Probably the most stunning thing to me all weekend was the openness and candor of the speakers. They freely, boldly and naturally stood up on stage in front of a hundred or several thousand people and talked about the challenges of their life as easily (seemingly) as they talked about what they had for breakfast. It wasn't the sensational, glorified stuff we are all tired of. It was this:
Jim stood up to talk about hope. He said it reminded him of three words: alcoholism, abuse, and infidelty. It was the first session of the morning and I am sure everybody, as I did, came fully awake at that point and said to themselves WHOA...
He said he came from a family history that was affected by all three. But, by God's grace, his family was a transitional family. His kids were the first generation who did not directly know any of these three things. But it did not mean he was immune from challenges. He knew in his head that he was supposed to put God first, then his marriage, then his kids and then his job. Since he was a successful youth pastor early in his life, he was unable to separate his job from his relationship from God. It came close to destroying his marriage. Fortunately, he realized it and changed. I think this detail came from his seminar, but they started a mandatory spouse-only date night and he gave his wife ultimate veto power over his schedule. He said that he constantly talked to youth pastors who struggled with the same thing.
I don't think I have ever heard a more profound discussion of hope. It did leave me with a thought that I discussed with Jim later: I have the impression in the "adult church" that we are afraid to publicly talk about our challenges and our weakness. We want to look good and smell good and spin doctor and make it seem like everything is fine when it's not. Now, we do it all the time at Cursillo, and the youth are not afraid to do it, but we are afraid to do it at church. Why don't we? I think we try to show a veneer of strength. So what we do is lead people to believe that brokennes is something be to covered up and hidden. You don't think so? How many people come to the CCPC service of healing and wholeness? 10? 20? I will believe we have changed when it's "standing room only" in our sanctuary in the service of healing and wholeness.
That last paragraph was editorial, in case you did not guess....
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Family Based Youth Ministry Two
Mark DeVries himself did the second session on FBYM. It was good hearing him here in a short time, bc he was able to "get to the point".
He started out as defining successful youth ministry as "one failure after another without losing enthusiasm".
His main verse is Heb 12:1-2 - we are surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses" in our faith development.
FYI: Mark is one of the most charming, funniest, easy to listen to people I have ever heard speak! We could actually invite him to our church to do a seminar! Ask me about it!
Mark said it is the responsibility of the youth worker to "build a constellation of relationships between youth and other adults in the church." He also said: "if you want to work directly with the kids, then DON'T be a church staff member, be a volunteer". The crisis in youth ministry is not getting kids to meetings - we can do that all day. The crisis is getting them to reach mature Christian adulthood.
Mark clarified some of the stats we heard. He said the "biggest predictor of sustained faith past the high school years was the degree to which the immediate family practiced their faith in the home." The biggest predictor that a teenager would reach faith maturity as an adult was the degree to which the teenager was connected to an extended Christian family.
So, any effort which promotes family home faith practice and builds the extended Christian family is what the youth worker needs to be doing. The notion that the family has to sit together in worship was never mentioned and did not really seem to fit his point.
Some youth ministers like to put guilt on parents for "not doing enough", but this does not help anybody. You can't assume that the parent-teen relationship is going magically change so that all of a sudden they are going to start communicating.
One of the best things a youth worker can do is to assist parents in "stacking the stands" with caring adults for those times when parent-teen communication is not happening.
Parents cannot carry all the weight and they don't need to. The youth worker has to influence the overall culture of the church to increase opportunities to build a web of caring adults. All of the load cannot be put on the "load bearing adults", such as youth advisors, sunday school teachers, youth elders. They are absolutely key parts of the web, but it has to be expanded to include a lot more adults. Mark tried a mentoring program, but it basically fell apart bc there were too many adults required who did were not able to carry on a conversation with teenagers. So, then they tried a prayer partner program where every youth was matched up with an adult. The adults could send notes to the youth, but there was no requirement or expectation set that they would have to have some deep spiritual interaction. There WAS an annual banquet for all the participants, but again no requirement that they had to talk. Now there was no rule that you could not talk. Basically, Mark said they had to set the bar of expectations "really low" - and only then were they able to "guarantee" a basic level of minimum participation.
How does the youth worker "influence the culture?" By becoming an interpreter, a "bard", walking and talking around the church, singing the songs, telling the stories; setting the expectations for the need for lots of caring adults to show love to the youth - and the hope is that the church will then "live into the expectations."
Mark has three components of youth ministry:
COWS - a great Cloud of Witnesses (see above)
HOGS - Habits of Godliness - some sort of "regular, portable, spritual practices" such as devotional, prayer, reading - things that they did in their own lives that involved more than "showing up at the building"
FISH - Families Initiate Spiritual Health
Mark's 100% no-brainer implementation plan:
Try. Fail. Learn. Try. Fail. Learn. Try. Sort of succeed. Try. Try. Learn. Try. Eventually something will emerge and stick. Note that being afraid of doing anything that is not wildly successful will probably lead you to do nothing. Or, try once and stop.
Two approaches: take something in place and endow it with an extended Christian family. For example, they had an annual banquet for seniors. They started including their parents and Sunday School teachers.
Or, try something completely new - like a parenting seminar.
The bottom line question is not: are they coming to youth group now, but will they still be participating in some sort of organized christian fellowship in 5 to 10 years from now?
He started out as defining successful youth ministry as "one failure after another without losing enthusiasm".
His main verse is Heb 12:1-2 - we are surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses" in our faith development.
FYI: Mark is one of the most charming, funniest, easy to listen to people I have ever heard speak! We could actually invite him to our church to do a seminar! Ask me about it!
Mark said it is the responsibility of the youth worker to "build a constellation of relationships between youth and other adults in the church." He also said: "if you want to work directly with the kids, then DON'T be a church staff member, be a volunteer". The crisis in youth ministry is not getting kids to meetings - we can do that all day. The crisis is getting them to reach mature Christian adulthood.
Mark clarified some of the stats we heard. He said the "biggest predictor of sustained faith past the high school years was the degree to which the immediate family practiced their faith in the home." The biggest predictor that a teenager would reach faith maturity as an adult was the degree to which the teenager was connected to an extended Christian family.
So, any effort which promotes family home faith practice and builds the extended Christian family is what the youth worker needs to be doing. The notion that the family has to sit together in worship was never mentioned and did not really seem to fit his point.
Some youth ministers like to put guilt on parents for "not doing enough", but this does not help anybody. You can't assume that the parent-teen relationship is going magically change so that all of a sudden they are going to start communicating.
One of the best things a youth worker can do is to assist parents in "stacking the stands" with caring adults for those times when parent-teen communication is not happening.
Parents cannot carry all the weight and they don't need to. The youth worker has to influence the overall culture of the church to increase opportunities to build a web of caring adults. All of the load cannot be put on the "load bearing adults", such as youth advisors, sunday school teachers, youth elders. They are absolutely key parts of the web, but it has to be expanded to include a lot more adults. Mark tried a mentoring program, but it basically fell apart bc there were too many adults required who did were not able to carry on a conversation with teenagers. So, then they tried a prayer partner program where every youth was matched up with an adult. The adults could send notes to the youth, but there was no requirement or expectation set that they would have to have some deep spiritual interaction. There WAS an annual banquet for all the participants, but again no requirement that they had to talk. Now there was no rule that you could not talk. Basically, Mark said they had to set the bar of expectations "really low" - and only then were they able to "guarantee" a basic level of minimum participation.
How does the youth worker "influence the culture?" By becoming an interpreter, a "bard", walking and talking around the church, singing the songs, telling the stories; setting the expectations for the need for lots of caring adults to show love to the youth - and the hope is that the church will then "live into the expectations."
Mark has three components of youth ministry:
COWS - a great Cloud of Witnesses (see above)
HOGS - Habits of Godliness - some sort of "regular, portable, spritual practices" such as devotional, prayer, reading - things that they did in their own lives that involved more than "showing up at the building"
FISH - Families Initiate Spiritual Health
Mark's 100% no-brainer implementation plan:
Try. Fail. Learn. Try. Fail. Learn. Try. Sort of succeed. Try. Try. Learn. Try. Eventually something will emerge and stick. Note that being afraid of doing anything that is not wildly successful will probably lead you to do nothing. Or, try once and stop.
Two approaches: take something in place and endow it with an extended Christian family. For example, they had an annual banquet for seniors. They started including their parents and Sunday School teachers.
Or, try something completely new - like a parenting seminar.
The bottom line question is not: are they coming to youth group now, but will they still be participating in some sort of organized christian fellowship in 5 to 10 years from now?
Family Based Youth Ministry One
I attended an 8 hour "deep track" on Family-Based Youth Ministry that was really good. Some of the key points:
Jim Burns:
FBYM does NOT mean we stop having "kid-with-kid" youth ministry. Some are saying it means just talking to parents and letting parents do it all. Nope.
FBYM is NOT A PROGRAM but a MINDSET.
It DOES mean we add the mission of "helping families succeed" to our list of things to do.
What are our barriers to doing that? 1. Too busy already
2. Easier to talk to kids than parents - not comfortable talking to them
3. Parents are not open to help - "I don't really like my kids and you can't make me"
4. Youth worker has no/limited influence on adult education program
5. Senior pastor is actually threatened by the youth worker talking to parents - having a close relationship - closer than his/hers
So what is the youth worker to do? - think of yourself as a FACILITATOR..
1. Inform - parent nights DONE WELL - biggest reason parents don't come is that they are thrown together and not done well - have great food, great program, personal invitations
AND do in-home visits with families - build relationships - parents will then seek you out
2. Assist - do panels, seminars on communicating with teenagers - understand culture; how to talk about sex, drugs, gangs; he offered a seminar in "how to get a scholarship" that attracted LOTS of parents; Develop a list of local counselors, so that when outside help is needed, you are ready
3. Encourage - parents support group, parents recognition dinner, write notes to kids AND parents; overall, acknowledge that being a parent of teens is stressful
4. Involve - parents advisory council, parent-teen socials, banquets, retreats
Understand that LOTS of families are DISFUNCTIONAL to varying degrees and need help. Divorce is the most frequent issue we will encounter.
Jim Burns:
FBYM does NOT mean we stop having "kid-with-kid" youth ministry. Some are saying it means just talking to parents and letting parents do it all. Nope.
FBYM is NOT A PROGRAM but a MINDSET.
It DOES mean we add the mission of "helping families succeed" to our list of things to do.
What are our barriers to doing that? 1. Too busy already
2. Easier to talk to kids than parents - not comfortable talking to them
3. Parents are not open to help - "I don't really like my kids and you can't make me"
4. Youth worker has no/limited influence on adult education program
5. Senior pastor is actually threatened by the youth worker talking to parents - having a close relationship - closer than his/hers
So what is the youth worker to do? - think of yourself as a FACILITATOR..
1. Inform - parent nights DONE WELL - biggest reason parents don't come is that they are thrown together and not done well - have great food, great program, personal invitations
AND do in-home visits with families - build relationships - parents will then seek you out
2. Assist - do panels, seminars on communicating with teenagers - understand culture; how to talk about sex, drugs, gangs; he offered a seminar in "how to get a scholarship" that attracted LOTS of parents; Develop a list of local counselors, so that when outside help is needed, you are ready
3. Encourage - parents support group, parents recognition dinner, write notes to kids AND parents; overall, acknowledge that being a parent of teens is stressful
4. Involve - parents advisory council, parent-teen socials, banquets, retreats
Understand that LOTS of families are DISFUNCTIONAL to varying degrees and need help. Divorce is the most frequent issue we will encounter.
Doug Fields' on Faith
I was not sure what to expect at the conference. I was seeing that all these California people were going to be there. All these Saddleback people. Was that good or bad? I had no idea. And who was this Doug Fields guy that was co-sponsoring the conference with Group?
Well, Doug got up Friday night to speak on the topic of Faith - the keynotes were going to be on Faith, Hope and Love.
Before his talk, he told a story of a young youth pastor he met from Waco, Texas named Gabriel. He was a former gang member and had an extremely successful ministry to kids in downtown Waco. The youth group at Saddleback heard about Gabriel and actually did a surprise visit to Waco to give the youth room an "extreme makeover" - tore out walls, painted, fixed up an office, gave him a laptop, put in tvs and gameboxes. They had a video of it.
And then, right before Thanksgiving, Gabriel's church told him they could not afford his salary and let him go. So, yeah, he was pretty crushed.
Doug invited Gabriel to the conference and brought him out on stage. I think he was really trying to let everybody know that everything does not have a happy ending in the short run, but that we don't give up on our ministry and we don't give up on God.
Then Doug moved into his talk. He said that he pondered what was the most important thing he could say to all these full time and volunteer youth workers looking back on 25 years of youth ministry. I will do a poor job of summarizing, but this is the best I can do. If you were there, add comments....
We all have an issue with control. We like the comfort and safety of being in control. We control for a whole host of reasons. But, Doug said he believes that the need to control is the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is not so much doubt or fear, but the need to control. Doug said:
"We need to work on what is possible and let God take care of the impossible".
He acknowledged that youth workers live a life of frustration, disappointment and sacrifice. We are always giving more than we are receiving. We live for results that we don't always get to see. We need reminders that what we do is worth it all. We never have enough money or resources. We never have the full unquestioned, support of the church board or the senior pastor.
As we left the auditorium, they passed out cards that had CONTROL on the top and faith on the bottom. He said it was to remind us that if we had a little bit of faith, that we could start learning to give up our need to control.
Well, Doug got up Friday night to speak on the topic of Faith - the keynotes were going to be on Faith, Hope and Love.
Before his talk, he told a story of a young youth pastor he met from Waco, Texas named Gabriel. He was a former gang member and had an extremely successful ministry to kids in downtown Waco. The youth group at Saddleback heard about Gabriel and actually did a surprise visit to Waco to give the youth room an "extreme makeover" - tore out walls, painted, fixed up an office, gave him a laptop, put in tvs and gameboxes. They had a video of it.
And then, right before Thanksgiving, Gabriel's church told him they could not afford his salary and let him go. So, yeah, he was pretty crushed.
Doug invited Gabriel to the conference and brought him out on stage. I think he was really trying to let everybody know that everything does not have a happy ending in the short run, but that we don't give up on our ministry and we don't give up on God.
Then Doug moved into his talk. He said that he pondered what was the most important thing he could say to all these full time and volunteer youth workers looking back on 25 years of youth ministry. I will do a poor job of summarizing, but this is the best I can do. If you were there, add comments....
We all have an issue with control. We like the comfort and safety of being in control. We control for a whole host of reasons. But, Doug said he believes that the need to control is the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is not so much doubt or fear, but the need to control. Doug said:
"We need to work on what is possible and let God take care of the impossible".
He acknowledged that youth workers live a life of frustration, disappointment and sacrifice. We are always giving more than we are receiving. We live for results that we don't always get to see. We need reminders that what we do is worth it all. We never have enough money or resources. We never have the full unquestioned, support of the church board or the senior pastor.
As we left the auditorium, they passed out cards that had CONTROL on the top and faith on the bottom. He said it was to remind us that if we had a little bit of faith, that we could start learning to give up our need to control.
Monday, February 12, 2007
My Notes on The Feb 2007 Indianapolis Youth Conference
These are my notes on some of the main sessions at the Group/Doug Fields Indianapolis Youth Ministry Conference. I will try to label editorial comments as best I can.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)