People keep saying it: caring about what you do makes all the difference in the world. It makes a difference to you, but it also makes a huge difference to the people around you. Working with people who are motivated more to make a positive impact than to advance themselves is fun; some days anything feels possible.

Caring is risky, though. Some environments discourage caring by fiercely protecting the status quo. If we’re not willing to go along when colleagues want to try new things to make improvements, it will remain difficult for them to care very much about what we’re doing.

I have had the great benefit for most of my career to work with people who care a lot about what they do and who encourage me to care just as much. I see it now–that has been invaluable.

Editing is where you make your money. Moving this paragraph before that one, taking out that superfluous use of “incidentally,” cutting that last sentence entirely. The fun part of writing is the editing.

But if you’re not writing, you won’t have anything to edit.

So start writing.

I’m fooling around with the structure of 8th grade Confirmation, because the structure I inherited is too good for me. It contains years of organization and established processes that reflect deep thinking. The team of volunteers know it and can faithfully lead it.

And here I go tinkering with it.

The major tweak is to give myself more face-to-face time with students in the form of bi-weekly salon-style lectures on topics extracted from the Brief Statement of Faith. In odd weeks, then, I’m preparing conversation guides for the volunteers and their Circle Groups. It’s not a perfect system. Yet. It’s not even one I intended to design.

Last month I designed a session on The Crucifixion that followed our conventional pattern: 20 minutes of introductory remarks from me followed by 30 minutes of Circle Group discussion. But 10 minutes into my time students started asking questions. Some back-and-forth ensued, and when my time was up I hadn’t covered half of what I needed to. So, on the fly, I decided to push the Circle Group discussion to the following week and spend the rest of the hour mixing it up with 8th graders about Jesus’ death.

It was fun. So for yesterday’s Resurrection discussion, I planned mostly Q&A. I put a simple guide (below) together using Kim Fabricius’ “10 Propositions on The Resurrection,” and off we went. It wasn’t flawless; it took into the third or fourth proposition for students to take the bait and start asking questions. But once they did the rest of the time flew, and with interesting stuff. One of them offered the concept of zero gravity as an analog to proposition 4. Another refuted that. Fun.

But not for everyone. As with all curriculum, the approach resonates with some, not all, participants. The challenge is to introduce elements in subsequent sessions that draw on different aptitudes and intelligences: kinesthetic, verbal, etc. But it feels better right now to build those in week-to-week and to not attempt to represent all of them in every session.

This doesn’t work without those volunteers’ willingness to adapt what they’re used to doing. That’s a big ask. This is an already intensive program that demands loads of time and energy from adult leaders. If this is too disruptive for them, I’ll have to take that seriously.

This is what technology can do.

Day: Thursday, November 17th

Time: 4:36 pm

Place: The Red Line train from Chicago Avenue to Belmont; the Brown Line train from Belmont to Western

Medium: Facebook Messenger

Object: A colleague and friend who occupies a similar position to mine in a similar church

Subject: Work

Details: I interrupted him on my commute home with a flurry of pronouncements. He, ever so gracious, asked a series of clarifying questions and informed affirmations. The exchange ended when I arrived to pick up my daughter from school.

Best line: “If we can’t do this for one another then what are we doing?”

Outcome: Anxiety=reduced. Perspective=gained.

 

The phonies we fall far are the ones we want to fall for: the “news” story about the other candidate’s hidden past; the amazing weight loss plan that permits unchecked eating; the gadget that guarantees newfound simplicity.

In the bazaar of communication that we’re all strolling through every moment of every day, the comforting trinkets of self deception and quick fixes can be had on every corner. Honestly, they’re not that hard to spot. One indicator is the enthusiasm of crowds. If lots of our colleagues are all of a sudden atwitter about a revelation that “changes everything,” we should wait a week before adopting it.

Style and flourish are also giveaways. They’re there to mask a lack of substance. The gem that sparkles overmuch is clearly a fraud. The headline that announces, “You won’t believe what happened next” is telling you what to do with it: don’t believe it. The job that recruits with glossy photos of employees driving sports cars is a pyramid scheme.

It’s not hard to spot a fake.

 

 

 

The three keynote talks I gave at the high school youth retreat last weekend were a convenient vehicle for reviving my flagging Biblical storytelling practice. After watching Casey Wait Fitzgerald tell Bible stories at a NEXT Church event in 2014, I started playing around with the technique (with Casey’s help). I’ve memorized and told about half a dozen stories in worship services since then. It’s been several months though.

So I said “Yes” to keynoting a youth retreat and convinced the organizer to let me try telling one long Biblical story over three keynote addresses. Since the retreat theme was “Anchored,” drawing on the phrase from Hebrews 6:19 about the “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” that is our hope, I picked a nautical story: Acts 27, Paul’s sea journey to Italy and eventual shipwreck on Malta.

Breaking a long story into multiple storytelling episodes was fun. Also, since there were 45 minutes allotted to each keynote, I had time to explain the story’s context and educate the audience about nautical terms like “lee” and “weighing anchor.” I projected a map behind me and used a laser pointer to trace the journey. The drama of washing ashore on Malta and not making it to our destination was pretty satisfying.

I haven’t seen the retreat evaluations yet, but it felt like the students connected to the story. If nothing else, it allowed me to pick up storytelling as a discipline again, which feels important.

I helped run a youth retreat this weekend, just three days after the Presidential election. Nothing about our planning anticipated the potentially charged atmosphere over the outcome and how that might effect the kids who came on the retreat. So we made a brief statement on the first night about how there’s lots of different feelings in the room about the outcome, and while it’s okay to talk about the election, please do so respectfully. No chanting.

It mostly worked to preserve an environment of recreation and reflection. Some of the leaders reflected as we were leaving that we appreciated a couple of days to turn off all things electoral. But I’m hearing a little bit of student feedback that is disappointed we didn’t make time during the retreat for youth to process it together.

For the youth groups that gathered back home this weekend–the kids who didn’t go on the retreat–, I asked volunteers to leave space for youth to talk about the election. But for the large retreat some of our students went on? Nope.

I’m not sure how that would have gone. A workshop maybe? I spoke during the retreat, and my talks only obliquely made mention of the situation. I never named a candidate. Could I have done something there?

I think the majority of retreat participants were not interested in getting into the election. They wanted a retreat from all that. But it would have been good for some kids, and I wish I’d thought of it.

Before you blow up the system, ask yourself three questions.

1. Is the system really the problem? Should my anger be directed at something else? The people who are goading me on to pull the pin, what do they stand to gain from a system reduced to rubble?
2. Who is this system even for? It’s not working for me right now, for sure. I’m not getting the things I need, the things I used to get. But who is getting what they need from the system as it stands? Wealthy people? Poor people? Disenfranchised or privileged people? The people who are working to preserve the system, what do they stand to lose if it goes up in smoke?
3. What comes next? After I have flexed my muscles for destruction, what is it that I dream of building? Am I even thinking past the demolition?

Blowing up the system may still be what you want to do, but if you’ve asked these questions you can rest easy in your reasons and minimize the time between clearing rubble and putting up scaffolding.

“If they’re shooting at you, you know you’re doing something right.”

I’ve seen every episode of The West Wing, and that is my favorite line from any of them. I’ve used it in more than one sermon, and, since the bleak dawn of Wednesday morning, it keeps coming to mind. As I listen to podcasts and read papers trying to explain America’s election of an unapologetic misogynist and racist, Andrew Macintosh from technical support is emerging as my source of solace.

 

What Tuesday revealed was hiding in plain sight for at least eight years: tens of millions of our compatriots resent the change in America that elevated an African American to its highest elected office and that unapologetically pursued an agenda of marriage equality for LGBT persons, deferred deportations for undocumented migrants, affordable health care for the uninsured, and stricter regulations on carbon emissions for the sake of the climate. President Obama has stood for multiracial leadership and a more collaborative posture towards the rest of the world, and for many, many citizens of this country, that is loathsome.

Good.

I wonder how we would assess the impact of the past eight years if the champions of a crusading, white, male-driven hegemony had not been upset by it. I wonder if making enemies among those whose vision of America is stuck in the post WWII era culture and economics is the worst thing you could achieve as a progressive. I don’t think it is.

Yes, we will have to learn to work together. Many of the gleeful victors of this election are not persuadable (if you love David Duke . . . ), but many more are. If the gains for inclusion and equality that have been made since ’08 are erased in a stroke over the next four years, then this observation will provide little solace. But it feels like, of all the emotions stampeding over the bodies of the vanquished this week, perhaps we should add satisfaction that what we are working on is worthy of such opposition.

If they’re shooting at you, you know you’re doing something right.

Nobody said this was going to be easy. Progress does not breed more progress, but reaction. Take it on the chin. Let it sink in: millions of your compatriots are attracted to a strong man with ugly manners and hateful rhetoric whose main appeal is that he “speaks his mind.” Or, rather, millions of your compatriots prefer that strong man to a woman  with 30 years of public service and concrete plans to help children and the poor.

Time to get to work.

Make beautiful things. Connect with your fellow humans. Listen. Care.

Resist the siren call of victimhood, the sweet whistle of rage, the adrenaline of scapegoating. Nobody promised us an unimpeded path to a better world. We have to fight for it.

Now’s when we find out what we’re made of.