Fuller Youth Institute Blog

An Innovative Training Opportunity for Your Church!

2013-05-22T02:32:57+00:00

Hello from the Fuller Youth Institute!

As one of our loyal readers, we would love to share with you some information about joining a Sticky Faith Cohort with the Fuller Youth Institute.

Through our Sticky Faith research we have learned that 40-50% of youth group graduates—like those at your church—walk away from faith and church after high school. As a result of six years of research, we launched a national movement to change these statistics.

Repeatedly, FYI has been told by parents, local youth pastors, denominational representatives, and national youth ministry leaders that this research has the potential to reshape local ministries as well as the field of youth ministry nationally.

In response, FYI created the Sticky Faith Cohort, a dynamic learning group process of innovative churches committed to take the research and apply it to their settings to offer more transformative youth and family ministry.

This month we are excited to announce the opportunity for you to join our fifth Sticky Faith Cohort, a specially-designed year-long coaching model with FYI. You can read more about the cohort process at http://stickyfaith.org/sticky-faith-cohort. This cohort is slated to begin in January 2014, and you can be part of it now.

We continue to be amazed at the transformational potential of this cohort model. This year's 36 churches are dynamically engaging the process in ways that inspire and challenge us. We hope to fill the coming cohort with churches eager to explore Sticky Faith changes in their contexts alongside like-minded teams from across the country.

Should you decide to move forward in the process of becoming a cohort church, please fill out the online application at http://stickyfaith.org/sticky-faith-cohort and we will follow up shortly. The commitment deadline is December 15th, but cohort spots are given on a first-come, first-served basis. We will also be hosting a phone call with Kara Powell & Brad Griffin on June 4 at 12:00PM PST for anyone who is interested in the cohort and has questions. Please call in at 218-339-2626, access code 559575#.

We truly believe Sticky Faith is a movement of God’s Spirit through churches across North America and beyond, and we’re so privileged to know folks like you! We hope we can spend more time together in the coming year with you and your church team through the Cohort.

Your fans,
Kara, Brad, Haley and the FYI Team

Sticky Faith Cohort 2013

Free Webcast on Building Family Assets with Gene Roehlkepartain

2013-05-13T23:07:47+00:00

Join us live for a free live webcast with the Search Institute’s Family Assets expert Gene Roehlkepartain!

Gene will be sharing more with us about research we’ve shared on strengthening families through asset-building, and some of the unique connections to faith.

Tuesday May 14, 11am Pacific

Rewatch the webcast below:

About Gene:

Gene Roehlkepartain is vice president of research and development for Search Institute, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit leader and partner with organizations around the world in discovering what kids need to succeed in their families, schools, and communities. Since joining Search Institute in 1991, he has held a number of roles and has been involved in many areas of the organization’s work, including its work on developmental assets, spiritual development, thriving, and family assets. He is the author of 17 books and more than 200 publications, including several in youth and family ministry.

For Further Resources:

ParentFurther.com

A Special Story From Kara

2013-05-13T12:44:36+00:00

In this Mother’s Day season, the most dominant image I have of my mom from my teenage years is her wearing a robe, sitting on our floral living room couch. In her right hand was her coffee cup. In her left hand was her Bible.

I’ve taken a fantastic seminary course on prayer. I own a shelf-full of superb books on prayer. But what has most motivated and impacted my own prayer life is my mom’s daily example of praying for our family and our world.

Part of why I’m so passionate about Sticky Faith is because of my parents’ skills in passing on the faith to me. We hope this month you make it more possible for our team at the Fuller Youth Institute to mobilize parents and leaders to equip teenagers with the lifelong faith they need.

During this Mother’s Day Season, would you prayerfully consider financially supporting FYI to help reach more adults who are loving and serving teenagers?

Because he believes in the Sticky Faith movement, one of our donors has generously given $50,000 in the hopes that the FYI community would share in his enthusiasm. Our donor hopes his generosity will inspire others like you to make a gift of any amount to Sticky Faith this spring.

By acting now to tangibly partner with us, you can help build Sticky Faith in even more young people across the country.

Grateful for your support,

Kara Powell, PhD
Executive Director

How viewing music as a language can reframe the way we teach faith

2013-05-08T11:01:24+00:00

As a kid, I hated practicing music. I knew (because I had been told) that learning technical skills and practicing instruments would make me better. But somehow practicing nearly always felt restrictive and forced. It was never as exciting as when I could improvise and make my own tune, though you might have been hard-pressed to define those tunes as “music.”

I never really treated music as a language.

Of course music is a language, a form of expression and communication. But this 5-minute TEDEducation video by Victor Wooten takes this truth to another level and raises some good questions.

Wooten makes some provocative proposals: Can music only be learned by following a strict regiment under a skilled teacher? Or is another way possible?

We learn our first language primarily by making mistakes. We try, we mirror, we experiment, and over time we learn from our mistakes. Wooten suggests, “As a baby, you were allowed to jam with professionals.” Our mistakes with language make others smile rather than jump in with harsh correction.

Music is rarely learned this way.

Nor is faith. But what if we were allowed to learn faith like we learn language? What if following Jesus wasn’t about mastering a test of abstract beliefs but about “jamming” with those further down the road from us?

That brings some important reframing to the work of discipleship. Are we teaching rules, or creating space where young people can jam? Are the young people in our ministries or in our homes free to be novices and apprentices improvising their way toward good theology and practice? This gives a whole new value to their questions and doubts.

Perhaps, as our friend Steve Argue continually reminds us, faith is a language, and the ways we learn that faith language matter. Perhaps the role of the faith community surrounding young people is to practice good language-learning principles.

Here are some practical ideas for teaching music, according to Wooten. I think you’ll see the parallels immediately:

1. There are no wrong notes. Embrace wrong notes instead of correcting them, at least at first.

2. Allow young people to play and perform with accomplished musicians often.

3. Encourage musicians to play more than they practice.

4. Remember that a language works best when we have something interesting to say. Many music teachers never find out what their students have to say; we only tell them what they are supposed to say.

Too many rules at the outset will actually slow down language development. The same is true of music. Perhaps the same is true of faith. Maybe we primarily learn faith by making mistakes. Maybe that’s why we claim the whole thing hangs on grace.

I suspect we don’t take this approach for a few reasons, most of them fear-based. This feels too open, too risky, too universalist. It feels like we’re abdicating our responsibility to “train up” children or teach them “right” things.

But if natural language learning is a mix of imitation, experimentation, and instruction, I don’t think we’re throwing the baby out with the bath water in this analogy.

What do you think? What have you found most opens teenagers up to exploring faith?

What helps them grow into a faith they “own” or “self-author”?

How would you push back on Wooten about music, or about faith?

How have you found a balance of imitation, experimentation, and instruction in your ministry or in your family?

PS, I love that this guy is riffing on “Amazing Grace” throughout the video. So very appropriate.

Three ideas to help you call young people to do big things

2013-05-06T10:20:34+00:00

In the midst of a country dampened by recent tragedies, last week David Bornstein shared in the NY Times about “Young Movers, With a Passion for Change.”

The subjects of Bornstein’s article are young people identified as peacemakers by Peace First, a nonprofit boldly declaring a positive message about kids: “We view children as natural problem solvers, creative thinkers, and leaders of change.” This year they’re reviewing nearly 700 applicants for the first-ever “Peace First Prize,” searching out young people ages 8-22 who model “compassion, courage and ability to create collaborative change.” Just browsing a handful of the nominees is enough to lift your spirits.

A positive take on adolescents might open our culture’s eyes to some other unseen realities, like these 10 amazing youth innovators featured by Mashable recently. Oh, and TEDxTeen is full of them. So why don’t we expect great things of the teenagers we interact with day in and day out?

Possibly because we just don’t expect much of them.

Possibly because we just hope they don’t blow it.

Possibly because we really just want them to be safe and nice. And benign.

Young people who do big things have often given up on safe and nice. They’re gutsy. And often it’s because an adult (or team of adults) is standing beside them offering a different narrative for the American teenager. Quoting Peace First president and co-founder Eric Dawson, Bornstein writes:

“We don’t call our young people to big things,” says Eric Dawson, whose organization has been training educators to teach peacemaking skills for two decades. “We spend our time telling them not to use drugs, not to smoke, not to be a bully. All good messages, but at the end of the day what are we advising young people to do?”

Dawson suggests three things adults can do:

1. Ask young people questions of engagement. What do you think about that? What would you do? How do you think we could make this better?

2. Take young people’s ideas seriously.

3. Give young people concrete opportunities to act on their ideas.

I like this list. What would you add? And how are you doing it?

Partner with FYI to reach more moms like Suzanne

2013-04-29T20:39:31+00:00

Hello Friends,

Every week we see the incredible impact of Sticky Faith on youth workers, churches and families. The stories we hear remind us of the incredible faithfulness of God and how his timing is always right.

For Suzanne and her three sons, the hopeful and practical message of Sticky Faith came at just the right time. She had always believed it was important to surround her sons with a community of caring adults, but when Suzanne heard me share about Sticky Faith at a weekend family camp, she finally understood both why it was so important and how to build that faith web.

Over the next few months, Suzanne and her husband asked both men and women to be intentional in caring for their boys. Across the board, they felt honored by the invitation to join the Sticky Faith team of adults who supported each boy.

The need for a caring team of adults climaxed when Suzanne was diagnosed with colon cancer a year later. Convinced by Sticky Faith of the importance of surrounding her sons with support, Suzanne continues to enlist men and women to come alongside her three boys as she battles cancer.

But Suzanne isn’t just building Sticky Faith in her own sons. She also invites neighborhood kids into her home so that those kids and their parents can get glimpses of a family transformed by Christ. Motivated by the thought of the role she can play in other kids’ faith, Suzanne shares, “I’m excited to see how God is going to work through our family to reach the families in our neighborhood.”

During this mother’s day Season, would you prayerfully consider financially supporting FYI to help reach more moms like Suzanne?

By acting now to partner tangibly with us, you can help build Sticky Faith in even more young people across the country.

Grateful for your support,

Kara Powell, PhD
Executive Director

What’s the definition of “urban” youth ministry?

2013-04-23T11:08:16+00:00

Have you ever asked—or been asked—this question? It’s a tough one.

The question sometimes sits under the surface of ministry discussions around urban youth ministry. Sometimes it’s an elephant in the room. What do we really mean when we say “urban” ministry?

I love that on opening day of this week's class about leadership in urban youth ministry, FYI professor Jeremy Del Rio opens with this very question. The students are all actively engaged in urban ministry of one sort another (as is Jeremy) in cities across the country and Canada. But Jeremy calls out an ambiguity that all of these students can identify with.

In American ministry culture, “Urban” has become a code word for ministry to people of color, or people impacted by poverty, or hip hop culture, or resource-deprived inner city neighborhoods, or all of the above. These distinctives aren’t necessarily bad, but they are very different, and none of them are tied by definition to the adjective “urban”.

For example, does urban ministry mean serving in the “inner city” with kids and families marked by poverty? What if the inner city is increasingly marked by gentrification (the relocation of middle/upper class populations to urban centers)? What if lower-income families are increasingly pushed to the margins or outer rings of a city? What if formerly all-white suburban communities become inhabited by nonwhite dwellers? What then?

Jeremy’s definition of urban ministry is a bit different, drawing from Jeremiah 29:7: “Seek the welfare of the city…and pray to the Lord on its behalf…in its welfare you will find your welfare.” If we can connect what we’re doing to seeking the peace and welfare—or shalom (wholeness, flourishing)—of the city we’re serving within, it’s urban ministry. It’s good news in the neighborhood.

This Jeremiah passage is a word spoken by a prophet to a people in exile—a people who find themselves in a place they don’t want to be, among a people they must serve as captives. Urban youth ministry is often like this, marked by serving in a context of exile. Choosing to serve with a posture of longevity and seeking the shalom of the city can make all the difference.

In other words, urban ministry means being willing to get in there, get to know your neighbors, and fully invest in the city around you. Are you willing to raise your grandkids in this space? If so, that might be a different vision of urban ministry than you’ve heard, one that’s often founded on going into a desperate community and rescuing it. Or one grounded in getting poor kids of color out of the neighborhood and on to “better” things.

The benchmark for success under this vision becomes the flourishing of the community within which the church is embedded.

Under this definition, the operative question becomes: How do I serve and support what God is already doing in this place, in this neighborhood, in this city?

How do you define urban ministry, and how does it shape what you do?

(reposted and updated from April 2012)

New Facebook Technology: “Designed to Put Friends Above Everything Else”

2013-04-22T11:34:56+00:00

Are the teenagers in your life not on Facebook enough? Good news. Facebook Home is on the way to give young people even more access to technology.

As described by a recent blog post from Common Sense Media:

Facebook Home integrates Facebook into your kid's smartphone, providing an "always on" social experience. The two main ways are through the "cover feed" and messaging. The cover feed will let teens see status updates, photos, and more from their Facebook news feed -- just by looking at the home screen of their phone. They don't need to open an app to see what's going on with their friends, or even to interact with them. And when their friends want to chat or send them a text message, a "chat head" will pop onto their screen, grabbing their attention -- even if they're in another app.

Facebook itself says that this new technology is “designed to put friends above everything else”. While technology can be a wonderful Kingdom and relationship-building tool for folks of all ages, thoughtful parents and leaders should help teenagers ask if putting “friends above everything else” is really their top goal.

We at FYI hope you use the release of Facebook Home to launch an important discussion with teenagers in which you ask:

What is most important to you? What do you want to put “above everything else”?
How does technology help you with those priorities?
How does technology make it challenging you to live out those priorities?
What do you think of Facebook Home?

What other questions have helped you had honest, authentic conversations with teenagers about how they use technology?

New resource for talking with girls about self-image

2013-04-18T11:24:03+00:00

Only 4 percent of women around the world consider themselves beautiful.

I’m not sure where Dove found this statistic (so I can’t validate it), but it sure is a provocative suggestion.

Based on this reality and their commitment to “create a world where beauty is a source of confidence, not anxiety,” Dove created a social experiment to compare women’s own descriptions of their faces with the descriptions given by another person (who had been a stranger until the experiment). Using a forensics sketch artist who never looked at the women he was sketching, the sketches based on self-perception versus others’ perception were then reviewed by the women themselves. The results were fascinating:

What strikes a chord with you from this experiment?

What do you wish girls knew about beauty? How do you help girls develop a healthy sense of beauty and self-worth?

How might you use this video to prompt conversations with girls you know, and with the women whose own self-image influences them?

(See more about the Dove campaign)

Best Price on Sticky Faith E-Books Ever

2013-04-15T16:31:13+00:00

If you’ve been wondering when to buy a copy of Sticky Faith or when to encourage a friend or parents to do so, NOW is the time. To celebrate the Fuller Youth Institute’s involvement in 3 upcoming national conferences (Q in Los Angeles, Catalyst West Coast, and the Orange Conference), Zondervan (our publisher) is generously offering the e-versions of both the parent and youth leader versions of Sticky Faith for $2.99.

That’s less than my favorite drink at Starbucks.

This $2.99 deal ends on May 6, so act now—and encourage others to do the same—to take advantage of this low price on e-books.

At the Q Conference, I’ll be speaking at “Numb Generations”. Gabe Lyons, the founder of Q Ideas and author of The Next Christians: Seven Ways You Can Live the Gospel and Restore the World, invited me to explore how technology (and to some degree psychiatric medicines) are causing us to become “numb”, or lose touch with what’s happening in the present.

This “numbness” isn’t just in teenagers; it’s across adult generations also. If you check out this recent infographic from some new research by the Pew Research Center, you’ll note that while 83% of 18-29 year-olds are using social media, so are 77% of 30-49 year-olds. As I’ll be sharing at Q, we can’t judge young people for their use of technology without putting our own use of technology under the microscope also.

Of course, technology is a wonderful tool. After all, it’s part of what allows us to offer specially discounted e-books. But each of us should ask ourselves and our young people: In what ways is technology causing us to miss out on present experiences and relationships?