A Flammable Ecology

There is no question that this Covid thing has been a beast. And it still is. But, even in the midst of that challenge I have been struck by the amazing ministry that is going on and how thankful I am that we have developed the ministries that we have. Our gym and landscape operations are still floating and a new online school partnership has begun. It’s incredible fruit in a time that sometimes has felt rotten.

This past week I was reading (again) the student ministry book, “The Godbearing Life” by Kenda Dean. In the 4th chapter she wades into the story of Moses and the burning bush as an image to describe us joining the Holy Spirit’s work in the lives of students. The idea is that we are and kind of flammable bush waiting to catch Holy fire as ministers and simultaneously we are a bit like Moses who needs to be on the lookout for students who are ready to catch fire. Kenda has a kind of hopeful and expectant lens when she approaches her gospel work. The Holy Spirit is always about to do something! Will we miss it!? She plays with this image over and over again. The bush, the fire, the one journeying through life. It’s one of the best youth ministry books that is out there.

At the end of the chapter she describes the church, the youth worker, the student’s family, and maybe a couple of other things as a kind of “flammable ecology” and it floored me when I read it. I have been trying to describe (for the last few years) what I see happening inside our ministries. Some students simply come to our church. Some simply come for a job. Some come for life skills or for drones. But, it’s when a student navigates several of the systems simultaneously that we seem to see the most gospel transformation. It’s often the student who showed up because a teacher made them, and then they decide they like one of the trainings, and then they need a job, and then they really enjoy their mentor, and then they go to the local college, and then they need help with a vehicle, and then they need affordable housing and a weight program. And then… And then…

It’s all of those things together that are what I call…the juice.

It’s when several symbiotic and interdependent ministries overlap that something combustible happens.

Kenda Dean’s term nails it. It’s a kind of flammable ecosystem in which a species of kid within the system often is forming symbiotic relationships with different elements of the network…and sometimes simultaneously. Adults are also shaped within this system as well though. We are training them in ministry (not well yet!) so that they can serve with excellence. And as they catch fire and grow many of them long to remain in the ecosystem for community or to help others take a similar journey. It’s a kind of interdependence or healthy symbiosis. Likewise the leadership of our different ministries have begun to cross-polinate in unexpected ways. Ideas are shared (practical and theological) and blended over time re-shaping the whole system. When we started this ministry we were all about the life skills and jobs. Now, those remain important, but we would say that human transformation is the overall goal. We know that happens through a variety of means in our emerging ecosystem.

I have been watching this happening for probably the last two years and couldn’t figure out how to name what I saw happening. It’s both theological and environmental. This appeals to me as a theologian pastor who was once both a history major and a forestry major. I have begun playing with ideas like mutualism, commenalism, parasitism, and predation as useful terms to describe what is happening in this ministry. The flammability that is here reminds me of a kind of Pyrophitic plants that require fire to germinate their seeds. Somehow, God seems to be working like that in ministry as well as ecologically. It’s a flammable ecology.

Graduation Day...Awesome!

Every year as I do ministry there are certain days that I look forward to and certain days that are stressful, but well worth every ounce of effort. Last Sunday was a bit of both. The student job skills/life skills ministry that I created had it's annual meal and certification. It's a day when our mentors and students (Blacksmiths and Apprentices as we call them) come together to feast, share, and celebrate all the fruit that we have seen in our program. We started with 23 students and finished with 20.  It was an amazing process as usual. Let me share a few of the highlights.

-One student shared that their mentor, who has been one of our best youth leaders at our church, is an amazing human being. They shared openly that they have never had healthy adults in their lives and that they were really grateful for their mentor. This student will be coming on our youth service trip at our church this year for the first time.

-Another shared that their mentor seemed like a mirror 20 years into the future and that they were grateful that they could learn from their mistakes in career and money.

-A student with difficulty in social interaction shared that they have done a lot of technology programs before, but that in our drone program they realized that they have never treated their instructors as people. They have treated them as things that were there to give them something.  I was floored.

-An adult shared how they blew it this year. They admitted that when they started as a Blacksmith in our program they treated like a program rather than an opportunity for human relationship. They think they drove their student off. I don't agree, but it was amazing to see a grown adult in our world own a mistake for a change in front of teenagers.

-A student, who came into our program making sure we knew they were an atheist, was deeply thankful that their mentor challenged them to look at their HIGHLY materialistic goals and ask the question, "Why?" over and over again. They are starting to see that self-actualization and achievement that does not take one's neighbor into account can be pretty empty.

-One student shared that they have never realized that they could accomplish goals before. She described her mentor/blacksmith as someone who is an excellent listener. She talked about engaging her first drama performance at school because of their relationship and how she has taken the first step to cosmetology school. She has discovered that she has agency. A year ago she was massively depressed.

-Another student spoke out loud. This would have been impossible two years ago. They are reading the gospels for the first time.

-One student, who used to be very shy, spoke with great confidence and relayed how they have learned to navigate conflict for the first time and that they are a respected member of their staff at a local fast food chain. They are about to join the Army. It was a hard decision, but we made sure not to get in the way of that choice and cheered for them as we sat around the table.

-Many adults shared as well. They discovered things about teens and their experience that they hadn't known. They talked about the progress they made on their own personal goals because they were accountable to the students as well. Some of them talked about the deep respect they have for what some of their students carry day in and day out. Some talked about realizing that the context that they grew up in was vastly different than that of their students. I have felt all along that this ministry was just as much about the adults as the teens involved.

All I can say is that I felt that we were sitting around a Passover table despite the Hawaiian pizza and video game sounds coming from the mini arcade in the next room. What I saw and heard was the sound of glory. Not our glory, but God's glory. Irenaeus once said, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive." I saw the glory of people coming alive. I think Jesus was delighted with what was happening in that room on Sunday.  It has been worth every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears. It has been worth every bit of risk.

Let's create some new ways of doing youth ministry...and ministry in general.

Let there be drones?!

One of the most enjoyable things about trying to do youth ministry through the medium of life skills and job training is how it mobilizes the gifts of others. It has also been thrilling to make loads of missional connections out in the community. A short time ago, both came together in a fascinating way.

About 3 months ago while I was hiring for my landscape crews for Motown Teen Lawn Care I ended up interviewing a 24 year old for the job. As it turned out, he had formerly attended a reform school for boys that my church has served at during the summers. I couldn't believe the coincidence.

He was so interested in the program that he ended up hiring on at our company. Given some aspects of his background he was intrigued by the idea of working with a company that supported a teen jobs program. In the course of our conversation he brought up the fact that he also works some hours at a small drone flying company and that his boss would be fascinated by what we are doing in our program. He felt that the two of us should meet.

And so a few weeks later I found myself sitting down to coffee with a Boeing employee who works for a drone manufacturing subsidiary. He  has children in a local high school that need soft skills and that also need more STEM training. The school simply doesn't do much of that.  We talked about about teenagers, drone applications, and this ministry I run. He is a self taught engineer who has said several times that he wishes as a teen that he could have understood that you could take playing around with electronics and turn it into a career.  He would have found much more interest in school if he could have seen that picture.  I have no idea whether this individual is a person of faith and in the context of the conversation it really didn't matter. We both cared about teens and our community. Essentially companies like his are looking to create training programs that can establish some kind of industry standard in drone training for thousands of potential applications.

What got me really excited was that I knew I had two hardware engineers at my church that would love this kind of project. Both of them had a good amount of experience working with students, but hadn't done so in a while. Within a couple of weeks I sat down with them and we began to talk about what a drone piloting/discipleship/job skills/mentoring initiative might look like. It was amazing.

As of this past week we have cemented that we will be recruiting 4 students from our program to do a test initiative on piloting drones. They will engage with our mentors, in all of our life skills trainings, and in a class to get FAA certified through the passing of their Part 107 test. It's amazing because I think the two engineers from my church are more excited about this than I am! They are excited to get to use their gifts on a really cool project for the Glory of God. They are excited to fly drones and play with nerd toys! In that way, the ministry is mobilizing gifts in my church that I never would have thought would have had a connection point to ministry. But, the ministry is also grabbing hold of the attention of local schools. I have a Career Technical lead in the public schools actively recruiting students for us. As a youth pastor, think about that for a second. This project helped me to link up with a local professional who I never would have met, somebody who is trying to do good work too. They love their community and technology and they weren't sure how to bring it all together.  I am also excited about the proposition that this could help get more young women involved in STEM too! I think there is some justice in that which seems awesome. 

It seems logical that this kind of work should be part of the role of the church.  Shouldn't the church be a place that kind of translates skills, people, places, money, etc. into a kind of tapestry of Kingdom work in the community? I think so.