Barefoot Training - Wednesday, June 08, 2011
The old push back. Someone gives you a nudge and you nudge right back.
I enjoy a good intellectual push back. An intellectual push back helps us gain insight by looking at a situation from a new perspective. It also allows for a more robust dialogue and hopefully a more faithful engagement with the world. So I welcomed Mark Oestreicher’s (Marko) recent article This is Your Brain On Adolescence: A Push Back on Accepted Views of Underdeveloped Brains in the latest issue of Immerse Journal.
I suggest that you read Marko’s article in order to get the nuance of his push back. I won’t try to interpret it hear because it won’t do justice to the article.
Extended Adolescence is Real but Doesn’t Have to Be
Extended adolescence or emerging adulthood is a description of what is some believe to be a distinct developmental stage for people in their twenties. Some practicioners in psychology are attempting to describe the unique tasks that are emerging among the current generation of twenty-somethings who are delaying marriage, career choices, and other choices associated with adulthood.
A few years ago I relocated to Kansas City from rural Ohio. For some who are in more metropolitan areas they will read that and think not much of a change. But there are significant cultural differences between a blue collar rural township (not big enough to be a town) and a metropolitan area. The transition was full of surprises not the least being the realization that extended adolescence was a real phenomenon.
In the community that I came from most youth that I knew where working part-time before the age of 16 or just after. If they didn’t work for wages they had to work on the family farm. So when I encountered extended adolescence or emerging adulthood for the first time I was pissed. There was a group of twenty-somethings who had grown up in the church that I attend in Kansas City. They seemed more interested in playing video games then being adults. They seemed happy to just coast through life on their parents dime and when I asked them about their calling to serve the Lord they responded with blank stares like the pre-teens in my previous faith community.
Now I’ve grown in the few years that I’ve been a part of their life. I’ve seen a couple of them make the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Some are taking their calling as Christ followers as central to their identity and they have accomplished the developmental tasks of adolescence.
My experience makes me believe that extended adolescence doesn’t have to be real. Despite what those writing on emerging adulthood as a new developmental stage might say I believe that this cultural norm isn’t and doesn’t have to always be as it is.
And one of the big issues for me regarding emerging adulthood is the impending social changes that will ensue if it is accepted as a norm. If the historical development of adolescence is any indication of what will happen with extended adolescence then I don’t want any part of it. Colleges will have to start offering 10 year undergraduate degrees to allow 20 year olds time to explore their interests more. The government will have to provide more money to the corporate world for the transitional period of emerging adults to adapt to corporate life. New laws will have to be created to take into special consideration the unique needs of a 28 year old as distinguished from a 33 year old. These imaginative social changes reflect much of the educational, corporate and legal changes that emerged after the acceptance of adolescence as normative. Again, I don’t think this is healthy for a society nor developing persons.
The Way Forward
Whether you agree with Marko’s push back or not, he proposes a way forward that I believe is a type of via media that all youth workers can find some agreement. Marko suggests that we live in the tension between the reality of the cultural norm of extended adolescence and the hope that it doesn’t always have to be normative. Marko explains that to live in these two tensions requires that youth workers both practice being with youth who experience extended adolescence as normative and practice guiding youth into adulthood.
Here are a list of things Marko is doing to live in the tensions of the norm of extended adolescence and being countercultural.
- Learn about emerging adulthood and the challenges facing teenage development
- Allow space in the church for teens to interrupt programs and to have a lack of impulse control.
- Create opportunities for teens to make decisions and allow space for those decisions to be both good and bad.
- Move away from treating teens like children (infantilization) and treat them like teenagers who are moving toward adulthood.
- Promote and create opportunities for meaningful relationships between teenagers and adults.
A Conversation Partner on the Way Forward
I just finished reading the book Consuming Youth before I read Marko’s article. They would wholeheartedly agree with Marko’s push back that extended adolescences doesn’t have to exist. They would hold that emerging adulthood is a cultural phenomenon and not a distinct psychological and physiological developmental stage.
They suggest that one way the church can respond is by being a community that focuses on vocation for youth and young adults much like Marko’s suggested countercultural actions. They suggest the church promote three destinations for youth’s participation in Christian community.
- Youth Independence: commitment to youth independence and the right to theological vocation, joyful service, and good accommodation within our faith community.
- Youth Influence: genuine opportunity for youth influence and participation in the community at large.
- Youth Resource: youth commitment, creativity, and critical thinking are viewed as resources[1]
An Exercise For Youth Workers
I suggest taking these tensions and possible ways forward to parents, families, teenagers and young adults in our communities. Let’s get those implicated in this conversation to respond and allow them to create the change in our faith communities and local communities. You can pass around the article for a read but here is another suggestion…
- Send a link out to a TED talk to all involved in the youth ministry within your local church[2]http://www.ted.com/talks/kiran_bir_sethi_teaches_kids_to_take_charge.html
- Invite them to have a conversation about their view and your faith community’s view of teenagers and young adults.
- Present Marko’s tensions and three destinations for youth presented above as suggestions on a way forward.
- Challenge them to brainstorm ways that your faith community can guide teens and young adults into adulthood with faith.
- Allow all of them to implement the change in your local church.
Conclusion
Join Marko and giving a little push back to the cultural norm of extended adolescence. God has given us all we need through Christ active in the community of believers. The church can be an alternative culture that allows, encourages, and guides youth to transition into adulthood in the faith. Let’s embrace our calling and promote a way forward for teens and young adults.
By Paul Sheneman
[1] John Berard, James Penner, and Rick Bartlett, Consuming Youth: Leading Teens Through Consumer Culture (Zondervan, 2010), 71.
[2] Ibid., 73.
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Barefoot Training - Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Great article (Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship by Jon Wasson in Immerse Journal) and great thoughts. What I have also found linked with radicalism is emotionalism; that somehow the level of emotion that one experiences in their worship, prayer, testimonies, etc, is an accurate gauge of our discipleship and growth as believers.
I speak as one who was quite susceptible to this as a teenager in the youth ministry. Discipleship was about who generated the greatest emotional response to a sermon, music set, at a retreat, an alter call, and so on. One particular night I remember my youth pastor challenging us during a time of corporate confession around a fire to "not hold back and be real before Jesus." As students began to share, I was well aware of my sin and didn't want to 'hide my sin from Jesus.' So, as a 17 year old teenager I shamefully admitted to everyone my battle with lust in front of a group that consisted partially of 12 year old girls. While I believed I was being obedient at the time, I look back at the whole experience and cringe, even though what I shared was definitely the most 'radical.'
Fast forward several years and I find myself as a youth minister. My first year at my church, we attended 'Acquire the Fire' because "that is what our youth group did every year before you became our youth pastor." With the help of smoke machines, loud bands, and youth speakers who can tell gripping stories, ATF has mastered the skill of evoking an emotional response from teenagers. And just like all highs, it is and was just a matter of time until the crash.
My church no longer attends ATF. Every once in awhile a parent or student will come up to me and ask why we don't go anymore or why other churches go and we don't. While my response obviously varies depending on who is doing the asking, my most common response is, "Because discipleship is a marathon... It is a daily decision and a daily directing of our paths toward Christ and in general, I believe ATF suggests something different."
Up until just a year or so ago, I experienced quite a bit of guilt and shame when I would compare our student ministry with that of the one I was a part of during my teenage years. I remember the emotion filled testimonies... I remember worshiping with my peers... I remember some great retreats that we went on together. Honestly, I don't see that as much with the youth ministry at my current church. However, what I have begun to see is something that has less highs and lows and something that appears to be more true and lasting. I have concluded that emotion/emotional response is not something to be avoided, however, it must not be abused in order to evoke an emotional response, which is manipulation.
By Jay McPherson
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Barefoot Training - Tuesday, May 10, 2011
One key area of any community is the roles that people play. In youth ministry many youth leaders must come to grips with the reality that they cannot fill every role. What we need to realize is that every person in our community, from volunteer leader to new student, plays a unique role or set of roles.
Roles may be formal like the small group leader or they may be informal like a motivator during an activity. Either way, it is helpful to get an imagination for who is playing what roles in order to encourage talents and gifts.
5 Important Roles in Youth Ministry*
Consumer: One who looks for and uses lessons, activities, events and social connections.
Creator: One who creates, shares, improves the lessons and leads or fuels discussions.
Connector: One who helps others to understand and get connected to others and activities.
Carrier: One who takes the groups way of life to other groups through various forms of communication (personal relationships, media, technology, etc.)
Caretaker: One who cares for the needs of the group (remembers B-days, visits those who are sick, counsels those who have a conflict, etc.)
Calling Youth through Roles
As you think about each person involved in your community and the roles that they have played and continue to play, the next step is to think about how you can encourage their gifts and talents through these roles. As youth and youth leaders get connected to their gifts and talents in meaningful ways they will be able to get a sense of purpose or calling. They will be more likely to see the value of their participation in the life of a community of Jesus followers and so form an identity in Christ.
What other roles exist in youth ministry?
How can we encourage youth to use their gifts and talents?
By Paul Sheneman
*Adaptation of Key Social Learning Roles
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Barefoot Training - Thursday, March 24, 2011
What
is theology? I can see the blank stares of teenagers in my mind as I
ask that question. The ones I’ve asked typically don’t understand the
question, and few have heard the word theology prior to it. But for me—and I hope for them one day—I understand that theology is remembering and telling meaningful stories.
I
was taught that the nature of religion was humanity’s search for God. I
was also taught that God is the matter of ultimate concern. (Gotta love
Paul Tillich!) And theology is our sorting through the gods in order to find a true God. But how do we sort through the gods? We sort through them in our storied reflection on our experience of those gods.
Take
Vinnie—name slightly changed to slightly protect his identity—as an
example of a teenager telling a meaningful story. He retold several
accounts of his lucrative lawn-mowing business. He proudly pulled his
wad of cash from his pocket and smiled as peers gawked at the spoils of
his toil. He talked about working hard in order to get what you want. He
identified himself as a shrewd business person. The money he earned
provided him praise from others, attention from peers, and the power to
buy.
To
Vinnie, making money through manual labor was meaningful. His stories
revealed that it was a matter of ultimate concern for him. He told his
stories with an absence of the God revealed in Scripture, expressing his
belief of God to be just a god.
His identity flowed from what he created by the work of his hand, so he
believed humans to be autonomous individuals who create their own
fortunes or demises. He believed those who worked hard were blessed and
those who didn’t were cursed.
Vinnie
experienced the god of working for money. That god made sense to him
and quickly became his God. So he talked about his God in meaningful
ways.
Theology
is remembering and telling meaningful stories. Sometimes teens share
stories of their experiences of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Sometimes teens share stories of their experiences of the gods
of fame, money, sexuality, pragmatism, etc. The key for youth workers is
to listen and shepherd teens through their meaningful stories in order
to point out the God who is.
By Paul Sheneman
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Barefoot Training - Thursday, March 17, 2011
Ahh
yes, theology. It’s the eight-letter word good Christians are taught
not to use. Sure, some of those questionable people talk about it in the
dark corners of the foyer. And there is the occasional legalistic guy
who harps on it in small group. But every true Christian knows that what
we need is less talk about God and more relationship with God, and I…half-heartedly agree.
In
school, I was taught to distinguish between stated theology and
grassroots theology. Stated theology is what is in the books, on the
websites, and spoken about in polished lectures. Grassroots
theology—or, what I like to refer to as everyday theology—is
what actually gets lived out, prayed, and talked about. Both are
important in the church, but as a youth worker, my main concern is to
promote and guide everyday theology.
One
way I attempt to promote everyday theology in youth ministry is to ask
simple theological questions. Just recently, I asked a small group of
high school students, “What does it mean to share God with a friend
(i.e., evangelism)? Don’t we believe God is everywhere and so God is
already in your friend’s life (i.e., omnipresence)?” We had some
conversation about those questions, and they agreed that sharing God
happens when we help people become aware that the God of Scripture is
present in their lives.
I
asked them, “What difference has knowing that God is present in your
life meant?” One teen told a story of how knowing that a powerful God is
looking out for him is a comforting thought and makes him happy.
Another teen told a story of how God has given him purpose to live life.
He acknowledged that living for selfish things like money and fame
didn’t make sense to him. Still another shared a story about how she
feels free, knowing Jesus forgave her. She went on to tell us how that
freedom allows her to love her friends.
Then
I said, “This is the gospel of God’s presence that you have to share
with your friends. The Bible might say a lot more then what you just
shared tonight, but none of that has the significance that your story of
God has for your friends.”
In
other words, their stories are their everyday theology of the
redemptive work of God. Their stories might not be theologically precise
in the halls of the academy, but they are theologically honest.
Everyday
theology is the starting point for theological education and spiritual
formation. Youth workers need to value and honor everyday theology in
order to promote the growth of students in their knowledge and wisdom in
the Lord.
Questions to Consider:
What is more important in youth ministry—stated or everyday theology?
How do you teach theology in youth ministry?
Where is your starting point for teaching theology?
By Paul Sheneman
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Barefoot Training - Thursday, March 03, 2011
My friend Jason and I did a workshop on A World Unbroken a couple of weeks ago. He shared the following poem:
Then he asked everyone to answer a simple question. “What story comes to mind when you hear this poem?”
One
youth pastor shared a story of a teenage boy who was living a life that
was like a crumpled-up something but had great potential, like a
blossoming dream. So the youth pastor put him in his pocket by sharing
his life with the boy and now holds on to the hope that God will
transform him. In this brief exercise, the youth pastor revealed to
everyone three simple truths about people and stories.
First,
when we share a story, it reveals something about ourselves. For the
youth pastor, it was his passion to see God work in the lives of youth.
It also revealed the youth pastor’s enduring hope in a loving and
powerful God.
Second,
the exercise revealed that people communicate meaning through stories.
The youth pastor shared a story with several facts. Those facts would
have no significance to anyone else if he were to list them off in
bullet-point fashion. Instead, by telling a story that incorporated
those facts, the youth pastor created meaning. He even inspired others
to hope in the God who causes our dreams to bloom.
Finally,
a story can connect us, both to God and others. The youth pastor
connected to the rest of the people in the room who were youth workers,
parents, or teenagers because of his story. The words he used to
describe the teenage boy and his hopes for him resonated with everyone’s
passions and desires for youth.
To
share God’s story and our stories together opens teens up to meaningfully connecting
with God and others. And those connections can inspire youth to be transformed into Christ followers.
Questions to Consider:
How do you incorporate sharing stories into youth ministry?
What are some other truths about the relationship between people and stories?
By Paul Sheneman
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Barefoot Training - Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Engaging the Whole Family 4:
A Way Forward
In
this series we have used the works of David Elkind, Diana Garland, and
Marjorie Thompson to guide our reflections on discerning the family. We
continue this reflection by turning to the challenges facing the family
and their proposals for a way forward for the church to minister to
families.
The Challenges
Elkind,
a child psychologist, is concerned with the health of children in North
America. He describes three major shifts in the roles of parents,
children, adolescents that correspond to the modern to postmodern shift.
Parenting in modernity was focused on intuition and technique in
postmodernity. The view of the child changed from innocence in
modernity to competence in postmodernity. The view of adolescents
changed from immature in modernity to sophisticated in postmodernity.
Elkind concludes that these shifts led to an imbalance of stress upon
children and adolescents which he calls the “new morbidity” of youth (98-152).
Garland,
a Christian social worker, is primarily concerned about the faith of
families. She is informed by Craig Dykstra’s work in faith practices
when she engages the particular stories of families. She finds that the
challenges facing the faith practices of families are busy schedules,
lack of training of parents, lack of knowledge of Scripture, competing
values within a family, and different levels of personal faith in the
family (127-198).
Thompson
suggests one of the main obstacles to the faith development of families
is the church. She writes, “What I am suggesting is the communal
church and the domestic church need to recapture a vision of the
Christian family as a sacred community. This will require an awareness
of the ‘sacred’ in the ‘secular,’ of God in the flesh of human life (20-21).”
A Modest Proposal
Elkind,
Garland, and Thompson all suggest a way forward for the family and I
believe that youth and family pastors can find a generous and faithful
way forward in their collective proposals. In bullet points here are
some suggested movements forward....
- Elkind
suggests a concept called the “vital family.” The vital family values
include emotional ties of committed love (a movement beyond intimate
love and mutual engagement), authentic parenting (blend of parenting out
of intuition and technique), interdependence (blend of autonomy and
togetherness) and a balance of unilateral and mutual authority.
- Elkind
suggests a reinvention of adulthood. This reinvention includes parents
appropriately exercising authority and sharing space with children and
adolescents. This space sharing includes the development of safe
environments for children to grow in competence and teens to grow in
sophistication.
- Garland
and Thompson suggest that the local church is integral in teaching
families the practice of faith. They call for the church to see their
role as learning community for families of faith.
- Garland suggests the informal teaching moments for faith in families are found in the dark moments of death and conflict.
I find hope in these suggestions. I believe that God can choose the local church
in these days to lead families forward into God’s mission. By God’s
grace, the church can practice space sharing with youth in our corporate
worship. In humility, the church has the opportunity to publicly seek
Christian ways of resolving the conflict as a way to train families. We
can learn together what it means to seek God in the dark moments of
life. We can practice the values of the vital family through Christian
faith practices. We can provide space for families to learn and serve
together. We can extend the call to all families to enter into God’s
saving embrace in Christ as a way forward for their family.
More Resources:
http://www.baylor.edu/social_work/cfcm/
http://practicingourfaith.org/
http://ekklesiaproject.org/
By: Paul Sheneman
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Barefoot Training - Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Engaging the Whole Family 3: What is the Family?
The
value of defining the family for our contemporary content is that it
gives us orientation in our engagement. If we can’t name the thing that
we encounter, how can we have a meaningful experience? We have a word
for God that has some meaning, and that concept seems a lot more complex
than family.
So
tell me, what is the family? I want to know because, for the life of
me, I can’t find one definition that does justice to the multiple
realities of family that I experience. For example, I’ve seen heads of
households be single, biological parents, biological grandparents with
single parents, two biological parents, two legal parents with no
biological relation, one legal parent with no biological relation, two
legal parents who are also the biological uncle and aunt, and the list
could go on. And then try to account for sibling relationships, and I
almost want to give up on ever finding a definition.
But what if we moved away from a sociological or structural definition? What if we tried a theological definition?
Here is my stab at it:
Family – a
supportive and formative group of people, connected through a common
biological lineage or covenant, who are meant to learn and practice the
worship of God through their relationships with God, each other, and the
world.
Does
that definition sound familiar? I hope so because the definition is
derived from a definition of the church. And here is my bias in favor of
this definition. I think the church is called to be the family of faith
for the world.
I
also think the definition helps youth and family ministers imagine that
the goal of families is to become “little churches,” in the words of
Jonathan Edwards. And the concept of families becoming little churches
corresponds to Diana Garland’s sociological research of more than 100
families. Her research revealed faith practices as an essential element
of family life. As a complement to that research, Marjorie Thompson’s
book argues that spiritual formation naturally happens in families in
both positive and negative ways. Therefore, we can conclude that
families are going to worship something. It is the role of the church to
be the family of faith that invite them into the worship of God.
Questions to Consider:
What is your definition of family?
What do you think about the above definition of family?
What do we do with this definition of family?
By: Paul Sheneman
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Barefoot Training - Thursday, December 09, 2010
Engaging the Whole Family
Reality TV is often an amusing form of entertainment. We sit back and are entertained by the shock factor of Wife Swap,
where contradictory family value systems collide in quite amusing ways.
Then there was the Osbourne family, who for a short period, appeased
the guilt of many families with their previously unimaginable level of
dysfunction. Finally there is the hard nosed quasi-Mary Poppins from
Great Britain, Jo Frost (a.k.a. Supernanny), that will put little kids
on the “naughty step” in order to right the wrongs of poor parenting in
the United States. And though laughter is what usually flows from these
shows, there is an eery feeling that these “reality” programs feel more
like a mirror of the North American family then a sensationalized
depiction.
In
the midst of such depictions of family in the entertainment media,youth
and family ministers are left wondering, “What is the family? What
happened to it? How can we engage the whole family in Christ-like
ways?”
I want to suggest three resources that can help you wrestle through these questions.
- David Elkind, Ties That Stress: The New Family Imbalance
- Diana Garland, Sacred Stories of Ordinary Families
- Marjorie J. Thompson, Family the Forming Center: A Vision of the Role of Family in Spiritual Formation
Over
the next two weeks we will engage some of the insights of each of these
works as we continue to seek meaningful ways to engage the whole family
as God’s story-formed people.
Questions to Consider:
How do you define the family?
What are the central challenges facing families today?
What resources have helped shape your engagement with families?
By: Paul Sheneman
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Barefoot Training - Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Connected to the Whole Church
With the advent of the contemporary youth ministry model over 30
years ago in North America came the warning that youth
workers ought not forget the rest of the local church in reaching and
teaching youth. Rather than heeding this word the professionalization
of youth ministry saw the rise of more sophisticated ways for youth
workers to say one thing and do the opposite. Two things that continue
to hinder youth workers from connecting teens to the entire local church
are professionalism and public education’s formative effect on human
development.
The
professional nature of youth ministry has continued to increase the
split between discipleship of youth and the discipleship of local
churches. The unique language, artifacts, and culture of the
professional youth worker hinders potential youth workers from engaging
youth because they fear not being equipped. Thus the rise of national
and regional youth worker training organizations who seek to equip
volunteer youth workers to engage in the specialized area of youth
discipleship. All too frequently, these training organizations equipped
youth workers with models and techniques that increased the divide
between youth discipleship and their local church discipleship.
I
may be talking myself out of a job but I think that what is needed are
local church leaders who integrate youth into the discipleship of the
whole church. This will definitely mean greater communication between
all age specific pastors and the lead pastor. It may include some
staple youth ministry activities (fall retreat, mission trip) fading
away. It would certainly mean that training would need to be a local
and grass roots activity rather than national or regional.
Public
education is one of the key reasons that youth ministry emerged as an
activity of the church. We are not going to see this cultural activity
end anytime soon but we must practice ways of being in the church that
counters its formative effect on our view of humans. A powerful
assumption that the public education system has formed in many North
Americans is that people learn better in age specific groups. One
counter practice many youth workers are beginning to implement are
intergenerational activities and learning. Thus the rise of mentoring,
intergenerational small groups, and family service project within local
churches.
These
are great steps in counter practices yet we have still not tapped into
the greatest counter practice, communion. The gathering of the whole
body of Christ in all of its diversity at the table is a powerful
counter practice to age specific formation. The action of communion
forms in us the reality that being together in our diversity is the
greatest crucible for learning.
A
youth worker that seeks to connect youth discipleship to the whole
church must address these two challenges. It will take prayer, trust,
creativity, and hope that God will work even in the midst of such
powerful cultural forces.
How are you connecting youth to the whole life of your church?
By Paul Sheneman
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