The Ecstacy And The Agony of The Youth Retreat Revisited

About a year ago I wrote a post that openly fretted about the prospects for students in mainline, progressive congregations to have an experience of camp-based youth retreats that didn’t feel completely out of step with the theology and worship of their home church.

We’ve just returned from our annual experience with the retreat that gave rise to that post, and I want to diverge from my series on Diana Bulter-Bass’s new book to revisit the things that felt funny to me about church camp a year ago.

However positive our students’ experience of the last retreat, their experience of this one seemed even better. The stock and trade of the church youth retreat is so for a reason, because those mixers, songs, and games have a proven track record of helping students make connections and feel comfortable. The staff at this retreat did those things proficiently and with characteristic gusto. I watched with admiration.

The retreat was structured around the beatitudes, and the staff very creatively helped small groups of students choose one with which to spend the weekend. Our students talked at length and in depth, guided by their volunteer adult counselors, about the blessedness of meekness, purity of heart, and poverty of spirit. I’m good right there. Full stop.

But on top of that the staff and counselors led students both in presenting their beatitude to their peers in a creative way and in “sharing” what significance the beatitude had gained for them. What struck me about this was how open-ended the process was and how unresolved many of the outcomes were. The students who presented on “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” for example, did a skit that followed two brothers who lose their mother, get disowned by their father, become criminals, and end by wondering if God cares about them at all.

The whole thing allowed for a posture of honest questioning and exploration without expected “Jesus-y” answers. In fact, with the ideas of Christianity After Religion ringing in my ears, the whole thing seemed to be after “how” students believe these beatitudes much less than “what” they believe about them. I was totally digging it.

As for the songs and the King-Jesus-God talks and the altar calls, I’m kind of over my dis-ease. Those things are the wheelhouse of church camp, and if you have a problem with those things then you kind of have a problem with camp. There are better and worse ways to do those things, for sure, but church camp is evangelicalism’s undisputed terrain, so if you’re going to get bent over an guitared avalanche of “Hims” and no hymns then you’ll be fighting an uphill battle.

That battle might be worth fighting at the youth retreat, but immersion in the conventions of a different expression of Christianity than my students are used to is a benefit that I think outweighs the cost of screwy pronouns.

For my part, I was primarily a parent of a four year-old at the retreat and not a counselor, so please excuse this gratuitous exhibit of cuteness.

When Theater and Volleyball Collide: Some Thoughts on The Pressures Facing Youth Facing Adults

A high school student participates in theater and volleyball. During the same week, she has both dress rehearsals and three performances of the theater production and two volleyball games. Something has to give.

The student approaches the theater director and asks permission to miss a rehearsal in favor of the volleyball game.

“Absolutely not. The production needs you. You’ve had the production schedule for eight weeks. You must be at all of the rehearsals or your theater grade will be docked an entire letter.”

Discouraged, the student approaches her volleyball coach. May she, she asks, miss one of the week’s two games in favor of the theater production?

“What? Of course not. You’re a starter and a leader on this team. You’ve known our schedule since the start of the season, and you know the rule: miss a practice and you’re benched for a week. Miss a game and it’s two weeks. The choice is yours.”

The volleyball coach and the theater teacher never speak to each other about the student.

Our high school youth group has been talking about pressure: peer pressure, academic pressure, social pressure. High school students today are under an immense load of pressure, and I’ve noticed that this pressure is placed upon them by adults who are themselves feeling the heat of high expectations.

The teachers need to produce students who test and perform at a high level to meet rising standards of standardized test scores and artistic achievement, and coaches need to produce winning teams that play at a high level to justify their positions or get promoted to better ones.

Where, in this ecosystem, are the adults who relate to these teenagers as something other than as lines on a resume? Where are the adults who care about these students as people, who’s livelyhood doesn’t depend on the students’ performance?

Am I, a pastor to these youth, making objects of them in much the same way? Does my sense of success as a minister depend upon their attendance at youth programs? When they blow off youth group because they have six hours of homework, does my annoyance evidence traces of the same fear-based use of them for my own professional security?

How much of the landscape of youth performance and achievement, including at church, dehumanizes young people for the sake of adults’ survival?

On Singing at Chick-Fil-A

Today we took the junior high group to a local Chick-Fil-A, as promised. They sang their song, ate their chicken, and got a really great welcome from the staff. The manager knew we were coming, so she had prepared this quote to share with us about why Chick-Fil-A is closed on Sunday:

I was not so committed to financial success that I was willing to abandon my principles and priorities. One of the most visible examples of this is our decision to close on Sunday. Our decision to close on Sunday was our way of honoring God and of directing our attention to things that mattered more than our business.

Truett Cathy, Chick-Fil-A founder

A New Culture of Chicken

A few weeks ago I used this video with our junior high mid-week guys group:

(serious hat tip here to The Youth Cartel and their weekly YouTube You Can Use resource for this, which was an entry into a conversation about Sabbath and rest—Chick Fil-A is closed on Sunday).

The following week I caught a few guys singing extended portions of the song. Then they started asking if we could go to Chick Fil-A as a youth group. I made them a deal: come back with a performance of “See You on Monday” and we’d go.

Well today they did just that. This time next week I’ll be gnawin’ on a Char Grilled Chicken Deluxe.

The episode has me thinking about the New Culture of Learning I blogged about back in the spring as I tried to scratch the itch of student motivation; if a New Culture of Learning is about marrying an unlimited information resource with a learner’s intrinsic motivation, how do you surface that motivation?

Um, chicken?

I actually think it’s more than that. This whole encounter has been a platform for these students to do something they think is fun. They actually practiced this, and they employed a certain level of discipline and coordination in pulling it off. I had nothing to do with it.

I’m thinking our trip next week will be an opportunity to continue the conversation about rest and Sabbath, which by now should be a conversation they feel a large ownership stake in.

Is this an overly optimistic way of viewing this?

Fun with Bible Mad Libs (or, Why Didn’t I Think of This Before?)

For tonight’s junior high youth group, I decided to use a Bible Mad Lib as a “springboard” into a Bible Study time. I’m sure everybody does this, so I’m sharing it only for the pure delight. These things made me laugh. And by “laugh” I mean cackle.

Here’s the template I constructed, using Luke 5:36-39:

Bible Mad Lib

No one (present perfect verb)*___________________ a piece from a new (noun)______________ and sews it on an old (noun)______________; otherwise the (noun)_____________ will be (past tense verb)**________________, and the (noun)______________ from the (noun)_______________ will not (verb)____________ the (noun)__________________. And no one puts new (plural noun)____________________ into (adjective__________________) wineskins; otherwise the new (plural noun)________________________will burst the (plural noun)_________________ and will be (past tense verb)_____________________, and the (noun)_____________________ will be destroyed. But new (noun)______________ must be put into (adjective)________________ (plural noun)____________________. And no one after drinking old (type of drink)_______________ desires new (type of drink)____________________, but says, “The (first type of drink)____________________ is (adjective)__________________.”’

And here’s but one example of what resulted. Again, cackled.

Bible Mad Lib

No one (present perfect verb)*laughs a piece from a new (noun)Billy Mays and sews it on an old (noun)Whitehouse; otherwise the (noun) couch will be (past tense verb)**blinked, and the (noun) trash can from the (noun) ball will not (verb) catch the (noun) Elmo. And no one puts new (plural noun) Elmos into (adjective smelly) wineskins; otherwise the new (plural noun) heaters will burst the (plural noun) lights and will be (past tense verb) jumped, and the (noun) chair will be destroyed. But new (noun) Atlantis must be put into (adjective) soft (plural noun) fans. And no one after drinking old (type of drink) soda desires new (type of drink) water, but says, “The (first type of drink) soda is (adjective) rough.”’

Put Me In, Coach (Youth Ministry Version)

John Vest has a nice post marking the 10 year anniversary of his full-time youth ministry career. Check back here in February of 2018 to read my 10 year reflections.

Fully aware of all I don’t know, I recently began a journey to become a better minister to the young people God calls me to serve. The Youth Ministry Coaching Program (YMCP) is the brainchild of Mark Oestreicher . Marko (as he’s known in the youth ministry universe) has written a handful of useful youth ministry books, particularly about middle school ministry. Last year I read his book Youth Ministry 3.0 and have blogged about it a few times. YMCP is a chance to interact with him around some of those ideas and to learn from a cohort of youth ministers.

Our first of six two-day gatherings was last week, and I’m already buzzing with insights from Marko and the cohort. I also had a chance to present some of my questions about A New Culture of Learning. Oh, and I have homework. This is going to be good.

See the promotional video below.

Meditate on This

Help me understand something that’s happening with the youth ministry I’m responsible for:

A student of mine (call him Steve), on his own initiative and without consulting me, approached an adult in our community to teach him and some of his friends meditation, and he offered the church as a sponsor and venue. The adult in question is known to me, and I regard her highly.

I spoke with her, and we scheduled three dates for a meditation experience that she would lead at the church. We sent out general publicity to our roster of students via email and text, but I insisted that participants primarily be recruited through Steve. I wanted him to invite his friends.

I couldn’t attend the first week (another adult did), but I attended last night. There were nine students there. Two of them are part of our congregation. The other seven represented Steve and six of his friends (five of which were girls). Steve’s mom is discouraged at the lack of participation by church youth, but my reaction is the exact opposite. I love this.

I love it because I have a growing conviction that ministry as a platform and youth ministry 3.0 insights are for real. During the last program year I blogged about Maggie and her use of a couple of church programs as platforms for her and her friends to do good work. This seems to me to be the same thing. Except it’s Steve and his friends.

Going into next year, it seems that several youth ministry “participant communities” are emerging. While there is still the traditional community of students from the church who come to weekly youth groups, there is also the community of Steve and his friends and the community of Maggie and her friends. The challenge will be to work with that traditional community on programming for them while also discerning opportunities to work with those other communities in meaningful ways.

Help me out: is this the right way to be interpreting what’s happening? Where else do you see this happening, and how does one discern well opportunities to do good work with new communities of students?

Converting Graduate Recognition Sunday

A few months ago a pastor friend of mine fretted to me about the church’s inability to retain youth into their college years. “90 % of youth who participate in church as high school students don’t in college,” he said. “And 90% of those who do in college don’t as young adults.”

I don’t know where my friend got his figures, but I’m inclined to believe them. What I don’t believe, though, is his framing of the problem. It’s not a failure of retention, but of conversion. We are failing to convert young people into more mature and responsible forms of church participation and leadership.

I don’t think the church is served by retaining Janie Straight-A Student into her young adulthood, at least not as she is in high school. She’s a gift to the church as a high school student. But as she grows and learns, her participation in church life, her understanding of God and her experience of faith, all need to be converted into something more than they were when she was 17.

Which brings me to Graduate Recognition, which our congregation will celebrate this Sunday. We will parade our five high school graduates up front, where I will fuss over them and lead the congregation in praying for and blessing them. I don’t see any reason NOT to do this. It’s a valuable ritual for the students and for the congregation that has invested in their nurture and growth.

What I do feel a need to differently, though, is pray. Whereas previous Graduate Recognition Sundays have had an air of, well, graduation, about them, I hope to give this one an air of commissioning. That we are sending these students out to the next phase in their life and that we still exercise a claim on them (and they on us) is what I wan’t to communicate. Even if they weren’t all relocating geographically, this would still be true. We are blessing them for the next phase of their faith journey, which remains intact in its current youthful form both to their and the church’s peril.

The Ecstasy And The Agony of The Youth Retreat

We took our junior high and high school youth to a retreat last weekend put on by our denomination’s local camp and conference center. It was the first foray in a long while for our church into this camp’s programming–or any camp programming for that matter (more on that later).

Our students made really valuable connections with students from other churches in our area, which was encouraging. To me, that’s a huge part of why you do retreats like that in favor of retreating with only your church’s youth. Literally within minutes of arriving, some of our students were talking with complete strangers on their own initiative.

The volunteer staff were college students who led high-quality group games and facilitated small groups. I think the model of faith provided by these volunteer staff for the youth was very positive.

The setting was ideal: mountains, snow, sun. It made for an entire afternoon of sledding and making snowmen and snowball fights. And students came in from the snow to a big lodge with a fire burning. Recreation meets comfort meets community. It was fantastic, and our students seemed to have an overwhelmingly positive experience.

Yet . . .

Our students came from the most theologically progressive church represented, I’m sure, and the content of the retreat was notably out of step in tone and tune from what we’re nurturing them in back home. I’m not interested in a sustained critique, and I think readers of this blog will know what I mean when I describe guitar-led, male pronoun-dominated praise songs filled with images of divine Kingship, sacrifice, and blood alongside devotional talks pressing kids to make a decision for Jesus.

I wrestled all weekend with two things: first, I believe it’s a good thing for our youth to be exposed to Christians from across the theological and denominational spectrum. Neither the church nor the world is served by communities of Christians rearing their young in isolation from one another with their own branded God talk.

But how do we both include our youth in those gatherings while also taking an active role in shaping them so that our youth can actually recognize what’s being presented and not experience it as a foreign language? For what it’s worth, I used my evaluation form to volunteer to help plan the next one.

Second, my experience has indicated that Christian camps, even those of mainline Protestant denominations, are irreducibly tilted towards the evangelical experience of faith. Liberal churches, then, are more likely to abstain from the church-wide camp or retreat experience altogether than they are to engage with that culture.

I’m certainly missing something here, right?

In Response To Timothy Eldred (or The Elephant in The Mainline Youth Ministry Room)

In a typical post on a good youth ministry blog, Timothy Eldred drills down to the core of everything youth ministry is about:

There is only one objective for youth ministry – for the whole church in fact. That goal also defines the purpose of ministry clearly and concisely. It is synthesized with one dynamic word: discipleship. It is the last word Jesus spoke when he commissioned his faithful few. It was his number one priority and our number one failure.

Because I don’t agree with Timothy, I have a problem. Or he does.

A comprehensive analysis of “discipleship” as a lens for doing ministry–any ministry–is beyond the scope of any blog post. And it wouldn’t help. Because this problem is not for lack of analysis. Timothy’s analysis is sound, and his elevation of discipleship as the sole objective for the church is compelling. Youth ministries from Kalamazoo to Kenya are surely thriving with just such an understanding.

But I’m not in that boat, and neither is the church I serve. And this is the elephant in the mainline youth ministry room. Especially among those congregations on the left side of the theological spectrum, “discipleship” does not seem to appear as a useful way of describing the life of faith. There doesn’t seem to be a singular preferred alternative, in my experience, but the longer I steward the youth ministry of just such a congregation the more I feel the failure of “discipleship” to contribute anything to my work.

The grown ups in my students’ congregation don’t employ discipleship-speak. The preachers don’t use it. It doesn’t appear in the prayers and hymns on Sunday morning, either. It’s not in the vocabulary of the faith in which they are being reared. That’s not a critique. Discipleship’s absence is surely no accident. But it doesn’t change the shape of the problem.

Succinctly put, the problem is this: Timothy and I both care deeply about youth ministry, yet we would seem to be drilling for very different minerals, so to speak. I’ll propose some alternatives to discipleship in my context in a later post, but for now, does this seem like an accurate statement of a problem? Or am I imagining things?