The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

Monty's Mistress

My buddy Monty just started his own blog called "The Heart of the Matter" to give tips and advice  directly to our thousands of Head to the Heart friends and others in youth ministry who just want to do a better job of connecting with kids and parents. I sent him this note:

Monty, looks good.

Just so you know, a blog is a demanding mistress who will always manage to make you feel guilty for not paying enough attention to her.

She will tear up your furnature and poop on your floor if you’re gone too long.

Oh, wait. That’s a dog.

Okay, a blog is a dog.

A female dog.

Rich

 

Nine Years as a Guide?

The goal of our Faith Inkubation process is to bond a living cell into the body of Christ. If I can't do that with my own kid, I'm just "a travel agent handing out brochures to a place I've never been and will never go." (Brennan Manning Quotation)

Let me tell you a proud papa story:

I started my fifth year in the most important job in the church last night... as a small group confirmation guide to my own kid.

After three years with my daughter and five girls, Arlyce and I had the honor of taking our son and six boys through their first year of confirmation last year. (Arlyce still has hair, but it got greyer every Wednesday night last year.)

This week we started confirmation again, got the same boys back and are excited to do it again with a little more maturity in the group. I say "a little" because one of the boys grew 6 inches and facial hair over the summer,  the rest have only changed slightly on their way to becoming young men, and two of the boys are still rascals and are only there by the grace of God. We will love them rather than lecture them, stick with them through the growing process, try to teach them a little respect when the up-front talks are going on, and pull a Jacobian "I will not let you go unless you bless me" on them as they transition from Jacobs to Israels.

My most proud moment in a long time was walking into the church at 6:25 pm and seeing my 8th grade Joseph on stage banging on his guitar as part of the seven piece youth confirmation band.

If I could have written the script for my parenting when I was a new father, I would have written my son into a worship band with a lot of great Christian friends and role models, and I would have written my wife and myself as leaders of his small group with a group of boys who actually want us around. I just couldn't have dreamed it happening as early as 8th grade.

Well, it's happening, and I am profoundly thankful to have this honor to see him grow in the Lord, to see him take some leadership without any prodding, and to be his small group guide... as I say, "The most important job in the church."

The question in my mind this morning after is: "Why would any Christian parent NOT want to be their own child's faith guide?"

What does the future hold? Who knows? Will all the boys stick around? Will Arlyce still have hair in two years? Will Joseph stay in the band?

I can only tell you this:

I intend to finish as a guide with this group of junior high confirmation boys in 20 months, then begin our weekly small group "breakfast club" with the same boys-turned-to-men all the way through their graduation day.

We've done the small group guide thing for four years. My church can count on a volunteer dad for another five.

Lake Recording

We had a marvelous day at the lake studio of our crackerjack engineer, Todd Ernster, yesterday. CEO Brad Lynch had just written a final song for our new New Testament confirmation themeset on the book of Acts and needed to lay it down quickly so Todd could do his magic and we could have it out next week. The kids came along to do some tubing on the Lake. Todd and Karen were gracious hosts, and we even got Kathryn, Joseph and Jesse into the studio. We wrote a rought "Saul, Why Do You Persecute Me" on the spot and they did the vocals. Here's a couple shots of the youngest members of the FINK music guild and a rough of something new for fall.

Who Should Teach Your Kids?

Who should be in charge of Christian education for your kids?

If you are a Lutheran, you might find this surprising:

“The head of every family has the duty of training and teaching his children and servants, or of having them taught. In his house he is like a minister or bishop over his household, and he has the command to supervise what they learn and to be responsible for them.”

Regarding

Sunday

Schools

and confirmation classes taught to your kids by people other than the parents, Luther also says:

“But you have no right to do this outside your own household and to force yourself upon other households or upon your neighbors.”

- Martin Luther, “The Sermon on the Mount,” Luther’s Works, Vol. 21 [

Saint Louis

: Concordia Publishing House, 1956], pp. 7-8)

Living Yearbooks

Living Stuff for Parents & Kids

Well, here's what I've been pulling 16 hour days on for the last month (and what I'll be pulling 16 hour days on for the next month before flying off to Australia to do a major league walk about).

As some of you know, I've spent the last 15 years trying to find ways to make confirmation more fun, interesting and effective.

I came home from my sabbatical with another long term goal. I intend to spend/invest the next 15 years trying to find ways to pull parents back into the faith incubation equation every night in every home and create systems, training, and resources that aim at that goal.

The first piece of this - something I'm rather proud of if I may say so myself - was launched yesterday at www.faithink.com and it's rather spectacularly beautiful. The next piece of this - our answer to brain-based Sunday School based on 15 years of trial & error research, will be unveiled in a month or so. (I know I can't use spectacular twice in a paragraph, but I'm gonna anyway). And it's going to be spectacular.

Can we engineer a social transformation that kills off 225 years of Sunday School drop off kids (a system that was created for spiritual orphans and is now enabling them?) Can we call an end to spiritual mercanaries as primary faith teachers for all of our kids and recruit, train, motivate and nurture parents? Can we mentor the mentors? Shepherd the shepherds? Equip the equipers?

Could there be a day when a majority of parents are talking with their own kids about God, reading the Bible, praying, and blessing their own children every night - taking on the role of primary faith mentor, teacher, role model and guide - in every home?

The three humble attempts above (did I mention spectacular) are the first of many resources designed to get straight into the home and begin the process with junior high. But, as anyone with half a brain tied behind their back knows, starting anything at junior high is stupid.

The next 8 humble attempt that we'll show off this summer will make the whole thing longer, later, and much, much earlier.

Enough of the infomercial. Take a look at the three if you've got a time, and let me know if you think they have a snowballs chance in h-e-double hockey sticks, or a snowball's chance in North Dakota.

7/8 Offsite Minsitry

Rich, I’ve heard you use the sentence "7/8 of your youth ministry happens off site in a FINK church" before, and I always wondered where this fraction came from. I suspect others have wondered the same. Brad

Every night in every home = 7
Every week in every church = 1

In a true FINK church, the church isn't doing the job for the parents. The church is simply there to get you started with a FINK theme on Wednesday (or Sunday) by kicking it off and giving you a great frame of reference.

Or a great frame of reverence.

The real work that is to be done by parent who commit to nightly “FINK FIVE” Home Huddles and do their:
1.  Highs & lows
2. Scripture
3. Talk
4. Prayer
5. Blessing with their own kids.

I spent the last 15 years trying to find ways to transform confirmation from information to faith formation through group formation.

I intend to invest the next 15 years trying to find ways to bring it on home.

Our new mission statement is “faith incubation every night in every home.”

If you're a true FINK,  you should be rattleing this off the top of you head to every parent you meet.  The shift that we are proposing will be from must doing FINK just at church to enlisting parents as primary faith incubators seven nights a week.

Skiing, Kids, God & Space

I'm at Copper Mountain today, skiing with my 13 year old son.

Well, sort of. Let me rephrase: I'm at Copper Mountain today, not skiing with my 13 year old son who is skiing.

With Arlyce and Kathryn on the church Mexico mission this spring break, I offered my son some ski time in the state where we spent our sabbatical last year. He gladly accepted.

On Sunday morning he woke with a terrible cough and cold. "Maybe we should forget it?" asked the wary parent. "No way!" coughed the kinetic kid. So off we flew.

The first day was spent at Steamboat Springs. The powder there is at 72 inches - reported to be the best in 20 years. We met my buddy Arlen and his wife and son, sent the boys off skiing and spent the day at the lodge on top of the mountain reading, talking business strategy, and enjoying the coffee.

Joseph had a terrible night coughing and decided to lay low yesterday morning. In the afternoon we skiied Sol Vista together. Well, sort of. Three runs down the mountain, my 13 year old sun blistered son requested some space. "You're slowing me down. I don't want to wait for you at the lift."

So, in spite of the spite, I restrained myself and choose to give the kid some space. "No problem. Meet you at the chalet at the end of the day." It hurt to be rejected. I guess I had some unrealistic expectation of a father and son enjoying the mountain together. Great time. Great memories. You get the picture. I did a few more runs (I'm more green circle and blue square and he's more black diamond anyway) then sat at the chalet and wrote some devotions for a new home huddle resource we're unveiling soon.

We ate supper at a small wide spot in the road at a place called "The American Cafe: Featuring German and Mexican Food". It had Italian menus on the table and only took cash. He coughed a lot during the evening, but was awake bright and early for today's trip. We arrived at Copper Mountain 9 minutes before the lifts started running. I resisted the urge to say, "I am your father. I paid for this trip. I am going to have a fun day skiing with my  son whether he wants to ski with his father or not."

As we pulled in to the lot, I quietly surrendered the power and asked, "Would you like to ski together today, or explore the mountain alone?" He chose alone.

Ouch.

It's tough begin a parent and letting go, but I seem to remember something from Edwin Freidman about family systems. If I recall correctly, he said the person who does the most work in the relationship will always be taken advantage of. And the harder you work to hold on, the greater and greater the force you will be met with pushing you away.

So, I'm sitting in Starbucks logging onto my blog, looking at a beautiful snow-laden mountain on a sparkling 55 degree day, wondering how to be a good parent to a 13 year old boy who won't wear a hat and won't apply sun screen on his already blistering nose and won't ride on a chair lift with an old guy who is footing the bills and loves him enough to let him go.

Maybe God feels the same way about me some days.

Most days.

Dear God,

I'm sorry. I don't mean to hurt you. I know you're paying the bills. I know you love me.

Yes, I'll get off the internet now and spend some time with you today. Now.

Want to go skiing, just with me?

Boys & Potato Gun Evangelism

Potato Gun Evangelism

Their "highs" are always about events and friends. Something they are looking forward to, or something they just did with friends. Mini-golf in the basement and breaking a lamp. Friends. Snowboarding and getting kicked off the slopes for throwing a frozen rubber glove filled with water. Friends. A three-day weekend coming up. Friends.

Their collective "lows" are always related to school. They all hate it. It gets in the way of video games. They don't like the English teacher. Math sucks. It's only Wednesday and they have two more days of torture. They got in trouble for falling asleep because they stayed up until 4 am... with their friends.

They are seventh grade boys.

Yesterday's cover article "Boys in Crisis" in Newsweek and last night's Servant Event with the six  boys from our confirmation small group went hand-in-hand. After finishing three years as small group guides for our daughter and five girls, my wife and I are now doing three years with our son and six boys. They're great kids with all the fun, energy, and challenges that go along with adolescence. They keep us honest and force a fair amount of creative management skills out of us. We're committed to taking them through confirmation, and then into senior high breakfast club. This isn't a sprint. (You couldn't keep up with them). We're in it for the long haul.

At FINK we suggest you do monthly Servant Events with your small groups to put your faith into action. We're always looking for some relevant activity which we can turn into fun, learning and bonding. This month our church food shelf was in need of post-holiday restocking, so we told each of our young men to bring some money (their own money - not borrowed) and we'd go shopping.

Six boys emptied their collective pockets and antied up $53 when they appeared at our back door in the ice last night. We piled into the minivan and slip slided away to Cub Foods. A short talk in the car centered around a question: How is it that 1/6 of the kids in the richest land in the world went to bed hungry last night? How is it that 1/3 of the kids here can be living below the poverty line? Closer to home, how can a rich town like Stillwater, MN, run out of food at its food shelves? There were no profound answers at that time.

THE SERVANT EVENT

We split into pairs at the store. For the next 25 minutes each duo was charged with filling their cart with as much reasonably healthy food they could get for the price. (No Jay, Lucky Charms don't exactly qualify.) They were also charged with coming as close to spending $17.66666 as they could without going over. (Making them do math for 25 minutes without them knowing it is a particularly favorite torture of mine.)

The surprize of the night was the new kid, Sam, who showed up out of the blue. Someone invited him. After a night of servanthood in action (and a potato gun fight) Sam now wants to join our group, join the church, and be confirmed! Potato gun evangelism? That's exactly the way it's supposed to happen. Kids reaching out in a natural way to include their friends.

A car-load of kids.

A care-load of kids?

Mix in some fun, some bonding, some talk, some prayer, some adult guidance.

Soon six boys become seven - a definate FINK no-no - but we'll see how it goes. Arlyce and I are doing the group together, so we might be able to manage. If not, we have two of us, so there are options. I may be writinga  "FINK Potatoe Gun Evangelism" book someday. The thesis? If six becomes seven, that's 16.66% growth a year. Not bad. And if seven forces your stock to split by design (miosis or mitosis?) and the same kind of growth occurs in two new cared-for cells , you've got a growth engine that the venture capital folks would notice.

More on that later. Back to the Newsweek article.

It's dead on. Read it and weep. Then stop your sniveling and get your boys into small groups that learn, serve, laugh, serve, pray, serve, and shoot potatoe guns. And have BOTH a male and female leading those groups while you're at it. Seriously. Each will bring something the other can't.

Read beyond the Newsweek article and you'll see that school isn't designed for boys. The time of the day isn't right. (There are still sleep drugs in their brains at 10:30 am). The lecture-based method of teaching doesn't work with the chemistry of their developing brains. The carrot and stick (mostly stick) doesn't work. They've got 30 - 40 kids in a classroom - no personal care - and 35 of them are putting in their time, watching the clock. They see no relevance in what they're learning. There is relatively little engagement, little spark, and dreadfully little reason for the bulk of them to work for  anything more than a marginally passing grade.

The End
So how did last night's Servant Event end? Were there any profound insights on servanthood, world hunger, or Christian activism when we returned to our house for the treat, our standard "Highs & Lows" and prayer?

I'll leave you to judge that for yourself, based on the quotations of the night:

1.     My "low" was an "F" on my math test. - Anonymous Kid
        Did you study? - Anonymous Judgemental Adult
        No. - Anonymous Kid
       Why didn't you study? - Anonymous Judgemental Adult
       You can't study math! It's just a bunch of problems! - Anonymous Kid with Unanymous Group Consent

2. (While reading the Newsweek on the counter) Middle school boys may use their brains less efficiently than girls...  Huh. Does that surprise me? - Tyler

3. My "high" is I get to join this group! - Sam

4. People who shoot potato guns will not shoot them in my car. - Arlyce

5. My chinchilla doesn't have internet. - Joseph

6. My "high" is a three day weekend. My "low" is school. - Nate

That's the depth of our discussion. So, what happened in confirmation last night? Did we accomplish anything?

Well, we did fill a few bags of groceries. Somebody will eat tomorrow. Servanthood.

We did have some fun together. Fellowship.

We did find out some highs and lows. Pastoral Care.

We may or may not have learned that Christ calls us to feed the hungry. Christian Education.

And now seventh grade Sam thinks he wants to be a confirmed Lutheran.

Or at least a kid from the outside wants to be along on events with some new friends and a couple old small group leaders who let him buy a potato gun.

Evangelism. Potato Gun style.

Lutheran Billions

By the way, Steve Jobs just sold Pixar to Disney today for $7.5B in an all stock transaction. He is now the single largest share holder of Disney stock. He’s 50 and a Lutheran. (I'm 50 and a Lutheran)

Maybe he’d like to help Lutheran confirmation some day?

If we could get him, and Lutheran confirmation flunkeys Dana Carvey and Bruce Willis together, maybe we could have a ton of fun?

(-; Rich

Sermon Notes & Servant Event Requirements

Our FINK buddy Mike from Irvine asks a question that we get at FINK from time to time:

Rich,

Your reader's digest version of whether you think sermon notes, service points should be required of Confirmation students? I've kind of inherited a model that would say that this is important but my young intern is questioning whether this should be the case..i can't say i disagree but want some ammo to bring to the Senior Pastor who will need some convincing...

My thoughts are that within FINK, coming to church and service are part of the small group bonding..if it becomes a fun experience it will certainly be a lot more lasting than a requirement, which is rarely fulfilled nor does it bear much fruit..i've seen some of the sermon notes..can't believe it was my sermon they were taking notes on!

Any reflections from you guys would be much appreciated!

thanks, Mike

 

I had to let this one soak in for a couple days. Here’s my answer to Mike, you, your Christian ed board, and anyone who cares:

I. Servant Events

Before one decides on the course of action to take in any important endeavor, one must first ask the question:

“What do we want to accomplish?”

With Servant Events, if the point is bonding living cells in the body of Christ, that’s one thing.

If it is to put numbers on a chart, that’s something else.

If it is to create a joyful servant of Christ who has tasted the beauty and value of a life of servanthood with friends – a life that they want to continue beyond the requirements – that’s one thing.

If it is fulfilling a requirement, that’s something else.

I suggest that each group does a servant event once a month with their friends, and together they fill out a simple half pager to clarify their project. Then, if you want maximum bang for the buck, have them do an oral report to the whole group (or a “temple talk” to the whole church in worship - with video and powerpoint photos if you’re so technically inclined:

This “offering that doesn’t fit in the plate could enliven the whole church to acts of servanthood, and help the kids see the value of their work even more.

 Simply tell the world:

1. What did we choose as our servant event?

2. Why did we choose it (what was the need)?

3. What did we give?

4. What did we receive?

5. What would we tell others who might want to do this kind of event? (What should I know?                 Who should I contact? etc.)

 

II. Sermon Notes

Again, with any significant endeavor, one must first ask the question:

“What do we want to accomplish?” (You get the picture)

With sermon notes, if the point is to simply take role and get kids to show up for worship, that’s one thing.

If it is to help young people focus, learn to listen to what God may be saying to help them live their lives in a Christly fashion, that’s something else.

If it is to fulfill a certain number of requirements with checks on a chart, that’s one thing.

If it is to create a disciple of Christ who is hungry to gather with the faithful, hear the Word and share the supper to be strengthened and informed for life, that’s something else.

I would suggest that children worship with their parents first – or sit with their small group Guide and other friends if their parents don’t worship. If you want proof that they’re listening and connecting, I would simplify the sermon note to two basic questions:

1. What was the preacher trying to      say today?

and

2. Why should I care? (Or, if that’s      too crass… “How do I apply it to my life?”)

Now here’s the caveat – make the parents fill out the same form, then let them compare their notes and make one uber note that they both sign.

Then bring the notes to confirmation each week and let the small groups discuss what each family wrote, and hand in an uber uber note. That way, even the kids who didn’t get to worship will get something out of the sermon.

One other thing: If they can’t answer the first question on a regular basis, maybe you need better preaching. If they can’t answer the second question on a regular basis, maybe you need much better preaching. I dare you to make the preacher read these notes every week. It could be brutal and painful, but therein lies growth.

One other other thing: Make the church council fill out these notes and take them home to Sunday dinner for one month.

One other other other thing: A month later, make the WHOLE CONGREGATION do the same and use it as a month’s worth of adult ed – teaching them all how to focus on the proclamation.

Gerhard Frost once said, “If you can’t say it simply, either you don’t understand it or you don’t believe it.”

Tell the kids they aren’t here to listen. They aren’t filling out these forms to get checks on a sheet. They are there to make your preacher a better preacher.

(-;

Rich