In this next week my big focus is on planning. Planning for The Hub, with the launch now just 21 weeks away. Planning for Sync Youth, which has been growing nicely and is starting to form a really good culture amongst the youth we have coming along.

Amongst all the hussle and bussle I am trying to keep a little ahead so as not to cause any ‘stop’ that doesn’t need to be there. Keeping the dynamics of youth, leaders, parents, effective communication and engaging experiences in line is proving to be a challenge but one that I am enjoying.

God is also talking to me a lot about prayer. Yes, that is right, God is talking to me about prayer, which is kinda what prayer is all about (speaking AND listening!) In particular I have been feeling him say to me that The Hub will not succeed based on whether we do everything ‘right’ or not, but on whether or not we get down on our knees and pray this new church plant into existence. This is hard for someone like me who likes to put shape and structures to things. This isn’t to say we won’t be doing that, but the focus I feel needs to be on prayer, not necessarily getting everything ‘right’.

We’ll see how this week goes

During the cleanup, I was struck by the students’ inbred consumerism. We leaders set up, led games, taught the lesson, and cleaned up when it was over. The youth simply “consumed” the program and went home. Why couldn’t they feel more like it was their ministry? Why couldn’t they lead most, if not all, of the activities? We decided to give it a shot.

This is the model that a lot of youth groups run with, where adult leaders do everything, and in an effort to be up front and honest about it, the youth group I run currently functions a fair bit in this way. HOWEVER, as Olsen asks, why couldn’t other students lead a lot of this?

One of the major changes that we have made at Sync Youth this year is we have ‘graduated’ our 16 and 17 year old’s into a new Young Adult group. As part of this I have offered our new young adults the opportunity to be Youth Leader Apprentices. The aim of this position is to start to HEAD in the direction where we get more of our younger youth/young adults developing in their leadership and helping take charge of their own youth program. Though for now we still require quite a bit of adult help, my goal is to get to the place where our Adult Leaders can do more of the relationship building and allow some of our older teenagers the opportunity to help set up and lead the games and activities.

Why?
You might be asking why is it important to get our students in their final years of high school involved in leadership? Don’t they have enough to do already? Isn’t there a problem because not all students are equipped or gifted with ‘leadership’. Well, yes and no.

I definitely believe there is a ‘gift of leadership’ that not everyone possesses, but I am starting to come to the belief that all of our kids can, if they want, help grow our younger youth in some way. They won’t necessarily be ‘leaders’ in the strictest sense of the term, but I am finding that some kids who otherwise wouldn’t be seen as leaders, are really great at ‘serving’…is this not one of the main roles of leadership? They may not all be the up the front, loud, proud leaders…but some of the better student leaders I have seen have quietly gone about cleaning up, making sure all the new kids feel welcome, encouraging the other student leaders. These are leadership qualities often missed when we look for up and coming leaders.

I had a really good discussion today with a friend on many of the topics I am mulling over for my book. We were particularly talking about rights of passage and effectively transitioning teens from youth group to adult church. One of the biggest problems I think we have had is in the ability to help our teenagers see themselves in 5-10 years time as they will be. NOT so much what they’ll be doing, will they be a Doctor etc…but more who they will BE as people. Student leadership, in many ways, is about helping equip and empower our teenagers in their giftings NOW, so that they can start to operate in them and see a glimpse of what they could be like in 5 years time. Not that they will see themselves as youth leaders, though they might become that, but that they can see they can be loving or they can be caring, or they can serve, or they can insert character trait here. A lot of what we have NOT done, from my observations, is help our teenagers to start operating in their adult ways earlier.

I believe this is an important step in moving INTO adult hood, as opposed to following the Peter Pan idea and never growing up. As much as there is a lot of talk about ‘our kids are being turned into adults too fast’ I almost wonder if that is only a half truth? Yes, we have tweens now (pre-pubescent teens, so 8-12ish) acting ‘like adults’ or dressing ‘like adults’ but equally, we have 20+ adolescents who have never grown up. Perhaps we need to help them around the ages of 16-17 start to OPERATE in some ways like their adult selves, so they can actually start to grasp what adulthood means for them. I believe this would help adulthood be less of a scary thing, which it is to many teens, and more a natural progression in life.

The more I think about all of this, the more I see how intricately everything is linked. From channeling the passion of teenagers for good, to transitioning them from teenagerhood to adult church and adult life, to creating and continuing rights of passage for our western cultured teens. And in all of this I believe the Church can play a pivotal role in helping to positively influence youth culture. To be known for how it is changing the lives of teenagers for the BETTER rather than what it is stopping teenagers from doing.

And in all of this I believe equipping our older teenagers in leadership, or possibly more truthfully just in their giftings, should play a large role in the future of our youth ministries.

One of the big things that my bible college education taught me was self preservation. They were very big on not just filling my head with knowledge but building me as a person, helping to teach me good characteristics and also teach me good self care. I know, from this training, that last week is ok as a once off every now and then…but it cannot become my regular rhythm, as I discussed last week.

One of the best self care principles that I have in place is that I regularly meet up with a mentor. This is something I did in the last week and, as usual, has proven to be very beneficial. Though a lot of our meeting was spent catching up as we have not met over the summer, the last 15 minutes basically made the meeting the most worthwhile thing I did all week because in that 15 minutes we discussed time management and in particular we discussed a system that my mentor uses to help him keep on top of all the ‘tasks’ that are in his life AND, more importantly, make sure he is using his time doing the things that are most important, that he is best equipped to do. ‘To do lists’ can grow very easily and without some sort of structure in place you can quickly find your time disappearing, and you can also find yourself spending a lot of time on tasks that are probably not as important as others.

One of the main systems my mentor uses is a website called ‘Remember The Milk’. I’ve provided a screen shot of my set up to the right. It won’t mean much to people who haven’t used the system, but it is definitely helping me keep on top of things.

One of the key things I have decided to do is, as much as possible, make my Sunday Afternoons a ‘organise my week’ time. This will ebb and flow because I know there will be times I have things on during Sunday afternoons, but in general it will be a good time to do this. As I have church Sunday morning and then The Hub on Sunday nights, I find it works best to consider Sunday a ‘work day’ because I don’t tend to get to ‘rest’ in the afternoon, which means I have often wasted that time. This way I can use my Sunday afternoons productively and get myself set up to use my week times as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Now, a quick aside to end this entry. To some people, the words ‘efficient’ and ‘effective’ cause red flags to go up all over the place. Isn’t ministry about relationship? Isn’t ministry about building the Kingdom of God? Yes, absolutely! However I am someone who BEST is able to do these things from within a structure. I like to put structures in place BECAUSE it is very easy to move away from a structure, where required (well, personal structures that I have set up) but I have found it doesn’t tend to work the other way, adding structure ‘on the fly’ doesn’t work for me. I feel most stressed and most out of my depth when I KNOW I have a lot on, or at least ‘feel’ like I do. If I put a structure like I have suggested in place, I tend to find the stress levels decrease and I actually find MORE time to be relational and more time to sow into building the Kingdom of God. It is just how I work best, and I want to give my best to God!

So onto another week.

This week also marks the beginning of Sync Youth for 2011. I am really excited for Sync Youth this year because it really will start to ‘look’ how I am wanting it to. We’ve made some fairly big structural changes after just 12 months and one can never really be sure how change on this scale is going to go until it happens, however I feel very positive about it. We’ll have a totally new group of youth at youth group and our older youth will be learning what it means to be youth leader apprentices. I’m very much looking forward to working with this older group, hoping to instill in them some skills that are worthwhile for life whilst also helping them discover their gifts and talents and equip them for service in those area’s.

The Hub really is starting to move now as we have begun to work with students at the ECU Student Village. On Saturday we took a group of students to Ikea so that they could furnish their units with little odds and ends that were not already provided. What was most amusing about this trip was that the majority of the students were from Sweden (the home of Ikea) and so it was quite fun learning what all the names of the furniture actually mean. Some made sense, some were quite ironic and some were just plain weird!

It felt great this last week to actually be out and about ‘doing stuff’ with people. I helped cook pancakes, helped about 10 students move in and met many more, discussing life and what courses they were studying. It is still very much early days but I sensed some really good connections and am feeling very positive about the prospect of this church plant really taking off at ECU Mt Lawley.

This week the rubber hits the road, let the journey of 2011 truly begin!

Sync Young Adults
At Inglewood this year we have started a new group for young adults aged 16+. This will mostly consist of our youth from Sync last year, most of whom are entering years 11 and 12 in 2011. Over my years in Youth Ministry I have found that at around about 15-16 years of age, the dynamics change with teenagers and they begin to interact with leaders in a different way to when they are 12-15. The typical ‘friday night event’ youth ministry model doesn’t connect as well with this age group in my opinion. As such we are looking to use a different model with this age group in the hope we can better transition them towards an adult faith and involvement with the greater church.

Some of these idea’s are;
1. The formation of a dedicated, weekly small group for this group which includes fun, food & discipleship.
2. Opportunities for this age group to serve, both with the younger Sync Youth group and in the greater church context.
3. More 1-1 or 2-2 style relationship times, where adult mentors can build into them and speak directly into their life situations.

None of this is particularly new or ground-breaking, but hopefully we will see them engaging with the church in more mature, adult-like ways.

Sync Youth
I have always felt that the typical youth group works best with youth aged roughly 12-15. This age group is high energy and just seems to crave interaction with older teens and adults. They are generally happy to go with the flow and are less critical of things that are not as they would like. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a difficult age to work with, if you get it wrong they can shun you all the more, but I tend to find them willing to listen to and learn from older role models. A less hard ‘edge’ than older teenagers seem to acquire.

The Hub
Another hat that I am currently wearing, as if building a youth ministry from the ground up is not enough, is lead pastor of a church plant aimed at university students at a local university. We are in the early stages of this plant, and there is much to discuss. For the next few months expect to hear of our endeavours to serve students as they move in to the on-site student village.

My Book
Yes, my book is still on the horizon. As I have said before, I began to write a book during my travels in 2009. Originally I planned to work hard on it in 2010 however I have realised that this particular project is going to be a few years in the making. I mostly want to write the book for my own purposes, to help me solidify what I think and feel regarding ministry to youth and young adults, however I also believe my journey could be useful for other people so I intend to document my journey as I go. I have already road tested some of me theories and will continue to do so in the hope that when my book is complete it is more than just a heap of ‘theories’ and ‘throughts’ but stories backed up my real life experience. Only time will tell how this goes!

So there is a very, very brief overview of my plans and some of which you can expect to hear about. I will also be endeavouring to write my story, how I got to where I am today. This will likely be 12-20 entries spread out throughout the year.

I hope you enjoy!

My first involvement with Graham was in 1993 when I decided, at 8 years of age, to be baptised. I still remember sitting in the little room by the old stage, which I believe was his office. He was asking me some questions about faith and baptism, making sure that I understood the commitment that I was making. I obviously answered them to his satisfaction because on May 2nd, 1993 he baptised me in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Shortly after this we moved to Albany.

Graham’s influence on my life was only beginning. In 2003 I moved back to Perth to attend university and once again started to attend Subiaco Church of Christ. I remember the first day I walked into the church, welcomed by many people but welcomed by name by Graham. He still remembered me, 10 years later. Graham always amazed me with his ability to remember people.

In 2004 I began to work at Subiaco Church of Christ. Though during my 4 years there I didn’t have a lot to do with Graham in a professional capacity, the way he led the staff team inspired me. He seemed to be able to strike the balance between being hands off, allowing his staff to do their job, and hands on when it was needed. I was also blessed to travel to Madagascar in 2005 with him and sit under some of the best, most dynamic teaching I have ever had the pleasure of hearing. If you think he was a good preacher and teacher on the pulpit in Australia, he was simply inspiring on that trip. Somehow he managed to take really complex biblical doctrines and simplify them enough so that every person in the room in Madagascar understood what he said. This was quite some feat as some 5% spoke English, most people relied upon Graham’s ability to make simple statements that were easy to translate.

When I left the staff team at Subi for new pastures, Graham wished me the best and every time I went back to visit, he would seemingly go out of his way to say hi and ask me how things were going. As late as June last year, right around the time he was diagnosed with cancer, he saw me at church and stopped me for 5 minutes to talk with me and encourage me in my journey.

Graham was a great man of God. He was strong, courageous and unafraid to follow the path God laid for him. This did at times put me off, and there were times I had difficulties with Graham, but his overall influence has been very positive. I live each day now inspired to be a pastor who loves people even half as much as Graham loved God’s flock.

Rest In Peace with our Lord, Graham. Till we meet again.

I am actually looking forward to this because it is actually hard to get into a ‘rhythm’ before things are similar to how they will be for the year. I have a few things down pat but it will only be when I know exactly how crazy things will be that I’ll be able to get into a routine which I am happy with.

It is also going to be interesting to see how I juggle the different ‘roles’. I obviously am working as a youth pastor but on the side I have a gardening business and also another possible part time job. The gardening business is slowly picking up (and I wanted it to be slow) which is good and the other job will only possibly eventuate once school goes back anyway.

One thing I am actually struggling with a bit though is feeling ‘justified’ to sit down and think/work on my book. I just haven’t been doing it. I won’t be doing that during work time and I find it hard to do after hours. The purpose of focusing this blog as I have was to give me an outlet to discuss some of the topics I want to cover but that requires me to sit down and actually write some content which is proving difficult! Hopefully I’ll get onto that soon.

Whatever happens I am pretty happy with my start to the year. Good times!

The next day, about the same time I noticed the same youth carrying the same sauce bottle walking around in the same manner in around about the same place. Again I continued on doing whatever it was that took me to that spot. When this happened a third day in a row I thought I might engage him in conversation and ask him about the sauce bottle. I expected to get some story about needing to ‘hide’ his booze, about the ease of carrying it around in the bottle etc. What i discovered was a lot more disturbing.

We started out with the usual questions. Name, what school he was from, what he was going to do next. These initial questions continued for a little while until I finally asked ‘so what is the deal with the sauce bottle’? His reply? ‘Well, we spent all our money on alcohol…this was all we could afford for food for the week’. Yes, that is right, inside the 2 litre sauce bottle was indeed…sauce. This was to be his nutritional intake for the week. Scary.

Leavers, or schoolies as it is called in the rest of Australia, is an amazingly jam packed environment that over the last few years has almost become a ‘right of passage’ for teenagers desiring to enter adulthood. The major provider of alcohol for teenagers celebrating the end of school is not illegally purchased with fake id’s OR an ‘older brother’ but generally is provided by parents who want their kids to have a ‘fun week away discovering themselves’. The modern day right of passage for teenagers in Australia is…binge drinking and sexual experimentation on a scale not experienced anywhere before or after, to the same extent. This right of passage has the ability to take a completely rational, sane, smart teenager and turn them into someone who, in normal circumstances, would be seen as immature and making bad choices. I remember a school dux(top student) telling me ‘normally I don’t drink and I until now planned on waiting till marriage to have sex, but this week I don’t care what i do!’ Indeed, he believed to enter ‘adulthood’ he had to have a week of craziness.

This is but a snippet of something I plan on discussing in my book on ‘Why Youth Ministry?’. We really do lack any semblence of worthwhile rights of passage in modern, western society. An article I was reading today suggests that where normalised rights of passage are lacking, adolescents will create their own, often less beneficial forms.  Another article from youthspecialties.com suggests that

“It’s unfortunate we don’t have an official Christian coming of age ceremony for our boys. For most young men there’s no “well done, my man” moment. The Jewish culture has the bar mitzvah. The first nations people have ceremonies—an African friend of mine told me about his three-day gathering. The closest thing to a rite of passage in our culture is the party at the bar when they reach legal drinking age.”

The same can, and is often said, for girls. Perhaps one area that youth ministry really could provide something ‘unique’ insociety is some form of ‘right of passage’ that is more useful and less destructive than the usual ‘Get drunk, party, discover my limits’ form that currently exists. Perhaps we’d get less Peter Pan’s…teenagers who never grow up and are still, effectively, adolescents into their 30′s! Just something I am interested in exploring.

One of the issues I am facing is what to do with church. When I lived in Perth I was invovled heavily at Subiaco Church of Christ. I love the church and have enjoyed visiting when I lived down south but am not drawn, in any particular way, to the need to make that my home now. However if I was to call somewhere else home it would be difficult too because I will be away for at least 3 months of 2010 and then will leave again in 2011. Wherever I go I like to be involved, if I was to return to Subi I could probably get involved in some way in the new year, if I was to find somewhere else it would be more difficult as, obviously, they would need to get to know me and would have to work out where I could get involved for a short term stay. But then again Subiaco has also changed a lot in 2 years and a lot of what used to be the case there is not now, it is not the same as it was (in a good way) from when I left. I have a lot of friends there but still, it feels very different to what it did when it WAS my home. Being involved in a small country church has, in some ways, changed what I look for and sometimes since I’ve been back I’ve felt a little daunted by how big Subi is and how easy it IS to just rock up and leave, without really being noticed, even as an ex-staff member.

Not really sure what I am saying or thinking right now. I feel like I am in a strange place, like I am waiting for something to click, like I know God has a purpose for the year ahead but what that purpose is has not been revealed to me yet. I don’t just want to ‘work’ for work sakes, I want to ‘seek first the Kingdom of God’ and trust that, while doing so, God will provide all my needs for now and the future. Just not sure what my role in that is for now!

We’ll see. I am sure in a month or so I will be back to my usual self with a bit of purpose and the like and it will be much easier. Right now though I am in a strange place that I am not used to!

The Church
I’ve just started reading a book called ‘The reason for God’ by Tim Keller and it has got me thinking once again about church. It is fairly widely commented that the church is going through a second reformation of sorts, or if people don’t believe it already is then they often believe that it needs to! For about the last 100 years or so many people both within the church and outside it have expected ‘religion’ to die. However this has not occurred. Instead, as Keller points out, “We [now] have neither the western Christendom of the past nor the secular, religionless society that was predicted for the future. We have something else entirely.” So what is this something else?

God’s tapestry
There is not much that I am certain of in this world but one thing I draw hope from is my certainty that God is weaving a beautiful tapestry that is perfect for the times that the church today finds itself in. As happened during the first reformation there is much debate between the different ‘camps’ as to what this new, or different church might look like. There is great debate about who is right, who is wrong. There is great debate about how much of the old and how much of the new is needed. What if the answer to all the debate is simply ‘yes’?

The old and the new
Though the church today is very different thanks to the reformation and all that followed, one thing that is clear is that there were still definitely many parts of the old that carried through to the new.  Though there is little debate that some of the current methods of church will be a part of whatever God is forming, just how much is usually the issue. What also amuses me is how almost all people discussing this argue that the way of the bible is the way we should go…which I don’t debate, it’s just the many varied interpretations of what that means that amuses me! So will house churches become the norm? Maybe it’ll be the megachurch that wins out? Perhaps those ‘sticklers’ hanging on to the old orthodox and traditional styles that will ‘win’ the so called battle. Or perhaps God is simply saying ‘yes’?

The Dream
I’ve long been interested in these discussions about the church. This has often strained me though because I don’t tend to fit nicely in any one camp. I listen to people talking about the emerging church and how it is shaping the world. This get’s me excited and I want to be more like that. Then I read about the persecuted churches and how they are taking off in the developing world under extreme difficulty and this makes me feel like praying for the Western church to be more persecuted! Then of course I have the positive experiences of the larger style churches that I have both been in and regularly read about. How much time do we spend arguing whose thread is the one God either should be, or is, using? What if all the threads are both being used…and being fixed to best fit the tapestry that God is weaving? I don’t doubt for one minute that a lot that is done in the name of the church makes me cringe and cry…but then I read some of the stuff that Martin Luther talked about and I realise that he too was a little rough around the edges and didn’t have it perfect!

My place
I’m not entirely sure where I am going with this other than to reflect on something I have believed for a number of years, my position in all this is to straddle the middle between the many different strands of ‘church’ that God is weaving into his masterpiece. I don’t quite know how this looks, I don’t yet quite know exactly what my role is but every day, more and more God refines in me a heart to see the big, the small, the rich, the poor working together to allow God to make the tapestry that he desires the world to see. And though at times I wonder if the masterpiece is ever coming together I just have to remember that even the best weaver starts with something that looks less like a masterpiece and more like something destined for the trash! What a journey this is God has me on.