I just read this on another blog, and got permission to share it. From Andrew Root:

“Andrew Root (photo by Courtney Perry)

Hello Youth Ministry friends, I’m sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled blog reading, but I have broken into transmission to offer you an opportunity.

I wanted to get before you the chance to get a free copy of my book, Relationships Unfiltered. As the new school year approaches and you think about volunteer leader meetings and trainings I would like to suggest you take a look at Relationships Unfiltered. It’s written just for this setting with discussion questions and chapters filled with illustrations and stories–but also promises to get you and your team thinking theologically about your core practice this coming school year: forming relationships with young people.

Here’s what I can do: If you’ll email me I’ll send you a free copy of the book so you can look it over and decide if it would be of help to you and your volunteers.

If you’re interested in using it, you can then go to Zondervan.com or Zondervan.com/ministry and type in the code 980752 in the “source code” box.  Starting August 1 this will give you a 40% discount on as many books as you’d like.

And I’ll also offer this, if you do use the book with your team, I’m willing to do a select number of skype or ichat conversations with you and your team after getting through the book.”

There you have it. Here is why this makes so much sense. First, this is without a doubt a great resource. Second, this introduces a new way to use this book. Third, it sets Andrew Root up as an expert in youth ministry and the new model for relational ministry. Fourth, he is paving the way to many speaking opportunities. Fifth, it is generous and kingdom minded.

I was already looking at this book as a resource for all of our leaders and teachers moving them into discipleship instead of just teaching. But now, I have put this on the top of my list of resources.

Thanks Andrew!

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I love looking at people’s desk and seeing what is there and how they are working. This is my desktop right now without any tidying up. Around from the top: black speaker (cambridgeworks), Jade plant, wild sage candle given to me from Cathy at Christmas (never burned), Barnes and Noble card, black ink pen, phone, stapler, light (Ikea), MBP power supply, right speaker, lead pencil, burned CD labeled “Band Music”, two notecards reminding me of follow up contacts, my staff agenda on top of my legal pad (I’m old fashioned, legal pads are a must for me), Magic Mouse, MacBook Pro, book (Relationships Unfiltered – Andrew Root), coaster with a mostly empty Panera cup (Dr. Pepper), tea cup, and finally speaker inputs.

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One thing has been pervasive for several years in the youth ministry I serve. The leaders will get to know kids well enough to be honest and insightful with the youth about their lives. When you only have 15 kids max, it is easy to get into kids lives. What that looks like and what I have been blessed with is a very discerning team of leaders who can call out themes that we all see in youth ministry and then can offer what that might look like when it is redeemed.

For example, we have a guy in our group who is mostly a bully. He self admittedly picks on people and verbally tears them down. He’s intelligent, observant, and has a knack for knowing what will really hurt. One night, he very candidly admitted what he was doing and followed that up with the additional sting that he only does it to people he knows he can get a reaction from. One of our leaders had an amazing break-through with him. She verbally processed what it would be like for him if a year from now, he had a different set of friends who were all there because of how he defended them, instead of attacked them. That was a year and a half ago. Guess what, he has a different set of friends now. Not all of them are friends because he has defended them, but I know that some of them are.

OK, that’s not prophecy, but it is amazing. Many of our deeper conversations with these teens is when we see something they are gifted in that they are abusing. It’s like they understand they have this amazing faculty to be awesome in their lives and the lives of those around them, and use that as a self serving, self validating tool.

Then there’s me. I am coming to realize that I am in the exact same position. What God has gifted me with and designed me to be has a lot to do with discernment and empathy. It’s just my natural go to when working with human beings. On a good day, that enables me to be able to help someone who is hurting see how they can be healed. On a bad day, and the bad days often out weigh the good, I am cynical of everyone around me, and I use that to make myself feel superior and clever. I really do want to give this up, but it is so natural that I often don’t even realize I am doing until it is done.

My cynicism is really just discernment run amuck. It is something that is God given that sin has corrupted and twisted. It accomplishes the opposite of what it ought to. Instead of bringing comfort and peace, it brings feelings of inadequacy and strife. That is the power of cynicism.

Man I need to have my own youth pastor.

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I just came across the Youth Ministry 360 blog. I can’t believe I am just now discovering these guys. And they love the Xbox 360 just like me!

Anyway, they have a great article about how we see ourselves as youth workers and the roles that we get caught up in. They even have a fairly solid view from Paul the apostles role in ministry. Check it out.

Link

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I just read a blog post by Matt Cleaver and thought, “What a great idea!” It always surprises me, though it shouldn’t, when I see someone else doing something that I do and thought I was an outcast for. I haven’t been a strong user of pre-packaged lessons and have tended to use books that I have read that sparked some thoughts for me. Matt does the same apparently.

He is thinking about creating a wiki of the books that he has used to develop lessons. What a great idea! I would love to use this resource! Check out his post and leave a comment if you would like to see it happen.

I am preparing for a new lesson series for the youth here. We have been tackling identity and formation for three years. I keep trying to leave it, but they continue to cling to a couple of foundational ideas. What I want to move onto is how to become the awesome creation that we are called in Eph. 2:10 (God’s workmanship). I’ve been thinking about it and trying to find a Biblical example of this.

Maybe it’s holy.

I have been trying to understand this word and have met with rhetoric. What is Holy? Most people respond with the typical “set apart.” Really? Set apart for what? Response, “righteousness.” So I ask what Holy means and I get “set apart for righteousness.” How easy it is for the church to hide behind rhetoric.

So phrases that I learned growing up like “be holy for I am holy” mean that God is set apart for righteousness and so we should be too? My heart tells me that there is more to this word than just set apart.

So I am experimenting with new words that would help my group understand what this means. The closest I find is “awesome.”

Be awesome because I am awesome.

Or even better yet, be awesome the way I created you to be, because, after all, I created you in my image and I am awesome in every way.

Does that really work?

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I just read the intro to the Youth Worker Journal where Chap Clark gives his views on discipleship. He starts his thoughts quoting how Gordon McDonald angered him twenty years ago with the phrase “teenage discipleship doesn’t happen.” I guess I am much like Chap, because I have the same response to his post.

I’m not angry so much as I just disagree. Chap says that we can’t “expect a 15 year old to grab onto Christ and exhibit faith with adult sized zeal and maturity…” He also says when we “place such demands on them, we end up doing more harm than good.” I see his point. We can’t expect teens to be in the same place developmentally as adults should be. Chap redeems his thoughts for me by bringing the thought that we can’t judge mature discipleship, but rather by recognizing a profound trust that is exercised (my summary of his thoughts).

I really struggle with this thinking on discipleship though. I hear so many people agree that our view of discipleship in the past 100 years has been very limited and in many cases wrong. So I am glad that people like Chap are stretching our view of discipleship. However, my experience of discipleship and what I see happening around me paints a different picture.

I work with mostly high social economic kids who are pressed into the adult world very early. With parental inversion so rampant, most teens are having to enter the adult world much earlier than they should be expected to. These teens I work with are given resources and freedom that grow them up quickly. I would say that isn’t unique to my situation though. Either way, I have seen maturity and discipleship that far outstrips any of the churches I have worked with in the past 17 years.

Discipleship is something I have fallen on my sword for in the past 5 years. I have lost a job for it, and will forever be descrying it’s value over small groups, Bible studies and all the programmatic trappings that have come out of the previous century. Having said that, and to be fair the Chap, I see discipleship as something different than he and others might view it.

For my definition, discipleship is the process in which someone leads another into the view of what God designed and created them for as a unique person as viewed in Ephesians 2:10.

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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 have been reading Drive by Dan Pink for about four months now. It is a book that I have casually read, picking it up occasionally when I wasn’t reading something else. I was reading it from a perspective of how do I motivate and encourage the teens that show up in my ministry, but I was thinking about it today as a youth worker.

Here is a ten-ish minute video about the book.

Basically, what he finds is that when doing cognitive tasks, extrinsic incentives actually reduce creativity and production. I layman’s terms, rewards outside of the field of work, make people less motivated and excited about what they do.

So what drives a youth worker? I can think of several things right off the top of my head. There are all the unhealthy motivators such as the guy who was a nerd in school and has now become a youth worker to fulfill his need for acceptance. Also there is the very common youth worker that needs to feel needed and is mostly practicing co-dependance. But all these aside, what really motivates the person who wants to put themselves into working with youth?

Mostly, from what I see, it is people who want to help teens, usually from the mistakes and situations they themselves experienced. Of the many people I have worked with and known, most people just honestly want to help teens not screw up the way they did.

Given that, it is a wonder that any youth ministry actually happens. I see it as a testimony to how much youth workers want to help, that they continue to try despite the de-motivators they face in churches across the nation. The prototypical youth ministry situation involves a limited budget, limited resources and time, limited or nonexistent support from church leadership coupled with unrealistic, unhelpful expectations. Often, all of these de-motivators are present at once.

So according to Dan Pink, youth ministry is the perfect situation for drive. Because it is a situation limited by sparse compensation and seldom used praise, the extrinsic motivators that often demotivate aren’t present. On the other hand, there is constant challenge and the need to be creative in problem solving.

Here is my list of situations that promote drive in youth leaders:

Freedom to try new things and fail
Self-direction is better
Short term success in the beginning
Long term success after the first year or two (depending on the pastor’s support)

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