Over the past several days I’ve started to put words to what I’ve been observing: The tribe of youth ministry is anxious.
2009 has been a ridiculously hard year. Last October when Tony Campolo spoke in Sacramento he said something like… “Church, as we know it today, will collapse with the economy. And we will shake ourselves off and ask, ‘what do we do now?”
Prophetic words.
A year later we have to step back and acknowledge that in many ways Tony was right.
A down economy has forced tens of thousands of churches to re-evaluate how they spend money. Not a bad thing, but has caused stress at all levels of church staffing.
A shifting culture, and the owning of the reality that traditional youth ministry programs are fading in their effectiveness… more stress for youth workers.
Time to think, causes that stress to bubble to the surface.
The length of time things have been stressful (for some, 2-3 years now) causes this stress to manifest itself.
And the manifestation of what we are all feeling is this anxious elephant in the room at the National Youth Workers Convention. It’s the tears shed as we go to worship. It’s the hunger in conversation. It’s the sleep in the hallways. It’s the lack of eye contact. It’s the nervous laughter.
We are an anxious tribe. We fidget. We wring our hands. We bang our heads against the wall. We wonder what to do with ourselves. We wonder what the future of youth ministry is. We hypothesize. We position ourselves. We take our stress out on others. We blame ourselves. We blame our leaders. We blame our calling. We blame God.
For me… recognizing this tribal anxiety and the disorder that goes with it is 90% of the battle. All of those symptoms in our tribe, I don’t know what to do with them. But anxiety, I know what to do with that.
We have a fascination with the little guy. Foundational to American storytelling is the little guy overcoming adversity to make it big. Americans love happy endings. The movie credits roll when Rocky raises his fists to the sky. Or when the young lawyer wins the big case against the mean corporation. Or when the nerdy sales guy finally marries the hot receptionist.
A storyline of a champion successfully defending his place in the world would never make it on TV. You’d never see a TV drama about a big law firm protecting their big clients assetts in a positive light. It would be offensive to our American storyline to celebrate the big guy keeping the little guy down. Our culture isn’t wired to believe that is a valid storyline.
We, collectively, hate the perennial winner. When the Chicago Bulls finally won the NBA Finals we celebrated with Michael Jordan. But when they won 3 in a row that seemed a bit much and everyone was fine with MJ going to play baseball for a few years. We were sick of his winning ways. The good guy needed to go wear a black baseball hat for a while… so we could welcome him back as he overcame being down to come to the top one more time.
We love the process of becoming a winner. But actual winners become the enemy in about two seconds.
This plays out painfully in politics. Collectively, we loved Bill Clinton as president. Then we hated him. We loathed his sleazy ways and couldn’t wait for him to leave office. People loved George W. Bush. It’s almost embarrassing to say that publicly– but the people loved Bush! Then they hated him. As time wore on everyone looked forward to him leaving office. Not even Republican nominees for his office wanted him at their events in the last year of his presidency. And now the tides are turning against Barack Obama. Just 12 months ago more than 60% of Americans chanted “Yes We Can” as they cast their ballot. Many cried along with the thousands at Grant Park when Obama won. Many lined up for days to proclaim his innaguration as the greatest day in our lifetime. But now he’s not the little guy, is he? The little guy has become the man and there is something in our collective DNA that must learn to loathe him.
It’s a little surreal when you look at it like that, isn’t it? Maybe its just hip to hate the President?
Sports? Same thing.
Celebrity?Same thing.
Business? Same thing.
Churches? Same thing.
Pretty much anyone or any thing which rises from obscurity to some notoriety is immediately loathed once they make it to the top. People hate Microsoft. They hate Dell. They hate AT&T. They hate the Yankees. They hate CNN. They hate Rick Warren. They hate Miley Cyrus.
I don’t know about you. But I’m ready for a new storyline in our culture. I’m sick of the hatred. I’m bored with making celebrities awesome in order to just tear them down. The plot is disgusting to me.
How about we start celebrating the everyday champions? The ones who never gain notoriety for coaching a freshmen basketball team. Is it possible for our culture to celebrate the Jack & Diane’s of the world? How about celebrating longevity? How about focusing on long term success instead of a parabola of success?
Of course not. We love creating superstars for the sole purpose of destroying them far too much.
Tonight the Google gods waved their magic wand and granted my wish by inviting me to the first group of beta testers for Google Wave. (See the video above.) Included in my account was the ability to invite a few people.
I have to be honest, I don’t see what all of the hype is about. Then again, that’s what I said about Twitter 2 years ago! I unwittingly posted a jab at Kristen that I had invites to give away and all of a sudden I was flooded with requests for an invite! Having no ability to chose, this is my attempt to give away some things while celebrating what I’m all about. Did you see people were selling invites on Ebay? Crazy!
Two Ways To Win an Invite
Contest 1: (one invite) Simply leave a comment on this post with a valid Google account email in the email field. Say whatever you want in the comment box. From this group of people I’ll pick one random person to get an invite using Random.org.
Contest 2: (one invite) Write a blog post or Facebook note about what you are doing to change your community for the better. Tell me how you volunteer at a community center, work with a local church, raise money for a good cause, or spend your weekends hand feeding endangered turtles. Then post the link here on my blog. (Either as a trackback or as a comment.) I will read them all and pick my favorite to get the invite. It’s not as democratic as the first contest but this part reflects who I am and what I’m all about.
Contest Deadline is Thursday, October 1st at 7:00 PM Pacific Time
Contest #1 Congrats to Bet. She was the random comment chosen for contest #1. Bet, I submitted your invite already. It can take a day or so for Google to actually approve you.
Last night I got a Facebook wall post by a former neighbor and childhood friend. He posted some Google Streetview links to the places where we grew up, including the elementary school that we walked to. It didn’t take me long to get curious about our daily walk to and from James Madison Elementary School. I was a bit surprised to see it pop up and say .7 miles.
When I thought out my daughter, entering 3rd grade, I thought to myself “there is no way I’d allow Megan to walk .7 miles to school without an adult!“It’s too dangerous. Too many bad things could happen. Plus we would worry all day wondering if she ever even made it to school. Couldn’t the school call me when she got there? Would someone call the police on us for letting her walk?
Isn’t that an odd reaction? My mom was not cruel in making me walk to school. Nor was she considered a bad parent for not driving me. In fact, all the kids in my neighborhood walked to school! She would have been seen as a bad parent if she had driven me each day. Culture in 1980s permitted– demanded that kids walk to school.
But the world is way more dangerous than it was when you were a kid, Adam!
That was my first reaction, too. Until I did some research and discovered that our country is much safer today than it was in 1985. While there is a general assumption in our psyche that things aren’t as safe as they were when we were kids… in fact, the world is a safer place. Less violent crime. Less petty crime. Even less violent crime against children.
The culture of fear in America
So why is it that we live in a safer society today but I would never allow my children to walk to school unattended? Why is it that it seems ludicrous to allow an 8 year old to walk to school with some friends? Why is it that I would be viewed as a horrible parent if I allowed her to do that?
The answer is that in the last 10 years we’ve allowed a new cultural more of irrational fear for our children to creep in. It wouldn’t be illegal for my child to walk .7 mile to school but it would feel wrong.
Culture mores are not always logical.
Cultural mores are not always reasonable.
Cultural mores are sometimes counter-productive for a society.
When I think back to my childhood most of the good stuff happened as a result of long periods of time without parents. We walked to school, we were at school all day, and when we came home we played with our friends. We spent epic amounts of time in trees or playing games or creating sandlot baseball tournaments. Now we take our kids to school, ask the teacher to report their behavior to us, and barely allow them any unsupervised time without us. In effect, normative parenting skills inhibit a childhood like I had.
Remember getting on your bike and riding around the neighborhood all day?
Remember going to the park with no adults around?
Remember disappearing into the woods to build forts?
All gone. Not because we live in a society that is more dangerous or litigious. But because culture has taken these things away.
I’m now a few chapters into Andrew Marin’s Love is an Orientation. I have to tell you I am fascinated by two aspects of the book.
1. How much homework Andrew has done. He knows his stuff. He knows the GLBT culture pretty well (from what I can tell) and he definitely knows Evangelical culture pretty well.
2. How much missiology he pours out. This captures my imagination! Viewing the GLBT community as a different culture helps me, a ton!
The thing that has jumped out to me so far the most has been the concept that white evangelicals dominate the church. In essence, our cultural mores control much of our church, dominate the culture, and define the agenda.
At the church we go to the leaders really get this concept and fight hard to push back against “white evangelical expectations.“The result is a church that is ethnically reflects the neighborhood we worship in.
Here are a couple things that I see us fighting for cultural reasons.
- The service will be tightly scheduled, so as to look and feel like we know what we are doing. To our Hispanic, African-American, and Souteast Asian brethren this just doesn’t work!
- The church should offer programs that are both entertaining and educational for children and youth. I see this as the biggest struggle our church faces. It’s an expectation of white evangelicals, but not as strong of a value to the other cultures we worship with. As a youth ministry person I see this struggle with parents of the people we’re reaching. The key is going to be creating a youth ministry that compliments the mission of the church.
- The music should be easy to sing. Yeah, this isn’t the case in our church by a mile.
- Small groups should be clusters of people just like me. Yeah, this isn’t happening and I hope it doesn’t.
See, there is much power in the dominant culture recognizing their position and making room to be uncomfortable for the sake of the Gospel. It is silly to expect other cultures to assimilate to us simply to hear the Gospel message!
No one would applaud a missionary who went to Africa and forced converts to sing Chris Tomlin songs in English, preach in English, and wear Western clothes. We would call that missionary a fool. We would pull his funding. And yet we applaud white evangelical pastors for creating churches who are comfortable only to other whites?
I have been a part of churches who made legitimate efforts to bridge cultures on Sunday mornings and I have been a part of churches who were ambivelent.
The question is:What are the things that churches need to be cognizent of as they reach out to various cultures?
I’ve been around Christians long enough to know that they like to talk about sex. In fact, I know enough about internet traffic to know that only one thing is more popular than a post about sex. In fact, most of you are reading this because you clicked on a link with a keyword you [...]
Here is this year’s Beloit College Mindset list for 2008.
For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Freddy Krueger have always been dead.
1. Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team.
2. Since they were in diapers, karaoke machines have been annoying people at parties.
3. They [...]
Last night I got a Facebook wall post by a former neighbor and childhood friend. He posted some Google Streetview links to the places where we grew up, including the elementary school that we walked to. It didn’t take me long to get curious about our daily walk to and from James Madison Elementary School. I was a bit surprised to see it pop up and say .7 miles.
I’m now a few chapters into Andrew Marin’s 
