Tag Archives: kara powell

books, youth ministry, youth work

kara powell reviews ‘understanding your young teen’

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dr. kara powell, youth ministry professor at fuller seminary, executive director of fuller youth institute, author of tons of books (including the sticky faith series), is also a good friend and former co-worker of mine. so, i suppose i shouldn’t be too surprised that her review (part 1 here) of my new book for parents, understanding your young teen, was so warm and kind (not that kara would ever compromise her academic impartiality in the name of friendship… well, yes, she would).

here’s a portion of her first post on the book:

The first is Marko’s one-word definition for middle schoolers. According to Marko, when he asks parents and leaders to define young teens in one word, some of the answers he gets back are: stressed, immature, confused, impossible, fun, potential, emerging, spontaneous, and unpredictable.

None of those are un-true, but Marko’s best one-word definition for the young teen experience is “change”. I’ll admit I’m biased because that is also my best one-word definition, but nonetheless, as Marko says well, “The life of a middle schooler is all about change. As previously noticed, it’s the second most significant period of change in the human lifespan.”

If you know a young teen, this isn’t a surprise to you. You know that they are undergoing monumental internal, developmental changes (e.g., cognitive, physical, relational, spiritual).

Interestingly, one of the things we have learned during our Sticky Faith Cohorts is that change is hard. Even when it’s a good change, even when it’s a change you (or someone else) wants to make, it’s still hard. As Dr. Scott Cormode at Fuller regularly reminds our Sticky Faith Churches, “Change involves loss.”

When we look at the 12 or 14 year-olds (and maybe even 16 and 18 year-olds) around us, it can seem like they are gaining so much. In the case of young teens, they are gaining new freedoms, social skills, intellectual abilities, and even faith experiences. Yet they are also losing something: they are losing some of the simplicity of their earlier childhood, some of the lack-of-stress that comes from not paying attention to social dynamics, and even some of the confusion that comes from trying to juggle two or more thoughts simultaneously (especially when those are abstract thoughts).

i like kara’s reminder that the massive change of the young teen years is a change of opportunity and gaining things, as well as a change of losing things. i often remind parents, when i’m speaking to them about these issues, that while their young teen might not be able to put words to it, they all carry around substantial, unarticulated fear connected to the changes their experiencing. this is why it’s so critical that parents (and youth workers) are constantly–really, i do mean constantly–working to normalize the experience of middle schoolers.

(btw: kara and her partner in crime, brad griffin, co-authored a ‘bonus chapter’ in understanding your young teen on new research about young teen girls.)

books, church, faith, youth ministry, youth work

2 sentence book reviews, part 4 (christian non-fiction and youth ministry)

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this is the final post in this series of 2 sentence book reviews. part 1 was fiction, part 2 was general non-fiction, part 3 was a combo of young adult fiction and graphic novels. this time around i’m covering christian non-fiction and youth ministry.

i allow myself (with a few exceptions this time) one sentence for summary, and one sentence for opinion.

Christian Non-Fiction

Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me: A Memoir… of Sorts, by Ian Morgan Cron
5 stars
Autobiographical stories of a unique childhood with a tyrant father, with spiritual commentary. Cron’s writing is about as good as it gets in Christian publishing, and his storytelling and reflections make this a “c’mon, you’ve gotta read it” book.

Liberate Eden, by Greg Fromholz
App: 5 stars
Book: 3 stars
Book-as-app about our connection to creation, I think. The app is the most creative thing I’ve seen in publishing in a long time, but the actual book is wordy and wanders (it actually annoyed me).

The Day Metallica Came to Church: Searching for the Everywhere God in Everything, by John Van Sloten
5 stars
Adventures at the intersection of Bible and culture. Fantastic insights, particularly the author’s concepts of bible and culture as both co-illuminating and counter-balancing.

Youth Ministry

Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids, by Kara E. Powell and Chap Clark
4.5 stars
Researched-based and practical help for parents who desire for their children’s faith to last beyond the teenage years. some amazing chapters and some ok-to-good chapters, but overall highly recommended (i’m recommending it to parents constantly).

Shaping the Journey of Emerging Adults: Life-Giving Rhythms for Spiritual Transformation, by Richard R. Dunn and Jana L. Sundene (releases march 3, 2012)
4.5 stars
i’m departing from my 2 sentence approach for this one, because i wrote an official endorsement for it:
When it comes to young adults, the American church seems to be stuck between hand-wringing (“Why are there no 20somethings in our church?”) and finger pointing (“Why don’t those people grow up?”). Neither of these responses are particularly helpful. Thankfully, Sundene and Dunn sidestep this lose-lose response and suggest a relational approach, not a program. Shaping the Journey of Emerging Adults is praxis at its best: research and theologically informed, yet real-world practical.

As For Me and My (Crazy) House: Protecting Your Heart, Marriage, and Family from the Demands of Ministry, by Brian Berry (release march, 2012)
5 stars
slight variation on my 2 sentence approach, here are the last two sentences of the foreword i wrote for this helpful book:
In this fantastic book you’re about to read, Brian doesn’t position himself as a model or an expert, but a fellow traveler. However, you could do a lot worse than to learn from the imbalanced-yet-sustainable, full life of this author, my friend.

a bonus review!!

Awkward Family Photos, by Mike Bender and Doug Chernack
4 stars
just what it says. hilarious.

news, the youth cartel, youth ministry, youth work

only three days left to order your ‘extended adolescence symposium’ mp3 or ebook

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i’m stoked. i wasn’t sure it would happen. but it did, thanks to some very gracious supporters who believe in what we’re doing.

so, yes, it’s official: the extended adolescence symposium is officially on.

i’m still a little in shock.

first, i thought it was such a crazy long shot that we could get our first pick of presenters. dr. robert epstein is a freakin’ grenade launcher. he has messed with my mind over the past year when it comes to thinking about adolescence and youth ministry and parenting. then there’s dr. jeffrey arnett, the dude who literally wrote the book (and came up with the phrase) on emerging adulthood. i think i’m a decent moderator; but when both epstein and arnett said they’d love to be a part of this thing, i knew we needed someone with much more significant mental chops. enter dr. kara powell. yup, her.

seriously, i designed this event for me! i want to learn from these people. i want to understand what’s going on in american adolescence. i want to more deeply think about the questions of why? and so what? i want to be challenge to rethink things. and, to be honest, i’m hoping to see a few sparks fly!

but the second shock was that people rallied to our kickstarter page and we have the majority of the funding we need to make this puppy a reality. i’ll try not to be hurt that no one opted in for the $500 steak dinner with me (sniff). i am a little surprised that no one wanted the $250 ‘lunch with one of the speakers’. heck, i think an hour with epstein or arnett or kara would, literally, be worth 5 times that, easily. but, hey, i’m not complaining. and mucho, mucho thanks to those who have pitched in, especially when getting the swag wasn’t your primary motivation (i know of many who just wanted to play a role in seeing this conversation take place).

next week, adam and i will launch a page on our website with regular ol’ ticket sales for this ain’t-been-done-before-and-might-not-be-again event. but, in order to get this thing approved on kickstarter, we had to come up with a couple non-event thingies. that’s where the mp3 of the event and the abridged ebook of choice quotes came from. but i only asked permission from the speakers to use their stuff for people who paid for it during the fundraising efforts on kickstarter.

in other words: the mp3 of the entire event, and the abridged ebook of selected content from the event will only be available until our kickstarter deadline this saturday, september 17. after that, we hope you’ll attend the event, but there won’t be any other way to get that stuff.

oh, and the regular ticket price will be $100. on the kickstarter site, you can still get ‘pre-sale’ tickets for $75. that price won’t be offered anywhere else.

so i’m just, ya know, givin’ you a heads up. (and, full disclosure, the money we’ve raised still won’t cover our actual costs.)

news, the youth cartel, youth ministry, youth work

help the youth cartel with the extended adolescence symposium

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some time ago, i started to read and learn about the phenomena of extended adolescence. the short story is that adolescence, in the united states, is now considered to be close to 20 years in duration, from about 11 on the young end, all the way to about 30 (on average) on the upper end. of course, with the loss of high school graduation and the marker of turning 18 as fairly accepted ending points, the ‘normal distribution’ is very wide — there are young adults who are fully functioning as adults in their early 20s, and others who stay in adolescence into their 30s.

the inertia on this thing is around commodifying this ‘new developmental life stage’ — the upper end commonly referred to as ’emerging adulthood.’ culture at large, as well as businesses and churches, are quickly buying into this as the new normal. some are even saying it’s good.

but there are a few voices (in the minority) who are saying, “what a minute; maybe this isn’t good, and maybe it doesn’t have to be this way.”

i started to dream about an event where we could explore this tension, particularly around it’s implications for youth ministry and the church. i talked about it with my partner in the youth cartel, adam mclane, and he had a bunch of energy around it also.

we put together an A-list of who were would love to have — long shots, really. and we thought about how great it would be to offer it in atlanta the day after the YS national youth workers convention (monday, november 21). with the blessing of YS, i went after our long-shot A-list: Dr. Jeffrey Arnett, the author and academic who coined the term ’emerging adult’; Dr. Robert Epstein, author of Teen 2.0 and a leading dissenting voice; and Dr. Kara Powell, a brilliant youth ministry academic who we felt would rock it as a moderator (and youth ministry interpreter). somewhat to our surprise, they all said they would love to be a part of it!

so the EXTENDED ADOLESCENCE SYMPOSIUM was born… kind of.

the plan is for a one-day event, rich with presentations, dialogue, and moderated debate.

but we still had a significant problem: how to fund the thing. we’ve enjoyed seeing how kickstarter has become a very cool platform for people trying to fund creative ventures. steve taylor’s film adaptation of don miller’s book blue like jazz was, for a period of time, the highest funded project on kickstarter, after the film lost its funding and fans came to the rescue.

we’re not blue like jazz, or don miller, or steve taylor. but then, we don’t need to raise a quarter million dollars either. we only need to raise $6000.

we’re hoping you’ll help us. there are a cool variety of sponsoring levels, each with their own benefit to the donor. you can get an mp3 of the event, an abridged ebook of some highlights, a reduced price ticket, lunch with one of the speakers, a nice steak dinner with me and adam (!), or even become an official sponsor of the event.

but we only have a few weeks to nail down the funding, as the speakers have all graciously agreed to wait until then to see if we can pull it together. so september 17 is our deadline.

click through to our kickstarter page to learn more about the event and the various donation levels. spread the news — please — via your own networks (email, facebook, twitter, G+, etc).

we really think this thing could be significant in helping us all wrestle with this juggernaut of extended adolescence, and its implications for us in the church who care about teenagers and young adults.

will you help us? better yet, will you join us?

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?

blogs, news, youth ministry, youth work

top 20 youth ministry blogs

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adam mclane’s research is complete, and he posted his list of the top 20 youth ministry blogs on the ys blog earlier this week. i’m super pleased to see whyismarko somehow land at #2. to be honest, i’m rather surprised by this, as it seems like my traffic never fully recovered from the 6 month blog sabbatical i took last year (and, even since i’ve started blogging again, my traffic has been on a slow downward arc). some of my slowing traffic, i’m sure, is that i have chosen to not care about it like i used to (the old 2 posts a day, every single day approach i used to use). these days i post when i want to, and rarely more than once a day. and if three days go by without a post, i choose to not care.

my ranking was certainly helped by the fact that, for whatever reason, my technorati ranking is pretty good at the moment (526), while josh griffin’s blog (who, i’m VERY confident, gets WAY more readers than mine) has an oddly low technorati ranking at the moment.

i like adam’s approach of considering influence as a subjective portion of the rankings. all rankings are, ultimately, subjective in one way or another (the compiler chooses which metrics to care about, which are often in opposition to one another). but i think the list will be even better next year, when those voting on influence are the last year’s top 20 (or, will that make it worse, like a church elder board that has the power to choose their own replacements!?).

some of the list are the expected standards of youth ministry blogging. but i was pleased to see tash mcgill pop up from 41 last year to 16 this year. tash is one of the only female bloggers on the list (kara powell of the fuller youth institute blog being the other), and one of only two non-US bloggers (the other being ian mcdonald of the UK-based youthblog). her blog is really worth reading (she’s a great writer), and i’m glad this list will give her more exposure. i’m also a fan of jeremy zach (as a person, youth worker, and blogger), and glad to see his blog on the rise.

the two biggest “injustices” on the list, in my opinion, are josh griffin not being in the top 2, and the fuller youth institute blog coming in at 13, where it actually dropped from #5 last year. the FYI blog is, i think, the single best youth ministry blog out there. if i were creating a “blogs youth workers should read” list of my own (100% weighted on my subjective opinion), the FYI blog would be #1. i’m not sure how it could drop this year, as the content is better than ever. but i have to believe it’s because not enough people know about it, and with the addition of “influence” in adam’s formula this year, it didn’t score high enough with those who provided the input on that factor. (there’s also a little “injustice” in people who barely ever blog at all making the list. for example, my good friend chris folmsbee makes the list at #8, a climb from #21 last year, but hasn’t posted since mid-march! or, how ’bout mark riddle, who rose this year also, but hasn’t posted since mid-january!)

ultimately, whether i made the list or not, i’m glad adam created it, because there are a few in the top 20 that i’ve never heard of — and i want to start following them.

here’s the list — happy reading!

2010 Rank / Blogger Name / Blog address (2009 Rank)
1 / Youth Specialties Blog / http://youthspecialties.com/blog (12)
2 / Mark Oestreicher / http://whyismarko.wpengine.com (3)
3 / Tim Schmoyer / http://studentministry.org (3)
4 / Josh Griffin / http://www.morethandodgeball.com/ (2)
5 / Adam McLane / http://adammclane.com (7)
6 / Adam Walker Cleaveland / http://pomomusings.com/ (1)
7 / Orange Leaders / http://www.orangeleaders.com/ (–)
8 / Chris Folmsbee / http://www.anewkindofyouthministry.com/ (21)
9 / Ian MacDonald / http://www.youthblog.org (9)
10 / Walt Mueller / http://learningmylines.blogspot.com/ (–)
11 / Jeremy Zach / http://www.reyouthpastor.com (28)
12 / Jonathan McKee / http://blog.thesource4ym.com/ (19)
13 / Fuller Youth Institute / http://fulleryouthinstitute.org/blog/ (5)
14 / Mark Riddle / http://www.theriddlegroup.com/blog/index.htm (25)
15 / Mike King / http://king.typepad.com/mike_king/ (15)
16 / Tash McGill / http://tashmcgill.blogspot.com/ (41)
17 / Gavin Richardson / http://www.gavoweb.com/ (8)
18 / Matt Cleaver / http://mattcleaver.com/ (29)
19 / Kurt Johnston / http://simplykurt.com/ (10)
20 / Stevan Sheets / http://www.stevansheets.com/ (10)

blogs, church, youth ministry, youth work

deep church youth ministry

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if you’re a youth worker and you don’t subscribe to the fuller youth institute‘s free e-journal, then you are seriously missing out or living in a cave.

this week’s e-journal had a link to an interview kara powell conducted with jim belcher, author of deep church (my review of this great book). i’m friends with both kara and jim, and worked with the two of them on a church staff a decade ago (and started a church service with them). so it was fun to hear them chatting. but i’m posting this on my blog, because the last 1/3 (or even 1/4) of the interview is where it seriously gets good, particularly for youth workers. jim says some really profound things about what we should be focusing on in youth ministry (based on his research for his book). i still recommend the book; but i highly recommend you take 5 or 7 minutes to listen to the last 1/3 of this interview (just fire it up, then click to the 2/3 point, if you don’t have time for the whole thing).

blogs, books, youth ministry, youth work

fuller youth institute

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my friend kara powell, and the peeps at what used to be called the fuller center for youth and family (or something like that), have re-branded, re-designed, and re-launched, under the much-easier-to-remember name: fuller youth institute (get it? FYI!)

here’s what i dig about kara and FYI: they bridge the gap between research and practice in youth ministry. this is rare. with much love for my academic friends, i think the following are all at least mostly true statements:

– much of what passes as academic work in youth ministry isn’t really academic (though this has certainly gotten better in the last half-decade).

– much of what passes as research in youth ministry wouldn’t pass muster with people who actually know how research is done.

– much of the good research done, both by spiritually-inclined institutions, and other studying adolescence, never gets connected with the real world of youth ministry.

that’s where FYI comes in. they exist pretty much for this purpose. they identify problems in youth ministry that would benefit from some research. then they do the research. then – this is where their uniqueness really comes out – they develop practical tools and articles that translate the findings and implications into real world tools and ideas for real world youth workers.

and… (drum roll)… it’s all free. yeah. free.

anyhow, they have an email all youth workers should subscribe to (see the “e-journal subscription” link on the home page), as well as a super-helpful website, a blog, a podcast, and a bunch of feeds you can subscribe to (i subscribe to their article feed, and their blog feed). and some of the work they’ve done has been translated, subsequently, into books kara powell and chap clark have published with ys:
deep ministry in a shallow world
deep justice in a broken world
and, a deep justice curriculum due out next may.