'Meaningful' Youth Ministry

How do you do 'meaningful' youth ministry?

After a long day of work in the Houston humidity and heat the nearly 100 middle school youth gather together back at the church. As I sat in the back of the room tonight I thought on this as I watched minute after minute of programmed time go by. First it was the video, then the skit, then more video, then a slide-show, then small group time. Coffee break for me. Now we're back together...testimonies (if you can even call them that), then a short talk--which tonight was actually just the reading of a devotional book (i'm pretty confused about that one)--then communion time. Now the kids are dancing and will be for a little while longer. They will sleep a bit tonight and then get on a bus and head for Dallas to spend the day at Six Flags Over Texas.

So is this youth ministry? I don't know what these kids leave with. I'm sure a lot of them leave with that warm, fuzzy feeling that we call 'God'. Granted, this is a Methodist church and who knows what anyone believes here anyway, but I still get this pessimistic feeling about the whole thing.

I have the day off tomorrow so maybe I'll try to write some more about this. I have to go play babysitter for a few more hours...

peace

I'm back...but tired

I'm back from the mission trip. Good trip. 170 High School students. lots of fun...

I'm too tired to think or write, but hopefully i will soon.

This is all I have now, the last paragraph of Simply Christian, by NT Wright:

Made for Spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world. It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning. That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God's new world, which he has thrown open before us.

Another Good Reading List

Common Grounds Online 2006 Non-fiction Reading List

http://commongroundsonline.typepad.com/common_grounds_online/2006/05/summer_reading_.html#more

There is definitely some good stuff in here. Charlie Peacock, NT Wright, Wolterstorff...

Happy reading!

Resist

Whoever can reconcile this, 'Resist not evil', with 'Resist violence by force', again, 'Give also thy other cheek', with 'Strike again'; also, 'Love thine enemies', with 'Spoil them, make a prey of them, pursue them with fire and the sword', or, 'Pray for those that persecute you, and those that calumniate you', with 'Persecute them by fines, imprisonments and death itself', whoever, I say, can find a means to reconcile these things may be supposed also to have found a way to reconcile God with the Devil, Christ with Antichrist, Light with Darkness, and good with evil. But if this be impossible, as indeed it is impossible, so will also the other be impossible, and men do but deceive both themselves and others, while they boldly adventure to establish such absurd and impossible things.

Robert Barclay, 1678

Ever since I spent time at L'Abri I have been thinking about what it means to be a pacifist. I have always said that I was a pacifist only because I never liked fighting. Maybe its because I'm not very strong so I would just say that I was a pacifist so I would have a reason to not back up my friends in a bar fight. Luckily I have well behaving friends and I never had to show my stripes in that situation.

One might think there would be a lot of pacifists at L'Abri. Surprisingly, there were only a few. I was one of the only people who really spoke up about it. Maybe I should define this better than I am. Pacifism is a tricky word because it denotes (at least to me) an extremely passive, almost non-caring attitude towards violence. I would say that Christian pacifism is more of an active non-violence. I didn't make that up, I think I stole it from Ron Sider's old book Christ & Violence. This is the same book that introduced me to the idea of systematic injustice. It was also the only book in the L'Abri library about nonviolence (in a positive light).

I guess I have always been a Christian pacifist for two reasons (more now, but from the beginning just two.) First, I could never reconcile violence (especially war) with Jesus' words to love our enemies and 'do not resist evil'. This was never well thought out but more of a gut-feeling about how we need to take those things seriously even if it messes up what we want to think about our enemies or violence done to us. Second, I never liked the idea that nonviolence needed to be defended. Violence was always the initial reaction and then we should present a case for nonviolence. It seemed that nonviolence should be the standard and one should try to be convinced of why violence should be allowed. More gut than anything else, but I could never get around those two things.

The other thing about nonviolence and pacifism is that I think it should be carried to its logical conclusion. Just like the idea of 'pro-life' should enlarged to include not only human birth but the environment, marriage, the death penalty, and all forms of life-giving and life-taking, I think that nonviolence should be extended too. Nonviolence in its fullest form should include nonviolence to the earth and its resources, nonviolence to enemies, nonviolence to our bodies, nonviolent words and actions towards our family, nonviolent speech in general. Its kind of like the difference between peace-loving and peace-making. Not just people who want peace, but people who make peace.

I wrote most of that last night. I don't know where I was going...so I'll stop there.

What Remains

I haven't had any good thoughts lately. I've been busy with my new job. It's actually nice to not have to sit in one place all day and just think about stuff. I'm much happier.

This will be another plug for a blog I read. This one should be a keeper. I was reading Matthew's stuff a few years ago (during the same time as Real Live Preacher stuff) and reading his thoughts on his own struggle to go to seminary vs. keeping a comfortable job helped me immensly. He stopped blogging for a while but he is back and I would love it if you guys went over and checked him out regularly. He writes and thinks beautifully about the stuff that matters.

What Remains

Someday, your children’s children’s children will drive by what remains of a Barnes and Noble hulking next door to the blasted remains of a Bed, Bath and Beyond. Across the potholed highway will be their fallen mirror images: the debris of a Borders; a leaning and derelict Linens ‘n’ Things.

No one gives any thought to how these things will look a thousand years from now, or even fifty. When Arnolfo di Cambia designed the duomo in Florence–over seven hundred years ago–he knew he was building something that would last. We don’t build things to last, or even to remain for very long. Everything will be abandoned, rebranded, moved along, or quietly disappeared....Read more here

Matthew Sturges' Blog

Enjoy! Maybe one of these days I'll actually write something.

Language and the Limits of Imagination

My friend Sarah goes to Duke Divinity School. She is cool. Like, really cool. And really smart. And awesome. Like, really awesome.

Anyway, she blogs over at Xanga (what does that even mean?) and writes some really cool stuff. Today's post is great. She and I have similar interests in theology (not to mention music, too!) but she writes beautifully. This post is about what it is like to learn theology. I highly recommend it.

Langauge and the Limits of Imagination

so I had a thought today while walking away from my car, which I left in the parking lot with strict instructions to get steaming hot while I was in Hebrew class> I was thinking about how to describe the task of teaching/learning theology. It's about learning a language, eh? Picking up a new vocabulary, getting a feel for its own web of connections and realities, looking along its sightlines until you can move around inside the space it carves out with both freedom and faithfulness....read more here

Sarah's Blog

Enjoy!

Your Guide Toward Meaningful Work

This was in today's Sojomail.

Your guide toward meaningful work

by David Batstone

The pursuit for meaningful work must be at the top of many people's minds these days. All of a sudden I am receiving a slew of invitations to speak on the subject of vocation and meaning at university campuses and professional forums.

Individuals yearn to pour their talents and deepest interests into work that matters. They are tired of being one person at work, another with their family, and possibly yet another in their community or political activity. Sustaining these multiple personalities quickly becomes exhausting and makes us feel spiritually fragmented.

Of course, many people in the world do not have the privilege of choosing work that means something beyond a daily wage. But for the majority of SojoMail readers, that is not the case. Education and economic conditions offer choices.

It's exciting to watch traditional boundaries on work blur. In many cases, the decision whether to join, or launch, a nonprofit organization rather than a for-profit enterprise comes down to personal strategy and circumstance. In other words, your skills alone do not determine your career path. In that respect, I know some very talented managers and business minds who find their niche confronting the problem of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa or designing low-cost housing in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. In like manner, I met some remarkably creative and values-led people at Dell Computer Corporation where I spent last week delivering workshops on ethics and sustainability in a global economy.

Following the publication of my last book, Saving the Corporate Soul, I went on the road for two years visiting all kinds of organizations about significance and purpose at work. I discovered that when individuals explain what motivates them they keep coming back to three basic drivers: purpose, passion, and profit. So I designed a short inventory to identify how individuals take a primary orientation from one of these drivers. I call the tool the Triple P Quiz: Purpose, Passion and Profit- and it's available online.

I like to use the word orientation because we truly operate with a mix of motivations. Nonetheless, I discovered that nearly everyone I interview points to a primary driver that shapes their experience at work.

In designing the tool, I aim not only to help workers learn more about themselves, I want to offer the workplace a language for job engagement and the range of motivations that inspire team members.

It may be helpful to offer here a thumb-nail sketch of each p. Passion-led individuals value inspiring and creative work. No matter how much an organization touts the higher purpose of a job, if they do not feel passionate about the activities the position involves, they are not likely to find the job enticing. In other words, passion-led people shiver at the thought of waking up to a month of Mondays and face a set of tasks that are uninspiring.

I meet purpose-led people most often in the nonprofit and civic sector. Don't get me wrong, these individuals are not disappointed to take on creative tasks. But what inspires them is the larger mission of the enterprise of which they are a part. Purpose people do not fit into a one-size-fits-all box, however. While one person may want to find a cure for cancer, another purpose person finds motivation for designing a new software. You want purpose people to help drive the mission and core values of your organization. They keep the enterprise on course.

Profit-led people are the most rare in the non-profit world. Profit does not solely refer to bottom-line financials. More broadly, profit-led people find meaning in achieving a set of determined deliverables. They are the ones who provide discipline and structure to the organization. If you have ever started your own enterprise, you know the valuable role that profit-led people play, especially once your operation began to scale.

The deeper I engage with organizations, the more I appreciate the range of motivations required to make an organization healthy and successful. Individuals are not all wired the same; they find meaning in very different ways. Unfortunately, we do not always value the differences.

Last week I received a cynical note from an individual who took the Triple P Quiz and proclaimed that passion people are self-indulgent. In short, here's his message: It is well and good to seek inspiration, but get over it, because the world is full of suffering people. This purpose-led individual doubts the sincerity of other people who do not share his own motivation. In my experience, it is always a temptation for purpose-led people to feel that any other motivation for meaning is inferior, if not selling out.

His position reminds me of a dilemma that a CEO presented to me recently. The company was a victim of its own success; it was experiencing wild economic growth. When the company launched over a decade ago, the very passionate founder attracted a first wave of employees who also believed fervently in the products of the company. Once the company passed the $100 million mark in sales, the management team saw the need to bring in profit-led people who could better discipline its operations. The early-generation workers, of course, viewed the intrusion of the profit-led people as a threat to their passion-led corporate culture. The profit-led people felt less than welcomed. For their part, they wondered how such a chaotic, undisciplined crew could have gotten so far in business.

My challenge is to help every member of an organization recognize the value of an orchestra with many instruments. No organization can sustain itself without a strong mission (purpose), a creative and inspired dynamism (passion), and clear set of achievements and deliverables (profit). When any one of these values dominates in such a degree that it squeezes out the comfortable space the others offer, the organization will falter. Those enterprises that value the uniqueness of their personnel, on the other hand, design work environments where productivity thrives.

-------------------

So, are you Passion-driven, Profit-driven, Purpose-driven? Take the test here.

I took the test and I am 81% Passion, 69% Purpose, 50% profit.*

*My first test was taken in a busy room without much thought. I retook the test about 12 hours later and my new results were: 94% Passion, 63% Purpose, and 44% Profit.

A New Law

I know I'm a little slow, but I just got Derek Webb's new(est) album Mockingbird and I have to say it might be his best yet. I've been listening to Derek for over 10 years now. When I was in high school Caedmon's Call used to play at Metro Bible Study (Houston) before they hit it big. If you are familiar with any of Caedmon's music, you will know that Derek has always stood out from the rest of the band in more ways than just his musical ability. His songs, of course, have always been deeper and more honest--much less praise music and more self/god discovery. On stage he only wears white T-shirts (sometimes accompanied by a jacket). My kind of guy.

OK, the CD. It's called Mockingbird. Apparently--and I have no actual evidence of this besides the music itself--Derek was reading a lot of Stanley Hauerwas (among others) during the writing of these songs. I'm sure that I will love it. Here is what Hauerwas himself says about the CD:

In general, I hate Christian rock music. But now I have heard the songs of Derek Webb. Webb’s songs are free of the pietistic sentimentality that usually characterizes popular Christian music. His music, like the Gospel, is at once hard, edgy, and beautiful.

I'm still getting to know the songs, but I wanted to post the lyrics to one of my favorites and include a link to a video.

A New Law

don’t teach me about politics and government
just tell me who to vote for

don’t teach me about truth and beauty
just label my music

don’t teach me how to live like a free man
just give me a new law

i don’t wanna know if the answers aren’t easy
so just bring it down from the mountain to me

i want a new law
i want a new law
gimme that new law

don’t teach me about moderation and liberty
i prefer a shot of grape juice

don’t teach me about loving my enemies

don’t teach me how to listen to the Spirit
just give me a new law

i don’t wanna know if the answers aren’t easy
so just bring it down from the mountain to me

i want a new law
i want a new law
gimme that new law

what’s the use in trading a law you can never keep
for one you can that cannot get you anything
do not be afraid
do not be afraid
do not be afraid

Link to video: http://www.workofthepeople.com/index.php5?ct=store.details&pid=V00044

Enjoy.

The Work of the People is defined by its name. We are a community of artists, storytellers, filmmakers, poets and theologians. Our work is to tell the story we share and to ask poignant questions through film, literature, art and music. We utilize our gifts to create tools for the Church to engage universal spiritual issues through progressive media. We confess that we are created in the image of God and fulfill our calling by creating and recreating to the glory of God

America Part 1

it’s the dawn of the 21st century
America is still on top
there’s political confusion, social illusion
but its no worse than most folks have got

we read in the papers about the dealers and the rapers
and the wars that are being fought
we see those who are needy
give thanks to the banks that are not

workin’ the 9 to 5
so we can afford our pretty white homes
and if we run out of money buying stuff we don’t need
we can always just apply for a loan

we live in the suburbs with our aunts and our mothers
and our pagers and our cellular phones
and our email, world wide web
so we’re never alone

we give and we give to ourselves
but still we need more
we drink and we drink to our health
pass out on the floor
there is something very wrong with this nation
that we all gladly ignore
rather be ignorant and complacent
than pack our bags and walk out the door

each Sunday the choir fills the churches with such beautiful sounds
then the music trails off
and its back to the noise
of traffic and the smell of downtown

we pass by the whores, the gays, the drunks in the doorways
and we try to keep our eyes on the ground
we snicker at the lost and think,
“man, I’m so glad that I’m found”

we give and we give to ourselves
but still we need more
we drink, yeah, we drink to our health
pass out on the floor
there is something very wrong with this nation
that we all just gladly ignore
rather be ignorant and complacent
than pack our bags and walk out the door

sometimes I find myself asking
“have we come this far?”
if only we could be the country we were
instead of the country we are
except the country we were was built
on the backs of the blacks and the blood of the red
America the beautiful
home for the rich and the graves of the dead

Seth Woods, America Part 1

What's not to like?

The Ongoing Holy War Against Evil, a poem by Wendell Berry

Stop the killing, or
I'll kill you, you
God-damned murderer!

I wonder why more people don't like poetry sometimes.