Sticky Faith
One of the things I neglected to mention in my "What's next?" blog post is probably the one that is biggest but also most vague in my mind at the moment. Dr. Kara Powell is the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute and a member of the faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Over the years, I have seen her name on various curriculum and resources, and they always looked like good resources, but I had never actually used them or read them. But this year she was at NYWC in Atlanta and I had the opportunity to hear her speak about her most recent research and subsequent book, which I am very interested in using. Her book is called Sticky Faith and there are actually 3 versions - one for youth workers, one for parents, and one for youth. I haven't read the book yet - in fact I still need to go buy it - but I was able to hear her speak at NYWC, and think she is on to something. So this morning, I read this article...
I like the two questions that this article asks to get started because that is where I am right now - trying to vision where we might need go. Which, let's be honest, is not a strong suit of mine. I am much better at living in the moment. I kind of stink at imagining how things will be when they are different. Not that I have a problem with change - I just can't see it until it happens. But I'm trying. So here are the questions from the article:
1. What stories of real life people in your ministry or church already capture your hopes for your future?
2. If you could imagine stories that capture how you hope God continues to work, what would they be?
I will come back to these questions at a later time, since I am still processing them. The article goes on to talk about the power of these stories when we tell them over and over. It talks about getting others on board and developing a team to help tell these stories and make the necessary changes. It talks about the importance of meeting to pray and stay focused. It talks about the necessity of communicating - even overcommunicating from what we think. It talks about experimenting to see what works and in the process developing new stories. And finally, it talks about the time all this will take. I think that's part of my challenge. I am at the beginning of something big, and I'm not sure what step to take.
Another speaker I heard a little while in Atlanta was Shaun King. Now he was not my favorite speaker, and I actually snuck out of his session to go to another more interesting session. But when I was listening, he was telling his story. Shaun had been the head of a church plant that in his opinion went wrong. This is a very simplified version of his story, and in my interpretation, but what I got out of his story was that his vision was for a very mission oriented church, but what happened instead was a church focused on itself. He talked about some of the mistakes he made that led to that point, and 2 things stuck with me...
1. You need to start the way you intend to continue. Shaun talked about how he knew even at the start that things were not the way they had been dreamed but he went along with things. But then once the church was actually started, it was much harder to make changes than it would have been to start differently. In other words, you need to determine your vision and stick to it.
2. The horizon principle. Essentially, this is the idea that our vision is like the sun setting over the ocean, it looks like there is a place where they meet, but no matter how far we swim out, that place does not exist. Likewise, there is no place that our vision and our reality will perfectly meet. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have vision, or that our vision will never be realized - just that it will never be realized exactly the way we visioned it.
So as I figure out the vision for SUM TEENS, these are some things that I need to keep in mind. As I take time to consider what the first step might be, I know that I need to take the time to do this right, but also not wait to long. It's a scary place, but it's also an exciting place to be - the beginning of something big. So today I pray, and seek, and imagine, and hope, and dream... and soon that prayer and seeking and imagining and hoping and dreaming will turn into praying and doing and trying and evaluating and figuring out what that next step will be... always with the prayer, and continuing to dream and imagine what might be next. So I guess the better question right now than "What's next?" might be "What's first?" Either way, here goes...
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