If you live in Southern California (or are willing to come visit) I am hosting 2 classes on December 3rd through a brand new website, Skillshare.
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Learn how to start a blog from scratch, build an audience, and have fun while doing it!
This class will be laid back but full of experience, practical application, and practice. As a full-time blogger and blog coach I’ve helped countless bloggers get going for their own blogs and even launch small businesses.
Topics covered: (But not limited to)
Getting started for free
Choosing the right platform
Customizing your blog
What to write about
How to write for response
How to build a tribe
Intro to analytics and other measurement tools
Principles of social media interaction
The class will be two hours. But the format is loose and I won’t leave until I’ve answered all of your questions. My goal is that you walk away with a firm understanding of what to do AND ready to get started. In true McLane Creative form, after class the teacher is buying the first round next door at the Mission Brewery.
Jackson is 8 months old. He crawls around on the floor. He pulls himself up on things to stand up. He coos, squeals, grunts, and makes endless raspberries. He’s the perfect size for Megan (10) and Paul (8) to pick up and play with. He loves to cuddle with mom and dad.
Eight months is one of those ages you wish your kids could just freeze and stay… forever.
This is the tension we live in as parents, isn’t it? We want them to slow down so we can enjoy each stage of development.
But they are in a hurry to grow up
Jackson wants to use real words to tells us exactly what he wants. He wants to not just stand up, but walk. He wants to run with his siblings. He wants to eat what we eat.
He wants to get big and we want to keep him small.
It’s cute when they are babies. Certainly understandable and easy to justify.
But this tug to keep them young isn’t always good for them
The other day I hung out with Ryan McRae, a resident director at CSU San Marcos. He sees this same phenomenon every day with 18, 19, 20 year olds whose parents have done their best to keep their children young. Many of them are ill-equipped to live on their own. They lack basic judgment skills. Lots of them can’t even cook for themselves or do their own laundry.
Young adults who can’t take care of themselves. They can’t resolve conflict among themselves. He has to tell the parents to leave their adult-aged children alone.
I’m not a psychologist… but when I hear these things my mind wonders, “Are these young adults developmentally delayed?” Yes.
It’s cute to keep a baby young. But its not helpful to them beyond toddlerhood.
As parents we want to hold on to that cute baby who crawls around on the floor and coos. But, to be a good parent, we need to own our role in raising our children to become responsible, respectable adults. The goal of your parenting can not be to hold onto the past. It has to be to prepare your kids for the future.
As I sit here this morning, looking out of my window onto my street, I have a single thought:
Today is powerful.
One single day could change everything.
No, there’s nothing significant about this Thursday.
I mean that every day is powerful.
And you have one shot to get today right.
Each day I have the opportunity to do something… in this moment… or let it slip away.
It’s a simple thought. But perspective adds to the realization that today can’t be just another day.
So often we get lost in the busyness of doing what we need to do today that we forget that Jesus Christ has empowered his believers to measure each day differently.
Jesus measures your day differently than you do.
Today might not seem significant. But it is.
Today is a gift. And what you do with this day matters deeply to the one who made the hours we describe as a day.
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
Whether you are a high school teacher, a high school pastor, or the parent of a high schooler we all have the same problem. How do we understand and reach the teenagers in front of us with messages that matter?
I’ve found that this lead in question is often the problem.
We are a generation of adults who likes to talk and pretend to be experts on things we don’t understand, we over-assume.
What matters to you isn’t necessarily something that matters to the students in your life.
That said, there is plenty of research available which will help you better understand what’s important and how to reach those in high school right now. Why is there so much research done on this age group? Because bagillions of dollars in spending are influenced by them! (What? You thought researchers just liked them? Maybe so?)
Here’s what’s on the menu for understanding those who just graduated high school:
Soup of the day – The Beloit Mindset List for the Class of 2015. We start things off by recognizing the world they have grown up with. They’ve never had a home phone, they’ve never dialed up the internet, they’ve never known a world without terrorist plots or going to the gate to pick up a friend at the airport. This list provides context.
Chef’s salad – The cost of college is on the forefront of their minds. Most high school students live with the adult assumption that they need to attend college. They are marketing savvy enough to ponder, “Do I need to go to college or do adults depend on me going to college?” They are asking good questions to count the cost like, “Is college right for me? Why do I want to go to college and spend all of that money if I don’t know what I want to do? Am I going to make enough money in the long run to afford the debt it will take to graduate?” This is why the gap year is so intriguing to them. (This is a massive opportunity for entrepreneurs)
Featured entree` – 5 Ways to Friend the Class of 2015. Research start-up Mr. Youth has published a powerful marketing whitepaper which dove deep into the forces that move them. The five ingredients of this dish include: Help them express their personal brand, Integrate organically into their world, Get in good with their friends, Become an on-demand brand, Get to know them before assuming what they want.
Dessert – Millennial Donors 2011 Executive Summary. Today’s students are motivated to change things. According to the second year study called Millennial Donors, 93% of those surveyed gave money to charity. 79% actively volunteered their time. But 90% of those surveyed said they would stop donating (time & money) if they didn’t trust the leadership.
What does this have to do with my role in students lives?
To reach students we have to understand what makes them tick instead of trying to get them to understand our point-of-view.
The world they have grown up in is vastly different from the one you grew up in. They already have a million adults in their lives that lecture to them, your best opportunity for reaching them is through listening.
Instead of asking students to get on your team you’ll need to help them see how your team and their team can collaborate. The concept of personal brand isn’t narcissism, it’s an opportunity.
Understand that a recommendation is their most powerful motivator. They simply won’t go somewhere or do something that’s not recommended to them.
They are hard-wired to give back, volunteer, and contribute their fair share. But the key component is trust. If you aren’t transparent and honest they will just move on.
Do you work with high school students? Do you agree or disagree with what I’ve pointed out? What are areas you’d like to explore more? How could this research impact your day-to-day interactions with high schoolers?
I’ve been around a few types of “manly men” in my lifetime.
Dude’s who hang out at country clubs, play sophisticated sports, and have sophisticated tastes.
Dude’s who smoke big cigars, enjoy fine beverages, and gamble big bucks. (Either gambling or on business deals)
Dude’s who shot guns, kill things, and could live for months self-sustained from things in their garage.
Not a good place to sit
I wouldn’t consider myself firmly in any of those camps. And I’d hardly consider myself a manly man. I’m more of a floater man who likes all of those things but never enough to go all in.
This past weekend I spent 3 days with group #3 while serving at the Encounter mens retreat. All told there were 57 young and fully grown men in the desert for 3 days of playing hard, eating good, and playing with fire. (Bonfires, flame-throwers, explosions, shooting range, paintball, and moreexplosions.)
As we were packing up I told Brian… “This is clearly the most red neck thing I’ve ever done.” I’m a city slicker whose idea of country boy is a bike rack on his car. I’m not really a big fan of guns– much less teaching young men how to shoot them. There was lots of irony in that I spent the last three years in an urban high school ministry trying to show young men that loving Jesus meant putting guns down (gangs) and now we were going to do just the opposite.
I had convinced myself to come into the weekend with an open mind. I have huge respect for Brian- a top 5 nominee for the brightest youth ministry veteran I’ve ever rubbed shoulders with. On top of that Encounter is a ministry to high school students in East County of San Diego. (For those not familiar with San Diego, anything east of La Mesa is referred to as “East County.” East County San Diego bears more reflection on ranching than it does big city. If we go 10 miles from our house you quickly get into horse, cactus, and big pick-up truck people.)
This kind of trip made me nervous from a city slicker perspective but was completely culturally relevant to the young men Encounter ministers to.
To the desert
Getting stuck on the way in
We drove out to Ocotillo and quickly got off paved roads and into the back country. (Map) Just getting back to the canyon was an adventure. We got there about 30 minutes before it got dark and quickly established camp. You can’t even call this area a campsite as it was completely undeveloped. (No electricity, no cell services, no water, no toilets… just a cool canyon in the desert.)
It’s all about the content
In reality, while this trip is über manly man it really is a youth group retreat about calling these young men to follow Christ. Our culture does it’s best to emasculate young men and treat them like boys. This was a wake up call for them that becoming a man is up to them. We are ready to look at them as men… maybe the first time they were told that?
The content for the weekend was wrapped up around this central thought:You are dangerous and you can use that danger for good or evil. Topically, we reenforced that with lessons (and sweet object lessons!) about danger, their mouth, sexual purity, their choices, and perspective. It was a great chance for them to wrestle with the reality of their personal decisions.
It’s all about being hands on
Where is Starbucks?
We live in a world where we are in community only when we choose to be in community. Moreover, we can walk away from anything that makes us uncomfortable. While that is safe and lawsuit conscious it is leading to the neurosis of a generation.
God never intended us to be lone wolves, the enemy did. (Look at Genesis 3, it’s always been a divide and conquer strategy) Satan builds strongholds as we delve further and further into isolation. We don’t think our actions have consequences. We want to talk about blowing things up but not the people who are harmed. We want to say nasty things to other people through a video game. We want to look at pornography and pretend that doesn’t hurt anyone. We want to focus on our friends and not our community. On and on, culture pushes us into being alone while God calls us to something more complete.
Isolation is the enemy of communion. Jesus’ call for communion was never a call for individuals to come to Jesus as individuals on their own terms. That’s a perversion of our individualistic culture. Faith that lasts is almost never “just Jesus and me.” Our culture lies about that, our church culture lies about that, and youth ministry (too often) preaches that.
Sharing communion in community under the hoppa
So 57 men of all ages went to the desert for an encounter with Jesus. To be communal, to live in commune, and to commune with their Creator.
My prayer is that as we shot, burned, and blew things up that those were symbols of the battle against the enemy. Three days per year of communion is not enough. I hope that for some of those young men they walk in communion with one another, in rejection of individualism, for the rest of their lives.
Kristen – Chapter one hit me hard as it exposed several weaknesses. I admitted that I while I had a ‘sticky faith’ parenting goal in mind, I had lost sight of important steps defining ‘how’ to get there. I knew that I needed to respond to what God was saying to me during the first chapter. In the past two weeks I’ve made progress towards that end. I’ve been consistent and intentional about praying out loud with the kids (note, I’ve never stopped praying for my children but I’ve not been consistent in leading them in prayer). I’ve helped Megan and Paul complete their church take-homes sheets – looking up, reading, and discussing Scripture. We’ve even had “God Talks” (as the book calls them). Specifically, talking about justice and how God calls us to act and stand up against people who are mistreating others (using the example of a current event). I started including this situation in our prayer time at the beginning of the week and updated Megan and Paul each day. Interestingly, it wasn’t until their Sunday school teacher talked about the situation that they really started asking questions. We had a great conversation that probably wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been praying all week. As we all move into chapter three, I’d love to know what kind of actions (if any) you have taken as a result of this study.
Adam – Last week, I ended the book club with a question for parents about goals. I asked, “Have you ever stated goals for your children’s faith development?” and most of us kind of winced a bit in responding to that question. (Myself included) It was an easy question to write but the fact is that it’s really hard to articulate what we would like our children’s faith to actually look like at specific life stages.
I reflected on that tension as I read chapter 3 of Sticky Faith. As a parent I have a hard time defining what faith development looks like at specific life stages of my own kids. But when it comes to my professional life? That’s like standard operating procedure in the church! I remember working on a document called “A description of a discipled person” and reviewing that with high school parents for years. How is it that I can run a parents meeting and describe in detail what a students faith should look like upon high school graduation but I can’t even articulate what that looks like in my own home?
For me, that revelation gave me a lot to reflect upon.
Identity formation, intentional friendships, the power of ritual
Our kids are 8 months, 8 years, and 10 years old. Each is full of personality. And it’s fun to imagine what they will be like as adults. Chapter 3 was a great reminder that my role as a parent has great importance in their identity formation process and I shouldn’t take that for granted.
We aren’t quite at the point where they wrestle with “Who am I?” questions. But I know that the words and actions we pour into them help them know that they are God’s beloved child. As Kristen referenced above… we can begin things in them today which will help them not only know who they are in God’s eyes, but also know that God’s Word is bedrock for figuring out who they are and where they fit in this world. It’s one thing to guide my child towards whom I want them to become. It’s an entirely different thing to help guide them on a path of discovering who God wants them to be!
Rituals and relationships are so important to this process. Ministry has lead us geographically far from our physical family. And yet God has, in His benevolence and providence, provided families and friends who deeply impact our kids. I love surrounding them with people in our life and saying, “Yes, I hope those adults rub off on my kids!” We have a lot of rituals in our house. From Saturday mornings at the Farmers Market to going to ball games to hiking Cowles mountain, we have established things that we, as McLane’s, do. But as Kristen mentioned above, we need to be more intentional about helping them connect the dots between what we are doing and why we are doing it. Megan and Paul could each tell you that we go to the Farmers Market so that they can learn where their food comes from. But I wonder if they would so quickly articulate why we worship Jesus at church?
For discussion
What are some ways you identified yourself growing up? How were they helpful to you as you grew older? How were they harmful?
Of Nouwen’s three answers to the question, “Who am I?”, which of these are you most prone to rely on? Describe what that looks and feels like. Which of these does your child rely on? What does that look like?
On a scale of 1 to 7, 1 being easy, 7 not so easy, how hard is it for you to see yourself as the beloved child of God? How easy is it for your child? Describe what you mean.
Name some ways you can emphasize who your child is (a beloved child of God) rather than what your child does. How would this emphasis change your approach to your child’s extracurricular activities or academic achievements?
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
The river of God’s activity is real. You don’t know it really exists until you are there. And when you are there… you just ride the current and smile.
How do you get there? There’s no formula. Just walk humbly and boldly and it seems to find you more than you find it. Like the wandering Israelites found Kadesh, sometimes it takes some hardship to find it.
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Here’s a newsflash friends. This is about Jesus and not you.
There are a lot of miserable ministry people right now. They strongly identify with Jesus as a suffering servant as they languish in a role they hate. They cringe when their boss talks to them. They quietly look for jobs all day at their current job.
Sometimes these suffering servants even have a chip on their shoulder about it. As if their having a job they hate is something we’re supposed to be impressed by?
True, suffering is part of life. And some of us are called to suffering in life. But I don’t think a ministry job in the United States qualifies.
Advice for people who hate their jobs
Quit. If it isn’t fun anymore, quit. If you find yourself whining about budget or your salary or stuff that needs to be fixed but the leaders won’t fix it, quit. If you have day dreams of the day you get to walk into your bosses office and say, “Take this job and shove it!” Quit now.
Quitting might seem insane. But it just might lead you to something fun.
Don’t let Satan win.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10
Those raised in evangelicalism were taught to believe that the world will only get worse until the Lord returns. Culture degrades, morality disintegrates, and the world falls apart to the point that only Jesus can rescue us from certain self-destruction.
Listen to almost any traditional evangelical voice and you’ll hear this language peppered in. Things are getting worse, of course they are getting worse, things have to get worse for Jesus to come back. (This implies that they kind of WANT things to get worse so Jesus can come back.)
This isn’t a historical eschatology of premillennialism and the general belief that Jesus would return to establish his Kingdom. Currently, much of this vantage point seems to be seated in a dispensational premillennialism which took root in the early 1900s, but was originally penned by John Darby in the 1830s.
How did this become popular?
The atrocities of World War I radically shifted people’s worldview. While the industrial revolution seemingly made life better and better, the Civil War brought an end to modern slavery, and modern medicine went about ending disease had elevated people’s general perception that the world was getting better. Those same technologies were used to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Europe– which dramatically flip-flopped the worldview the other way.
People began to look at science, invention, and modernization with a new lens. We enjoyed the benefits while always giving a suspicious eye to how evil men and women may use this against us. (This is alive and well today, isn’t it? Read Christian advice on any technology and you’ll see them dance this line of benefit versus danger.)
Evangelicalism became popular in that environment. People generally had a negative view of the world’s future and dispensationalism provided an explanation for it. It was the right message at the right time and lead to the rapid growth of the evangelical movement and the continued degradation of the mainline denominations we continue to see today. (Most of the mainline denominations rejected dispensational)
Much of how we view the world today as American Christians is heavily influenced by a a relatively new eschatological view (non-historical) and one which relatively few Americans understand or hold dear. (dispensationalism)
What does this have to do with me?
As a student at Moody Bible Institute I was taught dispensationalism and pre-tribulational, pre-millennial eschatology as bona fide fact. (I always felt it was a little weird to be taught the future as fact. I guess I was alone in that!) We were all required to take classes which indoctrinated us in the tenants. We all passed tests. And to graduate we all had to sign that we believed in a pre-tribulational rapture. Yes, every graduate of Moody has signed this… forever!
In a school that was so well-rounded in almost every other area this was the one thing they held onto as a distinctive! (And some silly rules about dancing, because we know dancing leads to amillennialism.) Moody isn’t alone. This is a core belief for traditional evangelicals.
What does this have to do with you?
I’m not saying dispensationalism is bad. And I’m not saying there’s no way there is a pre-tribulational rapture. (Though I do find the hermeneutics and evidence which lead to this conclusion as thin) Technically speaking, I’ve always affirmed premillennialism while holding views of a rapture at arms length… I’m not betting the farm on that one.
This is important to you because it impacts the tone with which so many traditional evangelicals approach issues of the day. There is an implied negativity. You’ll hear phrases like, “This is really a shame. Of course we expect it to continue getting worse until the Lord returns.” It’s a tone and a stance that they don’t intend to do anything to make it better– because that’s the way it has to be for Jesus to come back!
The shift to something else…
Most evangelicals seem to be softening on this hardline view. Even as you read this you probably felt like there was a shadow of truth there but it isn’t really how things work in your life or ministry. That’s because we’re seeing things change in evangelicalism. The rise of the neo-reformers (Piper, Driscoll, Keller) has introduced a Reformed theological perspective, which flirts with the notion of things getting worse while affirms that Jesus makes things better in society when his people are at work in society.
It doesn’t feel like people have landed, yet. But it it is clear that the traditional evangelical view of eschatology is having less and less impact on the ministry churches are doing on a day-to-day basis. In my view, this is great!
Neighborhoods are safer, schools are safer, on and on.
And just like the scary things of World War I brought about the rise of one theological perspective… The end of the Cold War and drops in these big, scary things are impacting how Christian view their place in the world.
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