Sometimes my worlds converge in the most awesome way.
ParentMinistry.net is a project I started working on about a year ago for Jeremy Lee. Basically, Jeremy’s site helps your church staff better minister to parents of teenagers by providing the easy-to-use, timely, and just plain awesome content.
Well, February 26th Jeremy has booked my very own partner-in-crime, Marko, as the speaker for his next free monthly webinar.
It’s kind of like an episode of Love Connection. Two folks whom I love working with, coming together for an hour of discussion about the minds of teenagers. The best part? It’s totally free!
After three amazing years of working at Youth Specialties, it’s with a crazy concoction of sadness and excitement, that I’m sharing today that I’m leaving Youth Specialties to start a new venture. It’s impossible to put into words the emotions I felt just now as I wrote, then again as I rewrote, and over the past weeks as I’ve meditated on having to write those words. Truly, few jobs could have shaped, challenged, encouraged, and forced me to grow more than these past three years at YS.
My hope is that I’ve received the gift which my time at YS was and it’ll act as a springboard for my next season in life.
At the same time, from a different place of emotion, I am bouncing up and down with excitement for the opportunity I have to partner with my friend Marko (Mark Oestreicher) in launching The Youth Cartel.
I told you it was a crazy concoction of emotions!
My last day as an official YS staff person will be August 31st and I’ll start my new role with The Youth Cartel on September 1st. I’m still coming to both NYWC in San Diego & Atlanta as a seminar speaker, fish bowl moderator, and presenter in the multimedia area. So I hope to see you at convention! Likewise, with my new role, I’ll have more free time at convention to chat with fellow attendees instead of racing from thing to thing.
First — A Look Inside My Head
The last several months have been incredible. The Spirit has been at work in our house, shaking things up and reassuring us at the same time. He has used many people to speak bold unmistakeable truth to us. We’ve had deep, long conversations with trusted friends, and even remarks from others such as, “Maybe your just doing what you’re doing to learn?” Or “I feel like God wants you to dream bigger.” Or even, “We’re wondering just how serious you are about San Diego. Do you want to be here for a long time?”
Into those messages have come some close friends, acting as a discernment group, helping Kristen and I weave together what we needed to do vs. what our heart might have been telling us. In the last several weeks, as we really dug into this thing, that group of men helped me (specifically) see past my own expectations and limitations and get a plain view of what God was calling me to do. (I’ll have to write about the wisdom of plurality in decisions another day.)
More important than even those outside voices has been the voice of Kristen. At every turn she’s been bold in telling me the truth. And when I said, “What do you think about this thing with Marko? A start-up is crazy.” She just looked at me and said, “It sounds crazy enough to be a lot of fun.” Yesterday I wrote a post about being bold and courageous. She lives that out better than anyone I know.
Housekeeping, literally house-keeping. Unlike a lot of ministry moves this life-change means we are staying put in San Diego and have no intention of moving any time soon. I’ve re-upped my San Diego State football tickets and added men’s basketball, as well. I mean… what’s not to love about San Diego?
Second — A Look Ahead
Stoked isn’t quite the right word for what I feel about The Youth Cartel. Marko and I have continued to grow closer as friends over the past three years. Originally, I thought maybe God was asking me to start my own youth ministry organization. But as Marko and I shared our hopes and dreams for youth ministry it became abundantly clear we needed to work together. Our byline is “Instigating a Youth Ministry Revolution.” If you’ve ever been with me for more than 20 minutes you know that’s what I’m all about. This venture is all about finding and elevating new ideas, new voices, and a new era of youth ministry. It’s that “sharedness” that drew Marko and I together to do this. As I shared in the video, we have some cool stuff in the works. And I can’t wait to give my full attention to this in September.
A fun sidenote: This is my second youth ministry start-up. My first, Youth Ministry Exchange, Marko led the way in buying from me in 2008.
Third — A Look at the Big Picture
What’s crazier than one start-up? Simultaneously running two start-ups. I’ll be sharing my time between The Youth Cartel and McLane Creative. To some degree, both organizations operate in very similar ways so it’s a natural compliment. I’ll continue growing McLane Creative with innovative design, marketing services, and coaching with my non-church clients. And all of my church/youth ministry related stuff will be part of The Youth Cartel. My hope, long-term, is that I can stay involved with both as they grow, with eventually handing over the day-to-day operations of the design firm to a protege`. (Or even one of my kids!)
That’s my news. If you have questions, leave me a comment (public) or even use my contact page. (private)
When I first started at YS I was pretty good about balance. I limited my availability. I worked from home at least one day per week. Weekends became sacred time again. And I did a lot more little things to set me on a healthy path.
Then last February that all changed. Some positions were eliminated and we were put in a meat grinder position of turning the company around financially. Without being asked to do so I took ownership of that– “I’m going to do my part.” and all that healthy balance went out the window.
The other day Tic and I were chatting about this being a reset point for our lives. Sure, there is infinite work to be done. But if we don’t pace ourselves the workload will destroy us. He said something along the lines of… “If I’m not at a convention or something I’m fully aware that I’m not that important. I don’t need to be reached all the time.” That really resonated to me. It kind of cut to the quick of the issue. Like Marko has talked about on his blog, I have an unhealthy tendency to attach my significance to the world by what I do instead of who I am to the most important people in my life.
And so Tic and I are trying something. It feels like a big step. In reality, it’s a baby step. But we want to start off with one little victory before trying to add more. On Friday we both set out-of-office messages that just said, “I’m not available over the weekend.” And we’re both going to try really hard to ignore work stuff for the weekend. And we’re going to catch-up on Tuesday to see how it went. (Starting on a three day weekend is asking too much, so we just want to make it Friday at 5pm until Monday morning.)
There is lots to do. In fact, there is tons to do. Far more than I can fit into a work week. But I’m just not that important. The world will continue to spin. Projects will wait. I don’t need to work night and day and weekends, too.
The fact that I have 43 unopened e-mails on my work account is driving me crazy! And knowing that that number will be about 200 by Monday morning is tough to deal with. But the truth is simple. I’m not that important to the world. The fact that 43 unopened emails are driving me crazy reveals the true depth of the problem, too.
I am really important to my family.
I desire to be fully present. I need to work on that. I’m trying.
I got up early and finally wrote the post about turning Croswell into a charter school. (Actually wanted to do that before the vote, oh well.) Then it was off to the races. Walked to the trolley. Long line at Starbucks caused me to miss my trolley… though a nice mocha and the Car Talk podcast helped me relax and enjoy the wait.
It was during that wait time that I noticed that Marko activated his new blog theme that I helped create. That was a fun project! His blog is now SEO-friendly, looks a lot cleaner, and helps establish his personal brand a little more. While no work was needed on my part for this, it was just something else to monitor.
Once I got to the office it was rush around and get ready for the May NYWC conference call. Thankfully, Jonathan helped me out by taking the lead on the Real World Parents newsletter. Traditionally, we each do about 50% of the content and I set it up, test it, and send it out. Taking that off my plate really helped as I worked through the details of the call. Going into it, we were 90% sure what we wanted to do. I wanted Marko to talk in the beginning part about the “why” of what we’re doing at convention this fall, then I wanted to field questions. Despite a massive GotoWebinar fail, the live streaming video portion went really well. Here’s the video from that.
With that, the first half of my day was done. A co-worker dropped me off at Enterprise and I rented a car (actually, they gave me a sweet Nissan Frontier) and I drove up to Orange County for a quick meeting. I drove up to meet with Dave Gibbons, he’s an author and pastor of Newsong church based out of Irvine, to shoot a quick video about NYWC. The drive went fast as I caught up with some people about other projects… literally, a 90 minute drive felt like 15 minutes. I arrived about 30 minutes early… rare… so I headed into the offices to wait for my 4 PM meeting. (And recharge my batteries!) About 15 minutes later Dave’s assistant asked me to come in and get set-up. Since his office is extremely awesome, setting up only took me about 5 minutes. In the middle of that, Dave came in early from his previous meeting. Literally, I had his shoot ready to go, shot, and I was out the door at 4:01 PM.
From there, it was off to the races to beat traffic back south to San Diego. I sailed through, making it home at my normal 6:00 on the dot.
I both love and hate days like this. I love that it is fun, I get a lot done, and the impact is obvious. I hate that there is so much to do that I can’t really enjoy it.
Nearly a year after starting at YS… I’m still shaking my head at the opportunity. Yesterday, I spent time moderating a discussion with Marko about the biggest event in my industry. Then I casually drove up and spent time with one of the greatest emerging leaders in evangelicalism. And then I was home by 6. Yeah, I’m not over how much God has hooked me up.
I’ve been wrestling with the concepts of Marko’s book, Youth Ministry 3.0 for a long time. Actually, before I worked a YS I had been going through a prolonged set of discussions at Romeo saying in a thousand different ways… What I’m doing isn’t working anymore.
The problem was simple. I was trained and experienced at how to do youth ministry a certain way. The entire ministry was built around a youth group night of games, worship, small groups, and a talk. I had seen it work and do incredible things! Even in Romeo we had seen this ministry model draw 40+ students to a church of 120. Lives were changed, kids were discipled, volunteers loved it, on and on. We ran that thing and worked that model like a well-oiled machine. I was well-versed in all the terminology of all the other well-oiled youth ministry systems and had written tons comparing and contrasting the strength of one model over the other. But in the last few years the model tanked. Kids stopped coming. The whole thing became kind of toxic. Instead of re-arranging their schedule to make in on Wednesday night all of a sudden kids were trying to find things to do on Wednesday night so they could politely bow out. Frustration mounted and I kept saying, “What I’m doing isn’t working anymore.”
The crazy thing was my reaction to a YM 2.0 model. My response was always, even to the last day, “I know this works, something is just missing, that’s all.” I would tweak things here, re-emphasize this or that. It was never that the concept was broken. The problem was always either the kids not getting the vision of the model or my model not having the funding/support it needed to succeed. It never really dawned on me that my solution to fixing things was to kill the model and search for a better way to minister to students. My reaction was always to just work harder and to keep trying.
Pray more, blame the parents. Pray more, blame the money. Pray more, blame myself. Pray more, blame the kids busyness. In the end I was royally frustrated and a little angry at God that He had me in a place where I couldn’t fix things.
But as Marko’s book shows, there is a massive shift from what he calls “Youth Ministry 2.0” built around programs and models, towards “Youth Ministry 3.0” where the programmatic approach is, probably though not necessarily, foregone for a draw towards ministries built around affinity. (A super over-simplified analysis, right there!)
My wrestling point right now is pretty simple… how do I help ministries kill what has worked for a generation and open their eyes to a way to reach this generation. My experience in YM 2.0 environments is that they’d be happy running an un-attended YM 2.0 model if that means they don’t have to change things. Youth workers may not like the sacred cows of big church but they have certainly built some sacred cows themselves. (Remember the fury over my articles, “I Kissed Retreats Goodbye?“)
From a national perspective I’m seeing one trend that is scaring me and I don’t want it to be the solution: Killing youth ministry budgets, staffs, and programs. Please tell me that we’re not going to throw the baby out with the bath water? Simply because a model isn’t working doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t minister to adolescents!
This morning I was reading a little of Marko’s upcoming book, Youth Ministry 3.0, and one of the early chapters made me think of the Amish. Maybe the Amish have had the solution for a long time?
My hypothesis is simple. Since adolescence is a cultural phenomenon and the church is called to create culture for redemptive purposes, maybe the church can turn the tide on adolescence elongation in our society over the next generation?
Factor #1 Sociologically the window of time known as adolescence is continuing to widen. Culture simply gives children a longer time to mature to adulthood. This creates a need for adolescent ministry to stretch from about 10 years old to about 25 years old. Fifteen months ago I posted some solutions to fight the elongation of adolescence. At the current pace, if nothing is done, adolescence may last 25 years by the time next week gets here.
Factor #2 The church is largely unprepared to help kids walk through the stages of adolescent development faster. With the roles of identity, autonomomy, and affinity to be accomplished before an adolescent is seen as an adult in our culture coupled with churches completely in denial that they can do anything about these tasks… and Christian parents completely whipped by professional adolescents who demand to be cared for deep into their 20s… we can see how the church has become part of the problem of elongation of adolesence in our culture with no real solutions.
The Amish solution. The Amish do one thing really well. They maintain adult members like crazy! Rather than having young children get baptized and join the church before they are ready to make an independent decision… the Amish encourage a period of running around and jumping… Rumspringa. When an Amish child enters Rumspringa the parents literally allow (encourage?) them to run around and do whatever they want. Explore the world, however they define that. Parents hope that their kids will come back to the faith… and many do… but they also reliquish control over that process, allowing the child to chose the faith themselves. Later, when they come back to the faith they come back in full knowledge of what they are walking away from and in full knowledge of what they are committing to.
Oh! We evangelicals do much the opposite, don’t we? We would never want our kids to sin! And strangely, some of the most committed followers of Christ I know are also some who tried out the other side of things and came running back to the cross!
Evangelical Rumspringa. One indictment of the church in Hyde’s Dedication and Leadership is that we don’t call our people to dedicate themselves to the church. (He compares dedication in the church to dedication to communism.) Hyde argues that our standards of leadership are too low which leads to an utter lack of true commitment to the cause. To further Hyde’s indictment, we ask for a commitment to the faith before people are cognitively aware or capable of making a rational decision.
This leads me to wonder if there is wisdom in giving our students entering college permission to do what they already are doing… but with a stronger purpose. Right now, we expect nothing out of college students. They are involved in churches, even on some levels in church leadership, but once they hit college we allow them to hit the pause button on their faith development. What if we did this more intentionally? What if we said, “Take this time off to go out and run free. Explore some stuff, chase your hearts desire, experiment with whatever you want to experiment with. But make me this promise that on July 1st after you graduate from college you will come talk to me about your faith. At that moment you will decide if you really want to follow Jesus and commit yourself to the cause or not.” This would test our definition of the sovereignty of God, wouldn’t it? For Calvinist, this would test our definition of predestination, wouldn’t it?
A Secret Revealt… We already do this practically. I know some people were offended by what I just wrote. In effect I just said that the church should give young Christians permission to sin with the hope that they will come back to Jesus. My argument back is that we are largely mislabeling our kids Christians when they are not truly dedicated to Christ in their hearts. They may have made a one-time commitment… but largely we know we are failing to develop a faith that lasts a lifetime in youth ministry. Christian Smith labeled what most kids in our ministries believe as Therepeutic Moralistic Deism. And every researcher agrees that youth ministry, as we know it, largely fails.
What I am asking is [not proposing, by the way]… Is there value in telling our kids who “don’t really get it” (e.g. about 90% of the students I’ve invested in over the last decade) to take a little rumspringa in college and lets talk about giving your life to Christ on ______?
As a confessional evangelical, my worry is that we’ve falsely assured some people who have confessed and been baptized that they are “saved for life.“ I worry that this isn’t really true as they may have not really understood the Gospel at all. I wonder if we merely coached them to say and do what we wanted them to do… and somehow assured someone of their salvation falsely? I wonder if an emotional decision made in middle school is enough?
How can this impact culture? Well, if that theory worked in college… maybe we could start backing down the length of time before we ask for that adult confession of faith? Back it down from 22 to 20? Then maybe move it into high school in a couple decades? Right now… in practice we largely don’t want people involved in ministry until they are married with kids! And for many… that’s 30 years old or later!
Thoughts?I know I’m on the edge of being labeled a heretic here. Keep in mind these are merely propositional thoughts and not proposals for your ministry.
If you’re in youth ministry, you know Marko. He’s the President of Youth Specialties and an all around fun guy. This spring he challenged youth workers to join him in a contest they created called, “Are you a bigger loser than Marko?” It’s a take-off on the hit show… and a bunch of people did it.
Well, last week it was announced that Marko had actually won his own contest. Yesterday, this video appeared on Marko’s blog.
OK, that’s just funny! It seems like what they are really doing is announcing more winners. But I like that they didn’t just say… “Uh, we’re going to give these people prizes.” Instead the produced a very cool video announcing the same thing.
