anastasia posted the other day about youth ministers on her ypulse blog. worth a read. a snippet:

I have been surprised by who is actually the most steeped in youth culture, media and marketing. Apart from execs at MTV or agencies that specialize in reaching youth, it’s YA librarians and youth ministers. In a way, it makes sense — both of these groups are driven by something greater than the almighty dollar — in one case, they are driven by “the almighty” period. They both genuinely care about teenagers and are selling something bigger (literacy, salvation) than a sneaker or a candy bar.

btw, anastasia is doing a seminar at the sacramento NYWC this fall.

in late april, a group of 23 veteran junior high pastors gathered again for a 4-day summit. between all of us, we have 270 years of experience working with middle schoolers. it’s a great group of people, who are passionate about their calling to young teens, and very interested in re-thinking their assumptions and approaches.

this year, noted sociologist christian smith (see post here about christian) join us for a half day, and talked with us primarily about the role of parents in the faith formation of teenagers. out of christian’s data and thoughts, and his responses to our many questions, we formulated a long list of discussion topics, voted on them, and formulated the agenda for the remainder of our days.

we all agreed this was the best of the 8 annual times we’ve met, primarily because we didn’t have easy answers to the issues raised.

i’ll post the notes from the gathering here.

part 4:

Need For Belonging

• Mark O – This last hour of discussion was the first time that we admitted that we don’t know how to do something!
• Eric – We know that the child’s faith and parents faith are tied, so it would be foolish to move on past it. How do we talk about this with parents?
• Mark O – Belonging has always been a problem for teens so why more now?
• Heather – there is more opportunity to belong on a surface level, aka facebook friends
• Corrie – Maybe families are broken and so youth look for belonging elsewhere.
• Heather/Johnny – being cut from sports teams and other social institutions
• Dan – It takes time, and we are increasingly just filling our time with other things.
• April – Why do students come to Youth group… community and friendship were not even in the top 5. They find more belonging in sports and other things, so they came to church to better themselves, not define themselves.
• Christina – Her girls joined small groups because they didn’t have friends at school.
• Brooklyn – there is a shift between 6th grade and 9th grade where they start to decide that they need a sense of belonging, in 6th grade they are still immersed in family, but as they go on they distance themselves.
• Mark O – They can’t understand belonging until they find some sort of autonomy
• Sean – Students identity is out of whack because they jump straight to thinking that this institution will define me, and then when it is not there neither are they.
• Dan – Cultures go through developmental stages where things are over emphasized, and because of this it leaves gaping holes. We are hitting one of those points now that social bonds are going to have higher and higher emphasis. I am intrigued by what belonging really means?
• Heather – All of us experience it in a service when they hear a great message and worship, however they miss a lot when they don’t connect afterwards. It is about creating a community in which your name and story are known, and people care about you, and will lift you up. This leads to the idea of support in identity.
• Brooklyn – solidarity, being around people that understand, share and walk with you through your struggles.
• Mark – a place you have worth and something to contribute
• Steve – a place you can be accepted for who you are
• April – Having someone to walk with in life, someone who is with you in ups and downs. It has to do with loyalty… Ive got your back.
• Sean – I don’t own those who I am friends with but if you mess with them you mess with me.
• Corrie – a place where if you are missing you are missed.
• Jeff – Being valued, and having ownership with friends, and the ownership of bettering the group.
• Johnny – People who need the things that you have.
• Alan M – How is this different from community?
• April – People understood me, and we all loved diversity, and I belonged in that, but didn’t yet have community, I was not intimate in that group yet.
• Jeff – You can be a part of a community and not feel like you belong, if they feel like they belong I think they are contributing.
• Alan M – I feel like it is symantics in how they are picked apart, because I see it opposite.
• Heather – is community big and belonging small?
• Dan – I wonder if community is the environment and belonging is the experience. Community is an environment where belonging can happen. I want a place to know I am loved, and can love. It is a place that you can grow in grace and truth, and to give a gift that matters. To sow a seed that continues, to write something on the wall of eternity that says “I was Here” finally sing a song of joy. If those are involved then you will want to come back.
• Eric – Those are all important but with middle school we lay development on top of that. Are we making some of those more important, and others less so.
• Mark O – It takes abstract thinking to understand and value giving a gift that matters, or sowing a seed that continues.
• Andy – That is what my 8th graders eat up, what am I going to leave, what is my legacy. But the 6th graders have no thoughts on that.

Where are your ministries succeeding at this and where are they falling down?

• Heather – We pull from 41 different schools, but 55% are from eden prarie, so I wear a different sweatshirt and t-shirt from a different school so that students see that i care. I email everyone and say to them to come and where their colors. It is a tangible way to recognize your youth!
• Nate – We had a student abducted and killed, and her little sister went from being anonymous to everyone knowing her, and she shrivled. We had to go over to her house to connect with her and try to be with her, finally last week she attended group for the first time.
• Mark O – We have the tendency to look for programmatic responses, and our discussion so far has been to look for tricks to show them belonging. but this is a reminder to look for individuals.
• Christina – We had a girl that was in a play, so we put her on the screen in front of everyone and she was on cloud 9.
• Nate – In the fall I coach guys soccer, and if they are bad I yell at them as a whole, but with the girls I have to coach individually and through relationships. So the thing that makes one girl excited could terrify another!
• Eric – Some Churches describe community and understand there are a lot of ways to get there, and then there are others that just want people in the building, which reflects that they don’t care why your there.
• Mark O – Based on Christian’s finding, think of the active kids, what percentage of those kids do you think are experiencing true belonging?
• Heather 40% of the regulars
• Alan R / Jeff – 50%
• Steve – more girls than guys
• Heather – one of the girls that I thought was for sure feeling belonged turned out to just be feeling left out, so I get nervous
• Jason – I think it is much lower than that percentage, I want it to be 50% but I don’t think we are measuring it with the correct variables, they don’t care for eachother like they should, One boy is a figure skater, and they all thought he was gay.
• Mark O – 30%
• Christina – Really? I feel like only those in our student leadership and a couple small groups.
• Andy – I wonder if it is developmental, in 6th grade it is all new, but our 8th graders have grown through things together.
• Alan R – I feel like my 6th grade boys feel so connected because I can give so much more time than my other volunteers.

How much can we influence this?

• Sean – This circle of Youth Pastors is not the norm, and I talk to new youth pastors that feel like they don’t belong, so can students belong if their leaders don’t?
• April – I keep going back to the time issue, we have 75 min a week, so how do we get kids to experience belonging in that little bit of time?
• Mark O – If they don’t experience belonging, then why are they going to continue to go to church.
• April – We do a great job of knowing every kids name, and touching them each week, it communicates belonging with these personal things. They don’t have to perform or produce anything.
• Jim – What are we inviting them to belong to? Is it belonging to a group, small group, Church, Body of Christ?
• Alan - Belonging seems like a deeper level of community, so shouldn’t we start by creating community and then take it from there?
• Dan – What is this community thing? We use the One Another phrases, love one another etc. I wonder if these are the engagements then belonging is when these engagements are being used. It is more than just throwing group events, it is bringing them to a place where they are experiencing these engagements.
• Alan M. – It seems almost to linear, it seems like community is so crazy, not just an a to b to c type thing.
• Eric – Because we are such a small slice of students lives, we need to recognize that the other things that they are doing aren’t all bad. Lets understand this is where we fit in this life.
• Scott – How many people can you help belong anyways? I have to bring in others to help do this.
• Corrie – There are different layers of belonging, we can’t just make them belong.
• Nate – The night after the girl was abducted we were with the family, and we literally hid from all media. Then a family came in and said that ten years ago our daughter was abducted and killed, and the weight was lightened because they connected on such a deep level. We connect with pseudo belonging, they were real.
• Jim – I keep coming back to my default line as how do we connect them to youth min, and that is wrong, obviously what I want is belonging to Christ - belonging to his Kingdom. This just looks way different from anything we have perceived.
• Dan – I think you are figuring it out, it is a constant reinvention and discovery. I would urge you to sit with how the one another engagements are finding there way into your groups. In spite of the differences I think my son has some of the same basic belongings I had. The experience of belonging will significantly go up for our kids.
• Nate – the week after this interaction with the families, the family was doing exactly what the other family did for them.
• Mark O – We are still living with models approaches and styles tuned to autonomy, we don’t really know how to do this.

Belonging to the Church

• Jason – We have a couple from Romania who feel that the mega church has killed or destroyed belonging and community, because in Romania it is 120 people who are family oriented, so is it possible to find belonging while being in the context of being with massive amounts of people? I experience real belonging in my small group of friends.
• Mark O – Why couldn’t we find belonging in big churches?
• Jason – In my old church students never experienced church as a family so how does a 12 year old experience real community in the church in such a separate place.
• Scott - I would maintain that even when kids are in the same service as adults, they are mean to them, they don’t smile, and they aren’t inviting.
• Corrie – I don’t feel like that is true, but my church is more oriented toward contemporary style. Rob is an advocate for the youth so people celebrate our students.
• Scott – I feel like culturally looking in the eyes of teens is unwanted, there may not be suspicion but is there any want of intergenerational relationships
• Steve – How many students attend the church service with their parents?… about 10%
• Heather – Parents don’t go to 2 services, they are one hour families
• Mark O – Students going to a service that means nothing doesn’t bring belonging.
• Mark J. – We canceled Youth Min for a day and encouraged students go to church with their parents. We do it often, and now we see the whole church wanting to get involved by having the pulpit promote it.
• Christina – We did the every 4th Sunday go to big church, but the pastor was preaching on irrelevant things for the youth.
• Alan R. – I didn’t necessarily understand the services, but I still loved going to Church as being a member of a church family.
• Scott – Is there an environmental difference that affects youth.
• Mark O – We all agree that attending service isn’t belonging, so then what is?
• Nate – I had 6th graders that were checking out jr. high and they were talking about how they were helping in the nursery with my own kids. I was excited that we had a place for them through serving, they were valued.
• Brooklyn – Do you think ceremonies have been segregated and are no longer brought in front of large congregations. Aka youth baptisms instead intergenerational.
• Ken – I now go to a Church that does celebrate those ceremonies that do that, and I see that more kids stay involved because people care about them.
• Christina – What about kids that go to multiple churches?
• Andy – we have that to, we have tons of kids that go to the catholic church on Sunday, but are still going to be confirmed in another church, and the families aren’t a part of that.
• Scott – We moved our services to other times so that they had to pick our church.
• Heather – there is a small problem with custodial issues so they are pulled between two places.
• Jeff – We have the senior pastor lay his hands on students who are in service, and recognize their value.
• Jim – The kids that really belong are those who have a network of parents who bond together with a leader alongside of it.
• Mark O – What are the implications of the 5 friends and a youth pastor that make belonging?
• Eric – I am still very intrigued by the Youth Pastor family and parent connection. With family connections it is easier for students to invite one another.
• Johnny – There are parents that have no contact with anyone from the church community.
• Jeff – The kids that are growing are the ones that need to invite their friends, and do those families with high value in faith does that translate into the new friend and family?
• Mark O – We need to look at the existing social networks of kids and work through them by instead of trying to attract them with our stuff we go and look at where these networks already are and connect with them there.
• Heather – I have a man that has worked with us for a long time, and he is all about our programs, but does not want to acclimate to culture.
• Jeff – How is that different from the old young life approach.
• Mark O – That was where they went after the popular kids and therefore attracted others, but now that doesn’t work, it was life on life with certain kids, and made others who aspired to be popular join.
• Alan R. – We have some business guys in our church who said they wanted to reach the skaters, So we had a skater talk with them on how they could be a presence in that community.
• Mark O – I don’t think you have to reflect the values of the skaters to be able to connect with a group of kids.
• Mark O – We need to look through 1 of 3 options. 1 is a Youth min of Youth ministries, 2, a supra – culture kingdom of God Culture ministry. 3, a hybrid of the two
• Heather - Will there be tension if we say hey we are all part of Gods kingdom, but then separating out into the separate group.
• Brooklyn – Look at Madonna and see how she has reinvented herself, but is still the same, in the same way we all need to reinvent ourselves.
• April – Our Middle School is fine now, but our highschool min is screwed up, because it is so different.
• Eric – In ten years will these problems be hitting middle school min?
• Brooklyn – Our kids are all very different even though it is predominantly white.
• Mark O – my 6 guys are not the same, so I am doing number 2 they would not naturally be an affinity group. They just happen to be locationally close
• April – I think there is so much blending between the two…
• Mark O – 6th graders have not yet split into affinity groups, where as 8th graders have.
• April – Maybe number one is what we have to work with in order to get to number 2
• Mark O – I think option two is extremely better if possible, it is so hard because we only have 75 minutes a week with them!
• Sean – If I went back and tried to explain 2 to an average person I feel like it would be a paradise like thing.
• April – What stays, and what goes with #2, we need to reinvent some and keep some.
• Brooklyn – A Kingdom Manifesto by Howard Snyder
• Alan M. – My struggle is isn’t number 2 what the church has always supposed to have been?
• Andy – Speechless…What if we did away with intergenerational boundaries, my pastor loves kids, but it still doesn’t find its way through the church.

4 Approaches of parenting and how they apply to Ministry

• Disengaged Youth Min is what?
• Heather – A baby sitting mentality.
• Eric – an entertainment approach without relationship
• Steve – A few leaders standing in the back
• Mark O – I spoke for a church that existed to be a nominally moral country club for kids. After 3 or 4 nights I said to the YP that a bunch of your kids aren’t even Christ followers, can I present the gospel, and he said yeah I have been here 2 years and haven’t had a chance yet.
• Cristin- when we know there are issues in their lives yet we ignore them.
• Eric – Like a Dad coming home saying look at how I have provided for you, but not being with them, is that like our youth centers?
• Christina – Affects, I know from the place I was there was no leadership and that made it disengaged, and then staff gave up. Children ran amok, staff didn’t know what to do then youth started to fall away.
• Steve – No Hope No belonging.

• Permissive
• Brooklyn – you aren’t specific, for example if you never talk about drinking you talk about doing right and wrong. Grace based approach no acountability
• April – Not telling Kids no
• Eric – Leaders that aren’t empowered.
• Mark O – This ministry lines up with MTD, we want you to feel loved at all costs.
• Heather – Talk about it, but never talk about how to fix the problem… Nothing is really wrong.
• Brooklyn – Jesus loves you so confess but don’t repent.
• Cristin – I think we allow ourselves to become people pleasers and allow other variables to impose on us, and by giving into that pressure we teach our kids that it is ok to give into peer pressure. We go after numbers and we are not focusing on creating good disciples. Pre-marital sex, should I play it safe, or offend a few people and tell a strong message.
• Steve – We back off the cost of following Jesus and support the be happy don’t fail message.
• April – having roles and guidelines put not enforcing them.
• Brooklyn – It seems to be a reflection of how the parents of your students are…
• Johnny – All 4 of these things we are reflecting our goal and style through our clues, and how our faith is played out. So then they see God in the style that they see.
• Brooklyn – Teenagers know when you don’t know what to do…

• Authoritarian
• Heather – High expectations no hug
• Nate – One Way communication
• Eric – We yell at kids
• Ken – We Punish don’t discipline
• Johnny – we don’t have time for kids
• Eric – Joy in being right.

• Authoritative
• Brooklyn – Adults that set boundaries, open to sharing and receiving, know kids names, Clear communication
• Heather – When we talk we want to find out the reason for the craziness not just punish
• Eric – We have things set up that have safety
• Steve – Involving Parents
• Brooklyn – It is hard to do this with authoritarians because they view themselves as such an asset.
• Scott – I LIKE IT we do an every other week gathering to keep up with what is going on and encourage our leaders.
• Phil - This is lived out without set rules, it is messy and one kid at a time, our ministry doesn’t have rules, the hope is that as kids live their lives and we teach Gods word, then we will know how to interact with students.
• Cristin – Rules that are broken have logical consequences.
• Christina – I think about going to winter camp and give all the same rules, yet my staff lets the kids break those boundaries
• Jason – It all depends on the culture of our church, we need to cast our style to all our leaders.

in late april, a group of 23 veteran junior high pastors gathered again for a 4-day summit. between all of us, we have 270 years of experience working with middle schoolers. it’s a great group of people, who are passionate about their calling to young teens, and very interested in re-thinking their assumptions and approaches.

this year, noted sociologist christian smith (see post here about christian) join us for a half day, and talked with us primarily about the role of parents in the faith formation of teenagers. out of christian’s data and thoughts, and his responses to our many questions, we formulated a long list of discussion topics, voted on them, and formulated the agenda for the remainder of our days.

we all agreed this was the best of the 8 annual times we’ve met, primarily because we didn’t have easy answers to the issues raised.

i’ll post the notes from the gathering here.

part 3:

Topics to consider talking about

• Parent Involvement / Adversarial relationship with Parents and Youth Pastors / The Churches Role in Authorizing the Parents
• MTD – How do we avoid it? / Subsistence Faith and Capitalistic Faith / Creating a Vision for teens, how are we promoting the have fun don’t screw up vision.
• Model Change for Youth Ministry / Relational Ministry vs. programmatic ministry
• Helping Youth articulate their faith and Jesus
• Intentional connection between teens and adults
• How Do we build a church that cares about students
• What “Parenting” Style is our youth ministry? Authoritarian, Authoritative, Cognitive
• How to address the need for belonging / Create an Ethos of belonging
• The Church’s Role in Authorizing Parents
• How do we reach kids without parents of faith / those who are not devoted
• Gender Roles in Youth Group
• How do we engage kids in a group that doesn’t have sound leadership?
• How do we explain cognitive autonomy to students, parents, and volunteers
• How do we promote regular attendance without seeming militaristic

Parent Involvement

• Mark – Age Plays a role in Parents relationships with younger Youth Pastors
• Eric – How do we change our church systems, not just reach out to parents, but have a wholistic system change, How do we build these pathways?
• Mark O – How are we modeling adversarial relationships with our parents?
• Scott – We are not thinking about how our parents are incorporated, we are putting up a brick wall that says “Parents, we have it under control”
• Ken – Time is a problem, we are fighting with all the kids other activities, and may be a financial burden to parents
• Brooklyn – I come into parent relationships assuming that parents want the schedule and to know the events, but how do we enter into real relationship building conversations.
• Alan – As a Youth worker I am passionate about your students faith, but have no leverage to get the kids there, where is church in the priority list? I think in most cases its not near the top, so am I being adversarial, or simply like a soccer coach demanding that they come to church. So is this really adversarial? Why is a soccer coach allowed to push soccer as a priority, but when I push it then it is adversarial.
• Mark O – All adversarial means is that there is tension, you aren’t on the same page, I have a tendency to assume parents are authoritarian or dismissive.
• Tensions in pushing events, feeling pressured to do things. Kids meeting with Youth Pastors, and not parents, does that devalue the parents?
• Johnny - We leverage on guilt, and that has a lot of emotional involvement. Aka I am bummed that your kid cant do this because it is so awesome for their faith, now parents feel as if they are screwing their kids life up.
• Nate – We struggle to connect with the kids that are on the bubble ones without tons of friends
• Jason – Maybe we are not doing a great job of communicating, Do we need to rethink how to communicate with parents, I used to have meetings with parents that loved me, hated me, and didn’t really know me. It gave them a forum to express their thoughts on our ministry.
• Andy - Our communication is often through kids, and that causes tension because the parents don’t necessarily see the stuff. We are empowering kids, but distancing parents
• Eric – We are getting a barrage of information, maybe our stuff is getting lost in the mix.
• Alan R. – Conversation vs simply information, How do I have a good discussion when only 10 parents show up to my meetings.
• Phil – That isn’t relationship if you have to show up to a meeting, the only good parent min I have done is the 10 parents of the guys in my small group, because we actually talk back and forth, I have built trust with them. Our Big ministries are just not focused on relationships with parents. Relationships with students are priority, I haven’t gotten to the point where when I see the student I think about their parents. None of this communication will be through fliers.
• Jason – is it then the small group leaders that need to focus on the parents
• April – is it feasible for a 19 year old to be calling the parents
• Christina – these 19 year olds have a lot on their plate, can we expect them to do the same thing as a full time Youth Pastor.
• Jason – Every other week our small group leaders gather for 45 min, and I give them 3 things to be working on, and i need to give them a set up to help them connect with the parents. How can we have Family partnerships with our small group parents, not just with us but with each other.
• Christina – I have parent dinners, and I never realized that the parents feel awkward because they don’t know each other
• Sean – How can we approach Parent relationships in such a way that youth min flows out of families not vice versa. Otherwise it seems as if the Youth Pastor is only building a community in order to fulfill their agenda.
• Cristin – How do we help parents help eachother, how do we have them build a moral trust amongst themselves?
• April – The parents that we will be communicating with are the parents that are already devoted, we need to attract the others too
• Brooklyn – What if we begin to help parents deconstruct the myth that we are just there for students and not the church on a whole. We need to communicate this to the whole church, everyone needs to buy into our Youth relationships.
• Mark O - If we conclude that our ministry would be more affective if we spent half our time for parents and half for students, is that a job we would still want?
• Jason- Yes I want to help set up families as a whole, not just my teens
• Andy - the last two years have been so rich because I have been getting to know parents of students, and I attribute this because now I have my own child. So now I have a weight to really want to connect with Parents. The Parent connection has been exhilarating.
• Mark O – If i’m honest, I conceptually like the idea of working with parents, but in reality I don’t really enjoy being around some parents.
• Jeff – I would much rather hang out with kids, its more fun and easier, parents are tough. But God has been working on my heart to affect the parents so that our kids can be encouraged.
• Alan M – I think it will be interesting to see where this goes in the next 15 years, our identity is wrapped up in students when we are younger, but now I feel like I should spend more time with parents, but can’t because I have so many other demands in ministry. It will be interesting to see how we as Youth ministers acclimate to parents as we ourselves grow as parents.
• Mark O - I don’t think it is as likely as you imply, the potential exists, but I see a lot of old dude youth ministers who drive old school youth min programs with parents as an enemy.
• Eric – Obviously you can be 45, but if your title is eric the middle school pastor, then the parent will think you are the one that works with my kid, not me. Could churches realize we could get more credibility if our title was family pastor.
• Scott – How many of us even have the opportunity to engage parents, How can we engage them with our title?
• Nate – I can’t remember ever reaching out to parents while I was in youth group.
• Steve - Parents are busy, our classes are just another thing to do.
• Heather – I know that sometimes kids think i’m cooler because I don’t punish, but the parents need to know we are supporting them.
• Andy – My senior pastor was challenged to visit everyone of his students houses which seems silly, but I think it is cool to do that.
• Alan – I do that once a month, 12 families a year, I go and ask them a barrage of questions.
• Scott – If we maintain that it is not just about students, then we are giving people roles that matter
• Eric- The Way that parents connect within the schools is with parents all connecting with each other, but even within the church there are handfuls of “connector” parents who can get you in the door.
• Mark O – As a volunteer I speak to 12 parents, my small group meets in my home, and I have told the parents that they need to come in to pick up their kid. So then the parents come and chat for a few minutes. I try to be intentional about calling them by their names as a peer relationship. I never communicate through my kids at all. I haven’t met in their homes, but I have spoken with some of them at starbucks and things like that.
• Jim – Sometimes our focus is communication with parents, what about parents communication with kids.

How Do We Engage Parents?
• Ken – I don’t think parents have to come to a meeting to be engaged, having parent boards, or involvement in one program helps bring all the parents together, giving parents some responsibility.
• Alan – letting them be a part of the youth group without making them lead a small group, giving them things that are comfortable, yet very intentional… Student advisor teams
• Heather – a one week rotation at the front desk to interact with new students and new parents. They get to see their kids walking around without being in their face.
• Nate – We do a once a month restaurant hang out with parents, where parents can come a chat and get to know us. Now I know the parents on a first name basis. Thursday lunches. About 12 show up. No agenda, its up to the parents.
• Mark – During the same time as Youth Group we would have parent small groups where they feel welcome to be there, plus it models for kids that small groups are important.
• Scott – Inside our student area there is a place for parents to sit and grab coffee.
• Johnny – Big Church, we try to fight for some time in the regular service, show a video, or invite them to check out our group. It promotes talking amongst the parents.
• Mark O – I am surprised with how little we are doing.
• Eric – we don’t have a lot of pathways for it.
• April – I have done a lot of things this past year that have just failed ex. 3 parent trainings, bring in speakers to talk to them. The first 2 there were 15 parents there. I do parent meetings right before the end of a trip, come back an hour early so that the parents can engage their children on important things.
• Heather – We do a celebration when we get back, but that might make them feel awkward.
• Scott – parents need to follow up on trips in the days after them.
• Heather - I like Dads to do bus driving. I have 4 Dads who drive, and they get involved in their kids.
• Andy – We showed the soul searching video, and we had 75 parents come! I have question cards for them. And gave them their own childrens surveys
• Mark O – Christina did a training with 150 parents on a Saturday morning. Then we had our teaching pastor take a third of the time, and people came because they could relate to him.
• Christina – We had a lot of good feedback, and that was the first time I had ever done one, it never worked anywhere else, so I do think it was the teaching pastor.
• Eric – It is important for Parents to trust eachother at the church, if all the kids sign up for something it is often times because the other parents signed up. We went and talked to Moms groups that helped us build credibility.

How Do We Empower Parents?

• Steve – Faith formation in the home, we are doing it as a Churchwide thing, we are not sure what it will look like yet, but it is going to highlight a learning time, a family meal.
• Christina – something I was told was that as a parent, they don’t have time to read lots of articles, instead give them a little bookmark that has more info behind it if you need it.
• Mark O – Christina uses a blog that is predominantly for parents that is an auto feed.
• Nate – A parent committee that focuses on student safety.
• Jeff – We use our existing family ministries to display our staff up front, this year we gave devotionals to work through, and then time to share together. It was a good trade off to step down and let them lead.
• Heather- a fall 7th grade/parent retreat. To have parent s learn that the Youth Pastor is alongside of them not against.
• Scott – Who tells parents how significant their role is? I try to weave that into everything that I say to parents. Using positive affirmation
• Corrie – follow up conversations one on one with notes and emails. Encourage that what they are doing is right regardless of the childs response.
• Alan R. – We do a trip with students and parents, and we get to have an opportunity for them to serve alongside one another, and encourage each other. We have parent children talks on planes.
• April – we focus series then give parents a handout that focuses on that asset, and we give them ideas to interact with their kids.
• Alan M – We do a virtual weekly, it has some things for parents to ask their kids when they jump in the car, but I would say only 10 % actually do it.
• Mark O – how might we empower parents?
• Jim – We had a survey of pre school parents, and 50% of those parents said it was the churches job to develop spirituality, not the parents.
• Marko: should we try to “Climb the Mountain” (change everything) or “Save the Starfish” (impact this family and that family)?
• Mark O – We feel defeated, that it is such a huge problem that seems so difficult to fix, so do we try to in a context of church, do we change the culture of church to address this, or do we help the individual and become content with that.
• Alan M – This is an internal tension, I feel good about what we are doing, but horrible that more people aren’t doing it. IT IS NOT A WASTE OF TIME, I think we are doing the starfish but it is a cop out not to try to do more.
• Phil – It doesn’t seem right to do this on a wide scale, it needs to be specifically oriented to the situation, and has to do with people who really know these students. If a 19 year old kid cant do it, then that is a leadership problem, not a parent problem.
• Jim - I am going to try to prevent a problem rather than waiting until the problem is there in order to personally solve it. I think an advantage of going to a place that wants this is that the leadership is fired up about it.
• Alan M. – I need to remind myself that it is a marathon not a sprint. Some of these changes are parent to parent. Aka word of mouth. Maybe our 10% will grow to 25 in a few years. We can’t always live in this instant.
• Johnny - Feel of the Ministry, what are we modeling in our ministries this will affect how the volunteers model it as well.
• Sean – In my ministry I don’t have much contact with parents, from an event perspective I think how can I plant seeds in these youth workers that help them authorize parents. Is there a way to help youth pastors at the event and give that to parents.
• Johnny - I have a huge platform to tell lots of Youth Pastors about what we are talking about right now, and i need to leverage that.
• Christina – I feel like I can plan out all my speaking ideas and give those to parents, but they aren’t going to see it. What if the head pastor would tell the parents to do that. I made a joke in a parent meeting that I liked free meals, and I was taken up on that offer.
• Mark J. – I am excited to having someone on staff with me who is actually a parent of teens, so that I can stop theorizing.
• Cristin – I haven’t said a lot because I have heard a lot of what is already happening, but the starfish seems like more evangelism focused or discipleship focused. So I don’t think I have a positive or negative to contribute. Just where do we draw the line?
• Mark O – How can we climb the mountain?
• Jeff – I have been convicted that we need a systematic change, but where does that start? Because my conversations always come out of crisis, but the issue started 4-5 years ago and now I am just bandaging it. How do we start the relationship of parents with kids early so that they don’t feel as awkward when they are teens. We try to give examples in our own family so that parents can hold on to something that they can actually grasp.
• Ken – All I have been doing is talking to parents not kids, it is not the kids being afraid of parents, but the adults being afraid to come into the jr. high building. How do I get adults to interact, I don’t want them here to help, I want them to come flawed and say lets do this together.
• Brooklyn – I feel like parents need to be inspired, September 11th happened, and all the kids wanted to go home, they needed their parents. Maybe we overlook the fact that parents need to be inspired.
• April – They need to be positively affirmed in everything.
• Phil – How do you do ministry with a lot of kids? We can do a ministry in a big group but also in small groups, so how can that small personal aspect be applied to parents?
• Christina – We need to hire volunteers to meet with our parents
• Eric – Yeah we do this and that but we need to be able to stand up to bigger ministries in our church.
• Jim – I love formulas, so I would love to leave here with a magic bullet, but is it not just a mentality that we go about day to day.
• Scott – I am frustrated, but I think that it has to do with the church, we can fritter away our time but it needs to be a large scale, I need to stand up for my ministry.

i’m in denver for a few days, for my annual meeting with the “young notorious sinners.” actually, we’re not that young, we’re hardly notorious, and well… yeah… one outa three. the name (and shape) of our group came from a group mike yaconelli and a handful of cronies had, which he writes about in his book “messy spirituality”, called the notorious sinners. we meet annually for four days for a sort-of accountability thingy. we each take a few hours to talk about our year, and ask a million questions, dig into the messiness and stuckness and pain and joy of each others’ lives. this group — now 7 guys — has become life family to me. one lives in toronto, one in atlanta, one in the san francisco area, one in new york, one in denver, and two of us here in san diego (actually, two of the other guys work at YS, but neither of them worked at YS when they became part of the group). this year is a bit weird, because one of the guys can only join us for the last 24 hours, and another is still trying to figure out if he can get a flight to join us at all.

i’ve posted about this group each year, and some accompanying thoughts about accountability. so i’m going to post links to those here, because i’ve noticed those posts still receive traffic, and the occasional incoming link…

ACCOUNTABILITY IS A SHAM (my 13th post, from back in the day!)

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON ACCOUNTABILITY

QUAKER CLEARNESS COMMITTEE VS. ACCOUNTABILITY

OFF TO JOIN THE OTHER SINNERS

GOODBYE SINNERS

IN THE WOODS OF GEORGIA WITH THE SINNERS

funny index card today on one of my new favorite blogs, indexed:

in late april, a group of 23 veteran junior high pastors gathered again for a 4-day summit. between all of us, we have 270 years of experience working with middle schoolers. it’s a great group of people, who are passionate about their calling to young teens, and very interested in re-thinking their assumptions and approaches.

this year, noted sociologist christian smith (see post here about christian) join us for a half day, and talked with us primarily about the role of parents in the faith formation of teenagers. out of christian’s data and thoughts, and his responses to our many questions, we formulated a long list of discussion topics, voted on them, and formulated the agenda for the remainder of our days.

we all agreed this was the best of the 8 annual times we’ve met, primarily because we didn’t have easy answers to the issues raised.

i’ll post the notes from the gathering here.

part 2:

Q&A with Christian Smith

• What are the affects of having a Youth Leader for an extended period of time when the youth pastor leaves? (Brooklyn).
CS: There is no data on this, but losing a youth leader tends to be disruptive in a youth’s life. And also when a good youth pastor leaves it can cause disengagement from the students. If people would give what they should give, then we would be able to fund any sort of ministry that we would want.

• Your data said that having a full time Youth Minister makes a significant difference; what does this mean? (Marko)
CS: It is probably a proxy that shows that churches either have the funding for a full fledged Youth Ministry, or they are so enthused with Youth Ministry that they want to have Youth group regardless of the cost.

• Is it fair to assume that this has an influence on the middle bandwith of students faith, those whose faith is very similar to their parents? (Marko)
CS: Yes, it’s fair to assume.

• Are Kids predominantly coming because of the 5 friends or other things? (Nate)
CS: they need both that and the full-time youth worker, not just one of them. Who is in the position to reach out to teenagers in non-religious homes? Churches with Fulltime youth ministry that are able to express this to their own Youth.

• What Would it look like to bridge the intergenerational gap while still maintaining the full time Youth Pastor? (Sean)
CS: We didn’t study congregations like this. A Full time Youth Minister has the capability to bridge the gap by getting together with the youth, the parents, and other adults. It would have to come down from the Senior pastor as a priority rather than slamming all the weight on the youth pastor.

• The book “Hurt” showed a bleak image of teens, but your findings are in opposition, How does that work? (Marko)
CS: We had a public disagreement about this, we did have different stories, he went from one location in SoCal, but much more in-depth, ours was at the national level. So his could be reflecting simply a SoCal thing. My Comparisson is teens to adults, as far as teens to the world yes teens are hurting, but so are all other generations. So therefore my comparison shows that teens are suffering in the world, but no more than other groups.

• You don’t see a large difference over time, are you interested in going and starting over? (Christina)
CS: It will be really interesting to see the change this summer (with 4+ years of data), because it will be a lot different than when it was just 2 years.

• If students won’t go beyond the ceiling of where their parents are, then where do these college students go? Do You think the church as a whole needs to be doing something different so that the whole ceiling is raised and faith in general gets much deeper across the board? If Teenagers are content with being what their parents are then it would seem counter intuitive to try to change the kids. (Alan M)
CS: That is my implication, we need to raise the whole level rather than focusing on a “Youth Problem.” Parents are getting exactly what they want, just coasting by, and maybe that means that churches are getting just what they want, and not trying to help the youth by helping everyone else. If Parents really thought about it then they might sort through their priorities and their reflection on their children.

• How does Moralistic Therapeutic deism reflect in their development? (April)
CS: I find that it cant be explained by developmental influence, rather it is being picked up through what they see around them.

Talking about God with these teens was easy, but the second we tried to talk about Jesus, the students closed up.

There is one difference between middle schoolers and High Schoolers, their examples are different. Middle Schoolers would imagine things, High schoolers would give an example from their own life. Middle School was all about “ifs”, Highschool was “When”

Kids Pray A lot, but other than that there was very little evidence of spiritual practice. Any number of sports, school, band, and other stuff had practice forced upon them, yet when it came to spirituality parents were afraid to shove it down their throats.

There is a vision that teenagers are here to have fun and not fail, the other practices contribute to not failing. So then faith doesn’t fit in. Not failing may be in competition with youth group, aka grades before church.

• Globalization of the American teenage culture and what does it project for our future? (April)
CS: I would love to see that too, but I have no data outside the USA. Friends of mine say just more of the same thing, if anything the US is just a little more religious.

To What extent is the vision that the Youth group exists to take care of the teens in the church, or to what extent does the youth group exist to reach out and draw teenagers outside of the church. A lack of everyone on the same page opens things up to be controversial.

• The Church Community gets very authoritarian with the outreach kids, which scares them away (Brooklyn)
• Youth Pastors are either completely invested in core kids, or are all about outreach it is hard to find a balance (Heather)
CS: Parents need to be given positive affirmation, they are still very relevant.

• How can we teach parents how to parent when we ourselves haven’t parented teens? (Jason)
CS: I think that Youth ministers can refer to what they have read and studied opposed to their actual experience.

It is not about adding extra parent programs, but rather involving them in the ones that are existing.

• Parents say their kids want their space and don’t want the parents to be involved. (Eric)
CS: There are times that kids do need there space, but what I want to see is the quality of the time they do spend together.

• What have you learned as a Parent? (Andy)
CS: I am authorized and responsible, the choices I make will affect their well being in the future. It is possible for me to have a happy warm relationship with my kids while they are teens. To be more aware of what I am modeling, telling someone something matters, but not as profoundly as my actual actions. Getting up the guts to address issues head on rather than letting them slide. It is really important for teens to know that the adults haven’t given up.

we asked kids, “If you could change anything about your family what would you change?” The number one answer was I wish I could be closer to my parents.

• Then We are approaching this from the wrong side, if the parents have all this influence, but they are not doing anything, then what?(Scott)
CS: It isn’t that they do nothing, it is that their influence is manifested through all their actions.

• What if we canceled all our Youth Ministries and just put on Parent things to try and engage them?(Scott)
CS: My hope would be that their family time throughout the week would be a ministry.

• Parent Ministries can leave parents feeling worse then before (Heather)
CS: We are caught up in the Adults are mature, and teens have identity issues, but adults have identity issues to!

• Students feel disconnected from parents because they don’t get it, but often times parents get it but don’t know it (corrie)
• We are often there to translate these things in between our students and their parents (Eric)
• In your ministry what is there that tells students that it is cool to seek a relationship with your parents? (Phil)

• If you could change one thing about youth ministry, what would it be?
CS: If I could Change one thing about youth ministers is I would have YM stop calling teens “students”, because that relates teens to what they know about school. In Youth Group they should be seen as whole people who have a life outside of academic success. To call them students narrows them down to their scholastic identity. Church should be an institution that sees them as all that they are. There are a lot of kids that have dropped out of school and therefore lost there identity in Church as well! Our Public language should be Teens or Youth. If someone’s job is to legitimately work with youth in school then they are student ministers, outside of that, why would they be titled that? I don’t care what they want to be called, they shouldn’t be called students, it is collaborating with the motto of don’t fail, and they don’t need that from the church.

some astute and brillant ysmarko reader emailed me a while ago with a link to this fantastic blog called “garfield minus garfield” (unfortunately , i can’t rememeber who sent it to me, but am positive it was an above-average person). the concept is simple: remove garfield, and his comments, from three-panel strips, leaving only john, talking to himself. the result is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes insightful take that looks a bit like most of us at times, and a bit, well, schizophrenic at other times. as the site says:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

here are a few samples:

with all the dark prophecy in recent years about how texting is killing off teenagers’ writing interest, here’s surprising research saying just the opposite. anastasia posts an interview between herself and the senior researcher on the project and the emeritus head of the writing institute about the report. a few bits (click though for the whole interview, or on the first link for the study):

YP: What do you think educators can take away from this research, especially writing teachers?

RS: The good news is that young people are writing more than ever. They are communicating more often with more people, and they are creating content on the internet in significant numbers. The challenge for teachers is to capture the energy and enthusiasm that teens display outside of school and build bridges to the curriculum in school. Teachers need to help students learn a variety of writing skills, understand when and where to use formal and informal language and to push their thinking in writing. Our society needs young people who can understand and express complex ideas, ideas that we know teens will need as they progress though their education. That is the task for educators.

and some stats, from this post:

While teens are heavily embedded in a tech-rich world and craft a significant amount of electronic text, they see a fundamental distinction between their electronic social communications and the more formal writing they do for school or for personal reasons.
- 87% of youth ages 12-17 engage at least occasionally in some form of electronic personal communication, which includes text messaging, sending email or instant messages, or posting comments on social networking sites (I would think this would be more like 100 percent)
- 60% of teens do not think of these electronic texts as “writing.”
Teens are utilitarian in their approach to technology and writing, using both computers and longhand depending on circumstances. Their use of computers for school and personal writing is often tied to the convenience of being able to edit easily. And while they do not think their use of computers or their text-based communications with friends influences their formal writing, many do admit that the informal styles that characterize their e-communications do occasionally bleed into their schoolwork.
- 57% of teens say they revise and edit more when they write using a computer.
- 63% of teens say using computers to write makes no difference in the quality of the writing they produce.
- 73% of teens say their personal electronic communications (email, IM, text messaging) have no impact on the writing they do for school, and 77% said they have no impact on the writing they do for themselves.
- 64% of teens admit that they incorporate, often accidentally, at least some informal writing styles used in personal electronic communication into their writing for school. (Some 25% have used emoticons in their school writing; 50% have used informal punctuation and grammar; 38% have used text shortcuts such as “LOL” meaning “laugh out loud.”)
Eight in ten parents believe that good writing skills are more important now than they were 20 years ago, and 86% of teens believe that good writing ability is an important component of guaranteeing success later in life.

in late april, a group of 23 veteran junior high pastors gathered again for a 4-day summit. between all of us, we have 270 years of experience working with middle schoolers. it’s a great group of people, who are passionate about their calling to young teens, and very interested in re-thinking their assumptions and approaches.

this year, noted sociologist christian smith (see post here about christian) join us for a half day, and talked with us primarily about the role of parents in the faith formation of teenagers. out of christian’s data and thoughts, and his responses to our many questions, we formulated a long list of discussion topics, voted on them, and formulated the agenda for the remainder of our days.

we all agreed this was the best of the 8 annual times we’ve met, primarily because we didn’t have easy answers to the issues raised.

i’ll post the notes from the gathering here.

part 1:

Christian –
• Started studying teens in 2000, Have kept up with the teens and send cards because they want to be able to conduct more surveys as the same teens age. Last week finished up a third wave survey. Have a retention rate of 78%. In the Fall he is writing a book on the third wave. Not much has changed in the two years between wave one and two, they all were still on the same trajectory. Only two had lives who were significantly different, and they had both had children. They went from way out there to focusing on pulling their life together. Those who have fallen out seem to be those who live transient at risk lives.

• The Role of Parents in Youth Ministry – He went into his work believing that parents must survive their children’s teenage years. He came out of the project realizing how profoundly formed teenagers are by their parents, and other adult figures in their lives. Culture is set up to de-authorize parents from having to deal with their teenage kids. for instance, there are therapists, youth workers, coaches and other specialists who there to fix kids. Parents get the feeling that they are not capable of parenting their own kids, that they aren’t good enough or qualified enough. Many Parents are ok with this. Many Youth Ministers seem to have troubled relationships with the parents of their students. So many institutions are set up to separate teenagers from adult interaction, which is why parents are so crucial, they are the only consistent adult contact that teens have. Teenagers really benefit from just normal relationships with adults. Socialization, students are formed by the things that are around them, and because teens don’t have much control over their surroundings and are therefore shaped by them. Even though teens act as if they don’t hear what their parents are trying to say to them, they are soaking every word up. Teenagers are replicating their parents.

• How do we reach kids without parents who have faith? - The Church has a full time youth ministry, and the kid has friends (majority of friends) who draw them into that youth group. Other adults did not play into these teens faith. This simply stresses the importance of parents and their faith. These are not independent - you need both!

• The most important pastor a teenager will ever have is their parents.

• What really matters with teens are socially relevant relationships ( a sense of belonging)

• Parents need to be part of responsible communities with other adults who challenge them in parenting. Other adults also have a responsibility to try to affect teens and play a role in there lives.

• The difference between a teen feeling like they belong in a church, and that they don’t belong is a continental divide as to how their lives will unfold. It is not about how fun the games are, or how good the sermon is, rather just a sense of feeling at home at church.

• Communities of faith need to look at their Youth and realize “we will get what we are”, not their ideal, not what they hope and wish, but instead simply a reflection of themselves.

• If there was simply a teen problem, then we could focus simply on our Youth. however we need to realize that we need to reshape ourselves to get to the root of the problem. As Youth Pastors we are brought in to solve a problem without the cooperation of the rest of the Church community.

• There is a dimension of untrustworthy adults, those who are investing in teens out of their own selfish needs. There are adults who should not be trusted with teens.

• The answer is engaging the central importance of parents and other members of the congregation, without this we will continue to be constrained by limitations.

• Styles of Parenting
• Good Parenting has 2 or 3 dimensions. 1st: strong and clear expectations with boundaries, demands and accountablility. (Parents are proactive in educating their children of the paremeters) 2nd: Emotional Warmth and closeness (letting children know they are loved) Both of these must be used together in order to have a well rounded relationship with the kids. The 3rd dimension is Cognitive autonomy, the idea of having space to work things out and room for children to come to a position that is not exactly the same as the parent.

• What would it look like if we applied all these to the Church Community? In theory it should be extendable and powerful to an entire community.

• Teens have a problem articulating their faith, because they don’t have any place to think out loud about what they think without being afraid of judgement.

• Very little age affects in these studies, the most important thing was whether or not the teenagers had been taught/socialized. There are certain developmental changes, however in order for these changes to be evident they must interact with people and be cultivated by them.

• There is a great fear of interacting with their teenagers.

• We need to let parents have the allowance to be able to be flawed. we need to seek real authentic relationships.

• Can you use the parenting factors for a whole community (eric)?
Yes there must be a shared authority of what is appropriate, however it is hard with non faith based communities, because moral foundations are significantly varied. Any factor will increase the probability that students will be steered in the right direction.

• How do we combat our students structural disconnect (Scott)?
We have created institutions that segregate teenagers, and we are happy to have a separate culture that we can cash in on, there is potential to have intergenerational relationships in Church, elsewhere this potential has become extinct.

• Christian did experiments where he would give eye contact to students, and realized that they were not prepared to interact with adults, they have been trained to be separated.

• Adults are too worried that they will impose things on teens and therefore are afraid to teach them anything… there are so many other institutions that are shoving crap down your kids throats. Another take is to simply set up what you believe, without telling them that they must follow this path.

• Baby boomers say “Being Young is about breaking down boundaries”, but it is a new world, and needs new perspectives.

• Is belonging a point in time thing, or a constant in youth culture? (Marko)
The more individual that our culture has become the more we need relationships. We are social creatures, we need to have a place where we feel at home and feel we fit in.

ooh — this is really cool; i need to try this with max. he will think it’s the coolest thing since, well, milk.