Tag Archives: almost christian

books, the youth cartel, youth ministry, youth work

current reading list for my coaching program (and a question about a virtual cohort)

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in my youth ministry coaching program cohorts, there’s a reading assignment for the first five of our six meetings (the last meeting has a TON of prep, so i don’t assign reading). i’ve modified the list a bit from the first year of YMCP to this last year. here’s my current list, and why i have participants read them (if you’re not interested in the list, skip to the bottom of this post and consider my semi-related question):

for the first meeting:
Youth Ministry 3.0, by some dude
why?
my book is a bit dated in some ways (i wrote it about 5 years ago, after all). i keep thinking i should write a Youth Ministry 3.1: What I Wish I’d Said (though, i ended up covering quite a bit of that in A Beautiful Mess, though indirectly). however, i assign this book first because i want to have common language in the cohort for many of the issues we’ll talk about. in fact, i lead a conversation based on the content of the book for about 2 hours at each of the first two meetings (where each of the other books get about a 45 minute discussion). whatever its weaknesses at this point (and they are there), YM3.0 still provides what i believe to be an accurate description of the primary changes in youth culture over the last 60 years, and a bit of backstory to books like Sticky Faith and Almost Christian, as to how we got where we are.

for the second meeting:
Orbiting the Giant Hairball, by Gordon MacKenzie
why?
when yaconelli announced that i was going to be the president of ys, old ys insider (and wittenburg door staffer) craig wilson — now known as mcnair — sent me a copy of this book. i think it’s the only book other than the bible that i’ve read four or five times, all the way through. and i wish every book i would ever read would be like this one: full of amazing stories that act as perfect metaphors for concepts and ideas. in this case, the concepts and ideas are about maintaining your creativity when you’re part of an organization with red-tape and bureaucracy and constricting systems. the metaphor of the title is brilliant in-and-of itself: don’t get caught in the hairball, but don’t shoot off on your own trajectory. maintain orbit, staying connected to the hairball, and exerting your own gravitational pull. a freakin’ brilliant and wonderfully weird book, if there ever was one.

for the third meeting:
Teen 2.0, by Robert Epstein
why?
i don’t know that i can think of another book — any other book — that i’ve ever read that has both shaped my thinking about adolescence, parenting, and youth ministry, while regularly pissing me off or driving me nuts. and, as about 70 people in my YMCP program have slogged through this long-winded but gripping diatribe, i could count on one hand those who wished they hadn’t bothered. you’d never know it by looking at him, but epstein is a freakin’ wild man, a voice in the desert, a logician and scientist who’s still very willing to use hyperbole and exaggeration. really, i’m not sure how else to describe this book (at it’s core, btw, it’s a description of how the “false” construct of adolescence came to be present and assumed as an unshakable non-negotiable). annoying? yup. longer than it needs to be? you bet. enlightening and perspective-altering? yeah, absolutely.

for the fourth meeting:
either Let My People Go Surfing, by Yvon Chouinard, or Delivering Happiness (not the comic book version, by the way!), by Tony Hsieh
why?
one of the central themes of my coaching program is the importance of values. i’ve blogged about this a bunch (here’s an example of that), so i won’t harp on it here. but we work on and talk about values quite a bit in YMCP. after the meeting where each partipant spends time crafting a first pass at their own personal vocational values, i have them read one of these two books (they can pick, or read both). both are amazing case studies of leaders who lead their organizations primarily by ruthlessly bringing alignment (and re-alignment) to the organization’s values. they lost revenue because they cared more about the values. the made tough choices. they messed (both admit where they got it wrong, and where they were tempted to compromise on their values). after reading these books, we talk about what it cost them to embrace their values, and what they gained. then we bring that around to our own contexts.

for the fifth meeting:
A Beautiful Mess: What’s Right About Youth Ministry, by the prince of Saturn
why?
i added my new book to my cohorts this past year because it felt like a nice book-end to the opening of Youth Ministry 3.0 (like i said, it clarifies some things, and emphasizes some things that were barely mentioned in YM3.0). but while participants are reading it, i ask them to be ready for these discussion questions:

  • What theology is explored here? How do you resonate or react to it?
  • Where are you most encouraged by what’s happening in your youth ministry? What does that reveal about God?

i also keep almost adding Almost Christian, by Kenda Dean, into the mix (probably replacing one of the current books). i haven’t added it in the past, because i’ve normally assumed most youth workers have already read it. but i keep finding that only about 25% of my participants have read it, and it really is — in my opinion — the single most important youth ministry book in the last 5 years (though it’s a very challenging read). each cohort ends up talking about it in roundabout ways, as i reference it so often; and most of my participants added it to their own self-assigned homework at one point or another.

Question: i’ve been toying with the idea (because multiple people have asked for it) of beta-testing a virtual cohort of the youth ministry coaching program. i’m a bit hesitant, because i think a massive, irreplaceable aspect of the value of the program is that we meet, face-to-face, for two days, every other month. that face time fosters the formation of a safe little tribe. each cohort grows to love one another and depend on each other for growth and support and accountability. and that just can’t be the same with a virtual cohort.

however, i know that there are just people who either cannot or will not find a way to pay the $3000 for participation in the full program. so… i’m wondering: if i beta-tested a virtual cohort (we’d probably meet one day/month, for about 4 hours, in a G+ hang-out), would you be interested? we could still cover some of the same ground; and it would be substantially cheaper, of course (though i don’t yet know what that means). anyhow: comment below, or shoot me an email ([email protected]) if you’re interested in exploring being a part of this beta-test. if i get 6 to 10 peeps, i’ll probably give it a whirl.

books, church, youth ministry, youth work

the future of youth ministry, episode 3

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i led a late night discussion at the national youth workers convention this past fall on “the future of youth ministry”. in preparation for that discussion, i emailed a few dozen friends with better youth ministry minds than my own, and asked them to complete the sentence, “the future of youth ministry….” about 15 of them responded (often with more than a sentence!). i’m posting them here as a series, sometimes with a bit of commentary from myself, and sometimes merely as a reflection-prod. would love to hear your responses.

**********

kara powell and brad griffin’s responses are a nice pair. and as it should be — kara and brad are two halves of the team at the fuller youth institute. and much of their “sticky faith” research and writing these days has been focused extensively on the content of both of their responses…

Kara Powell
I think the future of youth ministry is one in which the age-segregation that has dominated the church ends and we move toward the type of intergenerational community and integration God intends. We’re seeing in our research how important intergenerational community and relationships are to Sticky Faith.

Brad Griffin
The future of youth ministry must move toward more intergenerational connectedness, more valuing of and partnering with parents, and less programming fluff.

i really resonate with what kara and brad say. it’s hard to argue with, since it’s coming straight out of their research. it’s also representative of the research of the national study of youth and religion, conducted by christian smith and others. kenda dean reports on this latter research most directly (for christian youth ministries, at least) in her book almost christian. and, as i’ve posted about here multiple times, i’ve found a good deal of resonance with robert epstein‘s teen 2.0 (and conversations with him).

all of this research and writing, blended with my own observations, leads me to this conclusion: most of our approaches to youth ministry, developed in an era when autonomy was a primary need of teenagers, and when the american church was particularly gung-ho about creating age-based autonomous ministries, has resulted in a church experience, for most teenagers in churches with active youth groups, that isolates teenagers from the adults in the church. one of the many results of this (certainly there have been positives, as well as negatives), is that we don’t provide teenagers with meaningful adult relationships outside of those adults who are either paid to be with them (youth pastors) and those who volunteer to spend time in the age-based ghetto (youth ministry volunteers). in other words, most teenagers in our churches with youth ministries don’t rub shoulders with adults being adults.

teenagers don’t get to watch adults doing adult things.

teenagers don’t get to practice being “apprentice adults” in the adult bits of the church.

by the way, this is true for teenagers in most areas of their lives, not only in our churches — we’ve just bought into the way culture at large addresses teenagers, either with good motives or not-so-good motives: put them over there.

this isolation from the adult world that most teenagers experience lacks on-ramps to the world of adults. no wonder extended adolescence has become our new cultural reality.

i’m not suggesting we throw the baby out with the bathwater and completely do away with youth ministry. there’s a small, hipster movement of churches doing just that (“we don’t have a youth ministry, and we’re proud of it!”). i find that most of those churches are really just saying that they have other priorities that are much more important to them. but i do wonder if it might be wise for lead youth workers to intentionally choose a new job description (yes, easier said than done), from “lead programmer for teenagers” to “champion or lead banner bearer for teenagers”. the former is all about creating the ultimate space of isolation (stating t it negatively, to be sure); and the latter could be about being the voice — the gadfly — in the congregation, charged with the role of finding ways for teenagers to connect with adults, of not letting the congregation forget the teenagers in their midst.

what are your thoughts?

books

mini book reviews, part 3 (of 3)

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Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church, by Kenda Creasy Dean
5+ stars

i hardly know how to write a “mini book review” for this book. it’s too important. i know i write “every parent and youth worker must read this book” from time to time. and, maybe that’s not true for this one if you only read people magazine or star trek novels — because this is not an easy read (there were parts where my brain really had to work!). but anyone who’s thoughtful, and cares about the spiritual lives of christian teenagers — well… yup, you gotta read it. kenda worked as part of the research team for the “national study on youth and religion“, the findings of which were most widely disseminated in christian smith’s soul searching. from her proximity to the study and its subjects, kenda unpacks the findings as a book of practical theology. in other words, she takes the findings and says, “what does this mean for us?” at times discouraging (as was true of smith’s book also), and at times fiercely encouraging and hopeful, it would be an excellent book to read with a team of youth workers, or a team of parents, and have a series of conversations about the implications for your church and youth ministry (and your home). certainly, if i had a “5 most important books on youth ministry in the last 10 years” list, this would be on it.

The 9: Best Practices for Youth Ministry, by Kurt Johnston and Tim LeVert
5 stars

i don’t know tim (though he seems like a guy i’d really like); but kurt is one of my favorite human beings. deeply humble and wildly gifted as a youth worker, he is a passionate utilitarian, constantly asking, “what works?” not that this is a fluffy book of game ideas — not at all; but it’s a deeply practical book, as one would only expect from the creator of simply junior high. based on the findings of the exemplary youth ministries study (well, there were 8 findings in that study — tim and kurt, rightly, add a 9th), the book simply (ha) lists those practices, then riffs on what they look like in the real world of church-based youth ministry. particularly good reading if you’re in your first 5 years of youth ministry, this will be a book i’ll recommend often. sure, there are a couple places i don’t completely agree with the authors (for example, i think they’re overly optimistic about the health of youth ministry in general, and they would clearly say the opposite of my writing, that i’m overly pessimistic); but the book is a conversation, not a manifesto — so wholesale adoption isn’t required. whatever our youth ministry health, these are (9 of) the things we’ve gotta pay attention to.

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, by Ben Mezrich
4 stars

this story of the birth of facebook is about to be released as a major motion picture, so i thought i’d enjoy reading the full story (i’m sure the movie will have to compact much of the details) first. maybe i have a bit of an entrepreneurial dream — i’ve flirted, as have so many, with daydreams and almost-ideas for websites that would change the world (in fact, i’ve gone a few steps down the road on a few of ’em). and i have a couple good friends who are deep, deep into the major launch of an online enterprise software that really could revolutionize the workplace. so i came to this story with that kind of interest. mostly true (some fact, some reasonable conjecture), it’s an easy and fun read. but there’s some real pain in the story also, and fault isn’t obviously placed at anyone’s shoes: there are lots of gray areas, with varying viewpoints that would shift right and wrong. go ahead and use facebook without knowing the story behind it’s creation — it won’t impact your use experience in the least. but the backstory is a good one. not a ‘must read’, to be sure, but enjoyable nonetheless.

books, church, news, youth ministry, youth work

quick link: kenda dean on cnn.com

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don’t miss this article on cnn.com about kenda dean’s book, almost christian. the money paragraph:

No matter their background, Dean says committed Christian teens share four traits: They have a personal story about God they can share, a deep connection to a faith community, a sense of purpose and a sense of hope about their future.

**notice she doesn’t say “…and a fun youth group!” but, i would like to think that those four key qualities could be foci of our youth ministries.

THIS JUST IN: kenda’s response to the article with an important clarification on one point.

AND NOW, THIS JUST IN: kenda responds with more, this time about the title of the book and the title of the article.

books, church, youth ministry, youth work

encouragement and challenge about the impact of youth ministry

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i’m in the middle of reading kenda creasy dean‘s new book, almost christian: what the faith of our teenagers is telling the american church (it’s so good, and critical reading for all youth workers – i’m sure i’ll be posting more about it). the book is kenda’s interpretation of the findings of christian smith’s ‘national study on youth and religion’ (summarized in the book — or film, if you’re lazy — soul searching), and implications for the christian church (and, specifically, for youth ministry).

smith’s study, if you haven’t heard of it, found that the vast majority of teenagers in america subscribe to a faith he calls ‘moralistic therapeutic deism’. and, as tony jones writes in his endorsement of kenda’s book, “a lot of youth workers have been a bit depressed since the national study of youth and religion revealed what we’d long suspected about american teen spirituality.”

that’s why, early in the book, i found these few sentences very encouraging, while still clarifying the challenge:

we have known for some time that youth groups do important things for teenagers, providing moral formation, learned competencies, and social and organizational ties. but they seem less effective as catalysts for consequential faith, which is far more likely to take root in the rich relational soil of families, congregations, and mentor relationship where young people can see what faithful lives look like, and encounter the people who love them enacting a larger story of divine care and hope.