Tag Archives: Fuller Youth Institute

Sticky Faith Summit – Dr. Scott Cormode – Session 5

Sticky Faith

Sticky Faith

Session #5

Dr. Scott Cormode

People don’t resist change, they resist loss

When you’re trying to start a revolution, don’t worry about designing a system to distribute food after it’s done.
The hardest people to change for Sticky Faith in the next six months is us.
If we do it the way I’ve always done it, it will probably go badly.
I’ve buried some issues because I don’t know how to fix.  Changing the focus will force them to the surface.

  • Example – To move forward means I have to delegate more.  I don’t want to.  How’s it going to get done?
  • This is where “mixed messages cause chaos” comes in.
  • I say that I want to delegate, that leaders are important, that volunteers run the ministry.  I don’t let it happen.

Chris Arduous – Scholar who wanted to find what prevented organizations from learning?

  • Defensive reasoning – We read an article and think “I know someone who needs to learn that lesson”, it means we probably need to deal with it ourselves.
  • Most leaders get great quickly, and then plateau. I have.
  • What moves leaders past this level is to recognize their weakness, and to move past it.  There are articles in the red book on this.
  • When we become more concerned with failing our calling from God than we are with failing at ……, then we can move forward. (story of Ann, the nurse who had her kid teach her how to do math conversions)
  • Max Dupree speaks about temporary incompetence.  Anytime we take on a new role or task, we will experience temporary incompetence.  The only response is to take a deep breath and say “I’ve got a lot to learn”.
  • The other option is skilled incompetence.  You become so good at being incompetent that you no longer realize how incompetent you are.
  • Skilled incompetence can happen to individuals and to communities.

By the time a family gets to fifth grade, they have already formed their relationship with the church.  Children’s Min is SO important!!

Sticky Faith Summit – Chap Clark – Sessions 3 & 4

Sticky Faith

Sticky Faith

Session #3

Dr. Chap Clark

Cultural and Developmental Context
Findings from Hurt Study
A. Absent faith?
Christian Smith (Moralistic Therapeutic Deism)

Hurt and Hurt 2.0
B. Adolescence is lengthening

  • Historically, it has been in fixed stages (Piaget, Erikson)
  • Cultural response is that kids have been “hurried” into growing up way too fast
  • One of the big issues is that adolescence is a journey to adulthood that you have to figure out on your own
  • The average age of puberty in girls is when guys and girls begin asking adolescent questions.  Kids have to figure out who they think they are AND who everyone else thinks they are.
  • Pre-1900 – Female Puberty was 14.5  – Culture said you were an adult around 16
  • In 1900, 1% of kids high school aged went to a “high school”
  • 1970 – 1980 – Female Puberty was around 13 – Culture said you were an adult around 18/20
  • As adults, we think adolescence was great, but one look through a yearbook from high school reminds us of the brokenness of reality
  • Sticky Faith completely falls apart if adults aren’t willing to do their own work
  • One of the greatest problems in the church is the unwillingness of senior leadership to face and deal with their own wounds
  • Today – Female Puberty is around 11/12 – Culture says an adult in mid-20′s
  • Social environment impacts female puberty.  One study by NPR says that girls with a close relationship with their dad hits puberty six months later than a girl not close to her dad.
  • As a kid moves from childhood to adulthood, they move from dependent on their parents to interdependent of the community.  For centuries this process only took a couple of years around age 14/15.
  • In the 1930′s – 1990′s, kids left the dependent stage around 13, and moved into interdependent around 18/20.  The problem was the move from concrete to abstract stays around 14/15.
  • For centuries, a person’s uniqueness was decided by family/community.  In the last century, uniqueness became personal.
  • Currently, kids leave the dependent stage at 12, and don’t land on interdependent until mid 20′s.  Chap calls it Egocentric Abstraction
  • If you think of the teenage mind as a car, they acquire an accelerator long before they acquire the ability to steer or break. – Alison Gopnik WSJ Jan 28 2012
  • Now, a fourth stage has come about “Emerging Adulthood” in the late 20′s/early 30′s.
Sticky Faith

Session #4

Dr. Chap Clark

 

Education

  • In the1930′s, each state chose to mandate public high school.  The purpose was to train students to become adults.  It was a partnership between teachers and parents.
  • Denise Clark Pope – Doing School (p.156) Schools may be encouraging deception and cheating by requiring everyone to conform to a data set.
  • The state of postmodern kids has shown that the skill set of kids to manage adulthood is rising but the ongoing adult support and guidance has declined.
  • In this, around the 1970′s, life became more difficult than kids had skills for and there were less adults around to help.  This study was done in 1989.  How is it now?
  • Adolescence has extended because life has become more complicated and teens have less adults to help them figure it out.

Church

  • The church decided to get kids fired up with youth group
  • Discipleship has become a system where individuals make individual decisions about an individual relationship.
  • The structure of the church has all of the family divided up in silo’s to allow them to make individual decisions.
  • We need to understand that the family is a system, and when you ignore one part the whole family suffers.
  • The fragmentation of the church began with youth ministry

Theology of Christian Discipleship
The Goal of Adolescent Ministry: Adoption into the body of Christ.
The adults in the church have to be willing to change what they see church as, how they interact, etc.  If they don’t, it’s assimilation, not adoption.
http://www.parenteen.com
Healthy and Consistent Attachment
Kids under 12 need to have a “maternal attachment” – 1 Corinthians 2 – it’s the style of the issue, not the gender.  gentle, safe, secure
In adolescence, they need a “paternal attachment” – The style is to encourage, comfort, and to support

  • Can I trust my dad?
  • Can I communicate with my dad?
  • Can I have an emotional attachment with my dad?

In the mid-20′s they need to have community attachment
As kids walk the tight rope from childhood to adulthood, they need a safety net.
If there are holes in the net, many people want the “youth professional” to fix it.  We tell kids we will be there for them, and then we have to leave.
A youth pastor can be one voice, but just one.  Every kid needs a lot of voices in their lives, a lot of people to be around to catch them when they fall through the net, to cheer when they stay on the tightrope.
We need to create a community for every kid.

Developing Adolescent Faith

  1. Model authentic faith for the kids – EVERY adult becomes a youth pastor to EVERY kid in the congregation
  2. Encourage provocative conversation
  3. Lead with gentleness
  4. Comfort, encourage, and be a fan (1 Thessalonians 2:7,8)
  5. Introduce them to the real Jesus
  6. Teach / lead with justice

Sticky Faith Summit – Scott Cormode – Session #2

Sticky Faith

Sticky Faith

Session #2

Dr. Scott Cormode

Leadership Begins with Listening
One of the most powerful pieces of scripture is the Lament
The lament tells us that we can speak honestly to God, especially when we are angry.
Leadership begins with listening
If you can’t listen to people’s pain and anger, you have no business listening.
In the laments, God accepts people’s anger, even though it’s misdirected.
We have to do the same.
We can’t allow ourselves to jump too quickly from lament to hope, it cuts short the healing process.
We have to understand the depth of people’s pain to bring the healing of hope.
Story has a ton of power.
Story of aging church and the cribs that were illegal.
Churches have stories about children/youth ministry, there are reasons they pay us.
We want to mess it up.
We want to change what it means to be a parent.
Mental models are the images that we hold in our head of how things are supposed to be.
Mark 8 is a seminal model of the challenges of changing the mental models people have.
People disagreed on who He was, the disciples knew He was Messiah.
He had to change their view of Messiah.
They didn’t get it until after He died.
We must be patient with these changes in people.
We have to offer and alternative story for their future.
It’s not enough to discredit an old story.
To thrive in the midst of social change, we have to:

  1. Tell new stories
  2. Listen to old stories with new ears

BASIC: all good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end

Story of Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address

  1. start with the constitution in 1785, you had to keep slavery (slaves were 3/5 of a person)
  2. starts with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, no slavery

Starting with a different past puts you on a different trajectory to the future.
It’s not vision until it emanates back from the people.
It’s not vision until other people “come up with a new idea”
You don’t get. or deserve, credit.
Paul – Appollos – God
Plant- Water – Increase

Being a good parent improves your odds, it doesn’t guarantee anything.
Being a good leader improves your odds, it doesn’t guarantee anything.
God gives the results, He gets the credit.
We do NOT get the credit.

Mentoring answer – If the grownups won’t come to the teenagers, bring the teenagers to the grownups.

We need to cultivate experiments on the margins.        

This is the premise of rolling programs and ideas out slowly, quietly, and covertly.
Work out  the details, and add to it as we go.
Let people discover by word of mouth.

*We have to fail people’s expectations at a rate they can stand.* – Dr. Scott Cormode

Competing Commitments are often the problem.

  • Example of kids in worship / kids not disturbing worship

Organizational Momentum

A small win is a momentum changer.

Sticky Faith Summit Kara Powell

Sticky Faith

Sticky Faith
Session #1
Dr. Kara Powell


Metaphor                                               Message to kids

1. Church is building                             1. Kids are visitors
2. Bride of Christ                                   2. Future participants
3. Body of Christ                                    3. Functional members (what can
                                                                                  you do for us?)
4. Family of God                                    4. Orphans (we can separate kids
from their birth family through replacement)

5. Family of Families

Dennis Guernsey -  A New Design for Family Ministry

 

Participation in all church worship is #1 in sticky faith indicators.

Students teaching children is a huge indicator in sticky faith in teenagers.

Adults showing an interest in students is crucial.  HOW DO WE PROGRAM THAT?

I need to do a better job of staying in touch with our college freshmen with a plan, and getting some other adult to adopt them.

* Do a better job of connecting students to church/ministry at colleges.

5 to 1 ratio is important.

* How can I tie into the men’s and women’s ministries better?

* How can we get in front of the staff and the elders with our findings?

* How can we relate these issues to the adults?  How can we make their faith stickier?

Prayer post-its:  annonymous prayer requests on post it notes, leave yours on the way in, pick up another on the way out.

You’re Now Part of the Other Five Percent

Five on One.

It could be the number of players it takes to stop Jeremy Lin when they play the knicks.

It might be how many bucks it takes to buy your favorite drink at Starbucks.

It could be Subway’s latest campaign for their sandwiches.

Or maybe it’s one of the small ways we can radically change our youth ministries.

The folks at Fuller Youth Institute are advocating that we need to rethink how many adults each student needs in order to be healthy.  Often, we think in terms of what is the minimum number of adults we need to recruit to work with our students in order to have a safe and healthy ministry.  A lot of us have hovered around the idea of 1 adult for every five to seven students.  It’s allowed them to be known, loved, and cared for.  It’s a good number.

It’s just not enough.

Chap Clark, Kara Powell, Brad Griffin and the crew at FYI are advocating we turn the number on it’s head.  What if we set our ministries up so that there are five adults for every student?  I’m not saying we need five small group leaders for each student.  We’re talking about a youth group leader, an adopted grandma, a person from the men’s ministry, someone on the adult worship team, whatever.  We just need to start thinking about how we can get five adults to surround a student, to know them, to pray for them, to listen to God’s leading for them, etc.  Some might be in contact weekly, some less than that.  But all five will know their student, and be tuned in to what God is doing for them.

Basically, it means that I am not the only youth pastor in the church.  The amazing adults who work with our student minstries are not the only youth pastors in the church.  We all become youth pastors, to one level or another.  It will mean each of us invest in a student to see them become a well loved part of the church family.

Every one of us who love Jesus has had people step up and invest in us.  It’s merely time for us to pass that love on to the next group coming through.  It’s going to be beautiful.

Graduating from the Youth Group We Knew

We are expanding our youth group’s reach.  Right now.  Today.  Here and now.  You’re in on the ground floor.

For years, we have worked hard to get our students to high school graduation.  We have constantly implemented plans and programs to help our juniors and seniors stay engaged in youth group, giving them special opportunities, unique chances to lead, and a special focus as they move through their senior year.  The challenge has been once they graduate, we send them off to work, the military, or to school, and they are gone.  We have had zero plans for staying in touch, for helping them, for supporting them.  We’ve tried to get them into healthy churches or college ministries, but it all ended there.  We’ve loved on students when they are home, stayed in touch by Facebook, and cared when we could.  But we have not had a specific plan.  Yet.

This week, as I’ve been at the Sticky Faith summit at Fuller Seminary, we’ve discussed what it takes to help students have a faith that matures and grows after they leave youth group.  One of the things that has settled in is our need to create a system and plans for helping students to graduation, through graduation, and then beyond into the next phase of life.  We are going to figure this one out.  We have to work with students, parents, and leaders to design ways to extend our ministry forward into the early years of adulthood.

Here are some of the reasons we have to extend our ministry:
1. Adolescence has extended itself from around 18-20 years old to the late 20′s for most people growing up today.
2. Students headed out of high school are facing more challenges, faster, and with more pressure than ever before.
3. Students who have a healthy support system of people around them as they move from high school into the next phase of life, whatever it is, have a much higher success rate in their spiritual life.
4. As we begin to understand how to be a family of families (more on this another time), you simply don’t graduate from family.  You graduate from programs, but not family.  We say we are a family, and our goal is to serve as a family, so we’re going to need to figure this piece out.

What does this mean for our church?
1. We need to understand as parents that our kids need us as much as ever when they leave home after high school.  We are not done at 18.  Those days are gone (if they ever actually existed).
2. We need to understand as a family of families that it takes all of us to help our students.  We’re going to have to broaden our understanding that every member of our church is a youth pastor in their own right, with a stake in the life of every student.

It’s going to take some time, but I’m excited to see how God is going to use this to strengthen students, adults, and the Kingdom as a whole.  It’s going to be a great ride!

How Teens, Hymns, and Grandparents Can Save the Church

This week I’m at the Sticky Faith co-hort.  It’s a group of 26 churches meeting to discuss the challenge of students leaving the church after graduation.  The team at Fuller Youth Institute has done a six year study on what elements it takes for students to hold onto their faith effectively once they leave high school.  They’ve found some interesting information, and you can read about it in Sticky Faith.

One of the most surprising correlations they have found is that a majority of students they studied who successfully held onto their faith post-high school were actively involved in the Sunday morning worship at their church.  I’ve got to admit that this one shocked me.  Of all of the things I would have thought would help students grow a long term faith, inter-generational worship was not high on the list.  But in FYI’s study, a huge percentage of the students shared this common trait.  Why?  What in the world does inter-generational worship have to do with faith development?  Understand, this is not in churches that are necessarily “contemporary”, many of the churches were more “mainline” churches with a traditional worship style.  So, what’s going on with this one?

I’m not sure, and I don’t think FYI is positive either.  But definitely, there is something about being a part of a larger group, consistently focusing on God together, that speaks to who we are created to be.  I think back to the story told in Genesis about Adam and Eve.  Adam was created for worshipping God, but existing on His own wasn’t the full realization of all God wanted him to be.  So He created Eve, and they worshipped God together, and it was “very good.”  Ever since then, the story of God’s people is one of a family of families worshipping God together.  So, today, when we get together and worship on a regular basis, something fundamental changes in us.  It brings us closer to who we are supposed to be.

Also, when a student engages in worship with other generations, each generation is going to have to humbly flex a little to meet in the middle on methods and styles of worship.  This mutual serving of each other draws us closer together.  Any time we put ourselves second to serve another person in Jesus’ name, our faith is deepened.

I think both of these factors play into the whole process.  I’m sure there are a couple of dozen of other factors involved as well.  Some of the questions this raises for me are:
     1. how do we take this information and leverage it to serve our churches?
     2. What does this mean for how we should understand and plan our worship services?
     3. If our current worship services are having this impact, what would happen if we became more intentional?
     4. What does this mean for youth centered worship services that are not inter-generational?
     5. Is it okay to view worship as a tool to produce long term discipleship?

What do you think?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.