Tag: Culture

  • Anxiety in Youth Ministry

    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.

  • Americans Love to Hate Winners

    celebrity-plotline

    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.

  • Win a Google Wave Invite

    Win a Google Wave Invite

    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

    Who is eligible? Anyone who enters. Feel free to share this link. One entry per person. I’ll delete multiple entries and remove you from my Christmas list. You realize that this blog logs IP addresses, right?

    OK, 1-2-3 Go!

    Update:

    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.

    Contest #2 Congrats to Justin. His post is about picking up some random kids traveling through town and offering them a weekends worth of hospitality. Great story!

  • A culture of fear

    walk-to-schoolLast 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! crime-rate

    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.

  • Dominant Culture in Evangelicalism

    what-is-cultureI’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?

  • Secret Sex

    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 like to click on, “SEX” and are wondering what the secret is all about.

    What’s the one thing more popular than a post about sex? A post about sexual behavior Christians “shouldn’t do but like to talk about.”

    – Homosexuality

    – Cheating

    – Masturbation

    – Pornography

    – Getting caught looking at gay porn and masturbating.

    Here’s some data behind this Christian propensity to search for and click on things about sex. Notice the #1 read item at YMX over the last 2 years by a wide margin… it’s an article called “Solo Sex” and its about masturbation. In the 2 years that article has been on the site it has averaged 25 readers per day! Likewise, my blog data shows that most of my google visits from google searches arrive on terms such as “Christian dating” or “Christian sex.”

    Proving this point further, stop for a second and think about this: “Why are you reading this post? What about the title ‘Secret Sex’ made you click here?” Did I trick you to come here with my blog title? Did you click on a delicious link I served on Twitter? Or were you googling something like “Christian love advice?”

    Here is my theory, disagree with me if you like. I think that internally many evangelicals are wrestling with sexuality. I don’t mean they are worried about their gender preference or even secretly longing to do sinful things. I think that within Christian circles it just isn’t safe to talk about sex which leaves many adult Christians very immature in how they handle sex. So the result is that we talk about sexuality in very immature fashions. (And then we wonder why students have messed up views on sexuality!)

    While in non-Christian circles it isn’t unusual to have some safety within your peer group to talk about sex in an intelligent manner, I know I’ve never found Christian friends willing to have a serious conversation blushing it off as either “naughty” or diverting to childish jokes. (Of course, maybe its just my friends?) So while it may be normal and/or healthy to seek out talking with a peer about something intimate… in our circles we repress that discussion and look for answers privately.

    And I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

    I wonder if that repression of the discussion, which in and of itself is amoral but breaks a Christian taboo, is exactly what leads to the gross sexual dysfunction within many churches and marriages. Why can’t Christians just talk about sex? Why do Christians scour the internet searching for answers?

    Sidebar: Of course it could also be that there are so many people out there googling anything to do with sex that this disproportionally elevates the click through rates of posts about sex… that’s a theory worth contemplating without devaluing the overriding question.

    So, what is it?

    – Victorian cultural leftovers permeating Christian culture?

    – Fear?

    – Our mommy told us never to talk about sex, just learn about it the way she did in the library?

    – It should just be repressed. Asking this question proves that Adam is a pervert and just likes to say “sex” a lot.

  • The mindset of college freshmen

    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 have always been looking for Carmen Sandiego.
    4. GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.
    5. Coke and Pepsi have always used recycled plastic bottles.
    6. Shampoo and conditioner have always been available in the same bottle.
    7. Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
    8. The students’ parents may have dropped them in shock when they heard George Bush announce “tax-revenue increases.”
    9. Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.
    10. Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.
    11. All have had a relative—or known about a friend’s relative—who died comfortably at home with hospice.
    12. As a precursor to “whatever,” they have recognized that some people “just don’t get it.”
    13. Universal Studios has always offered an alternative to Mickey in Orlando, Fla.
    14. Grandma has always had wheels on her walker.
    15. Martha Stewart Living has always been setting the style.
    16. Häagen-Dazs ice cream has always come in quarts.
    17. Club Med resorts have always been places to take the whole family.
    18. WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
    19. Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.
    20. The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.
    21. Students have always been “Rocking the Vote.”
    22. Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.
    23. Schools have always been concerned about multiculturalism.
    24. We have always known that “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”
    25. There have always been gay rabbis.
    26. Wayne Newton has never had a mustache.
    27. College grads have always been able to Teach for America.
    28. IBM has never made typewriters.
    29. Roseanne Barr has never been invited to sing the national anthem again.
    30. McDonald’s and Burger King have always used vegetable oil for cooking french fries.
    31. The students have never been able to color a tree using a raw-umber Crayola.
    32. There has always been Pearl Jam.
    33. The Tonight Show has always had Jay Leno as its host and started at 11:35 p.m. Eastern time.
    34. Pee-wee has never been in his playhouse during the day.
    35. They never tasted Benefit cereal with psyllium.
    36. They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib.
    37. Authorities have always been building a wall along the Mexican border.
    38. Lenin’s name has never been on a major city in Russia.
    39. Employers have always been able to do credit checks on employees.
    40. Balsamic vinegar has always been available in the United States.
    41. Macaulay Culkin has always been Home Alone.
    42. The students’ parents may have watched American Gladiators on TV the day they were born.
    43. Personal privacy has always been threatened.
    44. Caller ID has always been available on phones.
    45. Living wills have always been asked for at hospital check-ins.
    46. The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.
    47. The students have never heard a gasoline-station attendant ask, “Want me to check under the hood?”
    48. Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles.
    49. Soft-drink refills have always been free.
    50. The students have never known life without Seinfeld references from a show about “nothing.”
    51. Windows operating systems have always made IBM PC’s user-friendly.
    52. Muscovites have always been able to buy Big Macs.
    53. The Royal New Zealand Navy has never been permitted a daily ration of rum.
    54. The Hubble Space Telescope has always been eavesdropping on the heavens.
    55. 98.6 degrees F, or otherwise, has always been confirmed in the ear.
    56. Michael Milken has always been a philanthropist promoting prostate-cancer research.
    57. Off-shore oil drilling in U.S. waters has always been prohibited.
    58. Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.
    59. There have always been charter schools.
    60. Students always had Goosebumps.

    Feel old yet?

    HT to Jake

  • Finding culture from within four walls

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the culture we live in as well as how we discover the culture we live in. Some of it comes from observation, some of it we naturally pick up without noticing it, but a lot of our culture comes from outside.

    Think about the cultural things you pick up at a camp or even on a vacation with friends. You develop new lingo and special norms. That’s fascinating to me about human nature. Why did God make us that way?

    And what does our ability to adapt and learn culture so quickly say about our God. We are made in His image, aren’t we? Does that mean that God is super-adaptable? Does that mean that God uses new lingo or norms to reach us? I think it does.

    And what about this. Have you ever thought about your own personal role in culture? Have you ever thought that you were put into a culture or sub-culture or micro-culture to infect, affect, or defect that culture?