I just read a great article  over at REyouthpastor. Basically, he asks youth pastors what one (and only one) thing they would tell other youth pastors. His answer:

“… network and be exposed to other youth ministries and youth pastors…”

It’s good advice. How often do we get entrenched in what we do and become bored and stagnant? It happens so often with my own ministry.

On the flip side of that, I would also love to see people trying something new. A few months ago I saw a video of the formulaic worship that happens across America. It was funny and a bit convicting. And it doesn’t just happen in worship.

How many youth ministries start their time together with an ice breaker/ game/ worship, and then settle into a sermon/ discussion? How many support a culture that only makes sense to itself and not to people outside of it? I had a similar experience recently when I took a group to a very popular youth camp. We walked in and all of my kids were looking around wondering what everybody was doing and, more importantly, why.

While I agree that there is a big danger of isolation, in my mind, there is an even bigger tendency to become isolated by doing what everybody else is doing. I don’t mean isolated in a segregationist model, but in separating youth ministry from the rest of the world.

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We had a great group last night talking about the cycle of faith that Christians go through from rebellion to crying out to redemption to pride. I really love these kids.

After we had wrapped up, one of them told me that he would love to hear from the group about why Christianity is better than other religions. It was such a straight ahead and honest question, that I was just in awe of this guy. I told him we would talk about that but it would probably take more than one week.

I have several ideas about where I would go, but was just wondering. Anybody want to weigh in? What would you say?

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I just read an article on the Fuller Youth Ministry blog about the middle 70%. Their contention is that the thriving 15% get a lot of attention and the struggling 15% get a lot of attention, but the middle 70% don’t get much attention. There are most likely right about that, and I’m not sure what can be done about it. Though I am reminded of how the one “one leader” model promotes that.

I have seen and even been at churches that expect the youth pastor to be the number one contact with teens. Unless you have a group of about 12 kids, that just isn’t practical or even possible most of the time. Instead, I have tried to decentralize my leadership into the leaders of other groups. I know that I can’t/won’t be able to relate to everyone in the youth group as well as some/most of my leaders. I certainly can’t go to six different campuses and all the activities involving my youth. Instead, I try to make it to the significant ones of my group. Each leader is responsible for those teens in their group.

I was reminded though of my daughters recent swim lessons. They are at Swimwell, which has a unique approach to teaching swimming. They often have special needs children and also do rehabilitation as well. So we take our girls there, they line them up next to the pool and without further instructions tell them to jump. They then start sorting out swimmers by their ability. As a parent, it was a little scary, but I saw the sense in it quickly. What was surprising after that is that they all went through the same routine and were constantly shuffling the groups according to ability. It wasn’t uncommon for each of my daughters to be in several groups within 45 minutes.

What would that look like in kingdom building discipleship I wonder? Could groups be based on where they are in their faith and the challenges particular to each of them instead of their friends or affinity? Just a thought.

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I saw on Marko’s blog that he had a list of questions from a friend that was a really good list. People have often said that the questions are often more important than the answers. These were good questions. Several I really liked were:

“3. What is the effect of facebook, social networking, and computer screens on a faith and community?

4. Why do so many of our students date people who don’t share a common faith system with them?”

And especially:

“9. What am I doing as a norm in ministry that I will genuinely have to apologize to the next generation of youth pastors for?”

These are good questions, but mine is different. I only really have one and it is the biggest, most often problematic source of what I do in youth ministry. It is what I spend most of my time trying to change (and would spend the rest of my life trying to change).

Why does Christianity create a culture of happiness as an end goal?

I don’t have anything against happiness, mind you. But it is like an idol in many Christian’s lives and for teens it is their goal in life. All this sounds great until you try to help someone start living like what they were created for. It’s not a comfortable place. It means change and awkwardness. It often means seeing friends go another way. New habits, new patterns for the new creation.

So said teen often comes back to me after trying this and understandably is confused. Their not as happy as they were. They are pursuing something that isn’t for their own comfort. Granted their life is way better in almost every sense, but they don’t feel as happy as they were, and then they look at people in the Christian culture and wonder what they missed. And it must be them, because everyone else seems like they are having a good time.

There are people out there who don’t get into this, but I just want to know why we feel like we should always present the happy side of life.

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There is a great post by Donald Miller (one of my favorite authors). Please go read it for yourself. He tackles two huge issues for the church today.

1. Do you have to attend church on Sunday morning in the building that has a cross to be considered in fellowship with other believers?

2. Is the church missing out on leadership because it focuses only on church leadership?

There are two great questions in there and a lot more to think about. He makes three points that really bring home something that is one of the things I hate about church today.

“1. Leadership in church has to do with teaching and administrating mostly centered around education.

2. Church attendance, then, is mostly about learning something,

3. When Jesus chose his disciples, they weren’t a group of educators.”

Now I have a bit of a soapbox that I need to get on. I have said so many times that I disagree with many of my former co-workers in their statement that “right thinking always leads to right living.” I think that is insane.

But the essential point is that I don’t think the church should be trying to make leaders, I don’t think the church should be mostly about education, and I don’t think that the church is on a good path when they talk about discipleship being a mix of the first two.

I need to flesh this out, so expect some future posts on this.

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I just watched the new Student Life this generation video. Wow, there were some great insights in there that clarified what I have thought. Two quotes that stood out:

“Who do I trust? Myself.”

“My parents don’t know what I do… and maybe they don’t care.”

Sad statements but I think they are very true from the teens I have worked with.

Video here.

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I don’t repost a lot of things from other blogs (maybe I should more often), but this was too good to let pass. Tim Schmoyer has posted this great thought on how we enable consumerism by our programming pressures and how we can move from that to making servant minded people in our ministries.

Check it out here.

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Techcrunch posted something interesting today on the next big thing. According to the post, Apple doesn’t predict the future, it creates it. iFund doesn’t create the future, it funds it. So the article starts out telling you it’s bias and things don’t settle down from there. The climax of the story:

“We’re going from the Old World to a brave New World.

• From the Old World of the traditional, tired window interfaces… to the wonderful new world of TOUCH.
• From the Old World of Point and Click to the new SWOOSH of Fluidity.
• Instead of old, artificial, indirect interfaces, the iPad is direct and NATURAL.
• Instead of WYSIWyg – what you see is what you get – it is WYTIWis. What You Touch… IS what IS.
• Instead of holding a MOUSE, you’re holding MAGIC.”

So, the iPad is the future according to this post. It is the future because the interface is different. With fear, it is said that the possible becomes the probable. With hopelessly, optimistic propaganda it is the same.

This is a great example about how propaganda works. On the one hand it promises a future that goes beyond your dreams. The old way that everyone is perfectly happy with is “old, tired, artificial, and indirect.” On the other hand, it threatens with the thought of missing out on the “new, wonderful, fluid, natural and magically real world.”

Aside from my point here, I think the iPad might have a chance at changing computing, but this article won’t matter in that decision. This post is just marketing (not the good kind that marketers talk about). There are some important challenges though for the iPad.

The big difference for the iPad isn’t the interface, though that will be different enough for some people to opt in or out according to how easily they adopt it. The big difference is cloud computing. The limitations of the iPad (storage, peripherals, lack of features like camera, mic, etc.) along with the traction it gets in the market will necessitate a new way of holding information. Apple hasn’t pioneered any of this (google, flickr, and others have), but they might provide the device that makes it become popular enough to get people to make the jump or make the jump farther.

I can make a fairly accurate prediction for the future though. People will continue to use propaganda and people will continue to fall for it.

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Most people will tell you that rejection is hard to take. I question that principle after reading my latest rejection. It just happens to be from Seth Godin. It was the rejection letter sent out to all the people who applied for his MBA program.

Here it is:

“Dear Paul,

Thank you. I am inspired.

Wow. More than inspired. Over a thousand extraordinary people applied…

Thanks so much for taking the time to apply to my 5-day program. I’m overwhelmed by the response, in numbers, sure, but also in the sheer quality of what came in.

There are people all over the world who are standing up for what they believe in and choosing to do work that matters. You are in very good company, and reading through the hundreds and hundreds of applications was both overwhelming and cause for optimism.

Of course, choices have to be made, and unfortunately, we couldn’t choose everyone. I hope you won’t take it personally, or as a comment on your work, but we’re unable to find room for you this time. I know that in narrowing this down to some finalists we have made some obvious mistakes, and missed people who would have been perfect, people who no doubt will achieve great things and brag about how we didn’t pick them… can’t wait till that happens!

Any selection process, by its nature, is flawed. This one especially so, because there’s limited information and too many good choices. So, forgive me for not being able to make it work. Unfortunately, we’re too swamped to reconsider any of the decisions.

Thanks again for the important work you’re doing and for your enthusiasm in applying. Keep making a difference.

Seth (and Ishita!)”

Here is when rejection isn’t hard to take, but is in fact, useful.

1. Though it was a form letter, it was still personal. I was lumped together with something really amazing.

2. It recognized who I was and even acknowledged that I was a part of a group of people that share a similar mission.

3. It acknowledges that they may have missed out in not accepting my application.

So, this is how a someone who cares about people and still wants to encourage them to keep doing what they are doing and doing it better writes.

This doesn’t change my plans at all (though I’m sure the time with the MBA program would have been amazing). I still am doing what I want and might even be more motivated to do it better. Thanks Seth for the encouragement and for setting the bar high.

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I wonder how it became standard that small groups in churches decided to study a book together. It’s not that I think there is anything wrong with reading a book together, but with the decline in books on paper and the trend in younger people to only read what they have to and mostly (that means facebook), I have started wondering if there might be some more obvious foci of groups.

If you find the advantages of reading a book; sharing thoughts, personal thoughts on the text, perspective, sharing an experience, and the relationships that form out of reading a book together, then it should be easy to find some alternatives that might be much better than reading a book.

How about:

Restoring a car
Wine tasting
Discussing movies and their messages
Taking a class together
Learning to ski

The list could go on forever really. All of those experiences could be the thing that drives the common ground to build a relationship that goes beyond the common weather/sports/politics driven conversational relationships.

Check out what Seth Godin had to say about friendship.

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