Martha. And yet we long for “the better way.”

Read the scripture again. Martha wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was welcoming Jesus, preparing food. But she was distracted. Jesus declares, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted.”

That’s most of us: we get worried and distracted.

I don’t think Jesus was telling Martha not to offer hospitality or live an active life. Rather, Jesus was after the state of her heart. We can be preparing food while our hearts are centered on Jesus. Likewise, it is possible to sit at the feet of Jesus and still be distracted.

Many of us live on the Mary/Martha pendulum. We work hard, in our distracted ways, and then long to sit at the feet of Jesus. Maybe we even get away for a day. But then we get exhausted again, because the rest we experienced that day away seems far away. We do not bring that rest back into our work.

In the story, Mary sits in contemplation at the feet of Jesus, looking into his face and listening to his voice. Jesus says that Mary has chosen the better way. Yet the passage just before this one is the story of the Good Samaritan, a passage that challenges us to get off our donkey and help others. Perhaps we are meant to live out an integration of Martha and Mary, with a rhythm of both action and contemplation. This is what Jesus modeled in his own life. He was busy in ministry, yet had regular times of being with his Father.¹. Perhaps if we get off the Mary/Martha pendulum, we could find a more integrated way to be both of them.

Rhythms of Pain and Joy (Psalm 126)

Psalm 126 gives us an insight into what this integration might look like: “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying sheaves with them.” (Psalm 126:5&6 NRSV). Life has its rhythms of both pain and joy. As Old Testament scholar John Goldingay writes in a book reflecting on his own journey through pain to joy (caring for his wife who suffers from MS):

So many things we achieve are achieved only through struggle and conflict, not in easy ways. They always seem to involve crosses. I have so longed to find somewhere in life, some corner where joy is unmingled with pain.

But I have never found it. Wherever I find joy, my own or other people’s, it always seems to be mingled with pain. And I find that the people I most respect are people who know the link between joy and pain. And I have found that if we will own pain and weep over it together, we also find Christ’s overflowing comfort.

The bad news is that there may be no corner of reality where joy is not related to pain. The good news is that there is no corner of reality where pain cannot be transformed into overflowing joy.²

Goldingay also describes joy as “an inner liftedness of spirit that means we do more than just cope inside when things are tough: we are happy inside if things are difficult outside”³

Society around us doesn’t understand joy, so we are encouraged to look for joy in all the wrong places. When we face pain and struggle, we are encouraged to escape it for a while. Getting away for an evening of fun is a fine thing to do, but it cannot be a substitute for the need to press in through the pain and be surprised by joy in the midst of the sorrow. Transformation and growth in our lives happen when we learn to walk through the pain to joy.

As a biblical scholar, Goldingay tells us that joy in the scriptures is a “noisy affair.”⁴  We tend to think of joy as something quiet in our hearts, like peace. But joy in the scriptures is more like noisy celebration. This is certainly true in many urban contexts. Urban youth workers often find that their communities have some things to teach us about the capacity to celebrate even when life is difficult. Why cancel that celebration because of pain? Pain is not the end of the story.

Whether we seek the quiet joy in our hearts or the noisy joy of celebration, this is the joy God intends for his people. This joy is also what our youth are seeking. They understand the pain. They know about the escapes. But many are looking for examples of life worth living, to know that the pain is not the end of the story.

Rhythms of Silence and Noise

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence…the more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life.”

– Mother Teresa ⁵

Noise is a given in the city. It is part of what makes up urban life. Silence, on the other hand, is a rare commodity. Yet silence is listed as a spiritual discipline in various writings. Those of us who live in the city might think that this does not relate to us, or is not very practical. We can write off this need for silence as something that doesn’t apply to us, but rather to suburban spirituality.  But then there is Mother Teresa.

The streets of Calcutta where Mother Teresa walked, and where her sisters still walk, are definitely not places of silence. Urban India redefines “crowded.” From that intense urban context, Mother Teresa tells us we need silence. Her own answer was to get up early each morning and spend a quiet hour in the adoration of Jesus, before the noises of the day began. She took seriously the call to “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37:7).  That hour of deep silence then prepared her for the many noises that would be part of the rest of her day. Her life was a rhythm of silence and urban noise.

Just this week, two people have shared with me that without taking time for silence, they would not be able to handle the noises of the city. The city can drown out all other voices.

I keep a list of urban sanctuaries, places to find silence in the mist of the city. It includes churches that are open in the middle of the day for prayer, a beautiful chapel at the local hospital, downtown fountains that are largely deserted on the weekend, and early morning walks. Korean Christians have something to teach us here. Many get up early to pray, finding their way to the peaks in Griffith Park, an urban park in L.A.

Rhythms of Work and Rest

Americans are overworked. Some years ago, Juliet Schor wrote a book called The Overworked American. Schor describes how our culture consistently chooses work over leisure. Despite the many labor-saving devices we now have that were meant to free up our time, we work longer and longer hours, far more hours than our counterparts in Europe and Australia.⁶

Eugene Peterson addresses this overwork in an article with the intriguing title “Confessions of a Former Sabbath Breaker,”⁷ Peterson describes his days of overwork as a Sabbath breaker –  how he sinned with gusto, yet no one called him on it, and he was even commended for his sin. Peterson writes, “In fact, at one critical point in my life, when I was out-of-control obsessive in my indulgence of this sin, I was rewarded with the largest single annual increase in salary I have ever received” ⁸ Peterson believes that this rampant sin leads to an entire culture living on the edge of panic, with a refusal to sit still and be silent, to look and listen.

The Jews understand Sabbath, shabbat, in ways that are difficult for us to grasp.

For the Jews, Sabbath is fundamental to life and to both their spiritual and emotional health. “It is the culmination of the week, the day that gives purpose to all other days.”⁹

When I first began to see my need for better rhythms, I began to take a day off. But this was not the day that gave purpose to my other days. In fact, sometimes I thought of it as the day in which to recoup so that I could have more energy for my work. But this is not a Sabbath. “The Sabbath as a day of rest, as a day of abstaining from toil, is not for the purpose of recovering one’s lost strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labor. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of Life.” ¹⁰

Within the work-to-Sabbath-rest rhythm, Eugene Peterson finds another rhythm. Peterson sees the ingredients of both prayer and play within Sabbath ¹¹

Both are essential for Sabbath. In prayer, we pay attention to God, we respond to God as our creator, and appreciate again his creation. We spend time in prayer and praise, we move toward the longing to fill our thirst, as the deer pants for water.  In play, we explore our humanity, including our bodies. Whether it is shooting hoops, wandering on the beach, walking in an urban park, or playing with our children, playing uses the bodies God has given us.

Creativity through the arts is another way to play. Whether we prefer to express ourselves through playing the drums or creating a collage, this kind of play also reminds us that we are created in the image of the Creator.  We need rhythms of Sabbath that move back and forth between playing and praying (and sometimes we will play and pray together).

Weaving Rhythms into Our Lives

God built rhythms into creation. Modern urban life is out of sync with those rhythms and so are we, yet rhythms help us sustain our lives, and live more fully.

In my neighborhood, indigenous peoples from Guatemala are coming in larger numbers. On the weekends, the women wear their traditional clothes, beautiful weavings representing their unique tribe. Amazing skill goes into the making of these weavings. But the weaving is only possible because of the warp, the lengthwise bands that hold it in place. The warp provides a structure that makes the weaving possible. If that structure is in place, and firm, the weaver can create beautiful weavings. But without that structure, the weaving will not hold its shape or may even collapse. The rhythms we build into our lives that God intends are like the warp of that weaving. When we attend to the warp-the rhythms-God can create the beautiful weavings that represent our lives.

Our youth too are so in need of healthy rhythms in their lives. When our lives are out of sync and the rhythms have collapsed, my husband and I look at each other and say, “Who would want this life?”  We want to live healthy rhythms in line with God’s intent for us, and we want to live lives that model a life worth living for the many youth in our lives.

GOING DEEPER: URBAN YOUTH WORKERS SHARE THEIR CITY RHYTHMS

By Kimberly Williams

Understanding the need for rhythms is one thing, but how do you do this? In particular, how do you do this when you’re married, single, or chasing after some kids of your own? We’ve checked in with urban youth workers from around the country to get some of their best practices.

Here is a little introduction of our panel, including their life stage and challenges they have identified that can keep them from embracing healthy rhythms.

JIM DYSON, Vice President of Field Ministries for Young Life. He and his wife are empty nesters. Dyson says that, for him, the challenge of this stage of life has been to stop working. “When we had children at home the priority of being with them forced me to take a break from work.”

JOHN LEWIS, Southern California Regional Director for the Urban Youth Workers Institute. He is single with two young children. For John, the challenge of this season is to balance taking care of kids and working a full-time job as a single parent.

CHRIS BROOKS, Dean of Students for an inner-city high school in Minneapolis. He has been married for 13 years, and has two children who are 8 and 6 years old. Brooks identifies the greatest challenges to finding healthy rhythms as the “hustle” (taking on “extra” work to make ends meet), and the lack of resources (such as organizational leaders who don’t value rest and renewal, or mustering up the money to live in the city).

SHAWN CASSELBERRY,Chicago City Director for Mission Year. He has been married for 9 years. He identifies his rhythm fight as taking “on more responsibility than is humanly possible.” Casselberry says, “Sometimes I can forget that my job is not to fix or solve the problems around us, but to live in solidarity with my neighbors.”

The following represents collective suggestions this group has discovered about their rhythms.

WHEN YOU HAVE KIDS OF YOUR OWN

• Make your kids’ activities a priority
• If you need to be out at night, see if you can be at home in the afternoon when the kids get home from school.
• Participate in sports or other activities together with your kids.
• Get an animal that you can have fun with and take care of together.
• Eat dinner together.
• As much as possible, don’t commit to travel that will take you away from your family for long periods of time.
• Ask your kids to suggest ways for you to be a better mom/dad and implement their ideas.
• Tuck your kids in at night.
• Take advantage of “kids eat free” nights at local restaurants.
• Do a simplified examen exercise with kids as a bedtime or evening dinner ritual. Usually with young kids asking about daily highs and lows works best.
• Take a Sabbath together as a family.
• Parents work together to give one another time for retreats.

WHEN YOU HAVE A SPOUSE

• Debrief with your spouse daily.
• Pray together with your spouse.
• Don’t answer the phone when you’re spending time with your spouse, but always answer when he/she calls you.

FOR YOUR OWN HEALTH

• Take a Sabbath, and do things that are life-giving.
• Find times you can disconnect electronically (cell, phone, email).
• Find ways to appropriately let your own anger out, like going to the bowling alley.
• Create a colleague group.  One respondent shared:

Several leaders of yearlong urban ministry programs got together to start a colleague group around the theme of a balanced life. We meet every other month to discuss books we are reading as a group, share ideas for balancing personal and professional life, and give each other support. We were able to get a grant for our group that covers the cost of books, retreats, and guest speakers.

• Schedule time to get together with friends.
• Try centering prayer (www.centeringprayer.com)
• Take seminary classes for intellectual stimulation and growth in new areas.
• Take public transportation and relax in the extra time it takes you to get where you’re going.
• Once each quarter find a way to take a personal retreat for a day or more.

While it can be hard to balance, each of our contributors also recognized the value of city life. Dyson found the tensions of ministry caused him to trust more in Christ. Lewis saw how experiences of pain can be a path to spiritual growth. “You will encounter pain in many ways that can take you to a deeper place spiritually,” Lewis says. Brooks noticed how the diversity of people and experiences have caused him to “think more deeply about God’s Word and the appropriate application of it.” Particularly the “passages about the poor have become more real as I engage them on a regular basis, and live among them.” Casselberry, too, has “seen the gospel come to life.  Living in the city allows me to trust God more fully than when our lives were more comfortable and easy.”

Rhythms take time to develop. Sometimes they develop and sometimes they are decided upon. Yet we were meant to live in rhythms, no matter what our life stage.

1. See “Your Life” in month 2 of this series for more on this
2. John Goldingay, Walk on: Life, Loss, Trust, and Other Realities(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 100.
3. John Goldingay, Walk On, 97.
4. John Goldingay, Walk On, 96.
5. Mother Teresa, quoted in Malcolm Muggeridge, Something Beautiful for God (Ballantine Books, 1979), 48.
6. Juliet Schor, The Overworked America: the Unexpected Decline of Leisure, (Basic Books, 1991). Note that some of this is due to forces beyond our control, such as the expectation of our employers, while some is due to our own choices.
7. Eugene Peterson, “Confessions of a Former Sabbath Breaker,” Christianity Today, Sep 2, 1988, 25-28. Although this article appeared over 20 years ago, it is still among the best and most concise writings on this topic.
8. Eugene Peterson, “Confessions of a Former Sabbath Breaker,” 25.
9. Christine Sine, Godspace, (Newberg, OR: Barclay Press, 2006), 141.  Listen to an interview with Christine and Kara Powell on rhythms in urban youth ministry.
10. Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel, quoted by Don Postema, Catch Your Breath: God’s Invitation to Sabbath Rest (Grand Rapids: Faith Alive Christian Resources, 1997), 32.
11. Eugene Peterson, “Confessions of a Former Sabbath Breaker,” 28.

For many youth ministries, the sum total of the church’s support of your justice journey is to patiently listen to a few student testimonies and then murmur, “Isn’t that sweet…?” Moving beyond this shallow (and somewhat patronizing) level of church engagement takes thought, perseverance, and a bit of diplomacy on your part. While we realize that your church’s exposure to your justice work is somewhat beyond your control (we don’t know too many churches in which the youth pastor calls the shots), here are some ideas to catapult you and your students into a deeper relationship with your congregation.

Before

• Meet with your church’s missions committee so its members understand the goals of your service. You may want to invite a few students to attend the meeting with you.

• Ask your senior pastor if you can invite the church to pray for you and your students. Provide a list of specific prayer requests and pictures of your students in your church bulletin.

• Find out about any missionaries or leaders your church already supports in the region you’re serving so you can connect with them before and during your justice work.

• Figure out creative ways to invite the congregation to support your trip financially. Some churches have started selling $25 or $50 “shares” congregation members can buy as a way to invest in students’ transformation.

• Ask the pastor who works most closely with the children in your church if your students can pair up with one or more children and ask those children to pray for them. Make sure your high school students bring a small gift back for those children.

• Meet with your senior adult ministry and do the same thing.

• Invite a pastor from the community in which you’re serving to come to your church and give a five-minute profile, or even an entire sermon, on their community.

• Ask your church or specific Sunday school classes to volunteer to mentor your students.

During

• Any Sunday you’re gone, give some sort of report at church services through phone calls, video conference calls, update videos, or e-mails (depending on the technology available).

• Ask adult classes and small groups to spend a few minutes praying for your justice ministry. (When you get back, be sure to let them know how God answered their prayers!)

• At any church gatherings or services while you’re gone, see if the parents of one or two of your students can lead your congregation in prayer.

• Find out any prayer gatherings occurring during your service experience and ask the leaders to pray specifically for your students.

After

• Make sure you report the work God did in and through your students to the entire church. When you share, be sure to highlight what you learned from the people in the community where you served.

• Teach your church any worship songs you learned from the locals.

• Invite the locals you served to share (in person or by video) how God is working in their community and how your group participated in God’s work.

• Give the locals cameras and ask them to take pictures of the impact of your service work and share those with your entire congregation.

• Invite adults who can help your students become justice advocates back home to meet with your students. There might be a city council member or community leader in your church; if not, someone in your church is likely to know that type of leader.

• Set up a meeting in which the students and adults who participated in the trip can discuss the experience with your church missions committee. Make sure the agenda includes discussing next steps for the church’s participation in this or other justice work.

Our students were well acclimated to video-as-didactic-tool by the time our first Blackout came around.  Since then, it’s become something of a self-perpetuation phenomenon: students like videos, so students expect videos, so students create videos, on and on.  Videos may or may not be right for your context, but if you think they’ll work, then please be encouraged by the power of film to tell a story, as well as the relative ease with which you can create your own, which is the premise of this article.  First, here are a few samples of videos made by students.

This is the first video we ever made in our high school ministry, and it was done by a senior girl using Final Cut HD for Mac.  She was by no means an expert on the software; in fact, she taught herself the basics the day before (students can do that sort of thing).  I explained to her the idea of Blackout, sent her some statistics from the research other students had done, and gave her the song.  She took it from there.

For our first real Blackout event, a sophomore boy took some stats, some pictures from the Internet, and a Switchfoot song and made a slideshow using iMovie for Mac.  He and I met once ahead of time to cast a general vision for the video and determine its development.  He showed it to me a couple of times along the way and we made edits.  The final product was stunning.

This was made by the same student who made the Water video, using the same general process.  By this time, our students had picked up on how easy and powerful it is to tell a story with a song, pictures, statistics, and Bible verses.  In fact, this video marked a heightened effort on the part of the students to get into Scripture for themselves.  They are far from expert exegetes - but they are reading the Bible a lot more than they were before.

This video was made by two junior boys - our third and fourth filmmakers - using the same stylistic blueprint as our first video.  I think the song is from a movie soundtrack, and they found the pictures on Google Images.  Again, the statistics and Scripture verses all came from the students’ personal study.

MAKING YOUR OWN VIDEOS

As you can see, our students have created lots of videos for our church’s justice projects.  Promotional videos are not at all essential to justice work - but they sure can help tell stories and inspire action.  They also tap into the creative energies and tech-savvy of those students who are already wandering around with video cameras and sitting at home at their computers for hours.  Whether you are making something to show at a justice event, or maybe just creating a multimedia memento of highlights from a recent work project or mission trip, few things connect better than slideshows and short videos.

And the best part is that videos like this are actually pretty easy to make.

If someone in your community has a Mac purchased in the last five years, you have everything that we have (PC users, skip to next paragraph).  iMovie is loaded with features and is extremely intuitive.  For the most part, you can just drag and drop images and audio, and from there it is just a matter of deciding your preferred order.

If you are a PC user, be not ashamed.  Microsoft Powerpoint is an amazing, uncomplicated slideshow maker.  Under the Insert drop down menu, you can insert pictures, text boxes, and songs, and under the Slide Show drop down menu, you can set your slides to advance automatically.  What that means is, after a little practice, you’ll be able to make a slideshow set to a song that plays by itself - like a movie.  All you need to do from there is plug your computer into a projector and you’re set.

For those of you feeling a little more tech-savvy, did you know you can turn any Microsoft Powerpoint Presentation into a movie?  You just click Save As and then select Powerpoint Movie (or, on some versions, a Powerpoint Show).  On my machine, the Powerpoint show is saved in a format compatible with the Quicktime movie player, probably because Quicktime is what’s installed on my hard drive.  From there, I can play it from my laptop, or burn it onto a DVD.

It may take some practice and timing to make it all come together, but believe me, you will be up and running in no time.  A helpful resource comes from the makers of the software themselves, Microsoft.  A tutorial for getting the most out of Powerpoint’s features can be found here:  http://www.microsoft.com/Education/PPT2003Tutorial.mspx

Lastly - and this may be the best news of all - your students are probably better at tech stuff anyway, and if they aren’t, what a great chance to spend some time with a student learning something new.

The Young Adult Struggle: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

“But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.” Peter answered and said to him, “Even if all are made to stumble because of You, I will never be made to stumble.” Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you that this night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” Peter said to him, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” And so said all the disciples.     Matthew 26:32-35

In many ways this story about Peter typifies the experience of young adults in their faith walk. Peter is trying to figure out what it means to follow Christ, and he goes from one extreme to the other. We can condemn Peter, or we can understand that for Peter and his peers this was a confusing time. They were trying to make sense of their lives, Jesus’ ministry, and this whole suffering servant, crucifixion, resurrection thing. It was a lot to put together.

Peter and the other disciples, homeboys along with the women who were around Jesus, like young adults today, find themselves caught in a web of big questions linked with their faith journey. And they don’t have easy answers. Young adults are in a period of reexamining their lives, motives, call, convictions, and theology.

What Are the Real Issues?

At the root of ministry with and to young adults is what I like to call the “great quest,” the question of purpose. The great quest is tied up with the great question: What have I been put on earth to be and do? This is both an identity question and a spiritual question. This question has theological and sociological implications. Young adults are in the process of defining themselves apart from their parents and in relationship to their peers. They are stretching out on their quest for a new life interdependent with their parents. There is a tension between what their parents defined for them and what they now have to define for themselves. The biblical foundation for quest, purpose, success, and significance is that famous Pauline passage of Ephesians 2:8-10 as Paul invites the readers to struggle with their divine design and purpose as outlined by God: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (NIV).

The Ephesians 2:8-10 Quest Question

What has God designed young adults to be and do? What are those works that God has prepared for them? Sharon Parks makes the quest question clear in her book Big Questions, Worthy Dreams as she characterizes the questions young adults are asking. Parks says, “These are questions of meaning, purpose, and faith; they are asked not just on the immediate horizon of where we spend the night. In young adulthood, as we step beyond the home that has sheltered us and look into the night sky, we can begin in a more conscious way to ask the ancient questions: Who am I under these stars? Does my life have a place and a purpose? Are we — am I — alone?”¹  Young adults come to the church with these questions of meaning on their hearts. Young adult ministry must bring them into a community of faith that recognizes and honors the developmental work they are doing and walks with them.

The young adult developmental period feels like life and death for those experiencing it. It is a valley experience as they seek what’s next (the immediate) and what tomorrow has in store for them (the future). Many young adults leave the church during this period, and as a result they are trying to do this developmental work in the context of popular culture, which bombards them with mixed messages. In the church they need to hear a message that engages the messages they are getting from the culture while teaching them ways to seek counsel from God, godly friends, and leaders as they walk through this important phase of life.

Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner, the authors of the book, Quarterlife Crisis, describe this period of life.  Robins and Wilner compare the quarterlife crisis (between the late teens and early twenties) to what is commonly referred to and accepted in the culture as the midlife crisis. They say:

While the midlife crisis revolves around a doomed sense of stagnancy, of a life set on pause while the rest of the world rattles on, the quarterlife crisis is a response to overwhelming instability, constant change, too many choices, and panicked sense of helplessness….The resulting overwhelming senses of helplessness and cluelessness, of indecision and apprehension, make up the real common experience we call the quarterlife crisis…. Twentysomethings believe they are alone and that they are having a much more difficult transition period than their peers-because the twenties are supposed to be “easy,” because no one talks about these problems, and because the difficulties are therefore so unexpected. ²

Because no one talks about or recognizes the quarterlife crisis, the young adults’ experiences that feel like life and death go unnoticed by the larger culture, especially in church culture. As a result, they are left shivering, alone, afraid, and confused, waiting for someone to stop by their house and talk with them as they walk along this lonely way.

Jesus’ Ministry: A Model of Response

Ministry to young adults was a significant part of Jesus’ ministry during his time on earth. We know that many of the disciples were young men searching for meaning, identity, and life purpose. We can of course assume that many of the women who where part of Jesus’ crowd were also young adults searching for the answer to the big questions of life. We know, for example, that Mary and Martha were close to Jesus and supportive of his ministry. Their search for an answer to what is most important in life is recorded in Luke 10:38-42. Mary and Martha are doing the work of young adults as they ask big questions and listen to Jesus’ answers. In essence Martha asks, “Do I do what is expected of me, or do I do what excites me? Do I sit and listen, or do I stay busy? How do I find God and find out what God wants of me?” The Mary and Martha story exposes some of the tension experienced in the lives of young adults.

Jesus was clear that Mary had made the better choice by choosing to sit and commune with him. Many young adults are busy running around trying to find out what God wants, what they want, and what the world wants on a trial-and-error basis while there isn’t a place for them to sit. A key theological theme in young adult ministry must be making a place for young adults to sit and listen to God. They need a break from the busy, a place where their resting and sitting at the feet of Jesus is appreciated and they are not criticized for what appears to be doing nothing.

Many young adults are caught between making a living, finishing a major, and doing what they really want to do — which in many cases they don’t even know yet. It is unfair to ask twenty-year-olds what they want to do for the rest of their lives. They don’t know. They walk into something that they may eventually struggle with and fight to walk away from.

Is This Church for Real?

Young adults are looking for confirmation that what they are doing is actually making a difference. They are not willing simply to come to church on Sunday and go through the motions. They question the relevance and power of the church. They critique form and fashion that don’t lead to deliverance. Jesus understood this. As soon as Jesus demonstrated the power of God in the deliverance of the demon-possessed man, he walked with his disciples to the home of Simon and Andrew. He was now about to show them how this ministry addressed their personal lives. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and Jesus healed her.

The key here is ministry that makes a difference. Jesus wasn’t offering religious platitudes or promising to do something later for those who were hurting. He responded on the spot in a way that made a lasting difference. Young adults want to be involved in ministry that is real, tangible, and making a difference in the here and now. George Barna calls these types of young adults religious revolutionaries. He says, “[There is] a new breed of disciples of Jesus Christ. They are not willing to play religious games and aren’t interested in being part of a religious community that is not intentionally and aggressively advancing God’s kingdom. They are people who want more of God — much more — in their lives. And they are doing whatever it takes to get it.”³

The disciples of Jesus got more of God; they were able to touch God, sit with God, and see God act. Young adults in the twenty-first century want this type of closeness with God. Jesus didn’t have a wall between him and the people. He gave them access and the ability to get involved and start working with the ministry today.

A ministry that doesn’t empower young adults to live an edited life in an unedited world with and among sin and sinners will not meet their needs. They need to be empowered to sit the way Jesus sat with tax collectors and sinners. This empowerment requires an encounter with God’s Word that reveals God’s ways and methods for living in the world they can’t leave.

Action Points

1. What has your church done to make sure it is welcoming to young adults?  Make two lists of ways your church both welcomes and discourages young adults to participate. Then send out your lists to a few young adults you know and invite them to comment on your lists.

2. What is unique about your city that would fight against young adults’ faith journey?  Host a focus group of young adults to discuss the issues and concerns they have about your particular context as it relates to young adult faith and identity.

3. Take stock of the ways your church involves young adults in meaningful service, both inside and outside the church, for the sake of the Kingdom.  Then brainstorm new inroads to plug young adults into existing ministries, involving appropriate leaders and of course young adults themselves.

1. Sharon Daloz Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Young Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 35.
2. Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner, Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties (New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001), 4-5.
3. George Barna, Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 2005), 7.

Many of the women in the program were mothers who had had disturbing childhoods themselves. The women shared about traumatic situations they had been through and ways that they were wounded. I came to realize that the struggles people experience in the city were a lot more complicated than I had first anticipated.

COPING THROUGH ADDICTION

In this series of seeking Sabbath Rest in a 24/7 City it is important not only to look at our city, our life, and our pain as we have over the last three months, but also to take a look at our own struggles. Out of our personal struggles we develop coping mechanisms that can keep us from being able to rest. One way we can learn more about facing our struggles is to look through the lens of addiction.

For a long time I was uncomfortable with the label of addiction. That was what “other people” dealt with, not me. I’m in control, I can handle myself, I am an example and a role model are statements I would make to myself.  But then I found the language and models of addiction helpful as I tried to understand more about why I struggle. Why “what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do,”¹ as Paul would say.

Often our first assumption when we are talking about addiction is to think of drugs and alcohol. But the term for addiction can be broadened beyond addictive substances to other forms of addictive behavior as well. This could include our sexuality, eating disorders, workaholism, video games, and even being addicted to others (or co-dependency).

In their book, Healing Addiction: An Integrated Pharmacopsychosocial Approach to Treatment, authors Peter Martin, Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie Bealer define addiction as:

“a persistent, repetitive, and often irresistible self-destructive activity that, at least in the beginning, is perceived as rewarding by individuals, but that robs them of time, resources, or the motivation to do the things that are part of a balanced life and may well have been part of their lives before becoming addicted.”²

For the purpose of this article I am defining addiction as the coping mechanisms we use to keep us from facing ourselves and God.

The more I have learned about addiction, the more I have been able to recognize that a person’s struggles are not only related to their individual decisions, but are also deeply rooted in systemic and generational issues. The philosophy of the recovery program where I worked as a counselor was that drug use can be a type of band-aid to cover over deep wounds. As counselors, we were encouraged to look beyond the addictive behavior itself to see what was going on underneath the addiction. Similarly, as urban youth workers, it’s important for us to be aware of the dynamics underlying some of our own struggles.

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO OUR STRUGGLES

Every one of us is unique. We have different personalities, sensitivities, quirks, passions, triggers, and things that make us tick. Some of these distinctions are ingrained in us from birth, while others are formed as we develop. When some of our foundational development experiences are filled with hurt, we experience wounds that require us to develop ways to cope. While these coping mechanisms can get us through a moment or period of time, they can also keep us from addressing the deeper hurts. Coping mechanisms can also keep us from healthily connecting with others, including God. Two factors involved in creating coping mechanisms are our ability to self-regulate and to our ability to attach to others.

Self-Regulation

A significant period in our early individual development is from 0 to 3 years old. During this time there is a shift from being completely dependent on our parents to being able to self-regulate. Self-regulation means we can do basic things like walk, eat, and go to the bathroom on our own. It also means that we can ask for help, can feel our emotions, and safely take risks and explore. In essence, to develop the ability to self-regulate is to develop self-control.

When we don’t develop the ability to self-regulate, we tend to need something outside of ourselves in order to calm down. We can’t do it on our own. Some of our coping mechanisms have the appearance of being helpful (i.e. pouring ourselves into work, always taking care of others, or staying busy) while others we can recognize as unhelpful (drugs, eating disorders, compulsive sexuality).

Attachment Theory

Another factor connected to developing coping mechanisms is the degree to which we as children are able to trust the adults who influence us in our early years. ³ In the 1950’s, John Bowlby, studying two-year-olds left in the hospital by their parents, developed the theory of attachment. The hospitals at this time in London had highly restrictive visiting hours for parents, meaning parents were only allowed to visit with their children an average of a few hours per week.⁴  Bowlby watched as the children would first protest, then experience despair, and finally would develop a coping mechanism of relational detachment.⁵  When the parents returned, the children wouldn’t get excited. In the mind of the children, the parents, who had represented protection and safety, had abandoned them.  The children therefore determined they had to take care of themselves and could no longer depend on others.⁶

The same type of dynamic exists today. If we experienced abandonment when we were children, we often try to stay in control and not let others close. We have a hard time developing trust.

When these two tasks of early childhood-our ability to self-regulate and to our ability to attach to others-are short-circuited, they can become sources of our coping mechanisms in adulthood. Many of our addictive struggles are rooted in the way we search for soothing in external comforts or our need to stay in control and not be hurt by others.⁷

ADDRESSING OUR STRUGGLES

Addiction in the urban community is often underestimated and trivialized or accepted as “normal”. While it may be comforting to look around and see others with similar struggles, it does not minimize the negative effects that our struggles have on us.

Our deep need to protect ourselves and to be in control can take up much of our energy and affect our ability to minister to others. Especially when we are in ministry, sometimes it feels like everything will fall apart if we stop using our coping mechanisms. When we try to appear in control and confident but internally we feel in disarray, we cannot fully be present to others. Sometimes we get caught up in caring for others simply because we believe it is how we address our own needs.⁸  These are ways that our coping mechanisms cover up our need to face ourselves, and keep us from fully experiencing rest.

One morning in Oakland, I was walking to work at the recovery program when one of the dealers on the corner asked me where I was going. I strategically told him I was “going to work,” not sure how he would respond if I told him I was a counselor at a drug recovery program. But he pressed, and I told him. He smiled and teased me by saying, “Awww, whatya tell’m, ‘just say no’?” We bantered back and forth, and then he said, “No, really, what do you tell them?” I said that I don’t tell people anything. If they want recovery, I can walk with them, and if they don’t, I won’t. He seemed pleased with my response and said, “I think I have some people I can send your way.”

Focusing on addressing our own issues requires a commitment on our part. While some of us may need professional support, and all of us need a community to journey with,⁹  no one can make us deal with our struggles. It is a process of acknowledging and developing awareness, establishing a support system, and learning about our unique triggers.

I personally have a very well-established set of unhealthy coping mechanisms I’ve been using my whole life. It’s always been with an implicit understanding that this is what I need to do “or else.” I never really cared to discover what the “or else” was referring to. A few years ago when I began a healing journey, I felt like I had two options. One option was to go on with my life as I had been, using my coping mechanisms. The only catch with this option is that I would now be aware that I was using coping mechanisms, and it would also mean I could never fully relax and be myself or be intimate with others. The other “or else” option was dark, unfamiliar, and completely unpredictable. To go that road felt as if I was choosing certain death. I had never related to Jesus’ painful prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane more.¹⁰

I took the counterintuitive, dark, and scary road. I have felt incredible pain from accepting the things that have been too unbearable to think about and the situations that I have felt deeply ashamed by. But I have also felt incredible freedom that comes from honesty and loving acceptance. For example, I discovered support when I began speaking to my family members about things that we never talked about before. In addition, I have been less defensive because I have started identifying the ways I can push away the people trying to care for me.

I never thought it was possible, but I have discovered that I don’t have to rely on the coping mechanisms I have always known.  They do not define me. While this is certainly a lifelong journey, as I have turned around to face myself and face God, I have experienced the “new creation” described in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “…the old has gone, the new has come!” The work of addressing my coping mechanisms has been hard and at times exhausting, but it is also what has enabled me to truly relax and enter into a Sabbath rest.

GOING DEEPER: Family System Dynamics

Another factor that affects us in our struggles with addiction is our family dynamics. Each family is different. As a kid, whenever I would use the strategy of comparing my mom to my friends’ parents to convince her to let me do something, she would say, “Other people, in other families, do other things.” As much as I came to hate that phrase, it was true-no two families are the same.

Boundaries

Within a family, boundaries may range from being very rigid to very loose.¹¹  A family member feels safe when the boundaries are dynamic enough to be rigid when they need to be rigid, and loose when they need to be loose. Unfortunately it is easier for a family to fall into one end or another of the spectrum. When family members feel too protected, this can lead to frail boundaries.  When family members feel too unprotected, this can lead to impenetrable boundaries. An inability to set appropriate boundaries leaves a person at a severe relational disadvantage when they enter into the world. It is often characteristic of those who struggle with addiction to have a difficult time setting boundaries. The kids we work with often press in on us and challenge our ability to set appropriate boundaries, which is one of the many reasons it is important to set and maintain boundaries.

Rules

Every family also has a set of rules. These include both stated agreements and silent rules that everyone internally knows, though they are never discussed. Three silent rules that can stifle family members and keep them from trusting the family system are:

• Don’t talk.
• Don’t feel.
• Don’t take responsibility (In other words, blaming, justifying, and lying are all allowed.)

These three silent rules often appear in families with addiction.

Roles

Finally, all families develop roles for their members. There are explicit roles like mother, son, and sister, but there are many implicit roles as well. These are roles like hero, scapegoat, and mascot. In healthy families, these roles are intended to be interchangeable and shared by all the family members. In families with addiction, these roles get permanently assigned to particular members. When this happens, it limits the growth of the family member and the family as a whole.

Our families are the places where we have the opportunity to learn about ourselves and to be intimate with others. To do this, we need to feel safe and cared for. Boundaries, rules, and roles, when modeled to us in healthy ways, can help us feel care and safety. When children don’t learn these things in a family system, they then must go into the world without the tools they need to express themselves and connect with others. Naturally, this can lead them to struggle as adults.

Our churches or youth ministries often function just like a family system. How are we to know how to help our teenagers through their individual development, or help our young people develop attachments, or model appropriate boundaries, rules, and roles if we never learned these things ourselves? While it may be appropriate to lament these disadvantages, if we are able to focus on addressing those areas now, we can model this developmental process for any of our youth who also did not learn them.

1. Romans 7:15, NIV.
2. Peter R. Martin, Bennett Alan Weinberg, and Bonnie K. Bealer, Healing Addiction: An Integrated Pharmacopsychosocial Approach to Treatment (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2007), 3.
3. For further study on Attachment Theory see: Bretherton, Inge. “The Origin of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.” Developmental Psychology 28:759-775, 1992.
4. A 1949 survey of London hospitals visiting hours ranged from a few hours once or twice a week, to not at all. In two of the hospitals parents could not interact with their children at all, only view them through a partition or while they were sleeping (Munro-Davies, H.G. ‘Visits to Children in Hospital’, Spectator, March 18, 1949. Found at: http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/3964413).
5. Overview of the findings of the study Robertson, J., & Bowlby, J. “Responses of young children to separation from their mothers,” Courrier of the International Children’s Centre, Paris, II, 1952, 131-140. Found in Inge Bretherton, “The Origin of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth,” Developmental Psychology 28:759-775, 1992.
6. “Bowlby maintained that infants and children experience separation anxiety when a situation activates both escape and attachment behavior but an attachment figure is not available” (Inge Bretherton, 763).
7. Another factor that can have a big influence on us is our family dynamics, see “Family Dynamics” sidebar.
8. Mary Ainsworth, a student of Bowlby’s, recognized that a person’s “disposition toward compulsive caregiving may derive from the redirection of attachment behavior. The individual may be taking the role of attachment figure instead of seeking care” (Bretherton, 764).
9. “If people are ready for the changes that come with treatment, they must make a commitment to persevere until their addiction is under control and they can lead a productive life. This perseverance must include a commitment to relationships with others with whom they engage in the journey of recovery. Addiction is a lonely state focused on an illness; recovery involves broadening patients’ horizons, including developing relationships with others that allow them to grow beyond the myopic concerns of repetitive harmful behaviors.” Peter Martin, Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie Bealer, Healing Addiction, 5.
10. “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” Luke 22:42, NIV.
11. See the article entitled “Your Life: Finding space to love God, your neighbor and yourself in the city” for more on the topic of boundaries.