There is more media content for a person to consume than there ever has been, and I spend most of my content consuming time feeling guilty for not consuming some other kind of content. Unless I’m reading.

There’s a content hierarchy my mind defaults to:

Books

Kindle books

Audio Books

Podcasts

Blogs

Television Shows and Movies

YouTube Videos

Unless I’m reading an actual bound book, I feel lazy. Yet books are what I use the least. My phone makes audio and blog content available for my commute, and I take full advantage. Podcasts and audio books and Feedly are my constant companions. If I’m feeling especially virtuous on the bus, I’ll read my Kindle. But I almost never sit down with a book.

Check that. I sit down and read from a book at the end of nearly every day, when I read for 30 minutes to my daughter. In the past 15 months I’ve read seven Harry Potters, three Lemony Snickets, and even a book by Salman Rushdie. Presently I’m reading the first Percy Jackson. Aloud. Every word of each of these books is read aloud.

All I’m saying is that if I didn’t have a seven year-old I would never read paper books.

The first 90 days in a new position feel like an opportune time to rig up some small experiments. Invite someone to run a brand new fundraiser. Throw a camping trip on the calendar. Propose some refurbishments.

I see two distinct advantages to experimenting quickly and aggressively. First, if even one of your experiments work, you and your new team get a little victory under your belt that will build some energy and cohesion.

Just as important, though, is your experiments’ failure. Since it’s small it doesn’t cost much to fail, and when it does you and your team can process some very valuable learning.

Perhaps it will never be easier to experiment than it is in the first few months. Your energy is high and your team doesn’t know you well enough yet to realize that you’re making it up as you go.

All ministry is making it up as we go. Embracing that reality with an ethos of experimentation is a lot more fun than laboring to project expertise.

I watched a teenager get annoyed yesterday because she was told to stop working. She’d been flipping pancakes for hours, experimenting with her technique, perfecting it, and she did not want to stop. She was in “flow,” and she resisted the instruction to stop.

What a great problem to have.

I’m growing wary of the “volunteer” label for the men and women who work with youth in our congregation. Technically correct, the designation feels limited to showing up, chaperoning, making sure nobody runs with scissors. Further, calling some adults “volunteers” creates a distinction between those folks and “staff,” a distinction that can easily perpetuate a practice of youth ministry that is dictated by professionals and fails to take full advantage of all the talent in the congregation.

That’s the term I’ve been employing more and more in place of “volunteer”: talent.

Teenagers in churches are surrounded by writers, video producers, actors, physicians, teachers, counselors, social workers, bankers, and a broad range of professionals (and retirees) in other fields. They’re swimming in a sea of talent. I want them to know that, and I want the talent to believe that the things they know and are interested in matter to the church’s teens. This is the desire behind our Summer Youth Bizarre idea–surfacing talent.

Maybe supplanting “volunteer” with “talent” is a tactical mistake though. Maybe supplement?

Volunteering is valuable. People have jobs. People have aging parents, kids, and sick friends. Showing up ain’t nothing.

Maybe a church needs multiple circles or tiers of adults who are working with youth: a talent tier, a volunteer tier, a staff tier, and even a governance tier.

 

 

Blogging from a Starbucks this morning, awaiting the arrival of a youth leader for an early morning get-to-know-you. Straight from here I will hop a bus down Michigan Avenue to see the Chamber Singers from Claremont High School song in this big choral festival. Because of Will.

Will invited me by text three days ago, which is weird because I’ve known Will for five years and never once traded texts with him. He’s in 12th grade now, and he’s that rare breed of high school student without a phone. Since 8th grade, he has suffered the ribbing of his friends at the after school youth group for this. Even as he’s led a couple of four piece rock bands, crushing Frontbottoms covers–their inaugural gig was one of my proudest youth worker experiences–he hasn’t been allowed this otherwise critical piece of adolescent socialization.

Will is resilient. He’s in Chamber Singers now, and part of a national competition, but only after two failed auditions. He kept at it. Now I get to watch him sing in Chicago.

Here’s to Will and to every young person who keeps after what they want, and who invite me to be there, even with a borrowed phone.

Yesterday my family was led around the Ranaissance Pleasure Faire by my daughter’s second grade schoolmate, who knows the place intimately, since her parents are both faire performers. Her dad spins yarn in the town square (he’s actually a computer coder) while her mom performs at various shows throughout the day (she’s actually a high school English teacher–that makes more sense).

This is what their family does Saturday and Sunday for seven consecutive weekends every year. This hot, dusty, slightly overdone mock-up of all things vaguely Elizabethan–so. many. corsets.–this is their thing. And these accented, always-slightly-bawdy, kilted and  robed performers–these are their people.

My daughter’s schoolmate recognizes everybody at the place, from the washing wenches to the queen. She rides the maypole carousel for free and walks through the “performers only” doors without hindrance. The booth-lined lanes might be her own cul-de-sac and the food court her kitchen. And she’s not the only one. I watched dozens of costumed kids carry on free of adult supervision throughout the day.

Is this the experience of community many people come to church looking for, where their kids are known by everyone and inhabit the space with an unencumbered sense of belonging? I’ve wondered before on this blog how churches love children, like, what are the particular things they do to care for and nurture young people. Maybe a troupe of Ren Fest performers could teach us a thing or two about this.

What struck me most was how thoroughly the kids participate in the community’s organizing ethos. They’re costumed like their parents, and they, too, speak in bad English accents. And when the queen processes along the roadway, even though they’re not part of the performance, the costumed kids all arrest their own play to pay attention. They aren’t making distinctions between their own roles and the one played by the court jester, i.e. Jerry the the accountant from San Dimas.

These kids are full participants in a subculture to which their parents are highly committed. Maybe that is a step further than what most people have in mind when they come to your Presbyterian or Methodist church. But there’s something undeniably beneficial about it for the kids.

On Wednesday I posted about climbing Everest barefoot finding an apartment in Chicago, and by the day’s end I had a lead on a place that far surpasses anything I’ve found so far. The chain of people that produced that development goes back years and spans three states.

I have this friend from college. He made a friend from Oklahoma after college, and years after they met the three of us worked on a magazine together. My friend’s friend became my magazine friend.

Then, two years ago, my college friend and I found ourselves gelling with four other pastors as part of a professional development group. Last year that group added my magazine friend, my college friend’s Oklahoma friend.

You with me so far?

My magazine friend reads this blog. She saw Wednesday’s post. It turns out my magazine friend has a church camp friend who lives in Chicago and who, on Wednesday afternoon, shared this on Facebook, which my magazine friend promptly sent to me:

Hey Ever’body, The apartment upstairs is opening at the end of June. It’s a three bedroom with an enclosed porch and a garage. It is also in the Waters School district for any of you with kids. And just a block from the Rockwell Brown Line stop. Oh, and pets welcome (encouraged as far as Julie, The Boy, and I are concerned. If you’re interested, message me or Julie Burton Lewis, and we’ll give you further details.

I read that wasting time in the San Francisco airport and immediately replied to my magazine friend, who made a quick Messenger introduction and off we went. Within minutes I had the building owner’s email address, and before an hour was up I had arranged a phone call with him for the next morning.

We spoke. It sounds great. I’m hopeful, for the first time since this search began.

The whole thing makes me marvel at the relationships that tie us all together and the power those relationships have to make our lives better.

 

There’s so much talent in churches. Listening and looking for it, blessing it, and connecting it to other talent to shape the ministry of the church–that’s the way forward now. Nilofer Merchant says, “The Social Era is ultimately about the way connected individuals form an ensemble and create value together.”

I’m fond of team language, yet “ensemble” feels even better to me. An ensemble can improvise.

Youth ministry depends on the engagement of adults working together. Do youth directors invite congregants into a value-creating ensemble, though, or are we more in the habit of pleading with volunteers to execute tasks we’ve already decided make up the muscle of youth programming: teaching Sunday school; leading a small group; chaperoning a lock-in.

Organizing an ensemble that creates value for teenagers and the church may issue in programming that is filled with all those same tasks, and that’s fine; the tasks aren’t the point. Collaborative value-creation is the point.

We’re going to experiment with some ensemble forming this summer by inviting literally anyone from the congregation to propose a Sunday morning course for teenagers during June and July. The ensemble of folks we gather might produce things as diverse as a book reading group, a knitting circle, an improv troupe, a prayer team, or even a running squad. Whatever we make, we’ll make it as an ensemble.

Bring on the noise.