So here’s a powerful confluence of events. The 8th grade Confirmation class leaves for its spring retreat tonight, the evening of the very day on which many of them will receive letters from the selective admission high schools to which they applied (it’s a Chicago thing).

So at the same time that my students will be relishing acceptance or despairing rejection from the schools of their choice, I and their leaders will be nudging them toward their own acceptance-of faith, of the church, of Jesus. 

It’s bound to be a time filled with possibility. That’s how I’m choosing to look at it. 

One of my first sermons to begin Lent after becoming a pastor made a lot out of these 40 days as something that couldn’t be got ’round. “We have to go through it,” I confidently intoned, drawing on the heart of the Protestant work ethic to face what needs facing. That’s how it rings to me now, at least.

But this Lent finds me more eager to tread the penitent path than I have been before. This year Lent feels not like something that must be done but something that can, and should, be done.

A great deal of mud has stuck on my shoes this past season that I’m eager to scrape off with a gnarly Lenten stick: outrage, anxiety, even despair. I need a season to drop some of that stuff.

So much accrues. Obligations, habits, grudges, attitudes: Lent is an invitation to walk for a season without some of those things by making a habit of dropping them by the roadside. It beckons us to experience time for a time without the daily dose of outrage, without those digital dopamine hits of affirmation, without the satiety of sweets or steak or whatever it is that makes us full.

The promise, of course, is that we will find how little we need them. We will discover again how much we can do and how far we can go on trust, simplicity, and grace.

The Acer R11 is back in the shop again. Seriously as The Verge might be about the R11 as the best Chromebook you can buy, when your one thing as a computer is web connectivity, you’d better be sure that thing works reliably.

So we’re blogging on the phone.

I finished Cal Newport’s Deep Work on Monday and started putting one of its insights to work on Tuesday by tweaking my task list for this week. Newport is down on task and to-do lists, because the don’t differentiate between shallow and deep work. Shallow work are tasks that any college educated worker could do, right now: ordering bagels for the youth group, scheduling a meeting, updating attendance logs. They need done (and well), but they don’t demand much in the way of concentration.

Placed alongside deep tasks, things that do require long periods of uninterrupted concentration, we choose the shallow stuff. It feels good to tick off those boxes.

So this week my task list is in two columns: deep and shallow. The deep all have to do with preparing materials for this weekend’s Confirmation retreat. 

Now to schedule the time to actually do the deep work…

That one person we know is probably not the exception to the rule. They’re probably the rule, which we could know if we cared enough to find out.

“But he’s different” probably means “He’s the only one we actually know.” In the absense of first-hand knowledge, we default to conventional wisdom, which is too bad, because it has never been easier to find out about something, even something complex, than it is today.

Listening to Monica Davey discuss the story she reported about the beloved owner of a Mexican restaurant in a small Illinois town who has been detained by ICE is where this comes from. The people she interviewed claim with conviction about their friend that he “gives more to the community than he ever takes.” They know now, first hand, that the portrayal of undocument migrants in the U.S. as dangerous freeloaders is a cruel fiction.

But they could have known that before. The truth is out there. Not strictly in personal relationships with exceptional people, but in peer-reviewed studies and carefully-sourced news stories.

We don’t know what we know until we urgently need to know it. On this subject, we all need urgently to know. Now.

Our Confirmation class welcomed a group of 8th graders from the Jewish temple down the street yesterday. Before they arrived I spent about 10 minutes with our students discussing interfaith dialogue–why it matters for Confirmation and for church generally. Lots of nods. Yes, yes, we understand. I’m good at this.

Once our guests arrived we all crammed into a room and did several minutes of get-to-know-you icebreaker activities. That left about 20 minutes to present briefly about Presbyterian Christianity and our congregation’s history before entertaining a few questions, some of which I directed to our students. Because, you know, I’m good at this.

Here’s the best moment. An 8th grader responds to a question about prayer by asserting that Christians to pray to God as “Spirit,” too. I jumped in to expand on her answer. Christian faith trusts in God who is One, but three persons: Father, Son (that’s Jesus), and Holy Spirit. I’m so good at this.

Then a guest from the temple says to no one in particular but loud enough for all of us to hear, “Wait, Jesus is God?”

Silence.

I look pleadingly to the leaders of the temple group and joke, “I’ve done it now, haven’t I?” Heh. Heh.

I don’t think they think I’m very good at this.

Yesterday I wrote about the appendix in Brian McLaren’s latest book, with its image for Christian community of a table supported by four legs: a compelling story, inspiring saints, meaningful practice, and a vision for the future. I wondered how those four legs might support a curriculum template for youth ministry.

I also wonder how those legs might support another youth ministry staple, the Statement of Faith (SOF). For many youth workers, especially those in mainline Protestant churches that deploy some version of Confirmation, the SOF is an annual ritual in which the pastor and her team of leaders coax from 8th or 9th graders written statements of doctrinal belief that are then shared with the church session, or board, who receives the young people int active church membership.

As with any youth ministry habit, this one has pros and cons. For perhaps the first time in their lives, students producing a SOF are systematically reflecting upon and then articulating the beliefs they feel they actually hold. They’re doing it together, in community, accompanied by caring adults. That’s valuable. Flexibility is typically the rule rather than rigidity, authenticity rather than doctrinal conformity. Expressions of doubt are even encouraged.

This approach is validated, I believe, by the graduating seniors who preached in worship last week, more than one of whom told a story about their Confirmation SOF. They didn’t really know what they believed. They doubted some of the doctrinal specifics. Yet that posture of uncertainty did not disqualify them from church participation. They were welcomed, and four years on they are active church participants thinking seriously about how their faith will guide the next chapter of their life.

Yet the SOF has some drawbacks. We don’t ask adults joining the church to produce such a statement. We don’t even ask it of post-Confirmation youth. So there’s that. Also, how much do we care–how much do we think God cares–about an 8th grade young person’s ability to state what they believe in written propositional form?

I’ve never been high on it, so I’ve made a habit these past ten years of tinkering with the SOF, moving it away from propositional “I believe . . . ” statements toward more descriptive expressions of how their faith has changed since childhood and what they want it to be in the future. One year it looked like this. It changes almost every year.

So now McLaren and his four-legged table have me wanting to ask students to write statements expressing the parts of the Christian story they find compelling; the saints they find inspiring; the practice they find meaningful; the future they want to see.

Unless somebody talks me out of it, this is what I’m going with.

 

 

Brian McLaren has this interesting little appendix in his latest book in which he offers the image of a four-legged table as the thing that can convene Christians in today’s world. Rather than rely on, say, a single motto like Solo Scriptura to unify people of faith today, he’s suggesting the four legs as supports for a shared faith commitment.

The four legs are 1) a compelling story, 2) inspiring saints, 3) a meaningful practice, and 4) a vision of the future.

This is not a post about Brian McLaren’s appendix, though. This is a post about a curriculum template for youth ministry.

 

If a young person regularly participates in youth group from the time she’s in the 6th grade to the time she graduates high school, she should do a lot of work with the Bible. She should learn its core stories and grapple with the claim they make on her life. She should also encounter some theological constructs like grace and faith. Important people from the history of the church should be presented to her during those years at some point, too. She should learn how to pray and read the Bible. She should relate her religious belief to her peer relationships (including romantic ones) and a world filled with systemic injustice.

A curriculum template is about planning for all that stuff. There are mission trips and retreats and worship services to support all that youth group content, but my template isn’t worried about those other events. It only wants to organize youth group lessons.

Could McLaren’s appendix be a useful organizing principal for a seven year youth group curriculum template? From the 6th through the 12th grades, a teenager in our youth ministry is regularly invited to a table supported by 1) and inspiring story (the core Biblical narrative), 2) inspiring saints (men and women from the Bible, church history, and their own congregation, 3) a meaningful practice (prayer, Scripture study, service), and 4) a vision for the future (relationships, justice, social life).

Unless somebody talks me out of it, this is what I’m going with.

You did the work and nobody showed. Stomp your foot, make the angry call, swear “Never again.”

Then remember the work you did and the time you spent doing it. Remember what you learned. Remember the improvements you made and the clarity you achieved. Remember that just because nobody wants the thing you made today doesn’t mean they never will; you have a product in your pocket now. Who knows when it will come in handy?

Remember that work is a gift and its own reward, and that if it’s Deep Work then that’s true in spades. Maybe nobody wants it today, but nobody’s taking it away from you, either. You’re still free to do with it what you will, even if that means giving it away to see what might happen.

The message of the backhanded compliment could not be more clear: stay away.

 

“You’re my favorite.”

Turn and run. Seriously. Put no stock in that person’s appraisal of you and your abilities. Assume that his preference for you is based on whatever issue he has and not, as he would flatter you to believe, in some superior skill that you possess.

Also consider that the others who are not her favorite are very likely having an impact you’re not, giving that the likes of this person, who  traffics in backhanded compliments, doesn’t like those others as much. They’re probably pushing and challenging in a way you’re not. At least not yet.

There are few curses more serious than the backhanded compliment.