I want my church’s weekly Sunday morning youth groups to grow in the coming year towards being taught by church members. I want my work and the work of youth ministry staff to focus more on developing curriculum and enabling church members as teachers who are discipling young people.

A few things have to happen for this change to take place. For starters, curriculum resources have to be developed or acquired far enough in advance to teachers to get comfortable with them and plan adjustments as suit them. Writing up a Sunday session on Thursday won’t work anymore.

Also, time has to be committed to review teachers’ experience, to listen to where they feel they are thriving and where they feel stuck, and then to work toward growth, both for the teachers and for program design. It won’t do to heave a curriculum over the wall at teachers with a “Good luck!” in September and then wait for them to ask for help. We need to commit to a year’s worth of review gatherings now.

We’re a couple of months away from the start of youth groups, and I have a list of things I’m hoping for. This is just the first one.

We engage the new work of people whose old work worked for us. Acquire first, listen later. The new work doesn’t need to be like the old work, only connected to it.

I added these July 14 album releases to my library without hearing a note, based solely on my experience with the artists associated with them. The work you do today buys you a chance to be heard next year, or next decade.

Offa Rex, The Queen of Hearts

A collaboration between The Decemberists and Olivia Chaney that covers a bill of traditional folk songs, like “The Old Church Yard”:

Oh Wonder, Ultralife

Their gutsy project of uploading one song to Soundcloud a month for 12 months before releasing them all as an album back in 2015 made me a fan. This one is billed as a conventional album.

Waxahatchee, Out in The Storm

Waxahatchee is a Katie Crutchfield, a singer whose voice is like sandpaper–to an itch. I would listen to hear read the American Health Care Act.

Lo Tom, Lo Tom

I was never into Pedro The Lion, but frontman David Bazan’s solo albums have done a number on my attention. If he’s connected to it, I want to hear it. Lo Tom is a side project that involves former Pedro members.

Whose work will you engage based solely on what they’ve already done?

I can seize upon the flawed analogy to mock the entire argument, but what is that getting me, really? What does it do for my learning, for my influence and impact, for my growth as a person and as a leader, to stand in a dismissive posture over another’s earnest argument?

Being right is less important than being constructive.

The story about the fancy sandwich shop does not carry the weight that David Brooks wants it to, a fact the internet seized upon with vigor. I’m no Brooks booster; I read his column only haphazardly. But I read this one, and, even with the flimsy illustration, I took its central claim to heart: that “cultural signifiers” combine with structural advantages to privilege the educated, upper-middle-class in America. “How am I contributing to this problem?” I asked myself.

I asked a closed group of trusted friends in a private message thread, too, and I was spared their derision, even though some of them may have thought the question misguided. I doubt the same civil reception would have been granted by a broader, more public, social network. Which is why I share almost nothing to Facebook anymore. I have learned my lesson.

I fear we are creating an environment where the cost of being wrong is so high that fewer and fewer people even risk it. Instead, masses of people keep their opinions to themselves, certain of enlightened condemnation should their articulation falter in even one aspect.

David Brooks doesn’t need the help, sure. But it’s not just about the columnist. It’s also about readers with whom constructive, solution-oriented conversation might be had, if not for a snark-fueled social media pile on over a single illustration.

Be constructive. If you’re right, we’ll know it.

 

Meaningful work over the long haul demands adaptation. This is as true in ministry as it is in education as it is in journalism as it is in parenting as it is in on and on and on.

The trick is that adaptation is never strictly a technical process, but is loaded down with value judgments. This scene from “Moneyball” nails it. Adaptation is improvement to some and capitulation to others.

When you’re mulling an adaptation and that voice in your head is telling you, “You’re listening to the wrong people. You’re not gonna win,” hear it out. Then proceed.

 

I start all my youth events with name activities. I draw a lot of them from Stanley Pollack’s Moving Beyond Icebreakers. Being known by name is a basic experience people should have in church, and youth ministry provides a socially acceptable way to goof around while learning peoples’ names. This one is probably my favorite.

I struggle with adults though. My default introduction when I greet a grown up at church whose name I don’t know has become, “I’m sure you’ve told me your name, but I forgot it.” People are readily understanding, but you can only do that so many times before it becomes insulting. After awhile, you just quit asking, or you whisper to a colleague, “What’s that guy’s name again?!” Sometimes they don’t know either.

Just to say: learning and remembering peoples’ names is something I can get better at.

 

There were some baptisms in worship yesterday. Dolled up babies and beaming parents, camera clicking grandparents and neck-craning congregants in the 13th pew. It’s a great scene.

The babies inevitably fuss and cry, though, both during the baptism and the remainder of the service. That’s not a problem for me. I subscribe to the sentiment of one of my seminary professors who said she appreciates when babies cry during baptisms because it indicates that at least somebody appreciates the gravity of what’s happening.

I think the sound of fussing children is a great indicator of church vitality, and I feel generally that grown ups who are irritated by ill tempered children in public places like airplanes and churches need to relax.

But I realized during yesterday’s service that “It’s not a problem for me” is not entirely true. When the whines and protests of wriggly children ring out during worship, I  get tense. If I’m speaking when a it starts, I suddenly become conscious of my volume and my pace. If someone else is speaking, I scan the pews with my eyes to see if congregants are reacting. I exert every ounce of willpower I have to not look at the child.

The noise is not a problem for me. The problem is my awareness of the noise’s effect on other people, most critically the parents.

Most of the time, parents already feel embarrassed and self-conscious when their child makes noise during a service. They don’t need annoyed looks from other people. That sends the exact wrong signal about welcome and the place of children in church.

I once was part of a church that took the dramatic step of placing rocking chairs and blankets in the back of its small sanctuary, so that parents with infants wouldn’t be forced to leave the service if the infant got fussy. It was a great idea, but in practice it didn’t work. Whenever those chairs got used, people stared and rolled their eyes, even some of the people who championed the idea to begin with.

Babies crying in church is a problem for me. I admit it. I start to freak out internally that the parents are going to feel unwelcome. No doubt that comes across as a reaction to the baby.

I need to quit doing that.

Get out of your home community.

Initiate relationships with people whose lives are appreciably different from yours.

Do helpful work.

Make partnerships.

Repeat.

This is my process for a worthwhile short-term mission trip. The “Repeat” step means there is value in returning multiple times to the same place. There is a well-documented pull in planning mission trips to mix it up and expose students to a variety of places, a pull that is not without merit. But I’m at a point now where I am less interested in that particular pull than I am in another pull, the one that brings me back to the same place and the same partners more than once.

Going back multiple times to work with the same people in the same place forces the issue of what a mission trip is for. It’s not tourism. It’s not heroism. The weeds my students pulled and the brush they cleared from a church parking lot in East Detroit last week is growing back even now; I want them to see that. I want them to attack it with the same sense of purpose the second time as they did the first, because it’s no less helpful for the fact that they already did it.

The leaders my students worked with and learned from aren’t going anywhere either. I want to expose new youth to those leaders, and I want youth who have worked with them once to grow in their appreciation for those leaders’ challenges and contributions. That is second-level stuff. You have to go back for it to happen.

I have no concrete plans at the minute, but I am without a doubt starting next year’s planning with the conviction that going back to the place we just left is a valuable proposition.

 

The night before we returned home from our most recent mission trip, I lay awake assembling a playlist for the next day’s six hour van ride.

Here’s what I ended up with.

It was a rousing success. For over three hours, students sang along, remarking how much they liked the playlist. A sixth grader asked how he could get it. Answer: come on the next mission trip.

I am glad to share with you the secret sauce.

Everything is upbeat. Nothing is offensive or embarrassing. Most of the songs are decades old.

The selections fall roughly into three categories:

1. Songs I like and think are fun for road trips but that are not widely known by middle schoolers (“101,” “You Don’t Treat Me No Good No More,” “Dreams”)
2. Songs the group had learned in the van the previous four days (“Don’t Shuffle Me Back,” “Odds Are”)
3. Songs I had caught people singing to themselves at some point on the trip (“Take On Me,” “You’ll Be Back,” “Elvira”)

That last one was key. I explicitly asked students for their favorite songs, and most couldn’t tell me. But when songs came on that I knew they knew because I had overheard them singing it, though they didn’t know I had heard them singing it, their faces lit up. It was super fun.

It’s a little frivolous, sure, but sing along music substantially enhances a long van ride with middle schoolers, both for them and for me.

Postscript:

The album Ladies And Gentlemen: Barenaked Ladies And The Persuasions served me very well on this trip. It was my default any time we were in the van. By the fourth day, kids were clamoring for “Don’t Shuffle Me Back” in particular when we went anywhere.

Often the things that feel most memorable on a mission trip are the things that weren’t on the schedule. There are few better experiences for young people (and adults) to develop patience and spontaneity as a mission trip. On this last one we:

• Organized an impromptu pizza and game night after our planned evening activity was rained out. This was on the last night of the trip, and the activity was one students had been looking forward to all week. Nobody complained.
• Split our group in two on a moment’s notice when a service site could only accommodate six of the 20 people who showed up. The decision about who would go where was made quickly and with minimal deliberation, and both groups had terrific experiences at their sites that morning.
• Enjoyed a brief Frostie stop when we were ahead of schedule for dinner. $.50 Frosties means the church invested a total of $9 and only the planning required to find the Wendy’s in Google Maps. Win.

Students and leaders should hear from the very beginning that we have no way of knowing everything that we will be doing on a mission trip, and that’s part of the fun. No doubt it’s part of the challenge, too; people invest time and energy into making schedules for these things, so it can be intensely frustrating when plans don’t work out. But, as much as sweating and praying, mission trips are for responding to changing circumstances to seize opportunities or to endure disappointment. Both are critical skills for faith and life.