So I thought I’d invite you into a social experiment that benefits other youth pastors and together we can see what happens.
First, I wanted the medium to be personal, immediate and helpful for folks who didn’t know exactly where to start, but needed someone a bit further down the road to provide some insight to their situation. So The phone was the device of choice. There are plenty of message boards out there and plenty of books on youth ministry, but a phone call for a someone just starting out, or someone who’s just been fired and trying to negotiate a severance for the first time in their lives is far superior to a message board.

I call this an experiment because I’m not sure it will work. I’m willing to use my influence and give my time to this and invite my friends to serve but I know that will not be enough to meet the need that’s out there. It’s an experiment, because you may or may not be interested in partnering in this thing. If you are, join me. If not, no hard feelings.

Here’s how the hotline works.
A new youth pastor, who’s trying to figure out how to prepare his first talk finds his way to the hotline. He dials the number. When the number is dialed each of the operator’s phones will ring, who ever answers first takes the call. Answer their questions, encourage them and maybe even pray for them. Then send them on their way. That’s a solid investment of 15-20 minutes if you ask me.
Now the hotline is free to the caller and it’s free as a volunteer, but the actual hotline has overhead. So there’s a tip jar to cover the cost of the hotline. This is where the experiment gets interesting. This service is dependent on it’s usefulness and the generosity, not just of the volunteers who give their time, but also of the occasional caller who feels they’ve been bless and will pay for minutes for the next person. The overhead is $10 an hour. Every penny goes to the hotline service. (I don’t make a penny)

If you are interested in joining me for this experiment here’s some of the ways we can work together.

First, sign up as a volunteer. You make your own schedule and can answer calls as little or as much as you’d like to.

Second, Spread the word. There’s a phone number and come code you can put on your website.
Third, love on some people.

Also, if you have ideas on ways this might be better let me know.
Let’s see what happens.

Here’s the link http://youthministry.pockethotline.com/
Here’s the phone number (866) 265-2749

this could be very interesting…

Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists. “A walloping great congregation is fine and fun,” says Martin Thorton, “but what most communities really need is a couple of saints. The tragedy is that they may well be there in embryo, waiting to be emancipated from the cult of the mediocre.”

The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.
-Eugene Peterson from Working the Angles, pg. 2

Years ago, when reading this, Eugene Peterson saved my view of pastoral leadership. He still does this today. This is page 2 of one of his books, in which he restored my soul and encouraged me and redeemed what it means to be a pastor.

“The day is a blur.

After an agonizing process, I gazed at my infant daughter and was swallowed by something that is impossible to explain: I was instantaneously in love. Never in my life, other than the birth of my other two children, have I been so completely and thoroughly caught up in the passion and glory of life.  If someone that instant had demanded I give my life for my child, it would have been the one most completely selfless and effortless act of my life.

My first lesson – and how can it be called that without trivializing the moment?- was that a love existed in me that was raw, pure, and ferocious.  My daughter’s dark, delicate eyes consumed me in beauty. I was besotted. But what infused me with such overwhelming love just at that moment? I was not so surprised by instantaneously loving my daughter, but I was stunned by it’s magnitude.  I was invaded by love, a love that felt both alien to and exactly like me, but a me that I’d never considered myself to be. All of that came at the same instant that my thoughts were lost in my infant daughter’s gaze.

It dawned on me that moment: This child and my children to come will teach me more than I could possibly hope to ever teach them. Since that moment my life has never been the same. It will never be the same for all eternity, and I have my children to thank.”

Dan Allender – How Children Raise Parents: The Art of Listening to your Family

I love this quote for several reasons.

1. It reflects so well the feelings I personally felt at the birth of my own children.

2. It reminds me of how much I learn from my kids, perhaps more than any other people in the world.

3. It reminds me that communities who find ways to isolate youth from adults are harming the adults as much as the kids.  So often we think changing youth ministry is for the kids benefit. But that couldn’t be more wrong. We are the ones who benefit from being with our kids, if we’re paying attention. If we show up. If we are present. They benefit then as well.

What follows is my response to his question, What is the Single Objective of Youth Ministry.  Tell me what you think? Am I off base?

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Today I’ll discuss my objectives for my kids as a father who happens to have a couple of decades of youth ministry experience.

I’m a parent of 3 kids who as I write this are 14, 10, and 6. It’s a bit surreal for me that in six short months I will be the parent of a high school boy, a middle school boy and an elementary aged girl.

I want my kids to be disciples of Christ which I’ll describe as a citizen of the kingdom of God. I like the sound of that.  When I say, citizen of the kingdom of God, I mean something very specific these days and  I’m indebted to Peter Block’s incredible book “Community” in which he describes a the nature of citizenship. Below are some things adapted from Block but have been central to they way I raise my kids, and to the way I think youth ministry in the future must function. Each of these contain such richness, that they could each be unpacked in a book, (which they will be), but for now, I’ll share a summary of each.

As followers of God in the way of Jesus and citizen of his kingdom:

1.  I hope my kids will hold themselves accountable for the well-being of the larger collective of which we are a part. This could be their neighborhood, their church, their family or their circle of friends.  I hope I’m raising my kids to see themselves as the people who steps into the spaces of need without losing track of where they end and others begin. Accountability is always chosen and my hope is that their lives will have this as their overall trajectory.

2. I hope my kids will choose to own and exercise power rather than defer or delegate it to others.  Entitlement and consumerism is the abdication of power to others.  To choose to own and exercise power is not to rule over others, but to accept maximum responsibility for things which they should be responsible. Most institutions today, including the family and the church train kids unintentionally to defer power and blame others for their circumstances. It is simply to say that I have power and responsibility in my community that no pastor, politician, or parent can accept on my behalf.

3. I hope my kids learn to consistently enter into a collective possibility that gives hospitable and restorative community its own sense of being. Kids don’t need to be told where they screw up or where they are messed up, but in an environment of possibility they will discover their gifts, exercise power, they can see what God is doing and thus create space for restoration. Restoration is always about hope and possibility. Restoration is the work of God in the church. I hope that my kids will enter into the collaborative creation of community that gives hospitality space and thus creates room for redemption and the work of God.

4. I hope my kids will acknowledge that community grows out of the possibility of citizens of the kingdom of God. Community is built not by specialized expertise, or great leadership (pastoral or otherwise), or improved services; it is built by faithful disciples.  Put more personally, solutions to the problems my kids face are best answered by my kids and their community.  The quick fix or the need for an expert or leader to bring change or health or restoration will never create community and only further cultivates entitlement.  Community comes from faithful disciples who see themselves as citizens of the kingdom.

5. I hope my kids learn to attend to the gifts and capacities of all others, and act to bring the gifts of those on the margin into the center.  As my kids encounter people who are marginalized by society, the church, or simply their high school friends, I hope they will work to help these kids see they profound ways they have been gifted and fit into the Body of Christ. Or more profoundly, as they themselves are marginalized by society, the church or their their high school communities they will work to bring their gifts to the center.

This has significant implications for every aspect of youth ministry and church life, but we’ll save that for another day.”

- Wendell Berry

In a particular chapter on “blame displacement” and a societies inability to accept responsibility, thus blaming others for their circumstances, Friedman leaves this little nugget on TV violence.

“Television, in fact, is a good example of how displacement works to avoid dealing with personal resources. The most pernicious violence on television is actually in the story line -how the simplistic concept of human struggles “does violence” to the nature of life.  The most insidious message that children -and adults- get from the average television program is the notion that motivation is singular, that all questions have answers, that justice always triumphs, that love conquers all, that life is unambiguous, and that there will always be a deus ex machine “in the wings” waiting to rush in.  This view of existence is a far more dangerous addiction for a regressed society than escape into vicarious violence.  Thus the worry of parents that violent television will affect their children adversely is the epitome of a chronically anxious society focusing on outside forces rather than inner strength. Parents cannot possibly hope to insulate their children against all the pathogenic forces and ideas in the environment.  That way of thinking has to lead to unending cycles of anxiety.”

after the staff meeting, spend 30 minutes completing your doodle.

make dinner. from scratch. pick the best ingredients.

invite your kids to help make dessert.

leave behind screens and the siren call for simply watching, looking on or forcing you into a role of only reacting.

paint a picture.

let your fingers find the piano keys.

make music.

write a poem about beauty or an essay about the flower you put into your daughters hair.

there is so much to consume and so many places we receive.

we no longer believe we are artists.

we believe the lie that our creation is no longer as good as the professionals.

will we smile at the child who spent an hour making a birthday card and see the love that went into it or will we make a comment to a knowing adult wondering what it says?

perhaps you were once that child and it’s how you lost your wonder for making things? perhaps we are the one’s helping our kids see themselves as consumers as well?

maybe we all should consider entering a creative recovery program in which our solutions to problems, must come from ourselves or our neighbors?

perhaps this recovery would include a ban on store birthday cards. for adults as well.

plant a garden and watch tomorrow’s meals spring from the ground.  Feel the connection to the earth and God in every bite you eat with a strange satisfaction and understanding.

create.  resist consuming.

2. people who use statistics to steam roll their congregations into becoming inter generational won’t do much better.  If they survive the change, which is a big if, they will fight an uphill battle regaining trust in their organizations.  One of the lessons they will learn in the process will be:  You can’t top-down inter-generational ministry. Statistics can be helpful for a community or parents, teens, youth workers, elderly, and staff to wrestle with, but they are far better at pointing to what we already know to be true. Statistics used to bully or scare a community (even the wonderful research done by my amazing friends) will only lead us back into the problem.  A community motivated by the fear of loosing their future as a church, denomination or family will resist faithfulness to the passionate mission the church is invited into by Christ.  Statistics affirm or bring light to what we already see around us.  The problem in most churches is that the staff are the only ones looking around on behalf of the church. At least this is what we assume. (more on this later.)

3. Inter-generational ministry and old school command and control understandings of leadership are diametrically opposed to each other.  In the short run, you can become more family friendly, or even develop a nicer more kid- friendly version  of your church where people smile at kids and even talk to them,  but this isn’t the inter-generational ministry that makes a difference in the lives of teens.  Nice-to-teens isn’t bad and it may be the best your church can do, but it’s not what we’re called to ask the church.

4. Inter-generational ministry will only happen within churches where the leadership have maturity, know their weaknesses/strengths, trust the Holy Spirit, and believes that God works  best in the congregation, parents and communities, no matter the experience, expertise, or leadership gifts of the pastors.

5. did I say that Orange, Almost Christian, or Sticky faith can’t be top downed?

6. People care more about teens that we think, but we aren’t paying attention because we’re too busy with our agenda. Parents, schools, coaches, neighbors, friends and other family members care about teens.  This includes your kids and the kids in the church you work with.

7. Agendas make for bad listening.  When we have an agenda we stop listening to people with the exception of ways we can involve people in our agenda.  Ask a friend who’s a middle school teacher how often they’ve been asked to be a small group leader or an IT professional how often their church has invited them to help them with a youth ministry webpage. Then ask them, how many church staff have asked them what they dream about and what they hope for teens in their community.  If you think it’s the same question, you’re in real trouble.

8. Our collective future together depends on us getting our head around a few things. My future is connected to yours and vice versa, so I’ll lay out some things in no particular order.

- The future is upon us and this is your invitation to co create a new reality of ministry.  The world is easier to change than you think.

- The future doesn’t require you to be a hero, to be the savior or the leader who brings inter-generational ministry. It requires you become a host who can facilitate an environment  for the wonderful dreams God has already place in the hearts of people. As host, you aren’t a shepherd of their ideas, but to the people in the community.

- In our collective future, the rest of us need you to be whole.  You need to be loved, or need to be in control will ruin any collaboration necessary for inter-generational ministry.  Caring for your soul really is your best ministry to teens and the church at large. This isn’t some trite call to piety or an abstract super spiritual guilt laden trip.  This is inherently practical.  If you need to be in control, only people who you can dominate will join you. Which probably doesn’t scare you, but it does me.  If you need to be loved, your ministry will rise and fall with your close relationships and your emotional state at any given time. Wholeness for the controller allows for safety for all you are hosting. Wholeness of the one who needs love, allows for the kind of empathy. mercy and compassion that give space for real help and transformation to all those who cross your path.  In our collective future, we need each other to be whole.

- Out of our wholeness we’ll be less intimidated by conflict, or divergent thinking. Conflict will be more common in our churches, not less, but it will be a different kind of conflict.  Gone will be the days without an adult on the playground.  The boundaries you and other provide will give space for healing, mission and calling in ways most of us only dream about in our churches.

- The future will require us to stop looking at models, even those prescribed by some of the researchers. The researchers provide us with these models because they care for us and because we keep demanding models. So let’s stop demanding models from people who’s best gift isn’t in our context.  God has already given your church the resources you need to be the church God has called you to be.  To think otherwise is to go against the very values that make inter-generational ministry so powerful.