Enlisting people is leadership, and there are no “right” people. Do the people we enlist share our vision and our values, and are they qualified and skilled enough to carry them out? Do they enjoy what we’re working on? Are they professionals, even if they’re not paid? Do they want to learn? Do they want to work with us? Do they like us?

Then they’re right.

Enlisting the first person we can find to fill a slot is a mistake, but so is carrying more than we ought to while we wait for the “right” person.

 

Of course, I didn’t know it until after, only a couple of hours after. I went straight from the church to the urgent care clinic. The bus had barely pulled away. One of the dedicated volunteers stayed with the last student awaiting pickup as I hailed a Lyft to make the 3:20 appointment my wife made for me when I texted her my symptoms on the way home.

As I waited for the “provider” to return to the exam room with my prescription, I texted those dedicated leaders that I had exposed them to Strep all weekend. Then I used the Remind app–the one we send travel updates to parents with–to warn them that their kids had been exposed.

That is some post-retreat work I hope to never do again.

Last week I thumbed through the sample book for the new Presbyterian Confirmation curriculum. It’s built around the traditional membership questions both youth and adults answer when they profess faith and join the church:

• Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world?
• Who is your Lord and Savior?
• Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple obeying his word and showing his love?
• Will you devote yourself to the church’s teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers?

I like this approach. I’m about to lead my third Confirmation retreat structured around the first three of these questions. I think they are the appropriate focus for Confirmation.

I also spent some time last week with the new “Cultivated Ministry” field guide produced by a team of NEXT Church leaders. It’s a simple tool for thinking about assessment in terms that are broader than budgets and worship attendance. It makes a clear distinction between outputs, the programs we run and the people who participate in them, and outcomes, the impact that participation has on peoples’ lives. It is a critical distinction.

My mind is mashing these two things together.

Maybe the traditional membership questions are outputs. Maybe we can measure the impact of youth group and worship and Confirmation by the measurable ways in which the people who come to those things renounce evil, obey Christ’s word, show his love, and devote themselves to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

For some, a text is a telegram: composed by a particular person at a particular time, the text’s meaning is clear and doesn’t change. The contemporary reader has direct access to author’s mind in the matter.

To others, a text is a conversation, not only between the author and the reader, but also with all the other readers and hearers in the room, all the editors and redactors who have come before, all the people who carried the text before it was put to paper. The contemporary reader does not have direct access to the author’s mind and wouldn’t want it even if she had it. Those other voices are as much a part of the text’s meaning as the letters initially inked on parchment.

I think the second view is the one that takes a text more seriously.

Cohorts are having a moment. Most of the circles I run in have at the very least experimented with some cohort-based initiatives for continuing education and professional development. I’ve participated in some. I’ve organized others.

I’m kind of a fan of the cohort.

It’s not a class. There is no teacher up front delivering lectures while you scribble (or type) notes. You will not be tested. Check that. You won’t be tested on course material. You will be tested on the value you add to the group, measured in attention and questions.

Though there’s no teacher, a good cohort has a strong leader, and the leader even teaches some. Mostly, though, she sets up and guards processes for exploration. She makes sure the cohort is accomplishing what its participants need it to accomplish.

The curriculum for a cohort is what the participants bring with them. The cohort I was in required each of us to make two presentations about an issue we were dealing with or a question we were working out. Tell us what the issue is, then tell us what kind of help you need. Help us help you.

It is a very helpful combination of democratic, user-driven structure and expert leadership. The two things a cohorts needs to succeed are curious participants and a skilled leader. That’s it.

Where’s your cohort? Want to start one?

Note: Presbyterian youth workers in Illinois and Indiana can sign up now for the cohort I’m organizing. It’s a Youth Ministry Coaching Program cohort, the one I did, led by Mark Oestreicher of the Youth Cartel. It’s starting next fall. Half the cost for each participant is covered by a generous grant from the Synod of Lincoln Trails. Click here to sign up. 

There might be a correlation between the impact of our work and the number of “thank you”s we’re delivering.

Does saying “thank you” more often heighten the impact of our work? Maybe. But that’s not where I’m going. No, I’m wondering if “thank you” can be takes as evidence of impact.

Since January I have burned through two entire packets of my favorite Thank You cards. I have sent them to numerous people who have worked with me on things that made heavy demands on their time, attention, and energy, things that we had not tried before and that I could not have done solo. The rest of my remaining packet will get burned next week thanking leaders of local faith communities, staff colleagues, and the college student participants in our first ever Urban Youth Mission interfaith alternative spring break.

Maybe writing lots of Thank You cards is a sign that we’re working on things that are bigger than us, whose impact, too, is bigger than us.

Yesterday we had youth ushers and a youth Beadle in worship. The litany of confession was led by three youth. The Prayer for Illumination and Psalter reading: both led by youth.

They all crushed it.

Meanwhile, the first four pews on the pulpit side were full of youth.

We’ve been at this since October, scheduling all youth participation in the 11:00 worship service on the first Sunday of each month and recruiting student leaders for the service, and yesterday was as good as its been.

And the thought that occurred to me in the middle of it? It’s not enough.

Worship participation is important. Singing the hymns and praying the prayers are things youth do alongside adults–as adults. In congregations that have traditionally planned youth ministry at the same time as worship, figuring out ways to expose teenagers to the worshiping congregation feels critical.

But it’s not enough.

Discipleship is more than worship. If we orient youth ministry toward Sunday worship participation–even Sunday worship leadership–without also setting youth up to serve their neighbors, grow in faith, and deepen relationships with friends and strangers, we’re leaving a lot on the discipleship table.

I’m thrilled about our experiments to engage youth in corporate worship. There’s mroe of that to come. But I’m not satisfied.

It’s not enough.

The preaching at the NEXT Church conference this week was astounding. We heard from three preachers who were lively, engaging, and deeply thoughtful, which should surprise no one; the NEXT pulpit has been hosting fine homileticians since the movement’s inception.

Check out all the sermons below.

If the national gathering is taken as representative, then I think we can say two things about the kind of preaching driving the NEXT church.

1. NEXT preaching is performative. Every one of the sermons was delivered with careful attention to the details of presentation. Timing, pace, volume, movement: the sermons we saw this week embraced performance elements as integral to the gospel they proclaimed.
2. NEXT preaching is all about that narrative. Not the Lowry Loop. Not Plot and Moves. Not illustrations. Actual narrative. Stories–about ice cream cones and camping trips and vacations. I’m willing to bet that at least one of the preachers in Baltimore has participated in a Moth Story Slam. Storytelling has made its way into the heart of how NEXT Church preachers conceive of the preaching task.

NEXT is not proposing preaching modalities for the church. At least not directly. I think the preachers at the national gatherings embody the movement’s convictions, though, about what effective preaching looks and sounds like in our era.

What else do you notice?

A new friend asks, “Why don’t the multiple churches in my community, some of which don’t run any youth ministry activities, work together on community-wide youth ministry?”

My gut response is that they don’t because they don’t exist. Tina the part time Youth Director exists. Steve the retired dentist who teaches high school Bible study exists. Becca the Solo Pastor exists.

People can work together. But for that to happen, either Becca or Tina or Steve has to take the permission to call or email the other two and propose something they can say “yes” or “no” to.

Let’s try a weekly youth group together.

Let’s plan a retreat together.

Let’s organize a community service day together.

If they say “no,” then the answer to my new friend’s question is basically, “Because Tina/Steve/Becca didn’t want to.”

Or the answer might be, “They do.”

We kept setting up the junior high youth group room as a circle of chairs. We did this because we want to facilitate community and connection among our students, and because we don’t want youth group to feel like a school classroom.

We kept having trouble with the junior high youth group. Disruptions were constant. A small group of students simply could not stop talking to one another, talking over their peers, talking, talking, talking.

We changed the circle of chairs into a setup with tables, and though the talking did not stop, it was limited to the peers at the table, and it was directed to the activity we wanted the students working on.

The way a room is set up has a direct effect on the kind of community we can achieve in that space. And sometimes too much connection is a barrier to community.