i’ve posted about teenage brains more than once. there’s been an good amount of research on teenage brains in the past decade, thanks to the MRI. there’s also been an explosion of more popular articles that infer teenagers are the way they are because of their brains, and we shouldn’t expect them to… (make good decisions, exhibit wisdom, control impulses, set priorities, act responsibly, or any other of a long list of adult-like behaviors).

this has really started to tick me off.

but two articles in the last few months (neither is new) have pushed back a bit:

this article in the huffington post, called “the teenager brain: debunking the 5 biggest myths“.

and, a fascinating article that many of you have probably already seen, published in national geographic, suggesting an alternative (evolutionary) possibility of why teenage brains are weak in certain controls and functions.

the article mentions some of the unhelpful conclusions being drawn by others:

They act that way because their brains aren’t done! You can see it right there in the scans!

This view, as titles from the explosion of scientific papers and popular articles about the “teen brain” put it, presents adolescents as “works in progress” whose “immature brains” lead some to question whether they are in a state “akin to mental retardation.”

but it goes on to suggest an alternate view:

B. J. Casey, a neuroscientist at Weill Cornell Medical College who has spent nearly a decade applying brain and genetic studies to our understanding of adolescence, puts it, “We’re so used to seeing adolescence as a problem. But the more we learn about what really makes this period unique, the more adolescence starts to seem like a highly functional, even adaptive period. It’s exactly what you’d need to do the things you have to do then.”

here’s what rubs me (and i’m borrowing this from dr. robert epstein): there’s a not-so-subtle discrimination against teenagers, MASSIVELY feeding extended adolescence, in this age-old discriminatory equation –

presence of a particular physical characteristic
alongside, the presence of a real or assumed set of behavioral realities (or biases)
means, the first results in the second

let me remind of a few places we’ve seen this before:

1. women’s brains are smaller, on average, then men’s. for centuries we were sure that women did not have the intelligence for business, voting, public office, and a variety of other intelligent functions. the smaller size of women’s brains were PROOF!
2. jews and people of african decent were said to have certain character traits (or lack certain character traits) due to physiology (surely, you’ve all seen the nazi drawings of a typical jewish face and head, with an explanation as to how it explains the stereotype).

i think we’re seeing the same equation play out in terms of teenagers today.

the assumption is (and it’s a BIG leap in logic): teenage brains prove what we’ve always assumed, that teenagers are incapable of wisdom, good decisions, and responsibility. the obvious (!) next step is: we should treat teenagers like children (infantilization) and remove all responsibility, keeping them “safe.”

PISHAH!

youth workers, don’t tollerate this faulty logic. don’t tollerate this discrimination. let’s be counter-cultural on this stuff — let’s INCREASE responsibility and opportunities for wisdom and choices and prioritization and impulse control.

instead of discriminating against teenagers, let’s give them opportunities to be the apprentice adults they have the full capacity to be.

time for another wad of 2-sentence book reviews! my format: i allow myself one sentence for summary, and one sentence for opinion (easy for some, really hard for others!).

General Nonfiction

Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks, by Ken Jennings
5 stars
jennings (that guy who won forever on the tv show jeopardy) takes us a romp through the world of maps and those who love them. you don’t have to be a ‘maphead’ to love this book, as it’s fantastically witty and fun, while being surprisingly interesting.

Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!, by Douglas Coupland
3 stars
off-beat fiction writer coupland takes a serious left turn and writes a non-fiction biography of the father of media studies. i had no idea what i was buying, and the book is well written, found myself getting extremely bored with this mcluhan love-fest.

Fiction

Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
4.5 stars
the wild tale of a boy lost at sea, drifting in a lifeboat with a massive bengal tiger. this one’s been around for years, but i finally read it and loved everything but the ending.

Leadership

From Values to Action: The Four Principles of Values-Based Leadership, by Harry M. Kraemer
4 stars
basic principles of what it means to lead from values rather than goals. some fantastic points, but dry and too targeted to a CEO reader.

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, by Yvon Chouinard
5 stars
the founder and owner of patagonia tells his life and company story and how patagonia ruthlessly works to embody their corporate values, even when it means a loss of potential profit. my third read of this fantastic book (and assigned reading in my coaching program), this is an amazing case study of allowing values to be your organization’s decision-making matrix.

Anything You Want, by Derek Sivers
3.5 stars
the founder of cd baby lays out his story and the values his rocketship of a company tried to embrace. a decent case study, but–as with most books in the domino line–rambling and long on words for the points made (which is saying something, since it’s only 88 pages!).

about 18 months ago, i was sitting in dr. robert epstein’s living room with a group of youth workers from my youth ministry coaching program, talking about his ideas about the cultural construct of adolescence. at one point, his children came home from school and trotted through the house — elementary-aged kids. he had previously mentioned to us that he had two older son (about 28 and 30) from his first marriage, and how a grip of young kids from his second marriage. trying to understand some of what he was talking about, i asked him, “how has your parenting changed from when you parented your older sons to how you parent the children in your home now?”

i remember his response verbatim, because it has impacted my parenting (and other thinking) in significant ways. he said, “i’ve shifted from parenting by control to parenting by facilitation. and by ‘facilitation’, i mean identifying and nurturing competencies.”

he unpacked that thought a bit more, but the damage was done. i instantly saw the truth in what he was saying. and i could see that, while not a super-high control parent, i hadn’t thought of it in these terms before. since then, jeannie and i have tried over and over again to remember this idea when faced with parenting issues.

an illustration:

my amazing 14 year-old son max recently said to me something like, “i want to do something!”
i think he’d said something prior to that, but i hadn’t been paying enough attention. i didn’t know what he meant.
“what do you mean?”
“i want to do something to make a difference. and i’ve tried a few times to start something, but it hasn’t worked”
(i started to realize he was talking about doing something to make a difference in the world, and his “it hasn’t worked” was an attempt to explain the combination of his own lack of follow-through and others.)
he continued, “so, i want to get rubber bracelets made to raise money for haiti, and i want to sell them.”

i was at a control or facilitation junction, baby. i love my son, and i want him to impact the world, and i want him to succeed. and the best way i know to ensure this is to exert my control, to take over the details and tell him what to do, overseeing and prescribing each step. i knew, in that moment, that if i encouraged him and served him, helping only when he asked, it would be a more fruitful growth opportunity for him (get this:) even if he failed.

i said, “that’s great, max! tell me if you need anything from me.”
he said, “well, is there anyone i should talk to?”
i suggested he talk to the guy at our church who oversees our church partnership with haiti. that was it.

max found that adult’s phone number and called him. he also called the pastor on staff who oversees that ministry area. he gathered info all on his own. he found a website that makes rubber bracelets and priced the whole thing out. he asked me for input on what to have inscribed on the bracelets, and i suggested something like “remember haiti” might be cool.

a few days later, max asked me if he could use my credit card to place the online order. i asked, “are you asking for me to pay for the bracelets?” “no, i’ll pay you right now, i just need your credit card to order them.” i had absolutely nothing to do with him placing the order, choosing the quantity, color, shipping method, or anything else. he covered the cost out of his own bank account; and a week later, i paid him $5 for one of his bracelets.

max still has a bag full of bracelets, sometimes remembering to bring them to school and church to sell them, and sometimes forgetting. it’s still unclear whether or not he will make back his investment and raise enough to make a nice donation to our church’s haiti ministry. but this is clear: whether he “succeeds” or “fails”, the experience will be better for him than if i had controlled it.

and here’s where my thinking goes on this…

replace “parenting” with “youth ministry” in that epstein line:
we need a shift from youth ministry by control to youth ministry by facilitation, where facilitation means identifying and nurturing competencies.

heck, replace “parenting” with “leadership”:
we need a shift from leadership by control to leadership by facilitation, where facilitation means identifying and nurturing competencies.

these aren’t easy shifts (especially if you’re steeped in parenting, or youth ministry, or leadership by control). but the implications are massive.

i wrote a web article for the immerse journal blog back in july. then i forgot about it. so it was a nice surprise to see it show up there today! and, the funny timing is: i wrote this before we’d decided to do the extended adolescence symposium. it’s proof i’ve been stewing on this for a while!

here’s a selection from the article:

I was on the phone with a well-known author the other day, talking about extended adolescence. He was asking me questions—in a healthy, skeptical way—about my slowly evolving contention that while we need to acknowledge cultural realities and do ministry in their context, the juggernaut of extended adolescence is something we can and should undermine, at least in our own homes and churches.

After almost 30 minutes of conversation, we arrived at a key crossroads. He made a statement I find to be indicative of the majority opinion of American adults: “It seems to me that the problem you’re referring to comes down to the self-centeredness of young adults today. They’re extremely selfish and have no interest in taking responsibility or becoming adults.”

I paused and took a breath. Then I responded (trying to use “yes, and” language rather than “you’re wrong” language), “Yes, I can totally see why you would say that. Today’s young adults do tend to have a level of narcissism that wasn’t as dominantly present 20 years ago. But that begs the question of why. I suggest they’re narcissistic because they’ve spent their entire lives in families and classrooms and churches and marketing messages that consistently tell them, that everything is all about them. To blame young adults for being narcissistic is like blaming an attack dog for biting. We have isolated teenagers, and now young adults, and then told them their culture is better than ours. Why would they ever want to grow out of that stage of life? How could they?”

click through to read the rest. there’s some good stuff in the comments section, btw.

click here to check out the info on the extended adolescence symposium.

a couple weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me this quote in a google chat:

“The major advances in civilisation are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur”
(Alfred North Whitehead)

and, immediately, i started thinking of youth ministry.

and this is what came to mind: i don’t like pain. i avoid pain. but i really like change. in fact, two of the seven vocational core values i came up with for myself earlier this year when i was doing some reflection on where i’m headed were:

• I want to change the world. I believe in my gut that I am invited into the ongoing restoration work of Christ in the world, and I want to actively participate in that Kingdom work.

• Change is non-negotiable. Upheaval, starting new things, risk and failure are all necessary and good, both for the organization I’m a part of and for my own level of thriving.

sounds like a recipe for pain, doesn’t it? because, really, there’s no way to lean into change and upheaval without also heading into some pain.

i pray for, long for, dream of, and want to be an active part in youth ministry changing. i won’t go into long detail about what that looks like; but i will say that our continued isolation of teenagers, our culturally lame attempts to entertain them, our arrogance about how cool we are (please know i’m looking in the mirror on that one), our immaturity, and our ongoing fondling of bigger and better as a measurement of success all need some painful disruption.

tweaking isn’t going to get us there.

here’s where i might be shooting myself in the foot (which would, i assume, be painful): i’m a youth worker. i can’t escape that calling. and — if i’m honest — i don’t really have a sure-fire recipe for a new way. whatever disruption happens is likely to hurt me in one way or another.

but that quote got me thinking:

what would “processes that all but wreck the [youth ministry structures and assumptions and culture and organizations] in which they occur” look like?
what would it mean?
where would it come from?
what might be beautiful and smelling of the kingdom of god on the other side of it?

my twitter-length confession for independence day:

there is so much about the U.S. that frustrates me, but i sure am glad to live here.

ca-caw!

in this series of posts (part 1, overview; part 2, competency facilitator; part 3, culture evangelist; part 4, mission curator, part 5, storytelling host, part 6, champion of hope, part 7, uniqueness dj, part 8, contextualization czar, and part 9, trust guard) i’m ruminating on the suggestion that leadership in the church needs to move away from the traditional notions of hierarchical power we’ve embraced for so long. and i’m unpacking 9 new metaphors for “powerless leadership”. here is the final metaphor (#9):

Collaboration Guide

i’m going to keep this short and to the point, since this series has gone on long enough (too long, possibly), and because i’ve written about collaboration multiple times in the midst of the other 8 metaphors.

here’s a strong statement for your consideration: the top three skills needed to be an effective leader in the twenty-tens are…

1. discernment

2. contextualization insight and praxis

3. a passion for and skill in hosting collaboration

a reminder of where this blog series began:

power-based leadership has no place in the church.
(and: power-based leadership is a culturally-waning paradigm in all contexts, because we live in a wiki, prosumer culture.)

and…

here’s a paradigmatic shift idea: church leadership needs to move from a paradigm of control to one of facilitation.
in this context: facilitation = identifying and nurturing competencies

collaboration is messy. it can be cumbersome. it can create political and relational tensions. but it is better is just about every way. collaboration is a reflection of the various giftings paul writes about, and a reflection of each person’s imago dei, and a reflection of the priesthood of all believers.

and collaboration works at a practical level: whatever hierarchical power a leader might forfeit by leading collaboratively is gained by an order of magnitude in terms of buy-in, shared ownership of mission, creativity, follow-through, quantity of output, breaking up group think, avoiding stupid errors and blind alleys, and all sort of other CYA dead ends.

this is the biggest lesson i learned in my years of leadership at ys — particularly when it came to the leadership team. when we operated collaboratively, we kicked butt and had a blast doing it. when we were forced to operate in more traditional top-down decision-making modalities, the fun went away, the mission lost focus, and the ministry suffered.

here’s a thought to chew on: collaboration requires leading from within, not leading from out in front.

what would this look like for you?
what would it require you give up?
what would you have to risk?
what might you gain?

in this series of posts (part 1, overview; part 2, competency facilitator; part 3, culture evangelist; part 4, mission curator, part 5, storytelling host, part 6, champion of hope, part 7, uniqueness dj, part 8, contextualization czar) i’m ruminating on the suggestion that leadership in the church needs to move away from the traditional notions of hierarchical power we’ve embraced for so long. and i’m unpacking 9 new metaphors for “powerless leadership”. here is metaphor #8:

Trust Guard

trust is, perhaps, the single greatest factor in leadership. and, while trust is so rarely present in hierarchical power structures (in churches or businesses), the funny thing is that it’s one of the few facets described in this blog series that is possible within traditional hierarchical power structures (btw: if you want a good book on this — trust in the context of traditional power structures, that is — i recommend stephen m.r. covey’s the speed of trust). and the reason boils down to this: trust is 100% dependent on honesty. if a hierarchical power-based leader is fully honest and transparent (an extremely rare occurrence, to be sure), it’s possible to instill trust. but more often than not, the mindset of a leader in utilizing role power and hierarchy has a mental mindset that says, “i know things you cannot and should not know; they are not your job to know them.” if the leader were, somehow, able to be completely honest with himself or herself (another rarity), the truth would be closer to, “being less than transparent and fully honest with you protects my position of power, control and authority over you. you are more dependent on me when i know more than you do.”

ah, but this tactic just doesn’t work.

a moment of honesty myself: i have not been a superstar on this. i think my leadership team at youth specialties had a high level of trust in me and my leadership; but that was directly connected to the level of honesty we shared. but for the rest of the staff of youth specialties, their trust of me vacillated greatly. at times, it was high and strong; at others, extremely questionable. in my 20/20 hindsight, i can see the pattern clearly: when we were in seasons where i was being ruthlessly honest, trust was high. when we were in seasons where i was withholding, or spinning them, trust was low (or at least weakened).

if we want our organizational teams (and, again, this applies to volunteer teams as well as groups of employees) to experience the kind of wholeness and full embracing of the organizational mission, we have to place the value of alignment in a place of preeminence. in youth ministry 3.0, i wrote about the goal of “communion” – a combination of authentic community with christ in the mix. pulling out the essence of that into a workplace, i can envision a kind of missional alignment experienced in community by all members of the team.

and, without trust and safety, there will be no communion or missional alignment.

without communion (or missional alignment), the ministry or church staff culture or business culture will be clubbish and/or wimpy.

what if one of the primary ways we leaders exercise our power is by being honest?

i’m reminded of this as i write, as i’ve been looking at a case study over the past few days. a particular mission board (ABWE) received information, decades ago, about one of their missionary doctors perpetrating pedophilia on young teen missionary kids. they responded by covering it up. the issues were brought up at multiple points over the last 20+ years; and each time, they promised action, but took none. not only is the wrong perpetrated in this example horrific on many other levels, the result has been – as i’ve watched this unfolding in real time – a systemic and complete breakdown of trust. trust in the organization and its leaders has been shot for a long time for those closest to the crime; but now that the story is coming to light, trust has been eroded at levels that reach far and wide, including affiliated churches and donors. the likely result will be leaders losing their jobs and a big shake up. justice, in situations like this, gets more and more difficult without honesty. (btw: if you’d like to read more about this story, or help throw your voice into the mix of people calling the board of the organization to action, read this fairly comprehensive blog, hosted by some of the MKs impacted.)

i’m also reminded of one of the (rare?) times i think i got this right: when it was brought to our attention at YS that we had published some blatantly racist content in one of our books, and we were called out by the asian american church community. in this case (as would have been true with ABWE), it would have been better had we not allowed the offenes to occur in the first place. but we screwed up; and the only right response was full disclosure, complete honesty, and swift action. now, you could say that this was all external, and more about our interface with customers. but the impact on our staff was significant; and the way we handled it (both in how we talked about it internally, and the steps our staff saw us taking) had an enormous impact on the level of trust internally. it was — counter-intuitively — one of those times when our screw-up resulted in more missional alignment (and communion) for our staff team.

back to my question: what would it look like if, as a leader trying to lead without power, that your primary expression of the power provided by your title or position were the relentless pursuit of honesty?

in this series of posts (part 1, overview; part 2, competency facilitator; part 3, culture evangelist; part 4, mission curator, part 5, storytelling host, part 6, champion of hope, part 7, uniqueness dj) i’m ruminating on the suggestion that leadership in the church needs to move away from the traditional notions of hierarchical power we’ve embraced for so long. and i’m unpacking 9 new metaphors for “powerless leadership”. here is metaphor #7:

Contextualization Czar

in order to actively engage in most of the previous metaphors, and in order to lead via collaboration, the leader who aspires to lead without traditional hierarchical power has to become an intentional student of context. really, since we’re living in an era where culture has splintered (youth culture, for sure, but all culture is following), the role of the leader must shift.

in the 1950s (think “mad men” or the church version — even more power, slightly less cigarettes and grain alcohol), the primary approach to leadership called for the loudest voice, and maybe the ability to think forwardly.

in the 80s and 90s, all kinds of social science-like skills rose up the “skills leaders must possess” ladder: empathic listener, prophetic visionary voice, new idea generator, motivational speaker, strategy hound.

but today, in our new world, when copying the other guy (or the other business, or the other church) gets you nowhere other than a few steps behind or grossly misguided, the ability to host these collaborative questions trump the other “skills”:
- what’s our context?
- who are we called to be?
- what are we passionate about, and why?
- what’s unique to us?
- how can we become more us, rather than more like someone else?

this means that we have to be anthroplogists. the wiki-god says, “Anthropology asks ‘What defines Homo sapiens?’” see it? pretty easy to translate that for our local, rather than global, realities. “what defines us here at the youth cartel?” or “what defines us at first church?”

now, leaders have played this role in many ways over the decades and millenia. but the spirit of what we’re addressing in these posts is that power-based leadership is both unbiblical and ineffective in today’s world. so we have to think about how to ask that “what defines us” question without forcing or demanding or unilaterally deciding.

and that brings us back to… collaborative discernment.

i think i’ve written this more than once on this blog, but i think the primary skill set needed (but not present) in most church leadership today is to recover the art of spiritual discernment. understanding context, being responsive to context, and hosting collaborative discernment rooted in context might be the best gift you can give your organization.

this past year in my youth ministry coaching program, i have gotten more and more adamant about the role of values in leadership. it’s not like this is a new idea in the least. and i’ve been talking and blogging about it for years. but i’ve refined my thinking, and it slowly became the central teaching/coaching component of the ymcp. for the first cohort, their final project involved articulating in written form both personal and professional values. (for an example of this, here are joel mayward’s personal and professional values.)

another ymcper, brian berry, recently sent me the link to this video, which has so much to say about the role of values (even though the video never once uses that word). you will not, i promise, regret the couple minutes you spend watching this video (in fact, hundreds of you will be repurposing it for youth group within a week):

so. i’ve got a challenging decision on my plate, one with vocational implications. i spent a couple days in the desert last week, seeking god. and, at one point i thought to myself, “you idiot. you made everyone else write out their core values, but you’ve never written out your own!” duh. admitadly, seperating personal and professional values is a false dichotomy (i wanted my ymcpers to think about the two spheres and what might be similar or different). but, i chose to create one list, more along the lines of “personal values that have vocational implications.”

here’s what i came up with (btw: i considered this a process of spiritual discernment, not an exercise in brainstorming):

• My family comes first. Without meaningful connection to them, I’m useless for anything else.

• Personal growth and transformation is the best life. I want the ‘fullness of life’ that Jesus promises in John 10:10, not the life of a cog, a maintainer, or a yes-man.

• I want to change the world. I believe in my gut that I am invited into the ongoing restoration work of Christ in the world, and I want to actively participate in that Kingdom work.

• I love the church, and want to see her change. I believe that, through Christ, the church is God’s plan for the world. We are the equipment. Let’s stop wasting time and get to it.

• I want to lead collaboratively. Powerless leadership is both biblical and more effective. Nurturing a culture of team, empowerment, collaboration, and risk are core to how I aspire to lead.

• Change is non-negotiable. Upheaval, starting new things, risk and failure are all necessary and good, both for the organization I’m a part of and for my own level of thriving.

• Uniqueness is better than conformity. Honoring and celebrating initiative and unique gifting, in alignment with the values of the whole, creates excellence and life. Conformity only leads to death.