Children’s Ministry and Culture

I’m working on our next family ministry night and crack open one of Willowcreek’s FX DVD’s — Compassion. These are excellent resources. I love the brevity of these pieces, the production is excellent, and they set up conversations well.

At last week’s staff retreat I was reminded about the importance of both metaphors and measures.

At one part of the discussion I balked at the verbage in one of the goals– “Lifting Jesus Up.” Derek had to remind me that Jesus himself said these words. My beef wasn’t with Jesus, but the impreciseness of the word picture. “Lifting Jesus Up” in all our of educational settings could mean anything to a number of people– is it a red-face shouting of Jesus name? Are we only teaching the Gospels and select passages from Paul?

My hunch– and I admit that I haven’t looked through my tools– that “lifting Jesus up” is might be an allusion to Moses lifting bronze snake on the pole (the nehustan) as a means of salvation from the plaque of snakes. Another possibility is that it’s an allusion to the banners that Roman soldiers would raise to proclaim the rule of Caeser. Or both. Once you get the ideas behind the word picture, creative power is unleashed.

Metaphors are powerful because they are evocative and creative. “Lifting Jesus Up”– if explained– has more power than “present, through a variety of hands-on learning methods, the historical Jesus and provide a template that allows the learner to imitate him.”

The power of an objective is in it’s measurability.  If you write a good objective, anyone can read it and know whether or not you’ve accomplished what you’ve set out to do. A good objective measures one three things– speed (when will you accomplish this), quantity, and quality.

Just returned from an overnight staff retreat (Yes, just a few days after returning from the Children’s Retreat). Oh Lord, Kumbaya. (Emphasize any word you’d like in the sentence to the immediate left.) I work with an amazing team. Thirteen of us went to a Christian resort in NY and spent twenty four hours listening to God, goal setting, worshipping, and playing together. Some of my take aways:

1) We discussed the importance of inviting Millenials into key leadership (not just volunteer positions, but volunteer leadership positions). We need to stay young. (I feel like we had just gotten young 10+ years ago when they hired two punk twenty-something kids, Derek and I, to run the youth and children’s ministries, respectively. (I turn forty in July)). I looked around the room at the retreat and realised that we had late Xers and Millenials on the staff– lots of them. I spoke about the opportunity to recruit Millenials at Willowcreek and some of their characteristics. I had a first hand reminder at the retreat as to what that looks like.

2) We opened the retreat by being given three questions to ask God, a Bible, and 1.5 hours. During that time I was confronted by 2 Corinthians 6:11-13. Paul confronts the Corinthians that their lives feel constricted because of where they invest their affections. They felt like they had small lives because they had small love.

3) I blogged a while back about finding opportunities to embody Jesus while going to bars listening to my wife sing in her trio. I haven’t done that in a while do to this crazy month of speaking, retreats, and launching our family ministry. It’s time to get back to that.

4) Chris Yount Jones told us about an exercise her team to sharpen their vision. It was good, so we stole it. We had to write a six word memoir about where we came from and then where we are going.

Here’s my group’s results:

Our Past: External focus makes Grace vital again.

Our Future: Cross-shaped lives will transform Erie.

5) A prediction: The words “mentoring” and “missional” are going to transform our culture.  

See Henry Zonio’s excellent blog post about criticisms about some questionable pictures of Miley Cyrus that will appear in a future Vanity Fair. The child singer is obviously positioning herself for a singing career as an adult. That strategy has included dropping the Hannah Montana character when not performing for pre-teens.

I was surprised, when at my church’s children’s retreat this weekend, that the fifth grade girls were aware of the upcoming photo shoot. I’m saddened that so many child singers feel the need to emphasize their sexuality to reach an adult audience.

Much is made about Millenials and Futuristics being natural multi-talksers. I walked into the front-room and witnessed my son playing the piano (well, I might add) while listening to podcast through his Ipod.

Call me old school, but I put my foot down.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=wLkFKVQV3RGaiKA7ouNLYQ&_render=rss

Orange ‘08 is under way. Through the magic of RSS you can see various responses from blogging and twittering attenders.  (Technology is changing– I barely understand that last sentence I typed.)

Here’s why it’s important to pay attention to Orange– whether you agree or disagree with all facets of the philosophy: they are forcing discussion about family ministry in a way that demands that churches and publishers take note. Orange seems to be advocating an intergrated approach to family ministry on a staffing level (Keith noted a while back that our current large church infrastructures discourage a holistic approach).

So, whether you use their curriculum or not, the Orange movement should not be ignored.  

One of the most important shifts in our thinking as children’s ministry practicioners is moving from a deficit-based to a strength-based model of ministry. It’s not enough to teach our children to avoid using their lives for destructive purposes. We need to remind them that God loaded them with assets they they are to use to build community and established a god-shaped reality (I’m not advocating theocracy, but relationships established on love, mercy, and justice). If we don’t instill this positive vision in children we give them a sin-management model of spirituality (Erwin McManus speaks to this well).

Jenifer Fox, M. Ed. has written a new volume Your Child’s Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them. Thumbing through the book, I’m seeing that this volume can help supply children’s ministry practicioners one of the tools we need to help our children discover the strengths from which they can build their lives.

Jenifer opens the book casting the vision for a strength-based approach to relating to children and then presents a useful workbook, with an assessment test, that provides a practical tool to identify the strengths of a child.

We’ve got five copies of this book to give away to Children’s Ministry and Culture readers. Here’s how earn a chance to win. Visit http://blog.strengthsmovement.com/ and read through Jenifer’s blog. Interact with her blog and leave a comment. Then copy that comment here, in this post, for a chance to win. I’ll pick five random readers as winners. This contest runs through May 28.

Here’s a list of characteristics of Millenials that is important to note when recruiting/retaining them as volunteers. This list came from McKee and McKee’s book The New Breed.

Hey all,

I know that I’m getting more hits from Grace folk as this blog was recently linked to our whoisgrace and iamgrace campaigns. I’m glad that you’ve found this site and I want to point out a few things.

First, this blog has a different tone from the other ones. That’s because Children’s Ministry and Culture has existed longer than the campaign and it’s not aimed at the Grace family. It’s primarily for children’s pastors and practitioners around the world as we attempt to decode our surrounding culture so we can present children and families with the power of God in Jesus. Someone quipped in church yesterday that this blog is too heady so she steared in another direction. You are all welcome to read this as a way to get inside of my and Keith’s minds (Keith is a pastor employed by Group Publishing to equip and support churches everywhere). But, you might consider www.eriehometeam.org. As it grows, you’ll find that I’ll be much more personal over there are we struggle together to figure this parenting thing out.

While I have you, some of you made nervous (or hopeful) remarks that I’d be looking for greener pastures following last week’s speaking adventure. The remarks seem to happen whenever I’m published or am invited to speak elsewhere. Please know that whenever I travel I return with a greater appreciation over Grace’s beauty. You really are a special congregation that I’m very much in love with. Together we went through the fires, one literal and one metaphoric. This is a wonderful congregation that has grown, is growing, and is unlocking it’s redemptive potential. I don’t feel like I’m outgrowing Grace. In fact the contrary is true. We’re changing so fast my fear is that Grace might outgrow me if I don’t constantly reinvent myself as a leader and stretch. Maybe If I talked more about the books and the publishing than it would alleviate the anxiety that leads to these discussions. On the other hand, my value as as pastor isn’t in that stuff, but in my willingness to serve children and volunteers.

Grace is beautiful. Let’s grow old together!

Larry

(And now back our more nerdy programming)

I spoke two sessions on Thurs to some very fantastic children’s minsitry practicioners. They engaged the material and launched some fantastic conversations.

The only downside of presenting was not being able to listen to other workshop presenters. However, that was made up by interviewing Willowcreek’s volunteers. Derek was with me, he’s a brilliant leader, and knows what q’s to ask:

• How did you get connected as a volunteer?
• How are you trained?
• Did you ever experience a time when it was a challenge to remain loyal to Willow? How did you handle it?
• Are you over/under challenged?

Willow’s volunteers are amazing, simple amazing. They get it. They know the vision and they understand how their contributions matter. We walked out with some ideas of how to improve our own volunteer assimilation processes.

I missed Friday’s sessions as we needed to drive home and then pour into our kids. Derek coaches his son’s football team. My son needed to be driven to NY for a youth group camp. I really wanted to hear Vischer do his thing.

Conspire is highly recommended.