Living in the Fish Bowl

Ahh they warned us about this. Kind of. Seminary professors and pastor friends had told us that once you're in ministry, you and your family will begin living life in a fish bowl. And a box. Everyone has an expectation for how you will behave, raise your children, conduct your marriage, how you do or do not voice opinions etc. There are expectations for what you "should" believe about certain things, and how quiet one's wife should remain. If you're reading this, it's because you actually know me, in person, and well, some of you may already be chuckling to yourselves about me being the quiet, submissive, non-opinionated wife of a youth pastor. Yeah...that's not exactly what our church got when they hired my husband. Instead, they got me. (Which I think is pretty great!) Most people don't seem to have a problem with who I am, or my education, or my opinions (well at least not that they've told me to my face yet!), but we're quickly learning that there are several who do. Most of these are individuals who haven't really ever had a conversation with me, but who have strong opinions about me already because they didn't like what they've seen of my writing. I feel strange about that. These are people who I am called to be in community with, and they already don't like me because I might have written opinions about youth ministry that differ from theirs (they don't help with the youth group...but that is a completely different story...). So a few weeks ago, I just stopped writing. I have all kinds of things I want to write about, but am beginning to feel rather hesitant to share my opinions. When people are forwarding what I have to say to our senior pastor, complaining about the crazy opinions of the youth pastor's wife, and then it's coming up in my husband's 3 month job performance review, I feel like a line has been crossed and the point of a blog has been missed. Granted I'm one of two people I know here who actually have a blog, so I realize this just isn't part of the culture of this community, which is fine, but I'm not sure I'm ready for my writing to be made an example.

Everytime I have sat down to write in the past couple weeks I can't come up with anything to say that I'm comfortable with our congregation reading. I don't feel like I can give an honest life update about how things are going. I don't even think I can honestly review the book I'm reading now without being labeled a heretic if I say I like it. For six years now this has been my place to share thoughts, updates, reflections, photos, and stories, and it's always felt comfortable--even if total strangers were reading what I had to say I never felt judged or misunderstood.

So I had a couple of choices. My husband wishes I'd just keep writing and not worry about what people think, he hates that I feel like I'm being censored or silenced. A woman literally showed up in his office the other day & told him she wishes his wife would learn to write with more discression. It took everything in his power not to tell her exactly what he thought! I wasn't ready to stop blogging altogether. I love it. I miss writing. I don't want to quit. I thought about making the blog private, where you'd have to enter a password to read what I've written, but I didn't think that sounded like fun--that was going to be a lot of work to figure out who wanted access and to grant each of you access! So after talking with a couple fellow bloggers also in ministry, I came up with this. I transfered everything from the old blog here, onto this one. I've taken our full names and the name of our church and location off the blog, and disabled google from being allowed to search for it. (Which means you can't find it if you just type my name and "blog" into google). I won't be sharing this address with anyone in the church community. I don't need my thoughts forwarded around the church staff any longer. I'm not putting the address on facebook, nor will I be linking new posts to facebook, so you'll have to check back or change your subscription in google reader if you do want to keep up with us :) We've only been here a couple months, but I've already found myself hurt by being a bit too open with people who I thought were trustworthy. Unfortunately I'm learning the hard way that churches aren't always the nicest places when it comes to accepting people's opinions that might be different from how things have always been done.

I hope you'll continue reading. We have had a big year so far and my guess is that it's only going to continue being a crazy adventure through the rest of 2011! Blessings my friends!

Lights, Camera, Auction!

Saturday was the dinner and auction at church to raise money for the Dominican Republic mission trip. It was quite the event! Enjoy a few photos from the set up portion of the evening (I was busy doing stuff during the auction so didn't get any photos from it).

The stage set up. It was a Hollywood theme, so the 10 girls who are going on the trip walked the red carpet in prom dresses to be introduced.

The tables all set

The girls receiving their serving instructions

Silent auction tables set up

Auction booklets and bid numbers all set out for registration

Photos from the past DR trips. We hand colored all those little black squares to make a film strip--definitely took awhile!

A weekend of Resurrection, Relaxation, and Random Adventures!

This past weekend was a fantastic time of celebrating the Resurrection, a little spring time, and good friends. Friday night Charles and I organized a Good Friday worship service for the youth and their families at the church, which went SO well. It was a lot of work, but we were glad we did it! We put together a student praise band, and this was their debut attempt at worship leading--they did a great job!

When we returned home Friday evening my best friend Jenn and her husband Sandeep arrived from Portland for the holiday weekend. Poor Charles had to work all day Saturday, but the 3 of us took the West Seattle water taxi over to downtown and walked up to Pike's Place market. It was about 65, perfectly sunny, and the first real spring day we've seen here! (Granted today it's cloudy again, but I'll take a taste of spring where I can get it!)

On the water taxi headed towards the cityPretty pretty skyline approaching!Even the sea lions were out enjoying the sun!
We took sandwiches with us and enjoyed a picnic on the lawn near Pike's Place.Of course it wouldn't be a sunny Saturday in Seattle if people weren't advocating for something! This was a rally happening raising awareness of police brutality or something like that...
Gorgeous flowers at Pikes Market! It's tulip season, which is my favorite!The bouquet we ended up withThat Saturday night when Charles was done with work the 4 of us went to dinner at Salty's on Alki beach. They gave us probably the best table in the restaurant...not a bad view!Easter Sunday! They came to church with us--love the tree on the church lawn!
After church Jenn and I made a delicious Easter meal--our first attempt at ham, sweet potatoes, crescent rolls, salad, and a cheesecake for dessert!
Our garbage disposal began acting up about a week ago, so the boys fixed it for us while we cooked.Ham and sweet potatoes! If you don't think you like sweet potatoes, you have to try this recipe--it has made lots of non-sweet potato eaters become big fans! Sandeep thought they were amazing :)
Happy Easter!We spontaneously decided to follow them home to Portland after lunch, spend a night there and then Charles and I headed to the Oregon coast early Monday morning so he could surf on his day off. We hadn't let the cheesecake chill long enough to eat when we were ready to go, so we packed it on ice and took it with us. We joked that it was like a progressive dinner--just ignore the 4 hour drive in between dinner and dessert!The boys were very excited about our cheesecake!Surfing and hanging out on the beach in Oregon. It was REALLY cold, wet, and windy which did not deter my husband, who had not caught a wave in almost 4 months. I stayed long enough to take some photos and then napped in the car while he surfed. I decided when the rain started blowing horizontally straight into my face that I was done!

It was SUCH a beautiful place, there were several other surfers braving the weather as well.

Youth Ministry Mini-Series: Post 2--The Rise of the Church of Cool

Here’s the crazy thing about youth ministry. Like so many other things in our world, it didn’t exist at the turn of the last century. Youth ministry in churches really didn’t begin until the mid 1960s, when churches realized they were seeing a decline in teen participation. Before this teens were in worship with their families, then perhaps in an age-appropriate Sunday School class, but the concept of a professional youth minister just didn’t exist. All the adults in a community were the “youth ministers” and all contributed to looking out for and discipling one another’s young. Kids belonged to the entire community, this was their church too.

As culture around the world headed more and more towards entertainment, churches began to feel like they had to compete. If children’s and youth programming wasn’t cool, exciting, and flashy, no one would want to hear about Jesus. Therefore it became of the utmost importance that we throw numerous extravagant events throughout a school year, and invest large sums of time and energy into figuring out how to make church “cool.” We celebrated the fact that we had a ton of kids show up for our big events--which I agree, is better than nothing, but it didn't seem to be as important that we didn’t see them the rest of the year. Years slowly slipped by and the youth programs at giant churches seemed to explode. Hundreds of kids showed up for youth groups, cool camps and retreats, and monthly special events. Smaller churches watched this and felt dismay--without the resources to pull off these types of events, how would they ever reach teenagers? Some smaller churches tried emulating what they saw going on, but taxed their volunteers and resources to the max attempting to pull off what a church with a giant youth budget could handle.

Having fun, age-appropriate programming is important. I am NOT in any way saying “get rid of youth group, or get rid of children’s programs!” I am NOT saying "lets make church boring," or "lets never play music a kid would recognize" (on the contrary, I think both these things are essential). I absolutely think camps, retreats, and events are VITAL to a health youth ministry for a variety of reasons. But I see three main problems with this intense focus on creating the ultimate “church of cool.” First, if we’re trying to be cool, as “cool” as the world around us, 9 times out of 10 we are going to loose. These kids have grown up in and are saturated by a culture of entertainment. Their attention spans are getting shorter and shorter thanks to technology and television. Everything around them is in place to suck them in and entertain them. Unless we’re going to hire professional event planners for our youth programs, the average youth director doesn’t have the training and shouldn’t have the time to create monster events to entertain kids. If this is our goal I think we might be missing the mark of what discipleship is--Jesus didn’t plan cool events, he simply invited people to be with him, to live life with him--and I think that’s what kids are actually hungry for these days. They don’t need the church to entertain them, they need the church to provide space where adults invite them to “come and see” something different than the world might offer.

The other problem I see (that kind of goes along with the first problem I mentioned) is that as Christians we should be offering kids something that looks different from the world. What a huge majority of kids are not getting anywhere in life are deep, meaningful, authentic relationships with adults who know their names, know their stories, and love them without an agenda. Most adults in kid’s lives are present because they need something from the kid. A coach needs a kid to be excellent at their sport. A teacher needs a kid to pay attention, follow rules, and perform in the classroom. Music instructors need kids to practice at home, and show up ready to demonstrate improvement. This isn’t to say these adults don’t care about kids, most of these adults love kids a lot--but the systems around us demand that kids perform in these settings to gain approval and attention from adults. Kids are smart--they figure this out at a super early age. They know what their second grade teacher expects of them, and this may be different than their 3rd grade teacher, so they quickly learn to read a situation and adapt their behavior to impress whatever adults are around. By the time they hit high school they have this down to a science. It takes at least a year of an adult just being present, engaging a student in conversation for a student to begin trusting that the adult doesn’t “need” something from them. The encouraging thing though is that the church is the one place where it is truly possible to let adults step in and be counter-cultural! Adults at the church have the opportunity to invest in a kid just because they love that kid. They shouldn’t need anything, they should be able to look at a kid and say “I love you just where you are. You don’t need to perform a certain way in order to make me love you more.” As we do this, we actually are given opportunities over the years to nudge and encourage a student to grow in certain ways, especially as we adults demonstrate we don’t have it all figured out either and are growing ourselves in ways too. The church is the one place where adults can truly communicate to students, “hey we’re all on this journey together, we’re all trying to figure this out together...lets walk with one another as we do.”

The third big problem I see with the “church needs to be super cool” mentality is one I’ll talk about in a future post, but that is the problem that arises when teens do graduate from high school, and what happens to them when they all of a sudden are asked to participate in the “adult congregation” when they’ve spent their whole adolescent journey separated from most of the adults in the congregation. The research here is a bit sobering.

When we first arrived at our new church, an elderly man came into my husband’s office and said “I have a challenge I want to issue to you. I want you to create a youth program here that is different than what the world out there offers our kids.” This is solely my own opinion (that’s the benefit of a blog, it’s my own opinion--you can totally disagree with me!), but what I think is different is not planning more and more fun events. What would be different and counter-cultural would be to create a space where a large team of adults show up every week to engage kids in conversation. It would be counter-cultural to create small groups where students and adults interact weekly and share with one another how they are wrestling with their faith, how their faith connects with life at school and work and in the home and with friends. It would be counter-cultural to invite them into things like sabbath keeping and rest instead of filling our calendars with more and more activities. We do fun events because they are important--they help earn us the right to engage in conversation with students. But we have to recognize that unless we have a designated space and time for kids and the adults to continue interacting the very next week, those relationships won't continue.

How about you? What’s been your experience in youth programs? What should the balance be between being “cool” and being “deep?” Those of you working with students now, what is your perception of what student's greatest needs are?

Have a blessed Holy Week, and stay tuned for post #3: The College Transition Project, coming early next week.

Youth Ministry Mini-Series: Post 1--Giving Voice to a Dream

It’s no secret, we’re living and breathing youth ministry these days. We probably will be for the next 30 years :) This new reality has us doing an awful lot of reflection and thinking about what makes a successful youth program. We’re digging back into our class notes from all our youth ministry classes, we’re re-reading books, we’re talking constantly about what makes a disciple of Jesus. When we imagine our own children heading off to college, we are already praying that they will be a disciple of Jesus--so we’re constantly asking the questions, “what would this look like?” “If we couldn’t ask our child, how would we know they were a disciple of Christ?” (And no, church attendance alone doesn’t count). “What would we need to do for our kids in elementary school, middle school, and especially in high school--both in our home and in our churches--to shape them in this way?” We’re dreaming about the kind of youth program we want in place at a church for our own teenagers someday, and we’re doing a lot of reflecting on our own experiences in youth ministry--as teens ourselves and then as volunteers at various churches over the years.

I have a lot of thoughts, more than I think anyone wants to read in one single blog post! So I’ve decided to do a bit of a mini-series here. I want to write about what’s going on in the world of youth ministry, why I care, what we’ve learned that has given birth to this dream my husband and I have--a dream of being part of a church that takes the discipleship of it’s young seriously. People have spent a lot of time lately asking us “so what’s your vision?” “What do you want to do?” and most importantly, “Why?” We can have these conversations with individuals, and we’re happy to do so, but I thought it would be kind of fun to share some of these answers with folks around the country, not just in our community here in Seattle. I have several posts written that I will be posting over the next couple weeks (every couple days), and I hope these help spark a conversation in your lives--wherever you are--about what it might look like to disciple our young. I hope some of these thoughts lead us all to learn more, to care more--whether we have kids or not. I hope we don’t let ourselves settle for doing things exactly the same way for years and years. Youth culture doesn’t stay the same--anyone who looks at the media today’s kids are inundated with will know their lives are vastly different than even when I was in high school in the late 90s. I hope we realize the Holy Spirit will continue to lead and guide us as we care for students, but that sometimes this requires us to be open to change. Sometimes what met needs twenty years ago, isn’t meeting the same needs today. That doesn’t mean something is a failure, it doesn’t mean a part of our youth program was bad, it just means the needs of kids in 2011 might be different than the needs of kids were in 1984.

About a week ago Charles and I shared a meal with three couples, all in their early 70s (I think!). It was a delightful time sharing conversation around a table, and eventually one of them began asking us these same questions. We shared our vision, we shared what we’ve been learning and experiencing. They asked questions, they shared their experiences with their children vs. their grandchildren. We dialogued. I loved it. Yesterday, one of these women told Charles that she loved our conversation--she loved thinking in a different way and wrestling with what we were dialoguing about. That’s my hope. I realize it’s not as possible (or preferable!) to do in cyberspace, but my hope is that these thoughts might spark lively conversation wherever you are. My prayer is that we would be a people unafraid to ask questions, and search for answers as the Church moves forward into the 21st century.

A quick disclaimer :) Throughout these posts when I refer to the “church” I’ll be referring to the Church with a capital C. Nothing I share is intended to be in reference to any of the five congregations I’ve been privileged to be a part of in the past 29 years. Yes, we are currently involved in ministry at a particular congregation that we love, and while its my hope that these postings will invite conversation around that community, my aim in sharing these things in cyber-land is bigger than that. What I share here is simply to invite conversation (hey, I’m a verbal processor, I like conversation!) I don’t have teenagers, I don’t pretend to know what its like to walk the difficult road of adolescence with a child I love, so I won’t pretend to have all the answers. I do, however, have a dream that has taken shape over the past several years--partly from research and partly from living my own experience in a variety of youth programs. I have a dream for the discipleship of students--and that’s what this mini-series is about--giving voice to that dream. I pray those of you who read this will read this with that in mind. I also will probably be posting some life-updates and other posts mixed in with these, just know that those specifically in this series will be designated as such. Thanks for reading!

Wanting Words

I have a ridiculous number of unfinished blog posts right now saved in blogger. I get a couple sentences into a post, and then for various reasons just stop writing. A lot of times I don't feel like I have words to express what I'm thinking. A lot of times I start writing about something I am thinking about, and then quit because I worry people won't like what I have to say. This blog has been used in the past to share the things I'm wrestling with or experiencing, but in the past few months my ENTIRE life has been consumed by church. I don't think I was prepared for how consuming life in ministry would be. And I don't think that's necessarily the way it is supposed to be, but for this season, that's our reality. I want to share what I'm thinking, what I'm wrestling with, and what our experience has been, but it's been pretty overwhelming, and I'm struggling to find the words. It's been a hard season. We're tired. We're feeling a bit of burn out (and it's been 3 months...I now fully understand why the average youth minister lasts 18 months in a church before resigning). At the same time, we're loving getting to know people, and have been SO welcomed by so many--and we truly have been delighting in chances to share meals with a variety of people in our congregation. We're also trying to figure out how to strengthen our marriage during this season where we often do not have one evening in the week free to even share a meal together. I have SO many things bumbling around in my head, and I'm still looking for the words to express them. A great friend of mine encouraged me the other day to continue being authentic on here, continue sharing what's been going on and what I'm thinking, and that's always been my desire--and thanks to her encouragement, that's what I plan on doing. So stay tuned, I promise, I have thoughts, and they're slowly being transformed into intelligible sentences, and when they are, I'll continue sharing.

Monday's Musings

I know it's been awhile since I've really posted anything, especially anything of substance. We have been busy, but I don't think that's the main reason I've been a bit quieter here in cyber space this past month or so. I think I am still feeling out life here in this new community, in my new role as the wife of a church staff member, and as already a fairly visible volunteer (they handed me a 12 week adult Sunday School class and I've been here for a grand total of about 10 weeks now--any thoughts I had about observing the culture here anonymously are long gone!). I definitely am doing a lot of thinking and processing, almost all the time, but I am choosing to censor my thoughts a bit more--not at all because they're bad or overly critical, but because I haven't figured out yet exactly where lines are that I'm going to accidentally cross and inadvertently offend someone with some random theological statement or comment about a given ministry program. I've always tried to be authentic about who I am--and for me a huge part of that is what I think about ministry and theology--and I don't want to loose that, but for this particular season I'm trying to figure out what that means exactly in cyber space. So! For now, here are a few random thoughts or updates that I know won't get me in trouble :) (I don't pretend these next paragraphs are connected to one another in any way!)

It's finally public and I don't have to keep the secret anymore! I am going to be an Aunt again!! Little miss Lily is going to be a big sister in October, in fact Megan is due with baby #2 the same week of Lily's (and her own!) birthday. The week of October 15th is going to be a busy one in the Backman household from now on! I am ridiculously excited for them and can't wait to find out if we'll be having a little niece or nephew in a couple months!

We found a delicious little coffee shop about .8 miles from our home--well really we've driven by it multiple times a day but just had never gone in. A few weeks ago we walked down to Pearls and found out they make delicious crepes, which we have now partaken of two different Saturday mornings. My personal favorite is the strawberry, nutella, whipped cream crepe--yup, a very healthy breakfast! They also made a great ham, spinach, cheese crepe that was pretty fantastic.

We've been the recipients of a LOT of amazing hospitality these days! We've been invited to share meals with a ton of families from church in the past couple weeks (and have several more lined up for the next month!) and we have been loving it! A couple weeks ago we had a delicious Irish meal with our associate pastor and his wife (who is from Ireland and cooked for us over St. Patrick's week). Last night we enjoyed Mexican food at a great restaurant on the waterfront with a couple who volunteers regularly with the youth, this morning we had brunch at the home of our senior pastor and his wife and spent about 3 1/2 hours sitting around their table sharing stories from our lives. Tonight we got to spend another 5 hours sharing conversation around the dinner table with another family. Next Monday we're having a meal with two of the older couples in our congregation who we think are just delightful--we had actually invited them over to our house to have an opportunity to get to know folks outside the youth program but they felt bad we were inviting them over and flipped the invitation on us! Next Tuesday we have the chance to have a meal with a family who has two middle school students--we are so humbled and honored by all the hospitality and invitations! We felt bad when a family said they wanted to have us over on a Saturday & we had to tell them the first available Saturday we had was at the end of the month! Sharing meals with people, being in each other's homes, hearing their stories, sharing our vision of youth ministry & pieces of our stories--these conversations are so rich for us, and we are so grateful to be in a community that seems to value this as well!

My first of a 12 week Sunday School class on The Good and Beautiful God was yesterday, and I think it went pretty well! I had fun with it at least! I had 22 folks of all ages show up--six of whom were young adults in their early 20s which was what I was hoping would happen--to give them a space they can belong and connect with older adults on Sunday morning that is less intimidating than some of the other adult classes. I'm kind of intimidated at the idea of teaching a 12 week class--that's kind of a long time, but I'm excited too. I really do love the book, and LOVE the people who showed up for conversation, so I am looking forward to a rich spring quarter.

I realized I haven't been to visit my parents in Minnesota since a year ago Christmas, so when I found out my grandparents are going to be out there the weekend of April 15th, I decided to head out there that weekend as well. Charles isn't able to join me, but it will be great spending time with my grandparents and being "home" again (even though I never lived there, "home" for now is wherever mom's garden is blooming!)

Next Tuesday I have the opportunity to guest speak in a class at SPU--my mentor from Bethany Pres, Dianne Ross, who is the children's ministry director there, is teaching a class on children's ministry at SPU for the spring. She's asked me to come in and talk with her students about the theology of children in the context of a family. Most of my thoughts will be coming straight from Chap Clark's Intro to Family Ministry class that I've now sat through multiple times as a TA, but still, teaching it and listening to it are two different things!

I've discovered an amazing new book that I'm reading--One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. It really is worth it, if anyone needs a new book to savor. Last week I spent quite a bit of time reading, one night Charles didn't come home til 11, so I had several hours to sit in the quiet of my living room with candles lit and enjoy her words.

Saturday we had the chance to celebrate Darbee at her bridal shower, which was very fun and held in a gorgeous home up in Edmonds overlooking the water. Saturday night we spent the evening at our neighbor's house playing games (a new one, 7 Wonders--it was a great game!) with some of their friends from college--gotta be honest, it was really fun being with people who weren't Christians, who aren't connected to the church--it was quite refreshing!

Anyways, I think that's enough ramblings for one sitting :)