From time to time I get rumblings that people don't understand me.
Have you ever had that problem?
Also, from time to time, I get rumblings that people don't understand FINK.
I just finished answering the "Confirmation Lite" question (actually, "Fluff" question) in a way that might be worth sharing. this will be longer than any blog you'd ever want to read, but here goes (actual email sent tonight):
Dear _______,
Some notes from your conversation with Monty came my way and I’d like to respond.
First, thanks much for your interest in reaching kids for Christ! We want to reach kids AND their families during the rough and sometimes rocky teen years. We also are dedicated to finding ways that turn parents into the primary inkubators of faith with church as reinforcement – not replacement – of the parents duties. We want church to be the place that gets them started – lights a spark – and the home to be the place where that faith is nurtured.
(Okay, so much for the speech…)
A Brief Background
As you may know, we started out ten years ago with only a few skits and worksheets. It wasn’t supposed to be a curriculum when it started – just some fun supplements to the Bible and Small Catechism to get the kids engaged. I used to write skits for Group Publishing and wanted to find some small ways that kids could get engaged personally (and out of their chairs) in the interpretation of their Bible and Catechism lessons.
We followed the George Bernard Shaw philosophy: “If you’re going to tell the truth, you’d better make them laugh or they’ll kill you!” supplemented with a little Hamlet: “The play’s the thing whereby I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”
I knew from five summers of Bible Camp staffing that drama was a good way to engage kids and help them understand the truths of God in a different way.
So, with the Bible and Luther’s Small Catechism as the only text books you’d ever need, skits as a supplement to the Bible for each lesson, and the thought that each small group needed a caring adult in the middle of the mix to help bring Christ’s love to kids so the lesson would be incarnate, we set out toward the goal of creating a method of teaching confirmation that would retain BOTH the information AND the kid. That was ten years ago.
Confirmation “Lite” (the fluff stuff)
We did receive the "confirmation lite" or “fluff” label in our first few years, mostly from people who didn’t understand that the Bible was the text book and our stuff was the supplement. The label first showed up on the Missouri Synod Publishing House website from people who didn’t want us competing with their lock on sales of workbooks, and from others who didn’t want to sanction anything that wasn’t LCMS – in spite of the fact that my “Welcome to the Family” baptism book and “Welcome to the Lord’s Table” communion book have been consistently best sellers for Concordia Publishing.
As time went on in the first years, we began to realize that the workbook one bought or resources one chose was not the total answer to the mass exodus problem after confirmation. The problem was bigger than the resources chosen. It also included the methods of teaching, and the lack of parental participation in faith dialogue with kids. That’s when we started reading Dr. Peter Senge at MIT and his “Fifth Discipline” to inform us on systemic change. We launched a research experiment and invited a couple thousand churches onto a voyage of discovery. How could we retain both the kid and the information? How would we educate both head and heart? How could we create incubators of faith that included both church and home? How could we engage kids in such a way that they took some responsibility for their own Christian education and in caring prayer groups at the same time? How could we include learning, service and fellowship in a wholistic system that kept the kids wanting to come back for more after confirmation day?
As the skits evolved over the decade into Bible supplements like art, music, ten nights of home devotions per theme, prayers, poetry, and 22 total arts for each lesson, the system also developed from a “Pied Piper” classroom model of bells and whistles into a pastoral care small group model that turned the love of Christ loose in kids lives, prayers, and hearts. In the ten years of development, we’ve made great discoveries, great mistakes, great strides, and great enemies. Through it all we’ve committed to reading everything we could get our hands on in brain research, education models, systems change, and team building. We also committed to re-evaluating and tweaking every thing we do every year with the input of tens of thousands of "living laboratories" across our network and some world class people at partner churches across the country.
We are attempting to grow the most effective system possible for capturing young minds for Jesus and turning them into disciples living their faith. I believe a decade of this focus has brought us well on our way. No one else in the world has attempted this over ten years or committed to this focused “learning organization” on the problem of adolescent faith development in the mainline. Are we there yet? No. We’ll never be there because we’ll never stop improving and kids will never stop changing. Is all our stuff great and effective? No. But our partners and members tell us when something isn’t working and we strengthen it, tweak it, or drop it accordingly year after year.
The One Thing
One thing has remaind the same, though, in all this decade. (And I say this both as a parish pastor for a dozen years and a father of a 15 year old who just got her drivers’ permit) Teens and their parents will always need Jesus, and Jesus comes most powerfully into the chaos and wonder of this moment of life when he comes in flesh – incarnate - through the love, care, and attention of other caring Christians. Not simply through a workbook. Not simply a class. Not simply a skit – although all these things can be wonderful.
Christ in flesh, the Word alive, in an adult who models Christ’s love and translates the Word of God from the lesson into the real life issue of the teens in their care and prayers.
Anyway, enough of the sermon. Suffice it to say I believe we no longer deserve the “fluff” label. We had some scanty resources a decade ago. That is no longer true. It comes mostly from folks who haven’t taken a serious look at our offering for years, who may not have understood our methods of capturing both head and heart, who are trying to sell national church publishing workbooks, or some poor souls who don’t think you can be learning anything if you’re having fun.
In Closing
Now, let me be bold. In a nutshell, I believe FINK is the best whole-brain, engaging, deep system and curriculum in the world. I don’t just believe it. I know it. But don’t believe me or Monty or anyone else on the payroll.
Ask Pastor Pam Challis in Chicago pamlca@aol.com who is now in a inner city church, but last year had 32 of her last 34 kids confirmed come back to plug directly in to ministries of the church. Ask Tammy Condron jandtcondron@hotmail.co in Riverside, CA, about the lives changed in her family through, of all things, confirmation. Email Rev. Jim Freitag JIMSLAPTOP@COMPUSERVE.COM who made amazing things happen with kids in Washington state and is now using it with young soldiers in Baghdad. Ask Deb Streicher dstreicher@cox.net in Burke, VA, who even got her pastor to change from all head knowledge to BOTH head and heart. Check out http://finkmonthly.faithink.com/e_article000230844.cfm from Pocatello, and talk to Amy Houch at a church that went from 12 to 55 kids in two years using not simply the FINK curriculum – but the methods, team building research, and both high tech and high touch processes in large group and small group.
None of this is to say it will work for everyone in every situation. None of it is to say it can’t (and won’t) get better – because we improve it every year with the input of our partner churches and members. That’s where people like you could come in, should you become a member and give us an honest (and even painful) critique of our weaknesses. We want to design and create the best resources out there for our systems. We are committed to continual improvement, tweaking and growth year by year with the feedback of our friends and partners out there who are actually using it and making it better.
By the time I come back from my Sabbatical, I will get into full gear as CCO (a title “Chief Creative Officer” that my friend Joani Schultz from Group Publishing suggested.) In that capacity, I will be conducting annual FINKtanks with our great new brand manager, Monty, the Head to the Heart partner churches, and others invited from outside our network to help us improve. Before that time, I would find it invaluable to know what you perceive as the existing weaknesses in our stuff so that we can incrementally improve over time.
If you have a chance and the desire, I'd very much appreciate a candid critique of what you have seen personally in your examination of our stuff and any direct input into the sort of things you believe we need to work on. I'd especially appreciate a comparison of our weaknesses vs. the strengths of any other curriculum you have studied as you’ve been looking for a system and resource base to meet your needs.
So, thanks again for caring about kids. And, if you’re still awake after my unusually long letter her, thanks also for listening. I’ll enclose a standard set of questions (below) that we send people when they are placing our stuff on the table with other curriculum to help them understand the philosophy behind our stuff. If you care to dig deeper and run through this detailed critique, I’ll probably send you a can of SPAM and a free T-shirt, maybe a certificate for sainthood.
Have a great weekend.
All God’s best.
Rich Melheim
Founder, Faith Inkubators, currently on Sabbatical
FINK/Other Curriculum Questions
1. Does the curriculum use multiple intelligences to make your teaching points clear to the learner (visual arts, drama, humor, servant events, hands-on learning, game shows, etc.) Are multiple intelligences and whole brain learning important to your people? We use Dr. Robert Sylvestre’s “A Celebration of Neurons” as our guide when writing for the whole brain to hit aural, physical and emotional centers of the brain and make the messages sticky.
2. Does the curriculum employ interactive learning techniques that allow small groups to take part in hands-on learning? Is this important to your leadership that the learner takes an active role in his or her own education? (We follow Dr. William Glasser’s “The Quality School” in our philosophy: In a quality school, everyone is the teacher.)\
3. Is a single teacher presenting the theme alone, or are teaching teams with a variety of gifts and voices working together to add variety, pace, and supplements to the lesson themes?
4. Is all the teaching done in one space and setting with the whole group, or are small groups employed as “break outs” to help teach parts of the lessons and process the information, relating it to the lives of the youth?
5. Is the focus of the education mostly information, or are pastoral care, service, fellowship and worship enlisted to help create an context for the content?
6. Does the curriculum have nightly home component – thematic devotions to reinforce the concepts taught at church? (In the FINK system a theme is unveiled at church and goes home Monday - Friday. 5/6 of the confirmation program happens at home.) Also, would you find this home component valuable, marginal, or a waste of time, effort and paper?
7. Does the curriculum employ music as a teaching tool? (At FINK, the learning of Scripture and Catechism is at the core of every gathering. The “memory work” isn’t work, however, because we’ve created a method of making the memory fun and lasting. A careful saturation technique is employed during every lesson that includes hearing the melody of the verse in opening music, singing the song verbatim while marking the words in NRSV Bibles, talking about the verses, seeing them on PowerPoints (or newsprint in the no tech version), discussing the verses in small group, hearing them again and signing them upon return from small group, and layering the theme music softly underneath closing prayers. If the child wakes up the next morning humming the Bible verse song, the Holy Spirit has been singing to their hearts all night and we know we’ve done our job right! All this is based on Dr. Eric Jensen’s “Brain Based Learning” – chapter 17. (www.thebrainstore.com) Check it out.
8. Does the curriculum employ technology to aid the learner in the whole experience? If so, what types of technology do you find useful? (We added 15,400 PowerPoint slides as optional resources last year for those who like to use tech visuals as they teach.) If the new curriculum doesn't have a tech element, what are you adding to teach to a tech saavy audience?
9. Does the curriculum have the option of integrating with the Sunday School themes so the entire congregation can be learning the same themes as in our Generations In Faith Together and Faith Stepping Stones? We believe that anything you do shouldn’t be a one time shot. We follow Winston Churchil’s advice: “If you have a point to make, make it once, make it twice, then grab a tremendous hammer and give it a tremendous WHACK!”
10. What percentage of sophomores, juniors, and seniors are actively involved in active ministries, weekly small group and nightly home devotions following confirmation day?
#10 may be the only criteria that matters. Did we create disciples of Jesus and life-long learners? If we did not, what can we do better next year?
Thanks again for your care for kids and your partnership in the Gospel.
All the best!
Rev. Rich Melheim
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