Archives for September 2011

Two of my friends, Adam McLane and Mark Oestreicher recently formed a little company called “the youth cartel”.  Well, apart from doing some coaching that I was the beneficiary of and apart from them both volunteering in our student ministry and apart from being just good friends, now they also are making my convos with students waaay easy too.

Seriously, there is this little gem they send out every Monday called “Youtube You Can Use”.  And let me just say, it’s cheating.  Seriously, if you have a small group Bible Study you’re responsible for, you might not need curriculum anymore.  If you’re a youth pastor, you might actually get fired by your boss when they decide they don’t need you to write Bible Studies anymore either.  It’s ridiculous how simple it is- unless your e-mail freezes or they realize what a steal this is and start charging you for the brilliance of it- then you might be able to keep your job.  But until then, um… you should really slyly sign up and use your non-church e-mail to get it all sneaky and stuff.

Anyway, the third week of this e-mail just came out and each week it basically has 3 elements.

A VIDEO: 1 to 2 minutes via Youtube- which is uh… free.

A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS TO KICK AROUND ABOUT THE VIDEO.- free again.

A BIBLE PASSAGE TO READ AND SOME MORE QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT- and again.

I decided that I’m just going to bust out my iphone and use this video and the questions with my high school son during our Wed. am breakfast chats.  Bammo!  Instant fun and reason to talk about something significant.

What’s that you say?  You have not subscribed to this e-mail yet.  Oh.. I see, you like doing stuff the hard way.   For the rest of you people who believe you should work smart not hard… Well for you, you can subscribe here.  Just don’t tell your senior pastor or your elder board about where you get your free brilliance 🙂

I have been trying to get a book published under the title “You Suck: enduring, learning from, and responding to your critics”.  But I can’t get it passed the world of christian publishing.  Everyone I pitched it to loves the concept, and the book title is tentatively in the contract, but I can’t get it to go- because of one thing: the word “Suck”.

I have taught seminars at both the National Youth Workers Convention and the Simply Youth Ministry Conference under the above title and gotten rave reviews from those who came and found the content to be honest, authentic, and helpful.  As a youth pastor for the last 17 years, I’ve had some crazy things said to me from both students and adults and experienced criticism at levels that at times make you just want to quit and become an arborist- cuz plants don’t talk back.  I wrote an article in this months Group Magazine entitled, “You Suck”- but they edited it to say “You Stink”- I found this out by reading the article.   I had a friend of mine get told by the publisher that he had to remove the word “suck” from the inside of his book- like in a single sentence.   I recently wrote a magazine article that I wanted titled “I suck at ______ ” (I’ll leave the rest blank to avoid giving away the article) for a different magazine.  They told me they also understood why I titled it that but that it would be offensive to some and cause those same people to not read it or to pass judgment on it for it’s shock factor.  I’ve been told “Christian Bookstores” won’t stock a book with “suck” in the title and that evidently, a lot of people still buy books in “Christian Bookstores”.  That thought blew my mind, but ok.  My local christian bookstore I think is owned by whoever makes trinkets of all things Max Lucado, Thomas Kinkade paintings, and testamint gum- but that’s a different blog post.

REALLY?

Who out there are the rhetoric police on the word “Suck”?  Please call yourself out so we can actually talk.

Let me tell you why you should stop banning the word suck.

SOME THINGS SUCK.   Vacuums suck.  Everyone sucks on straws.  Suck is a legitimate verb.

WORDS CHANGE IN MEANING.  Ok… even if there ever was a generation that thought the word meant a sexual act, no real walking talking human being today does.  Interview 1000 people at the mall and ask them what they think of when they hear the word “suck”.  My money is on they don’t think porn.  If you want proof that meaning changes over time, here it is.  For some reason which I cannot explain, people felt it ok to at one time shorten Richard to a name that has nothing to do with Richard at all really.  I actually cannot write that word on this blog.  Why?  Because clearly, words must change in meaning.  Nobody names their kid this anymore.  And no student or adult I know of thinks that the word “suck” has anything to do with the porn industry.  They however do think that guys first name does.

SOMETIMES LIFE FLAT OUT SUCKS.  Please tell me, what word do you describe the total loss of your home with?  What do you say to someone when their car is totaled?  What do you call it when a student is diagnosed with cancer?  Maybe you call it tragedy or horrible.  Most people I know say, “well that just sucks” or “this sucks”.

In the end, I don’t care if you tell your kids to say sucks or don’t.  Honestly, we did not teach our 8 year olds to use it in their vocabulary either.  But the book in question is not written for 8 year olds.  I’m writing a book for adults who know that sometimes, life sucks and know full well what it’s like to be told “You Suck”. When they are, they also know that no one is speaking of your sexual experiences, but rather your inability to meet their approval.

So there you go.  When life hands you lemons, go ahead and call it out.  This sucks.  Then go make lemonade and suck it down through a straw in protest.

There’s a fine line between ritual and the sacred.  Ritual is all about doing something because you “ought to” or because it’s what you’re “supposed to do”.  Sacred is holy.  Sacred is something you do because you know you’re called to.  It is set apart as something different and unique- something that is treasured.  

When I was asked to take over the leadership of our kids ministry team, one of the sacred/ritual lines we were faced with evaluating was that of Baptism for kids.  We began to ask, “How do we help kids understand baptism in an authentic way?  How do we help them to honor and understand a sacred moment and not settle for just a religious experience based on the desires of others?”

We had 3 main concerns:

#1. At what age, can a child actually understand the concept of “symbol”?  Baptism in the Scriptures is a symbol, and by definition, it requires abstract thinking skills to comprehend.  A child must be able to understand that Baptism symbolizes Jesus’ death and resurrection, but does not require them to actually physically die to experience it.  It’s a complicated concept for a child.

#2. How do we help parents to share in this role, helping their child to embrace baptism without being forced to do that which they are not ready to do out of ritual expectations?

#3. What rules should we set up and at what point are we actually imposing our opinion on a family/child’s decision?  Like, who are we to tell parents when and how their kid can get baptized?  For me, our family has set 10 at the minimum age.  Jake has been asking get baptized for 2 years, but we don’t think he really understands it yet.  In the case of a baptism policy, essentially we were trying to dig for the lowest common denominator- the point where we felt like we were not doing something a kin to solely a parental decision like infant baptism and yet not being some kinda pharisee gate keeper either.

Last weekend was our semi-annual church baptisms.  So, here’s what we decided for now:

How old?  We chose third grade.

What do parents need to know?  We wrote this letter.

What do kids need?  We made this worksheet that a kid fills out and goes over with their parent.

How about you?  Does your church have a policy on this you like that is similar or different?

I grew up on the proclamational form of church.  This is where the one on the mic speaks.  The crowd listens- usually with notes of some kind that the speaker wrote.  I’ve done ministry like this for literally decades.  I still love it sometimes- especially when the communicator and the message are dynamically delivered.  But last year, something flipped in me and I said, “this is not working in our high school ministry anymore”.

Dynamic messages are not necessarily transformational.  It’s time to ditch this model for my students.

But if I’m going to stop talking at students and seriously start engaging them in the learning process, then some significant things are going to have to change.  If I want to put my money where my mouth is and stop telling students what to think and actually engage them in the process of learning how to think, then this will require some significant shifts.  I can no longer delegate an interactive learning style to the small group setting only.

Here’s 3 I’m in the midst of:

CREATE SPACE FOR QUESTIONS AND CONVERSATION. 

I’ve never done youth ministry without one staple in my weekend program.  It’s always been (and still is) called, “the mingle”.  It’s some silly or significant question that students ask/answer during a fairly unstructured conversation space in our program.  Sometimes it’s about some culture thing like the superbowl.  Sometimes it’s a light intro to the topic of the hour or so we’re together.  Currently, it’s when we also encourage students to get a drink from our deck cafe and welcome anyone who is new too.

But lately, I’ve decided that’s not cutting it either.  So I’ve added having students engage one another in conversation 3-5 times during a 35 minute talk.   Most of the time it’s a multiple choice question that is answered in 2 minutes or less.  Sometimes it’s deep.  Sometimes it’s silly.  I try and make them safe and when asking for deeper stuff, I usually ask them to talk about “teens today” instead of “struggles they each can identify with”.  But if I don’t break up the convo and have students start interacting with one another and the adults around them, then in this season of my student ministry, I’m pretty sure we’ve missed it.

I don’t know that we’re there yet, but it’s a start.  Here’s 3 examples of questions I asked last weekend.

INSTIGATE A TENSION TO BE WRESTLED WITH.

DON’T LET ANYONE SIT ALONE.  

Lastly, if I don’t want students to sit and listen and not engage God or me or anyone in the tension, then I can’t let them sit by themselves.  We sit around smallish cafe tables already- with like 4-6 students or so at them. But that doesn’t stop someone from trying to nab a table to themselves. Which we are slowly trying to outlaw in our ministry.  As best we can, we are working to make it totally taboo in our environment to come and be alone in our space.