Hey NYWC, welcome to St. Louis!

You're about to spend a week in my hometown, and I'm thrilled you're here! Here's a few basic notes about St. Louis that might be helpful.

Every St. Louis Bread Co. location has free Wi-Fi. So when you're eating lunch and need to quick check your Facebook, go there. The convention center has it too, for those of us who tend to type during things.

Forest Park is here, and one of the largest city parks in the US. If you need a quiet place to relax away from downtown, the Zoo, the Art Museum, and the History Museum are all in the park and free.

The restaurants downtown near the center are probably going to fill up pretty fast. If you want to branch out a little and find some non-crowded food, get on the Metro (go out the 6th Street door at the America's Center and walk left to the train station, about half a block away) and go to Clayton Station. Clayton is full of neat little restaurants, (and also my church, St. Michael and St. George, if you'd like to visit us on Sunday morning and check out what the youth ministry has going on. Ask somebody to find Isaac for you.

Speaking of the Metro system, my friend Sam (who flew in from Belgium to come here) says not to be afraid of public transportation in STL. It's clean and easy and the people who run it are friendly.

Here's some great restaurants:
Fitz's American Grill (makes their own root beer, and lets you watch)
Jimmy's on the Park (little fancier place, bistro-like and try the flash-friend spinach)
Nadoz' Cafe (on Lindell Blvd in the Coronado building; peek into the grand ballroom while you're there)
Kaldi's Coffeehouse (read the story of Kaldi painted on the wall)
Stratton's Cafe
Serendipity Ice Cream (both a little farther out, in Webster Groves, but they're awesome when you have a block of time or need to skip something and decompress)

Indie Community has a lunch going on Saturday at the City Museum, and going to the lunch gets you free admission to the museum. This is a very cool place; a more hands-on experience than most museums, and it's definitely worth a look around.

When you just need to talk to God, head over to the Catholic Basilica here in town. Doesn't matter what denomination you serve; you'll love the mosaics that the cathedral is famous for. There's also the Episcopal cathedral downtown; they're near-always open.

Once again, welcome to town-- I'll try to post helpful things every day; if you have a question while you're here, post a comment on the blog or email me at isaac(AT)csmsg(DOT)org! All God's best on your convention experience-- I'll be praying for us all!

Video Scavenger Hunt 2007-- the year of the offensive tackle

The instructions read: "Bonus points: Include your youth minister in one of your videos."

The kids ran up to me and said: "Isaac! We have to catch you on tape!"

I said: "Okay."

Here's what happened.

Overheard

On the plane from Denver to STL yesterday, I overheard the following four sentences in rapid succession.

"Make sure you tell them it's not my fault we missed the plane."

"They know we're late for everything."

"I know a lot of those are my fault."

"I just don't want the reputation of someone who's always late."

At the moment, I'm reading Steven James' book "Story" which is about the mystery that is faith in Christ and how much more deeply we need to look at it, and one of his chapters is about "Christ admirers" vs. "Christ-followers." He points out that Christ admirers say great things about Jesus, and claim faith in Him, but don't change their lives when He challenges them to. Christ-followers, on the other hand, back up their reputed faith with the responses to Christ's work and teaching that show they really are walking with the Lord.

The fact that I was reading the book and hearing the conversation at the same time struck me as highly ironic.

Group's Effective Communicators' Summit-- Day 3

Level 1 of the summit finished up today, so I'm flying home in the morning, and today was the moment of truth.

I gave my 20-minute message today, and then had 1-on-1 time with a coach who walked me through the tape and pointed out some things.

T showed me today that I need to spend more time preparing the normal messages that I do, which are 2 minutes and 10 minutes, on Sundays and Wednesdays, because there's so little time to get the point across that they need extra polish.

He also said that when I have the chance to give longer messages, for example on retreats, I should replace a lot of my talking time with time for my students to discover with each other the points that I want them to know. They also need time to work out how to apply it.

This actually goes right along with my teaching courses. It's applying it and investing the time that will be the trick.

But I also worked out a little strategy for it. When I go into a message, I've discovered, what I need is an outline of the points I want to make and the questions I want to ask, and a few illustrations that go along with it. I don't actually work as well with every word written out. And if the group I'm speaking to is discovering a lot of my material themselves, I'll need to be quick on my feet to respond to them.

This year I've been committing to improving my planning (by doing more of it in advance), my standard material (things I use over again and just needed to write down) and my speaking (first by doing more of it, second by reflecting on it and doing training like this.

Group's Effective Communicators' Summit- Day 2

Driving from my hotel to Group's HQ, I can see the Rocky Mountains the whole way down, and it's amazing. There was ice on the windshield this morning but I'm from Michigan; that was nothing. I didn't wait in the car for the defroster, just hopped out with the ice scraper and then off I went.

Today I have had conversations about what the biggest challenges in ministry are; how accountability to goals is a blessing and a thorn; and whether doing youth work in Hawaii is as great as we all think it would be (the minister from HI and I decided that since there's no off-season for the beach, ministries have to fight more distractions year-round!)

People retain 5-10% of what they hear
25% of the media they see
40-60% of the role-playing they do
and 80-90% of the experiences they have

And in order for an experience to have the value we as ministers intend it to have, we need to allow time for kids to process with us, guiding the discussion using the Gospel.

Within the conference, half of us are anxious about using experiential techniques more than lecture techniques because we'll lose control of the group, and the other half are afraid that we won't be able to cover as much of the material. But faith is not a subject we master, so if we are going to reach postmodern teenagers, we're going to need to get over that fear and start using more hands-on and discovery-based ways to teach.

Group's Effective Communicators Experience-- Day 1

I flew out to Loveland this morning to be part of Group Publishing's communicators' summit, and for the only time I can ever remember, all of my flights, shuttles and various legs of the trip happened on time, so I got here just early enough to change out of my travel clothes and run over to Group headquarters.

The group is a mix of children's ministers, youth ministers, a few senior pastors, some volunteers, and a few Group staff. Most of us haven't been to one of these events before, or out to Group HQ, and a bunch of us haven't had the chance to do actual speakers' training since we took public speaking in college.

We're all excited about something that's happening in our congregations. I've decided that the best question one can ask another minister is "What's great at your place?" because it lets us talk about what's going on, what we're passionate about, without asking "So how many are you running?" or any other questions that hinge on numbers.

I need to work on the outline for my 20-minute presentation that's the thing I'm supposed to have with me, so those are my notes.

I "gently sprung" this on my leaders

This week pray for my small group leaders-- they are flying solo on Wednesday night and while I know they're up for it, some of them are a little nervous.

I'll be out at Group's headquarters for a speakers' training workshop (and hopefully blogging from there) and completely forgot that I'd need to set up some system for covering Wednesday Bible study, until last Wednesday. So the leaders agreed to give it a try, and the kids agreed to show up, and we'll see how it goes.

God's got a plan for it, I know that!

Family Meals, with or without TV, make kids healthier

An article in the NYTimes today showcases some research about family dinner time; apparently, eating together is one of the most powerful influences on kids' diet (and has an impact on other behaviors) and things like TV don't distract from that as much as we've thought.

“Obviously, we want people eating family meals, and we want them to turn the TV off,” said Shira Feldman, public health specialist at the university’s School of Public Health and lead author of the research. “But just the act of eating together is on some level very beneficial, even if the TV is on.”
The research, published this month in The Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, is the latest testament to the power of the family meal. While many parents worry about what their kids are eating — vegetables versus junk — a voluminous body of research suggests that the best strategy for improving a child’s diet is simply putting food on the table and sitting down together to eat it."

The Secret Checklist for Lock-Ins

A few things I learned from the last series of lock-ins we did here at CSMSG.

• Strings of Christmas lights make great safety lighting through the hallways-- kids can play games "in the dark" and I can see my way around.
• Give the adult leaders the Bible study guides before Bible study actually starts. One adult at the 8th grade event said, "Well, I have gone into presentations with less preparation than this."
• Set up an official rotation for adults to be in each of the activity areas, not all clumped together in one space. This worked out naturally after a little while, but I should have been more active about it.
• Post signs that say, "This door is locked" on red paper on any door that's not physically locked but that is "locked to students."
• At rule-making time, make the "please don't" list yourself, then ask students to make the "please do" list and all sign it.
• Don't leave the pile of big red signs around where students can find it and post the "guys only" and "girls only" signs on the opposite doors.

What took my breath away this morning

Over the summer, the staff at Fortune Lake led a prayer walk, and one of the stations was about expressing our identity as we see it, and considering our identity the way God sees it. This photo was the board after that station was over, the last week of camp. "I am broken like Christ" made me a little teary. (Click the photo to see it full-size and read it better.)

(credit to my friend LB on Facebook)

Greatest quotes from this weekend's HS lock-in

(while playing Apples to Apples, the world's greatest game next to chess and Monopoly): You can't cuddle up to Los Angeles, but you could with a bottle of soy sauce!

(at the beginning of the A2A game):
PK: "And there's Isaac-- he's not my friend."
Isaac: "Even if I'm not your friend, I'm still your brother in Christ."
PK: (thinks for a second) "Yeah, well, just don't tell anybody about that!"

Halo 3 makes news as an outreach tool

In the NY Times this morning, this article about churches using Halo 3 in their youth programs.

"Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a popular video game at church"

"Martial images in literature or movies popular with religious people are not new. The popular “Left Behind” series of books — it also spawned a video game — dealt with the conflict preceding the second coming of Christ. Playing Halo is “no different than going on a camping trip,” said Kedrick Kenerly, founder of Christian Gamers Online, an Internet site whose central themes are video games and religion. “It’s a way to fellowship.” "

CSMSG's ministry uses the Nintendo wii to give students a fun way to start and close our events, or to hang out and chat after school, but I do make a point of limiting the type of games and screening violent ones. It doesn't seem to matter to the kids-- they might comment on how I pick lame games, but they'll get up and play them right after that.

An unclear comment about Facebook

I'm not entirely sure what this essayist is saying, but there's an article about Facebook attempting to grow up in the NY Times Op-Ed section today, called "The Fakebook Generation."

"Facebook did not become popular because it was a functional tool — after all, most college students live in close quarters with the majority of their Facebook friends and have no need for social networking. Instead, we log into the Web site because it’s entertaining to watch a constantly evolving narrative starring the other people in the library...

For young people, Facebook is yet another form of escapism; we can turn our lives into stage dramas and relationships into comedy routines. Make believe is not part of the postgraduate Facebook user’s agenda. As more and more older users try to turn Facebook into a legitimate social reference guide, younger people may follow suit and stop treating it as a circus ring. But let’s hope not."

One of the reasons my adult leaders and I so appreciate Facebook is that it's treated by kids as a safe place to have important discussions; while there's some question about whether that's healthy, it's a good first step that might not otherwise be taken, toward finding a trusted adult mentor who can point the way to God.

Ten things that would make field hockey better

I thoroughly enjoyed the game this morning. My kids are solid players and they put up a good fight, but ultimately lost 2-0.

I also had some time to think, while I was watching, of a list of suggestions for the powers that be who decide how field hockey is played, that would improve the game. As a disclaimer, I mentioned a few of them to one of my students who plays, and she immediately said, "Oh, that would make the game much more fun!"

1. Water hazards and sand traps. Since field hockey is what regular hockey would look like if it was played on a golf course, let's include the traditional golf obstacles.
2. Tackling. So many times the other team stole the ball; if my student had been able to knock the other player down and run away with the ball, that problem could have been solved.
3. Hills on the field. Bear with me on this one. A level playing field means everyone can see all the other players all the time; how much fun is that, really? Let's get some high ground that a team can hide behind and ambush the other team when they run by. We are talking, after all, about a game that used to be played with the heads of one's enemies.
4. The "You Hassle, You Hustle" rule. (In fact, let's get this in all sports.) Under this rule, if a parent shouts out advice to the team, the referees insert that parent into the game to show everyone how it's done right. Guarantee the stands stay quieter after the freshman girls' team schools some middle-aged dad who shouts, "You gotta catch up with them!"
5. Let the players actually stand up while they play; no more of this bent-over running thing- that cannot be good for the spine.
6. An official airline.
7. Crossover games-- like the series crossover novels that featured both Nancy Drew AND the Hardy Boys; let's play the field hockey team vs. the tennis team, or something like that. Maybe the bowling team.

8. There might be only seven things-- any other suggestions?

Study Bible

I'm trying to pick a study Bible for my small group and youth groups to use here at the church; right now we have the plain New Revised Standard, the pew version, with no footnotes or other useful goodies. I like having the Word straight up like that, but I also like having a version that includes some background and cross-references so that my kids start to get that it's one big picture, not a bunch of random ones.

Who's got a good one that works for the group you have? Why'd you pick it and where did you get it from?

My conditions:

No "named" versions, aka Steve and Sarah Everyminister's Get-Your-Life-Straightened-Out-In-90-Days Study Bible. Adding a person's name to the Word does not make it more valuable or useful to a kid's life.

No cheesy theme Bibles-- "half-pipe of life" type thing.

All of life explained by index cards

I saw this blog mentioned on the NYTimes website a while back and forgot to go look at the actual blog until today-- it's called "Indexed" and the author does charts that show odd relationships between things, drawn on index cards. Most of them are very funny: check it out!

This week's quickest lock-in game

The exercise is: get a tent pole. Either grab one from an actual tent, or put together two tent pole repair kits, leaving out one segment.

Have people stand in lines on either side. They need to hold their index fingers out, alternating with the people on the other side of the line.

A person on either end of the line holds the tent pole just above the students' fingers while you give the instructions:

Rest the tent pole on their index fingers. Warn the students not to hook their fingers around the ends like the guy in white is doing. Their job is, working all together, to lower the tent pole to the ground. They must keep their fingers in contact with the tent pole at all times.

Usually, the first thing that happens is that the tent pole goes straight above their heads and stays there for a while. After they've tried their best for a few minutes, give them a new instruction: this time, they need to lower the tent pole to the ground. And the tent pole is very, very heavy.

You can interpret it by explaining that if we see the Christian life as a set of rules and things we have to do, it'll get really frustrating. But if we understand it as a relationship between us and God who continually reaches down to meet us, we'll worry about it less.

Usually it takes a long time-- my kids got it in 2 minutes this weekend.

Bible study on Responsibilities-- used with Confirmation class

Here's a Bible study I did this weekend on the 8th grade lock-in. We used the movie "Night at the Museum" which is a good, fun, mostly clean movie that came out around Christmas in 2006.


What’s Your “Rs?”

Check-In
What’s the first thing your family ever made you responsible for?

What do you know?
What kinds of things do adults “have to” do?

From the Movie
Which characters lived up to their responsibilities? How did they do that?

Which characters did not keep their promises? What happened because of that?

What does the movie teach us about responsibility?

From the Bible
Matthew 28:16-20
In your own words, what’s the church been commanded to do?

How do we do those things here in our church?

Acts 2:42-47
What were the disciples’ responsibilities?

What happened because the disciples kept those habits?

1 Timothy 4:11-16
Timothy was a young person but he had big responsibilities. How can you lead and serve in the church today?

Which of the responsibilities we’ve talked about tonight do you think you most need to pay attention to?

In Our Lives
Write yourself a note encouraging you to be responsible for one of the things we’ve talked about tonight. Seal it in an envelope and write your name (first and last) on the outside. You’ll get that note in the mail sometime during this year.

Closing Prayer
Ask a student in your group to make up a prayer or read this one:

Dear God, you prepared your disciples to receive the Holy Spirit by hearing Jesus’ teaching. Make our hearts and minds ready to receive the Spirit’s blessings too, that we may be full of the strength that Your presence brings. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, adapted, pg. 819)

Segment from the September Kickoff: "What do they Know?"

M.W., one of my priests here at CSMSG, left a printout in my mailbox today called "Kids These Days: What they Don't Want from the Church." It's worth a read.

A quote:

"Preach the gospel full on…ditto. Tell it like it is and let the students grow in holiness. Yes, they will fail. Who doesn’t? But let them fail knowing what Christ and his Church expects of them. Lowering the moral bar comes across as expecting too little from them. What does that say about the Church’s view of our future ecclesial leaders? They can’t cut it, so we have to shorten the race."

"Rescued from this body of death"

Here's one of those scary/gross/a little funny stories that show up now and then, today via the Post-Dispatch.

"Man buys smoker, finds human leg inside."

"Police said the man opened up the smoker and saw what he thought was a piece of driftwood wrapped in paper. When he unwrapped it, he found a human leg, cut off 2 to 3 inches above the knee.

[The leg's ] mother explained her son had his leg amputated after a plane crash and kept the leg following the surgery "for religious reasons" she doesn't know much about."

I think this story is just shocking enough that somebody could use it as an illustration for a message to high school students. Anyone have an idea how?

"Three Important Questions"-- a low-prep Bible study format

One of our church groups that I'd spoken to a while back called me last Monday to ask if I could fill in for the priest who regularly leads their Bible study on Tuesday morning before they have lunch. I had a class on Tuesday so couldn't make it back in time (I did join them for lunch, though) but offered to leave them a format so they could guide themselves through the chapter.

A couple of the questions are borrowed from "No Experience Necessary" which is also an excellent study. When I created the 3Qs format, I wanted it to be adaptable to any Scripture a group decided to study.

Here is the format for your toolbox:


Three Important Questions

Open with a prayer. You can ask a group member to make up a prayer, or use one from the Prayer Book. The prayers begin on page 815. Number 3, #7, #52 and #58 are especially appropriate for Bible study groups.

After the prayer, ask the members of the group to share what they have seen God doing in their lives or the lives of their families since the last time you met. If the group has trouble coming up with examples, remind them to share general blessings like good news they’ve received, continued health, things like that.

Now open the Bible to the passage you’ve chosen to study. You might want to continue one you’ve been reading or pick a favorite.

Read it once all the way through without stopping. The first time you read, you just want to make sure you know what’s happening.

Then read it again. Before you read, ask the group members to imagine themselves being part of the story. They might pick a character and try to see that person’s perspective, or just try and imagine what it would have been like to be present the day the story took place.

Now ask these 3 questions and see how the group responds:

What is God doing in the story?
What is God calling me to do as a response to this story?
What is God calling us (the Bible study group, the congregation, or the whole Church) to do as a response to this story?

If you need additional questions, ask these:

(After question #1)

How does this story give clues to what Jesus is going to do in the end?

Are there any references made to other Bible stories? What was God doing in those times?

Are there situations like this happening in our world today? What is the Church doing to show God’s way to the people involved?

(After question #2)

What’s my first reaction to this story?

If this happened to me, or someone I know, today, what would my advice or help be?

How would I pray for the people in this story?

(After question #3)

What does the church already do that meets the need in the story?

In what way is our church especially good at listening to God’s will for us?

If we could ask God to explain one thing from this story to our church, what would we ask?

Close in prayer.

It's one of the things I've always feared

One of my kids came up to me after our church school classes let out today and asked, "Are you really as obsessed with God as you were down in the gym this morning?"

(Each week we gather for 20 minutes or so of fellowship as a whole group before they break off into classes, and each week I do a Gospel minute where I share a story about the Gospel lesson that applies to the students' lives. That's what she meant.)

"My friend says you're only like that here because that's what you're paid to do. When you go home you're probably like, 'Oh, whatever.'"

It was hard to hear. And I'm not sure what to do about it, since I can't just take all my students home and have them live with me. They know, because I tell them all the time, that I truly enjoy life with God, but I've always wondered if professional youth workers have less credibility after kids figure out that we get paid.

Apparently, what's popular is not always healthy...

From a Post-Dispatch article today, via AP:

"At rail stations and shopping malls around the world, reports are popping up of people, particularly young children, getting their toes caught in escalators.

According to reports appearing across the United States and as far away as Singapore and Japan, entrapments occur because of two of the biggest selling points of shoes like Crocs: their flexibility and grip. Some report the shoes get caught in the "teeth" at the bottom or top of the escalator, or in the crack between the steps and the side of the escalator. The reports of serious injuries have all involved young children."

Top 10 Reasons to do Service Projects with the youth group

10. Because Jesus said, "Go surf!" Oh, wait... that's "serve."
9. That warm and fuzzy feeling you get afterward is perfectly legal.
8. You'll meet people who go to all the other high schools in St. Louis.
7. You could get your picture on next year's top 10 list.
6. Because the world needs more sandwiches.
5. Girls think it's hot when you volunteer.
4. Because ripped and dirty clothes are fashionable right now.
3. My friend's friend's cousin told me that if you skip your homework to do a service project, your teacher has to give you an "A."
2. No matter what the project is, we'll accomplish more than the Cardinals.
1. Isaac will finally remember your name, and stop calling you "Brenda."

Another sermon

This time from Rev. Michael Blewett, one of the priests here at CSMSG, and posted on his blog.

"When in trouble, name names."

Michael was right on the money this week. I'm working on a few original posts, but it's the day after the September kickoff and I'm in the middle of the whirlwind, and trying to clean up and put things back where I found them in my youth room. For the last month I've just been dumping stuff when I walked in, because prep for the kickoff was taking so much energy.

What I learned from my summer sermon

Back on August 12, I had my first chance to give the sermon in the main service on a Sunday morning. I'm definitely used to giving Gospel minutes during our fellowship time after church, or messages to the youth group every month when we meet there, but this was a whole other animal.

Here's the sermon. When you click the link it'll take you to the sermon page, and then just click my name (I'm the only "Isaac" on the page) and the sermon will play.

Here's what I learned by writing this sermon:

I learned it's especially tough to write a lively proclamation of the Good News when you're in an especially dry spiritual season. I started doing the Bible study and research for this message a good two weeks before I got to give it, and the thing wouldn't write. I'd get an idea for the introduction onto the page, then couldn't back it up. Or the idea would end up being too complicated to keep my attention, and I'd know the congregation would think the same thing.

This part taught me to rely on prayer more than on my imagination. Rather than jumping straight into the message, I should have taken that first week to sit with God about it.

I learned that when you have a limited time in which to speak, it's probably wise to focus on one or two aspects of the Scripture that's been assigned. The passage I had began with "Have no fear, little flock," and moved through "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also," and "Be ready for Christ to return," and finished with "This is serious, people!" just to tie it all together. (That last one wasn't in there verbatim, but it's a good reminder to add to the end of Gospel readings, I think!)

This part taught me to pick the piece that I am post passionate about telling people, and then pour myself into it, when I have such a buffet table to pick from. See the earlier post on giving speeches.

Finally, when I showed up at Rev. Heather's doorstep at 9pm on Saturday, I learned (because she told me) that when a congregation listens to a preacher, they'll connect to the message best by hearing how the Gospel affected the preacher's life. What the congregation suspects is that there's really something going on in this Bible-thing; hearing a story about a real person they know can help bring that out.

The next time I preach, I'll learn a whole different set of lessons, and hopefully put these few into practice. What's really surprised me about this preaching experience is that I knew all of those things from building youth group messages, and had to learn them all over again when writing a sermon for the full congregation.

Journaling with high school class

As part of this year's curriculum, I'm working on a journal that goes along with our high school lessons, which are based around topics students have asked questions about, and designed to teach what a Christian approach to those topics is like. The journal is something we haven't done before.

Has anyone had any particular success with journaling, or any notable difficulties, that would give me some idea of what to expect when we start using them? Or any ideas/angles that would be useful to include in the journal. Right now I have weekly sections through each topic, a form for confession, a couple of prayer forms, and a Bible study method in the book.

A comment on how to prepare

I was listening to the latest Car Talk podcast (love those guys!) and heard them reference an ad campaign for an investment company that used the line, "The only place where 'success' comes before 'preparation' is in the dictionary."

Anyone have a way we can use this as an illustration? I have the feeling it's a good one.

A little shift in perspective, and suddenly...

On my way out the door to go look for kids the other day, I realized that I'd forgotten to pick a book off my shelf to bring to Starbucks, and asked my program director if she had anything I hadn't read (or loaned her my copy of). She grabbed Mark Yaconelli's "Contemplative Youth Ministry" which I'd been meaning to get into.

Mark makes the point that the rarest gift teenagers have is an adult presence who truly listens to them, and those words jumped out at me. I like to teach, and talk, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to always have something useful and Godly to say to my students when I see them.

But this morning I decided to go about things a little differently; I went in determined to listen. And before the main service, I'd had four good conversations, two of them with students I haven't seen in a while.

A lot of my summer has been devoted to writing programming and lesson plans for this coming year, and that attitude bled over into the way I related to kids. So reading Mark's words brought me back to the place God had prepared for me today.

The Perfect New-Volunteer test

Yesterday was a busy day, and it's on days like that when the most random ideas strike me as excellent--

So there I was, sitting in Starbucks, and I had the idea for a very reliable volunteer interview scenario. Find a Starbucks near a middle school (within walking distance) and arrange to interview your new volunteer there on a Friday afternoon; in fact, plan to meet 20 minutes after the first wave of kids walks in, so you'll be standing in line with 30 or so teenagers who all want to talk about the amazing things that happened in school today.

You'll weed out all the adults who really don't have a clue about youth ministry, such as this mom who walked in with her younger daughter and nearly walked right back out again (the daughter found some friends before mom could steer her out the door), saying, "Not only is there a long line, but they're noisy!"

Loving the fuzzy logic

This past week in our Wednesday small group night, we asked our students to talk about how a new person should feel at his/her first small group night. G, one of the most enthusiastic kids, had this answer:

"They should feel worried... really worried! Because then, when they realize how awesome it is, they'll REALLY want to come back!"

On making a speech you can believe in

One of my students asked me the other day, "Do you know any good topics for debates?" Her homework was to write a short (1-2 minute) speech on a topic that people could debate. (The class wouldn't actively debate each topic, but the assignment was supposed to test the students' understanding of what topics will bring out lively debate.)

The advice I gave was, "You should make the speech about something you believe in." For two reasons, a speech should always be about something the speaker believes in, and the more passionate the belief, the better. Audiences can tell if a speaker is just reciting. Sometimes speakers have to debate the opposite side of their own position, but this should only be done as an exercise, not as a habit.

So we tried to come up with something she believed in. And we came up with three categories of things that count as beliefs: religious belief, political belief, and "cause" belief-- for example, one of my causes is worldwide literacy.

What I couldn't convince her to do was to actually pick a strong belief and make the speech about it. Part of the problem was that the assignment was due the next day. But another part came from this student not wanting the challenge of using such a short speech to convince an audience about the power of her belief.

That's a problem a youth worker can sink his teeth into. We're called to be "always ready to give an explanation for the hope that is within us," (1 Peter 3:15) and sometimes we only have a short time to do so.

With that in mind, here's an exercise I use, borrowed from a pastor I worked with.

Get students to pick partners. Then give them these instructions:

"Imagine you're in an airport seeing a friend off. You have one minute until s/he boards the plane, and your friend suddenly turns to you and says, 'You know, I've always noticed something was different about you. You have a lot more hope than most people, and you have this way of getting through things. What makes you work like that?' In the one minute before the plane leaves, explain how God's love affects your life."

Introduction and Covenanting Lesson Plan

Here's a lesson from the curriculum we've been developing for our fall semester with the high school class. "Melvin the Christian" is an idea one of the teachers had at the end of last year-- build a chicken-wire frame, probably half-scale, of a person's body and over the year, as we talk about what it takes to live a Christian life, add layers of papier-mache, then clothes and other details, to Melvin to show how we're growing.

Feel free to use any of this that would be useful to you!


This matters on Monday morning
9th-12th grade curriculum
School year 2007-2008

Topic: Introduction and Covenant

You may need to complete this lesson in two parts; it’s designed to introduce the class to their teachers and to each other; get a sense of everyone’s spiritual activity; and create the class covenant that will make this a safe place.

Teacher’s Preparation:

How will I keep my classroom a safe place for all my students, in their bodies, minds and spirits?

Reflections for the Teacher:

In this class, you’re not THE BOSS in a negative sense. It’s not your job to keep everyone thinking exactly the same thing, or dump information into their brains and ask them to repeat it back.

You are a guide, a leader who points the way to our ultimate Teacher, Jesus Christ. That means we teachers don’t have all the answers, and that we expect ourselves to grow as our students do.

The goal of this curriculum is to present topics that our students deal with, through a Christian lens. How do we already act? What does our world teach us? How does God expect us as His people to be different? And how can we, every day, respond to God’s love by becoming more and more like our Savior.

Do challenge students’ opinions. Do make them think. Do tell them when God has a completely different idea than they think. But never make them think it’s not okay to wonder. Don’t make doubt a bad word; explain that wondering, and doubting, and feeling lost, are part of the journey we’re on, and that God will support us and guide us.

Who are we?

Ask your students to introduce themselves by sharing the following three facts:
Name
School
Activity that will take up the most of my time this school year.

As teachers, introduce yourselves by name, reminding the students what you’d like to be called, (Mr. or Mrs. is okay, but students may have a hard time warming up to you with your title.)

Teachers, then share the thing about living a faithful life that you find the hardest to keep up with. You might want to share this in two parts—what God expects from a Christian, and how you find it hard to live up to.

Take time to pray.

Thank God for your students. Pray for them each by name during this prayer.

Pray for God’s strength and wisdom as we learn to live His way.

Ask for God’s guidance and forgiveness in the mistakes we make.

What will the tone of this class be?

Ask a student to take notes for the class during this next section.

Tell your students that your classroom will be a safe place for them. Then ask, “What should we expect from each other that will keep our classroom safe?” Write down all the answers.

Ask your students to define, “Confidential.” Explain that what you say in the classroom will be kept confidential. Then ask your students if they know any exceptions to a promise of confidentiality. (You’ll need to say clearly that if a student admits being a danger to him/herself or others, or is involved in a dangerous situation, you will have to report it to the right people—sometimes that’s parents, sometimes it’s law enforcement.)

At the top of the paper where you’ve written the expectations for your classroom’s tone, write, “We will,” and have students sign the paper. (We’ll laminate this or put it in a frame and make it part of your classroom.) This is your classroom covenant.

What has God already done in us?

Draw three long horizontal lines on a chalkboard, At opposite ends of the first line, write, “Don’t know what I think,” and “Completely set in my opinions.” On the ends of the second line, write, “Completely believe,” and “Completely doubt.” On the third line, write “Growing like a weed,” and “Standing still.” Ask your students to write their names on each line where they best fit.

The first line is for gauging opinions. The second is for checking where our belief in God stands as of right now. The third line is for asking, “How do I feel my faith has been growing over the summer?”

DISCUSSION:

What’s the most powerful thing God has done in my life this year?
What does it mean to live God’s way?

What makes it hard to live God’s way?

How can we support each other as we work to live God’s way?

Explain to your class that you’ll be setting goals for yourselves to grow toward as part of each topic. Ask:

How can we hold ourselves accountable for our growth?

What should we do if one of us admits not making progress in a given week?

What support can we give each other during the week?

Melvin the Christian

Bring in the frame for Melvin and the papier-mache supplies. Today you’ll be making his first layer.

Ask each student to write on a slip of paper a sentence or two that describe where they’re at in faith. Use the scale you made on the board if you need to. These should be written anonymously, and can be pasted on face up or face down.

Close in prayer.

It's fishbowl time!

Best question that came into the Wednesday night fishbowl (the fishbowl's for questions that don't fit that night's topic but that people have to know):

Why is the Mona Lisa so famous?

(Anyone want to take a stab at that one before Wednesday?)

A chuch typo

We're putting together an updated songbook for our children's chapel service, and I walked into our clergy assistant's office today to find a sheet on her desk with one of my all-time favorite camp songs on it.

"I love this song!" I said, not noticing that she was pulling all those pages out.
"Read the whole thing," she told me.

The first verse was good: "I will call upon the Lord/who is worthy to be praised/ So shall I be/ saved from my enemies."

But the chorus had a kicker to it: "The Lord liveth!/ and blessed be the Lord/ and may the God of our salvation be exhausted!"

(It should read, "be exalted," by the way.)

A follow-up to the last post

An op-ed piece in the NYTimes today describes "the dark night of the soul," and what it means for a person's faith, and it's a good read.

There's a reason we call for "authenticity" in youth ministry today, and this story really throws light on how foolish it is to try and make the Christian life look easy to nonbelievers, new believers or anyone else. It's ridiculous to hide the hard times we have and the difficult seasons we have to go through (I'm in one... it's one of the reasons I haven't written much lately) because if we try and keep a face up in front of people, and then they somehow discover that we're not all content and perfect, our whole faith is going to look iffy to them.

Apparently even great saints have doubtful times

I found an article in my mailbox today, copied from the Post-Dispatch (I'll edit in a link later, in a hurry just now) about Mother Teresa's writings to her confessors and confidants about how she experienced a really long time (years and years) of feeling like God was not with her.

The mom who mentioned this story to me yesterday, before I saw the paper itself, seemed a little shaken by it, but I had a thought:

Even if Mother Teresa did feel lost, did wonder if Christ had really forsaken her, she still obeyed the command He'd given her, still served the people who needed her most. And thus, no matter what any writings say, she is still an example of true faith.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "Only the obedient believe, and only believers obey."

Why I enjoy small group so much

At the beginning of small group, between dinner/check-in and actually getting started, I pull the questions out of the fishbowl on the table that kids have left there for me from the week before. (This is the way we keep ourselves on task during the group; if someone has a question that doesn't connect to the topic, we put it in the fishbowl for the next week.)

The question was "Why do we end prayers with 'Amen'?"

Smart Kid: "In Hebrew, it means 'Let it be done.'"
Really Smart Kid: "Then shouldn't we say, 'Amen, please?'"

Apparently it's logical

Humans today are apparently trapped in a virtual world, an environment created by advanced "posthumans," according to this story in the NY Times today.

"My gut feeling is that the odds are better than 20 percent, maybe better than even. I think it’s highly likely that civilization could endure to produce those supercomputers. And if owners of the computers were anything like the millions of people immersed in virtual worlds like Second Life, SimCity and World of Warcraft, they’d be running simulations just to get a chance to control history — or maybe give themselves virtual roles as Cleopatra or Napoleon.

It’s unsettling to think of the world being run by a futuristic computer geek, although we might at last dispose of that of classic theological question: How could God allow so much evil in the world? For the same reason there are plagues and earthquakes and battles in games like World of Warcraft. Peace is boring, Dude."

Reusing (clothes, anyway) catching on

A while ago I read an article about how while recycling had gotten trendy over the past few years, no one's ever paid much attention to the "reduce" and "reuse" parts of the original triangle.

I'm a proud Goodwill shopper and talk about donating clothes and buying used with my kids fairly often, as a form of stewardship, and some of the folks (guys especially) I talk to are really uncomfortable with it. Since every designer store in the world, it seems, has a location in St. Louis, this story caught my eye today:

"Back to school shoppers stock up at resale stores"

"While parents are increasingly shopping resale, another trend is on the horizon: Teenage shoppers, who once never would have set foot in such stores, also are on the rise."Being green is cool, and we are in the recycling business," Maurice said. "Definitely the attitude (among teens) has changed. Also the kids are happier because they are getting more."

A little moment that kept me laughing through Communion

I preached yesterday, in the "big church," at all three services. Today, I'm really tired from all that, but still laughing because of my students. I'd been given the idea to include some material in my sermon about the students at our church, since I have a perspective on them that the other preachers generally don't use. And so during the main service, I talked directly to the youth group in the congregation.

The youth group was busy while I was preaching. They were busy putting a whoopee cushion under my chair, and then re-inflating it a couple of times when I'd managed to sit on it while there was too much noise (hymns, etc) for it to be embarrassing.

Maybe they didn't get all of the challenge I set out for them in the sermon, but they're comfortable enough to hang around while I teach about God, which is a great start!

Is it Enough?

The other day I was watching "My Super Sweet 16" on MTV-- for anyone who's unfamiliar, this is a show that gives us all a good look at 16th birthday parties thrown by kids whose parents want to buy their love or can't fight their sense of entitlement.

The two girls featured on the show (they had the same birthday, so shared the party) asked all their guests to donate money to St. Jude Children's Hospital rather than bringing gifts, and over the course of the party raised $50,000 for the hospital.

Which is a good thing. $50,000 worth of research and care for kids with cancer-- who could fault them for that?

The trouble is, the party cost $421,000, eight times the value of the donation. Nearly half a million dollars spent on celebrating two children and making them feel like rockstars. Does the donation, set against that obscene self-aggrandizement, have any value left? If the two students had spent the half-million on the hospital, and the 50,000 on the party, wouldn't that have made more of a difference?

When Jesus said, "The measure with which you give is the measure which will be given to you," did he have this sort of thing in mind? I'm not sure quite what to think-- I want to give those two girls credit for their generosity, but when their party cost eight times what they gave away, and the money for the donation came from their guests and not themselves, how generous was it?

A bag-o-friendship to teach commitment

Last week, a friend from here at church dropped off a fragrant bag at my office. In it was about a cup of "starter" batter for a batch of Amish friendship bread. The bread, a tradition probably started by the Amish, is passed on in starter form from one friend to another; the recipient works the bag for 10 days, sometimes adding ingredients, mostly just mushing it up to keep it from being stagnant. At the end of the preparation, you make several gift starters to pass on to your own friends, add the last ingredients (including, oddly, a box of instant pudding) and bake the actual bread. What you end up with is a sweet, cinnamon-sugar-crusted loaf of Amish goodness.

When I told one of my students about it, she let me get about a sentence into the story and interrupted me to say, "Just to let you know, I don't want one!" According to her, it was far too much work.

So that made me start to think about how this weeklong bread might be a good activitiy for a small-group Bible study during a series about friendship and what it means to be a friend. You have to be committed to this bread or the starter will go bad. It takes some waiting; the bag leaks odd smells through the days when it sits on the counter; it's harder to make than most bread because there's a specific order to the steps. It's like a good friendship. (Which, of course, is why I suspect the Amish named it the way they did.)

"Of course it's hard. Anything that's worth doing is hard," I told a student one day. But to see that there's an investment required to build up good, Christian friendships, this kind of concrete, tasty project might be just what students need.

Here's the recipe:

Amish Friendship Bread Starter
Amish Friendship Bread (requires the starter)

A "Spiritual Interview" for youth and leaders

I was sitting in Starbucks the other day, reading “The New Faithful” by Colleen Carroll, and noticed a job interview happening at a table across the cafe from me. This made me think about the number of job interviews I'd seen happening there since I moved to St. Louis-- every time I walk into a Starbucks store, someone's trying to get a job, either at the store, or meeting an interviewer at this convenient place.

The purpose of a job interview is to find out how well the person applying will fit in and what he/she will contribute to the company. One tactic that interviewers use all the time is asking challenging or tricky questions, trying to find out how well people think on their feet or how much they know. After the interview, the applicant will have an idea of where he's a strong choice for the job, and a set of weaknesses she can work on before the next meeting.

It made me think about how useful it might be to hold spiritual interviews with students once in a while, to directly ask questions about faith that check what students know and give them some things to think about afterward. The idea wouldn't be to put pressure on students to come up with certain answers, but to see where they're at and help us figure out how to help them more precisely. Greg Stier's “Ministry Mutiny” has an idea like this; that's another spark source for me on this one.
These are some useful questions for a spiritual life interview:

When you go to worship, what part of the service do you most look forward to?
If God had a message to give you right now, what medium (music, people, words, etc.) would He use to deliver it?
When you need to make a big decision, what steps do you take to discern what God wants you to choose?
How do they make M&Ms? (That's an actual interview question, designed to check creativity. Throw it in just for fun.)
What spiritual practices give you strength when you're tempted?
Talk about the times this year when you've been the highest and lowest, spiritually. Where was God in both of those places?

Sometimes we can get these things to come up in conversation. But I also think there's a place for a planned check-in.

The Vatican's 10 Commandments for Drivers

Found this story on Yahoo today, courtesy of the Associated Press: "Vatican's 10 commandments for drivers"

"An unusual document from the Vatican's office for migrants and itinerant people also warned that cars can be "an occasion of sin" — particularly when they are used for dangerous passing or for prostitution.

It warned about the effects of road rage, saying driving can bring out "primitive" behavior in motorists, including "impoliteness, rude gestures, cursing, blasphemy, loss of sense of responsibility or deliberate infringement of the highway code."

It urged motorists to obey traffic regulations, drive with a moral sense, and to pray when behind the wheel.
Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the office, told a news conference that the Vatican felt it necessary to address the pastoral needs of motorists because driving had become such a big part of contemporary life."

Another small but vital thought

I posted one of these a few days ago, and since then another one has been kicking around in my mind, something I probably should have gotten a long time ago, and I'm not entirely sure why it just appeared.

It isn't that God starts speaking when I start listening.

It's that God's speaking all the time, and when I start listening, I hear Him.

A message from God...

...courtesy of the P.K.s

In evolution, religious belief found "useful"

The Post-Dispatch, here in St. Louis, ran this story about researchers at Wash. U. who are researching religion as an evolutionary response:

Perhaps since the time of Galileo, science and religion have had a gentleman's agreement: You stay out of my business, and I'll stay out of yours. Not any longer. A cadre of scientists, including Washington University anthropologist Pascal Boyer, are trying to explain why, in almost every human culture, people choose belief in God over unbelief — why, it seems, the human brain is wired for belief.And the scientists are finding something that would please Charles Darwin himself: Religion may have evolved through the same rules that led to big brains and opposable thumbs. From an evolutionary standpoint, they have found, belief can be useful."Supernatural beliefs are, in general, very easy extensions from beliefs that are useful in everyday life," Boyer said...

"Believers say, 'You're showing how God interacts with my brain.' Atheists say, 'That's great because it shows that it's nothing more than activity in the brain,'" he said.But Boyer feels that he has been caught in the middle. Believers have accused him of trying to take the mystery away. And atheists have criticized him for not attacking religion enough. He has received hate mail from both sides.

An Open Letter to the Scientists

Dear Scientists of the world,

Please show us that the reason you came to be a scientist is because you wondered about something you didn't know, and that wonder consumed you and drove you.

When someone writes a newspaper article about a new discovery you made, please tell us how many wrong turns your investigation took, how many times you asked the wrong question or missed something. Tell us about how much you kept wondering through the whole thing.

Because when my students see an unbroken string of stories about how we've just proved something, they learn that it's the results that matter, and not the wonder. That curiosity is only good when it's leading to proof. That things we can't see, and don't understand, don't matter until we can, and do.

I love what you're doing for the world, making medicine and cool gadgets and the Showtime Rotisserie. And I know we-- scientists and ministers-- can play nice together, since all the things you're discovering are things God made work that way. So let's make each other's jobs a little easier, and give the world back the gift of wonder, of process, of saying "I don't know."

Thanks,

Isaac

It's a great time to be in ministry

...as this article from the Christian Science Monitor points out.

"The rising interest in spirituality has led many more students to enroll in religion courses or to major in religion, reports The New York Times. Many students choose to live in dorms that allow a focus on matters of faith. Often, these students were raised by baby-boomer parents who did not impose a religion on them, but when faced with difficulties on campus, the students search for answers to tough questions of life."

How do we make this happen?

I had a whole discussion this week with my small group about how they weren't going to read their Bibles. We had a dare, since we're in a series right now about how to use the Bible, which was to pick a number between 3 and 8, and read the Bible that many days between group meetings. The discussion then ran through some of the following comments:

Buddhist student and pastor's kid: "We already know everything about the Bible; we've read it before!"
Fairly reliable student: "What if reading it one time is pretty much impossible?
Me: "How is that impossible?"
FRS: "Well, I'm studying for finals."
Particularly obnoxious student: "Yeah, finals are way more important than the Bible!"
Struggling student: "What if I read the same thing every day?"
POS: "What if I read one word every day?"
Me: "You have to read more than one word at a time."
POS: "What if God was leading me to that one word?"

How do we overcome resistance to reading the Bible because it's too ________ (fill in: boring, old, weird, violent, irrelevant, hard...)? I really want my students to be excited about Scripture because every time I open it something jumps out at me, but they don't seem to be catching on. Help!

Bible will not be declared an "indecent publication"

From Reuters, this story:

HONG KONG (Reuters) - "Hong Kong's media regulator has rejected calls to reclassify the Bible as an indecent publication following more than 2,000 complaints about its sexual and violent content, including rape and incest...

Publications classified as indecent in Hong Kong can only be bought by people aged over 18 and must be sealed in a wrapper with a statutory warning notice."

Finally, a good answer

My students have been asking questions that have both stumped and inspired me in the last couple of weeks, and one that comes out especially often has to do with prayer, and it usually goes "Why won't God give me what I'm praying for?"

This small thought snuck into my mind the other day and won't go away:

We ask for anything we think would be good enough.

But God will only give us what is perfect for us to have.

But why do we have church?

A student came up to me last week and asked, "Why do we have church (meaning the regular Sunday worship)? Why can't we just have youth group and Bible study?

I explained it was because we needed to hear the Gospel and have Communion.

"But why can't we just do that in youth group?" he wanted to know.

I told him it was because we needed a priest to do Communion, and that we needed to hear the sermon.

"But why couldn't the priest just come to the youth group?"

I didn't have a good answer for him that day. But it made me think.

Well, J, the reason we have church is because we need the chance to worship with the whole community. By which I mean this:

If we had the Gospel and Communion in the youth group, we would end up having those things with people who were just like us: young, growing in faith, and without a lot of experience at anything. We would invite Jesus into our little circle and enjoy our time with Him all by ourselves.

We have church because we need to worship with people who are old. People who have a lot of stories to tell with their lives. People who are just beginning to wonder about God. People who are wrestling with Him. People who are different-- in their ages, in their faith development, in their involvement with the church-- from us.

Church is so we can talk to God together.
Church is so we can see the people we pray for.
Church is so we don't ever think we are the only ones who know God, because we're comfortable in our own little way of doing things.

An open letter to all of my students

My dear young friends in Christ,

No, I cannot personally prove to you that God is real. But at the same time, I cannot prove to you that any of the situations you see on reality television would actually happen if there weren't any cameras there, and you believe in those rather easily.

No, having never been there, I cannot personally prove to you that Heaven and Hell are in fact real places. I can also not prove that winning the county Little League championship in third grade will land you a spot on the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals, but you're talking about that as if it's going to happen tomorrow.

No, I cannot personally prove that the Bible records with complete accuracy the miracles Christ performed, since I wasn't there to see them myself. But neither can I prove that the tips you pick up in "Cosmo" will in fact lead you to Mr. Right, and you quote them the way I'd like to hear you quoting the New Testament.

No, it's not possible to completely understand the book of Revelation and Christ's second coming. But if Jesus had a band, and they were reuniting after many years, you'd want to know all about it.

Finally, no, I cannot prove that your friends, family, teachers, co-workers or that guy at the bus stop will understand why you want to live a life that is faithful to God, and not to yourself or to them. But no one understands you anyway.

I love you all with the love of Christ,

Isaac

Skittles: Steal the Rainbow

From MSNBC, this story:

"A man caught removing tires from a truck
has been charged with stealing the tractor-
trailer containing $250,000 worth of Skittles,
police said."

The most odd part of this story is that the Skittles in the stolen trailer were worth $250,000. The tires and rims he was trying to remove and sell were worth $500. I suspect there's a metaphor there, useful for youth Gospel messages.

The difference was, she did it on purpose

"As he went along, he passed a woman in the crowd who had been constantly bleeding for twelve years, and no one could heal her. She thought to herself, 'If I can just touch him, I will be healed.' So she reached out and touched the hem of his robe, and instantly she was healed. Jesus stopped and said to his disciples, 'Who touched me?' They laughed and said, 'Master, the crowd is pressing and jostling against you-- dozens of people have been touching you. How can you ask who it was?' He replied, 'I know someone touched me; I felt power go out from me.' Then the woman, seeing she could not go unnoticed, threw herself at Jesus' feet and in front of the whole crowd told how she had touched him and felt herself instantly healed. Jesus said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace.'"

At the evening prayer service before the Confirmation banquet, I had the honor of reading the Gospel lesson for the day, and the quote at the beginning of this post was part of it. After the service, the story got me thinking.

The whole crowd touched him. Anyone close to Jesus, wanting to hear what he said, bumped up against him and pushed into him on all sides. Some of the crowd was behind him, pushing him forward. Others were in front, trying to hear and lead the way at the same time. They all touched him, but one woman reached out to him. One woman touched him on purpose, knowing that if she could just contact Christ, something would happen to her life.

In this story, where am I? I'd like to automatically say I was with that woman, reaching out to touch Jesus on purpose, but there are some days when I know I'm so familiar with Him that I know I'm probably bumping and pushing, maybe even getting ahead and trying to get Christ to follow me. How do I avoid that state?

And where are my students? I know they're reaching out, but there are many times when I know they're reaching out in the wrong direction. How do I keep them in the crowd so they can hear Christ, and hear from Him which direction they should be pointing?

Above all, I pray that they and I will learn to do all these things on purpose, conscious that something will happen when we contact Christ, even if we underestimate it.

There's a light at the end of this tunnel

...and someday our students will get there, and do things like this: (AP, via NYTimes.com

"Twenty years later, Wiese hauled [her] diary out of storage and read it to a bar full of strangers just for laughs.
''Cringe readings,'' these exercises are called, and they are growing in popularity around the country.
Groups in New York and elsewhere convene to relive what most would rather forget: the depths of their teenage angst. Participants get up on stage with their ragged, old diaries and are instructed to read only material embarrassing enough to make them cringe.
It turns out that embarrassing is also funny. When Wiese appeared at the reading, held monthly at a Brooklyn bar, the room was packed beyond capacity. The 33-year-old fundraiser may have been cringing, but her audience was cheering."

What does this say about my small group?

One of my students brought a friend to small group night this week and shared the following conversation:

"So [my friend] said, 'At my youth group, we watch Rob Bell videos.' And I said, 'yeah, at my church we watch Will It Blend'!"

Doing a bit of thinking

One of the reasons I choose to call myself a rookie, and plan to for my whole career, is to keep me from being arrogant. Yes, I want to be the best youth minister in the world. But that doesn't have anything to do with me, or whatever status might come along with that. It's because God called me to this ministry and He, (and my students) deserve nothing less than that from me.

It's struck home this semester how much I need to avoid arrogance. I've been taking an "Intro to classroom teaching" course and part of the course was a classroom observation series in local schools. I saw some amazing teaching that inspired me to go back to my youth group and immediately start using some of the things I saw. I also saw some really poor teaching; teachers who didn't care, and didn't stretch themselves, so their students stayed right where they started. And I saw some teachers who were right in the middle, doing the very best they could and not seeing many results.

It's easy not to be arrogant in the presence of great teachers, because they are so obviously better at it than me and I am eager to learn from them. It's nearly as easy to avoid arrogance when I'm watching bad teachers, because my thoughts get extreme enough about how much better than that I want to be that I can identify them and stop them right away. But in the middle is the hardest part. In the middle I'm caught between my incredibly high ideals, that get boosted by my education professor, and knowing the reality of how students can often seem callous and non-absorbent.

So in that place, I need to be the most careful. I need to consciously watch for what a teacher cares about. I need to see the small ways (often very small ways) the students show their respect and interest. And however long I'm there, I need to ask myself, "What would make me do the same thing this teacher is doing?" rather than "I can't believe she's doing that... I have a much better plan!"

Arrogance is one of the great killers of great youth ministers. And great teachers. And only when we break through it can we keep on learning.

Don't nobody mess with my radio...

Reverend Fun cartoon used under terms found here.

(C) 2007 Gospel Communications, Inc.

Cheddarvision

www.cheddarvision.tv-- the link goes to a webcam from England that shows a wheel of Cheddar cheese aging. Live.

Here's the YouTube timelapse too.

This is a neat idea. Not only because I love cheese. But also because not everything happens in an instant.

I've been waiting four years (the number of years I've been working directly with confirmation classes) for this to happen. My senior pastor in Michigan used to tell the class it was an option every year, and said he'd never had anyone say it either.

I'd messaged a student to ask for some feedback on our confirmation class, and my student wrote back to me, "I just don't want to be confirmed."

I'll tell you why I was thrilled about this.

Confirmands make promises. It's not just what they promise their youth minister that matters, it's that they promise their congregation and their God that they will, among other things, "continue in the apostles' teaching, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers," something that new members have promised to do since the church in Acts.

Every year, at least one confirmand makes those promises without intending to keep them. Every year, a few of them drift away after confirmation, without really thinking about what a serious breach they're creating between their promises and their actions. Especially in mainline churches, the temptation is to see confirmation as just another ritual, and go through the motions to make your parents happy. (That's a whole separate problem, by the way, not something I'm happy about or working to allow.)

So I'm thrilled because someone finally said, "This just isn't for me." We're not going to lose track of this student. But admitting honest doubt is, even if the doubter doesn't realize it, a step toward honest faith. Someone who says, "No" isn't always saying "Never" but often "I need more time."

One of these things is not like the other...

More hilarity from classroom observations, in the middle school. The lesson talked about the structure of the early church, and how the church modeled itself on the hierarchy of the Roman Empire, with laypeople, then priests, then deacons, then bishops, then archbishops, etc. One student had a question.

Student: A bishop... you mean like a jester?
Teacher: No... bishops and jesters are two completely different things.

Then one student identified the top of the hierarchy, the Pope.

Teacher: That's right. Are you Catholic?
Student: No, I'm Episcopalian.
Other Student: What's an Episcoponian?

Empowerment or worse!

So how's this for an idea that could start out healthy and turn bad in just a few heartbeats?

Mommy and Daddy's Little Life Coach (NYTimes)

"Parents have long depended on their children to be in-house experts on fashion, technology and pop culture, to introduce them to fresh music, purge their closets of ghastly apparel (“mom jeans”) and troubleshoot household electronics. And generations of parents have encouraged their children to weigh in on family decisions like choosing a winter vacation spot or a replacement for the belly-up goldfish.

But the nature and pervasiveness of child-to-parent advice has reached new proportions for a variety of reasons. Many parents — who have shed their status as old fogy untouchables and become pals with their progeny — are treating their offspring as worldly equals. They think of their computer-savvy, plugged-in children as confidants, and so they look to them for advice on life decisions, as well as major purchases: cars, computers, vacation packages, real estate, home décor. "

When I pray in school, it's for more comments like these...

The other day I was observing a middle school social studies classroom on a day when they were hearing a lesson on the early Christians, as part of a unit on Roman history.

Teacher: "Why might Roman roads have helped spread the Christian message?"
Student: "Maybe they had pictures of Jesus on them...?"

Christos anesti! Alethos anesti!

Welcome to a new season of blogging with the Rookie Youthworker! I took a fast from writing on it over Lent for a couple of reasons:

1) I was feeling really pressured to keep putting up awesome useful content, on top of work and school, and needed to step back and rest for a little while.

2) I didn't really know what the blog was for anymore.

God gave me an excellent season during Lent to sit and think and pray about it. Although most of the real progress didn't happen until the end of Lent, the whole time was worth it.

To deal with the problem of pressure, I've decided to re-instate the posting rule I had when I first started the RYW blog in December of 2005. I will post "major" content, aka serious essay-type posts or technique ideas or something to wrestle with and use, three times every week. That way I'll have time to think on them and make sure they're coherent and helpful.

To recover my sense of direction, God and I realized that the blog has three main purposes:

1) To glorify God by serving as a place where youth ministers can wrestle with theology and philosophy of ministry, to make sure the things we do are faithful to His commands.

2) To contribute to the overall state of youth ministry by offering ideas that we can work on, tweak, debate and remodel.

3) To share both humor and information from the world around us that helps us keep our perspective and appreciate the unique context we're working in today.

May God bless you through this blog and we strengthen each other in conversation this year!