I once served in a church that had a strong business model. All of the staff were encouraged to read books like Good to Great or Unleashing the Ideavirus. In that church, we talked a LOT about outcomes. It was a church model based on productivity. Most of the focus was on programs and how they produced the outcomes we were looking for.

Something happened to me while thinking through these ideas.

I don’t believe in outcomes based ministry.

That might be a little strong to some. I realized it in a conversation I had recently when someone was reading some of my thoughts. The asked me what was the purpose of what I was doing. Why do things differently? What were my outcomes?

I just blinked… several times… There it was staring me in the face. I don’t believe in outcomes.

To clarify, let me say that I don’t think you can measure a ministry or the efforts of any minister by numbers, conversions, Bible verses memorized, attendance, percentages, fiery hoops jumped through, prayers prayed, or anything other silly measurable that I can think of.

It hit me somewhere in my past. All of the measurable outcomes I could think of were either not good measures of spiritual growth or out of my hands. If I could turn someone’s heart, make them aware of the Spirit’s prompting, even call the Lord to their attention apart from God, that would be amazing. But I can’t do those things on my own. In fact, those are things only God can do.

So I’m left with two choices. Either I measure things that I can do, but don’t really matter, or I try to recognize what God does and try to participate in it.

Being able to make a decision underrated. Looking at how many pople live life – how they let others make decisions for them about what car to drive, what clothes to wear, where to live – it is amazing that we struggle for personal freedom to be able to make a decision at all. It seems so many people reject this basic freedom.

I used to work a group called Young American Showcase. They trained their representatives in many things that were helpful on the road. Mainly they taught us to know what we were doing. That is, they taught us to know our appeal to the audience and commit to it.

In entertainment, doing a performance without committing to it is death. Half-hearted performances just don’t appeal to audiences, and if they see that you aren’t sure of your performance, they begin to think that you are messing up.

In the Christian life, the same is true. In many ways, Christians don’t seem sure of what it is they are doing. Poling churches, one stresses a moderate lifestyle while another encourages freedom. There are just as many perspectives on how to live a Christian life as there are churches (and probably a whole lot more). There seems to be little uniformity though and very little commitment, and that points to how unsure they are about what the Christian life is about.

This is maybe the biggest indictment on the state of discipleship. Discipleship is the process of how people learn they are about and is the way they are shown the way to commit to it and be decisive.

Depending upon which statistics you consult, between 60 and 95% of teenagers in youth ministries in America leave the church after graduation. According to Barna about 7-8% of the nation hold the basics beliefs that would distinguish them as Christians. I haven’t seen these two statistics used together, but I think they represent similar or same issues.

Attractional ministry sucks. From Willow Creek’s Reveal to Sally Morgenthaler‘s confession, it is becoming more apparent to the mainstream church that wrangling people into the church with promises of entertainment doesn’t work. In fact, it has proven to be utterly self-destructive.

I didn’t have a clear way of thinking of this until I heard an urban philosophy. It goes something like, “young men go around making babies as if they are trying to prove they can.” Youth ministry (and adult ministries as well) is very similar.

Youth ministries create illegitimate children. When they are more concerned about creating new life than nurturing it, they make orphans in the faith.

To be fair, churches have put pressure on youth workers to post numbers of salvation prayers and re-dedications. When we reduce evangelism to the newest gimmick, we must realize the sad state we are in. Evangelism isn’t the only problem though. Discipleship that focuses on curriculum instead of people is like rearing a child focused solely on the food (or media) they consume.

Corrections

How do we recover? Here are my solutions, though I acknowledge their are hopelessly incomplete.

1. Stop  tracking numbers. Just stop. I’m not saying numbers aren’t important, but I am saying we should take the emphasis off of it.
2. Start tracking transformation. It’s much harder to measure changes in teens than it is to track how many prayers they pray. It’s not impossible though. The fruits of the Spirit are a good place to start.
3. Stop hiding behind books. I’ve done it myself. It’s so much easier to just teach from a book than engage someone personally in their life. Transformation doesn’t happen in books, though. It occurs most in close relationships with others. Live there instead.

Other ideas? Anyone?

Another great article on attractional ministry is over at Benjer’s site.

Update: And just saw another post by Joel Mayward about Orphan Care.

Amber Case, cyborg anthropologist, makes a strong argument that we have all become cyborgs. With the constancy technological add-ons of cell phones and computers, we have become another form of humanity. Through technology, time and space have compressed allowing us to be present in many places at once. For more, listen here.

Due to computers and especially social networking, we extend our mental self into a new person. Our digital brains and hard drives define our knowledge extending it and externalizing it. So we have access to more information then ever, but know less. In our relationships, this makes us a glutton of extended networks without intimacy or compassion.

We have s second identity. It shows up online and people interact with that other person when we aren’t there. We are always connected, and if we could manifest all of our contacts in the room, it would always be full. So we have more contacts and less friendship. It lessens the impact of friendship. We know about others more but know their self less. We know ourselves less.

People new to technology become adolescents in their online identities. Mastery of these technologies defines maturity rather than emotional health. Just try to have a reasonable conversation between games on Xbox Live. It became a social cancer of its own.

What does this mean for youth ministry? This cyborg life reduces solitude and reflection, limiting the time needed for development of actual identity. Young adults in this generation have an identity deficit. They know how to be online, but lack the ability to be connected face to face. They suck at attachment.

Knowing this, how does youth ministry:

• become a place where they look in the mirror without flinching?
• help young adults develop their created identity and reject the imposed identity they are surrounded with?
• provide solitude to reflect on their life and its direction?
• practice belonging to something transcendent?

Also, check out what Marko has to say about the effect of social networking on Middle Schoolers. Also a great couple of posts by John Alexander over at the garage on Restlessness in Youth Ministry.

A couple of days ago I was reading Randy Elrod’s blog. Though I am a new reader, I have found his thoughts to be little sparks for creativity. In his post about how compliments don’t mean much, he throws out an idea that stuck with me.

Empathy as he describes it:

“Empaths are so extremely sensitive that they will often feel what is happening to other people more so than they will feel it if it were happening to them. Because of this they will ignore their own needs. They will often find it hard to process when someone thanks them or gives them a compliment. They don’t understand gratitude because they don’t understand any other way of thinking and they are much more likely to pay someone else a compliment than to take one themselves.”

I immediately starting thinking about youth ministry. I have seen pastors super-impose their own situations on the people the minister to without giving a second thought to its relevance. On the other end of the spectrum, I have seen pastors who can’t share anything personal with their congregants. Both of these are signs of emotional immaturity.

There is a certain need for empathy in youth ministry. It seems obvious that youth workers need to put their needs aside and be sensitive to the needs of their youth. Here’s where I have gotten it wrong:

1. Program Driven – I am a recovering task master. Nothing makes me feel like seeing a great program executed. I can’t tell you how many times I have let a teens needs take second place to the execution of a (my) program.

2. Self-Worth – When I feel insecure about what I am doing, I look for affirmation in all the long places (sounds like a punk rock rip off of the country song). This never works. If I get affirmation, I discount it. If I don’t, I feel like I am not appreciated.

3. Performance – If neither of the previous techniques works, I often turn to how well I do my job. The only measurables that matter at this point are bodies and signs of change. So I take out the magnifying glass and start to pat myself on the back. While I’m doing this, I miss what is going on around me.

The thing about these three ways I go wrong (there are more than three, trust me) is that they all focus on me instead of the needs of my charges. Easily I can go a season without falling into one of these patterns, but I find that a little introspection shows little signs of lack my of empathy.

I had a crazy week meeting with my YMCP cohort. For some reason I just  couldn’t get focused. I was distracted and distracting. Often, I would get an idea and be so amped in my head that I couldn’t settle down enough to articulate it to the rest of the group. Knowing this only made it worse. I was beginning to become a bit paranoid about myself and my appearance. Then something cool happened.

Now friend and guerilla thinker, Jeff Goins, was talking to me about writing. Why do I think he is a guerilla thinker? He challenged me a lot this weekend probably without ever even knowing it. He is a soldier Drill Sergeant in the war on Christian mediocrity.

Hanging with Jeff, I started thinking about why I began writing in the first place. It wasn’t that I wanted to be famous for writing (if that’s my objective, I really need to rethink what I am doing). It all started with a curiosity about youth ministry. I wondered what youth ministry would be like if I got rid of some of the stereotypes. You know those right? Youth ministry should be fun, game oriented, attractional. It should make young adults do things like pray more, read their Bible more, attend church more, do less risky behavior, not drink or have sex. These are all good things, don’t get me wrong, but starting from that presupposition had limited my view of youth ministry and what it could do in the lives of teens. Worse, it limited what God could do through me.

So I started asking lots of questions of myself and others. I started trying new things that would counteract some of those old ways. Well, it wasn’t long before God started using this newfound freedom in me. It was more about who I was created to be, and curiosity was the vehicle for showing me that.

There has been a lot of thought about the future of youth ministry. I hope that curiosity drives that future.

Here are two videos about how wonder and curiosity should shape our vision of the future of youth ministry.

Last night I had two great surprises. One was when an out of town student was able to come. She lives over an hour away and doesn’t make it often. So last night was a treat.

We talked at length last night about the requirements for being a Christian. I love this talk for teens because it is usually an affirmation of their faith. I always approach this question with the verse from Romans 10:9 – “For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (NLT). So we call Jesus savior because he saves us  by grace through the justification of our sins. We also call him Lord because we are expected to follow him and through sanctification. Both of these things are what the Bible describes as saving faith. We talked about faith, a right relationship and obedience.

The last word usually trips teens up. They know just like anyone one that they aren’t perfectly obedient. So they question their faith. I just happens that I am working on an article about teaching obedience, so we dove right into this paradox. How does is escape the church’s perspective that all of the things that make us a Christian pale against experiencing God’s love?

I had never thought about it explicitly, but last night I wondered about this. We had an infant baptism yesterday morning. I love those, because it is also a reaffirmation of our faith. I also grew up in the Baptist church and have a certain affinity for immersion and believer’s baptism. Never have I heard in either situation a call to experiencing God’s love as vital to our faith.

Here’s where I land the ship. Yes, we need salvation, and yes we need obedience. I don’t think those are in question here, but why isn’t the love of Christ stressed in our vows and continually through our discipleship afterwards? Isn’t it through Jesus’ love that we learn to obey? I think that the appeal to our hearts is clear through the Bible. With all the teaching lately about the need to engage our hearts, I hope the future of the church includes teaching the necessity of God’s love.

A zoetrope is a physical device that helps explain how animation works. It focuses your eye on a one split second snap shot repeated with just a little bit of variation. Think of the little pieces of paper with a series of images that are slightly different. When viewed separately, they are just images. When view in series, it appears to have movement. Check out what Pixar did with it.

That is often what we see in youth ministry. We see teens once or twice a week for a couple of hours. It’s a snap shot of their lives, and it’s not even an accurate picture since we remove them from their natural environment. It’s important for those of us in youth ministry to remember that what we see is fairly limited and not necessarily accurate.

We see these snap shots in series, but there is a lot of time in between. Its easy for us to focus on what’s the same, since that is the most consistent picture we see. What is the most telling, though, is what’s different.

What do you do knowing this?

• Remind yourself that for most of your students, this is a small part of their life.
• Go outside of your environment and visit them in theirs.
• Watch for small changes, not just big ones.
• Know that what happens between the snap shots you see is probably more important.
• Make your places as safe for those changes as possible.

Many of you will probably be familiar with Stravinski’s The Rite of Spring through Disney’s Fantasia. A slightly less known fact is that I was a conducting intern at Belmont University under Robert Gregg. The Rite of Spring is one of the hardest pieces of music I have yet to experience from a conducting perspective. It’s a fluid mix of flowing passages and driving rhythms without a steady meter. If your not into music or conducting, just know that this piece of music is beautifully twisted and erratic and HARD. Much like youth ministry.

I was thinking of how they are similar this past week. Here is how I think youth ministry is like conducting The Rite of Spring.

Erratic
Youth ministry isn’t anyone’s 9-5 job. It means taking calls late in the night (or early in the morning), being out of office much of the time, having retreats and lock-ins, and generally being at the mercy of teen’s schedules. It’s more than just the schedule though. Teens bring their own quirky rules to relationships that change often. What was a safe topic yesterday often isn’t today. Conducting something so erratic means you have to be prepared in advance and ready for change.

Organic
Anyone who has served in youth ministry knows that it isn’t efficient in any way. Often the work you do today in youth ministry will be a rehearsal of ideas that have been said before (and before that too). It does sink in eventually, but it is much more organic than efficient. I love meeting with a youth who is struggling and having them tell me their newfound key to life (as if I have never heard it) that I have been telling them the entire time I have known them. I know then that is has connected for them. Conducting means rehearsals of the keys truths from the Bible, over and over again.

Beautiful
I can remember going to hear the symphony and wondering what to watch. There is so much happening visually, it’s hard to focus. Often I would just close my eyes. When I didn’t, though, I would watch the conductor. Conducting, with its precision and passion, is one of the most beautiful things to watch and appreciate. Granted, like youth ministries, it often looks like someone just flapping their arms. But more often, it is holding things together, making harmony out of what would be chaos an making sense out of nonsense (or with nonsense). Conducting youth ministry is a beautiful thing to watch when it reaches hurting people where they’re at and moves them into a new life.

The analogy breaks down at some point. They all do in the end. Conducting isn’t like youth ministry in many ways – if it’s healthy. Conducting is hands off and controlling. It’s goal is to manipulate each person in the group to get the right performance out of them. Conducting only really cares about the final outcome, and isn’t concerned with how much trauma it takes to get there. Everything revolves around that final concert. Youth ministry at least attempts to care for it’s group along the way.

Do you conduct youth ministry, or just let its cacophony just happen around you?

I have had this thought for a while, but it has come into focus lately through Marko’s posts about Leading Without Power. A lot of what people say about leadership could also apply to discipleship. I’m not alone apparently, because Mark Riddle has said the same repeatedly. So I started poking around.

There are many meanings for the word leadership. The best guess I can give is the, “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task” (wikipedia). What confuses leadership is the many different models of leadership. There is school of three classical styles, emergent leadership, transactional leadership, etc. There are probably as many ideas about leadership as there are leaders out there. Safe bet for me is someone with followers.

Discipleship is similar. It requires followers and like leadership encompasses influence, aid and support in accomplishment. The way discipleship functions can also be fairly divergent. Some people use discipleship as a leadership building platform, some as spiritual formation and some as education. So the similarities are there to draw on.

Similarities – both leadership and discipleship sometimes (in my view, if done well):

• Guide people
• Realize and utilize talents
• Set goals and outcomes
• Provides direction in achieving goals
• Has plans and measurables

How do they differ?

• Internal or external goals

Generally (as in, I am making a huge generalization, but one I believe mostly true), the goals of leadership are focused on external things. Usually it is developing a product, event, service or whatever. Leadership has an external focus on what is seen and more easily controlled.

Discipleship is internal. It’s goal is to develop the person as the created image of God. Doing this relies on the internal workings of the person and how that plays out in the world. Over and over again, you see Jesus, Paul, Peter and others working with people to help them realize who they are because of their relationship with God.

I’m sure there are other way that they differ, but for me, this is the one that counts. When I lead, I want to see outcomes and effectiveness. When I disciple, I have to realize my limitations and allow God to change what’s inside a person. It’s a slower process to disciple, but well worth it.