Innovation Virtues: Courage

A few months back I wrote about the need to define innovation as an idea that actually hits the ground. The goal was to define as something different than creativity or invention. The question with all three (creativity, innovation, and invention) in my mind is what it takes to actually do them. I mean innovation is actually about the doing!

I thought it might be good to do a post every once in a while on the “virtues” of innovation. I spend a lot of time thinking about the virtues that the gospel calls me to cultivate in my life. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about them. Most of the people I have met that talk a lot about virtues I find to either be boringly dogmatic or remarkably hypocritical. That might sound harsh, but I have an inherent distrust about people that talk too much about virtues. Virtues are not something you televise, they are tools to self scrutinize and reflect. And to be honest, I remain fairly certain that if you push a virtue too far, it often becomes a vice.

So my innovation question is, “What are the virtues that are required to not only think of an idea, but to get it to ground? What are the virtues necessary for innovation?” The first virtue: Courage.

A few months ago I came across this quote from C.S. Lewis that I had not read before. I thought it was a great quote to describe some of the tension in Christian social enterprise and in innovation.

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the highest point of reality.”

One of the things about innovating anything is that it requires people to do things a bit different. You have to learn outside your circle. You have to take a risk in piloting experiments. You have to fail periodically and not hide, but rather analyze why something didn’t work. In my social enterprise based world you have to have the courage to take financial and legal risks in starting a business. And of course (and this may be its own virtue) you have to have the courage to trust God.

Lately, youth ministry groups and others are starting to launch various kinds of social enterprise, innovation, and design tools. I am excited about this. Some of them seem to be pretty darn good. But, in my conversations with the designers that implement them and innovators on the ground it seems pretty clear that no tool in the world will help someone launch an innovation if they recipient lacks some essential courage. Even the small innovations require courage at times!

The reality is that in a world that only seems to value or believe in what can be seen, touched, etc., even more courage is needed to do anything. In a culture (my culture) in which your failure in material achievement actually functions as a kind of denial of your existence, failure does feel final and fatal. Failure becomes an inability to assert your identity and self actualize. This secular reality only ups the force of failure. So, to ask people to risk and innovate is a higher stakes game in the modern world.

Now, back to C.S. Lewis!

What I love about this quote is that it acknowledges that courage itself is an essential virtue to living out other virtues. When doing innovation work and social enterprise work there is always this tension between the business and the ministry. There is tension between whether the idea helps the Kingdom go forward or whether the innovative idea has become the main thing. You never want that, but it is a tension. Courage is needed at every turn. At every turn in innovation as you court failure and financial problems, or being fired, there is a temptation to retreat from all the virtues. In many ways, courage becomes the virtuous fulcrum on which all other virtues are tested. Lewis nails that.

So, take courage in whatever venue you find yourself. May you cultivate the virtue of courage as best you can so that you might find the boldness to live out all the virtues! And do all of it in such a way that the Kingdom of love, hope, peace, and joy moves forward!

Keys to Innovation in Youth Ministry (Or Anything Else!) for 2021

This is a post that is due to be on the Download Youth Ministry Youth Blog:

So, I am no good at predicting the future. If we didn’t all know that in 2020, we certainly know it now. What I do know is that in 2021 youth ministry needs to innovate…and fast. And it needs to be planning for innovation not DURING Covid, but post-Covid. We need to innovate now for the future! We need to do it before the temptation to return to what was expected returns. Now is the time to re-think and dream. Youth ministry has needed to innovate for 50 years. While I can’t predict the future, innovation in youth ministry is something that I know something about!

So, here is the list of keys for innovation for 2021 and beyond!

1. Question Everything- If you aren’t good at asking tough questions about your theology and your ministry now is the time to start. In faith and in innovation questions should WAY outnumber answers. All innovation begins with questions and more questions. “Why do we do it this way?” “What if we tried that?” “How did that experiment go?” “What did we learn just now?” “How do we do it better/more like Jesus?” Question everything in 2021!

2. Seek Understanding- If you don’t know your students and your city you won’t know what direction your ministry should go. What do local leaders say students struggle with? What is your students’ world/home/school actually like? Good missionaries learn about the culture around them and good church innovators do too. Do you really know your town? Why are you certain of that?

3. Observe Details- Good innovators pay attention to how their people use their stuff. What parts of your ministry do students deeply enjoy? Why do they like it? Could you do more of that? What do they love out in the community and could that be a new kind of ministry?

4. Experiment, Evaluate, Repeat- This is the season to emerge and try something new!  Innovators experiment. But, they don’t always believe the mantra that more experiments are better. The best innovators say that isn’t true. Lots of experiments are only good if there are few enough for you to evaluate each one of them. Put together a team that supports each experiment then experiment, evaluate, and repeat. Over and over. Sometimes one experiment combines with another to produce something truly great!

5. Risk Something- I know many of us are vulnerable. We don’t get paid that well. We have families. We may not have cooperative staffs, heads of staff, or healthy church culture. But, if you are able to, take a risk! You cannot innovate without risk. Jesus risked in coming into the world and people are only willing to follow those who are willing to risk first.

6. Cross-Pollinate- The best innovators read outside their jobs, they go to different conferences, and they have coffee with people outside their area. What if you went to an education conference? What if you had coffee with somebody from juvenile probation? What if you joined a local non-profit circle to learn their best practices? The church is way too isolated not just in terms of who we minister to, but who we learn FROM. Most of us aren’t experts at anything if we are honest. Let’s go learn from the best. The best ideas come when innovators go outside their ministries.

7. Fail Shamelessly- Jesus’ earthly ministry only made it 3 years, he didn’t make it far from home, and his 12 best buddies never understood him.  From the outside Jesus’ ministry might have looked like a failure. The Lord loves you and nothing can change that. Failure and mistakes are just lessons learned along the way. And sometimes one failure becomes the key ingredient to a later experiment! But, don’t fail alone. Get the support of your leadership. Make sure you are failing in a group. No mistake can diminish God’s love for you or for your team. So give yourself some grace. Do another new thing. Do it better next time and move forward!

The famous missionary William Carey once said, “Attempt great things for God, expect great things from God.” The Kingdom of God is worth it and so are students! Let’s innovate YM in 2021!

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.

The Matryoshka Haus: A Community of Innovation

About a year ago I was made aware of a group of folks working on solving social problems together as a human network. The place was called Matryoshka. If you don't know what a Matryoshka is, its a Russian nesting doll. On two different legs of my trip to the U.K. I was able to meet with folks from Matryoshka to better understand who they are and what they are doing. Let's start with the basics.

Matryoshka is a community that began with the work of a woman named Shannon Hopkins. Creatively working in the U.K. she created a pub initiative that helped fight human trafficking and a creative arts project called, "Doxology". She learned she had a knack for this kind of social impact work and that she was adept at gathering others who were interested in this kind of work as well. Overt time a community began to develop of people who were skilled at collaboratively working on engaging social problems in area.

Today, Matryoshka is housed in its own space in the Canary wharf area of London. They have a co-working space that includes folks inside and outside Matryoshka's direct network. Many of these folks are engaged with Christian faith, but others are not. That characteristic is not considered a necessity to solving pressing issues. What is clear to me is that their faith does inform both the work that they do and the way that they gather in intentional community. Matryoshka uses this co-working model to sustain part of its operations, but the majority of their sustainability comes from what they produce.

Matryoshka has begun to develop tools to help non-profits create solutions to intractable social problems and to figure out how to better measure the impact of their work. They sell these tools to organizations throughout the U.K. and the U.S. as well.

There are a number of organizations that are designing tools to help faith based organizations ideate and innovate, but what makes Matryoshka unique is that the people that design their tools are people who are on the ground and have experience practicing social innovation. They are actually engaged in the work on the ground.

Many folks who are beginning to design tools in the U.S. have not themselves actually built any social change organizations or enterprises. It is far more likely that they are able to design tools because they have the time to do so (afforded by their institution) and access to larger institutional funding. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I often wish that practitioners of innovation were the ones designing tools rather than exclusively research institutions or large ministry companies. My own sense is that if practitioners were at least more heavily involved in the design process and testing process that significantly different tools and ideation processes might be developed.

My hope is that research institutions will begin to creatively partner with those that are doing the innovation work to generate ideas and gatherings that might help other individuals do similar kinds of work more effectively. Social innovators who are on the ground take a ton of risk and invest loads of blood, sweat, and tears in their work and they should have a seat at the table to share their expertise when they can. They not only have a clearer sense of what is possible, but also are the embodiement of the passion and ethos that is required to make this kind of work happen. That spirit, or elan, is not something that is reproducible and I am not sure that it is possible to do this kind of work without it. Last, its worth noting that in Matryoshka's early days it was Christian institutions that pulled funding away from their trafficking initiative because it overemphasized social justice. It is important to understand that many Christian practitioners of social innovation are seeking to avoid the church and have often been burned by it. One of the reasons that I think involving and funding practitioners matters is that generally speaking Christian companies and learning institutions are generally not very good at finding, reaching, and involving these sorts of outsiders.

For Youth Ministry Innovators, the hope is that we can begin to utilize some of the tools that Matryoshka has designed as we work with churches and youth ministries that are seeking to impact their localized communities through the work of their churches. I also hope we can be a helpful conversation partner with Matryoshka to help them reflect theologically on the work that they are doing.

Regardless of what happens, they are doing amazing Kingdom work.  They work collaboratively on problems that each of them faces, they have common gatherings and meals together, and they have a well developed sense of their values:

-They believe that social innovation is a tangible expression of God's Kingdom.

-All people are designed to do good work.

-Hospitality is critical and their community is shaped by the radical welcome of God in Christ.

-Christian Social Innovation is a particular kind of innovation that is guided by the life and work of Jesus.

-The process of innovation involves critical discernment, imagintion, creation, and inspiring future expressions of Kingdom work in others.

Matryoshka is a fabulous organization and one of the most unique expressions of the gospel that I have ever seen. We hope to continue to partner with them in some way moving forward.

Sabbatical 2018

I haven't written in a while because I have been on a sabbatical around the U.S. and in the U.K. Mainly I am relaxing with family and writing here and there as well as exploring new places and old places that feel like home. But, part of what I have also been doing is meeting with some folks from different institutions who are interested in Christian Social Enterprise and the work that I have been doing with my team in Washington.

Over the coming weeks I plan on writing a number of posts about those conversations and some growing thoughts that I have been having. Below I am going to list the folks that I am meeting with and lay out some of what I plan on posting about in relation to them. There will also be a couple of guest posts that I have requested.

1. Dave Odom- Dave is the director of the Duke's Faith and Leadership initiatives at Duke University. That initiative is funded by the Lilly Endowment. Dave's main job, as I understand it, is to help improve institutional leadership of every kind in the North American church. He is really good at listening and grabbing ahold of what is at work in new developments in the American church.

2. Abigail Visco Rusert- Abigail is the Director for the Institute for Youth Ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary. She is heavily involved with new youth ministry projects at the seminary.

3. Jonny Baker- Jonny was/is a big figure in the Emerging Church movement in the U.K. He is currently directing the training program for the Church Missionary Society that is training pioneering leaders in the U.K. I am rarely excited to meet with someone. I started reading Jonny's blogs and looking at his stuff related to Proost back in 2002 and am always impressed with his work.

4. Greg Jones- Greg is kind of leadership guru. He has lead Duke Divinity and most recently was the Executive Vice President and Provost of Baylor University. He is helping to coach me in how to build this crazy thing that I have started.

5. Steve Chalke- Steve is the head of one of the largest non-profits (Oasis) in the United Kingdom. He is an amazing speaker and author. I think he is the Rob Bell of the U.K. (love it or hate it is up to you) and many American Christians have no idea who he is. I want to explore with him how he has kept so many missional ministries connected to a local church.

6. Church of Scotland- I hope to meet with some folks from the "Go For It" initiative about their work. I love the Church of Scotland having worked in Scotland doing missionary work for a brief time. I would love to help them with unleashing the idea of social enterprise in the Church of Scotland.

7. Homeboy Industries- This opportunity hasn't been set up yet, but I am trying to meet up with someone from their business end of operations to understand how they have strung together their organization. It would be amazing to get a chance to speak with them. I also have never been to Homeboy despite having Father Boyle come and speak at our church. I am hoping to get a feel not just for the business side of things, but for the atmosphere of the place. We will see!

8. Matryoshka Haus- I don't even know how to describe this community except to say that it is a co-working space in that sustains itself by designing tools for non-profits to better measure the impact of their ministries. They are also really good with design thinking in the startup process. I am hopeful that I can help them in some small way to think theologically (as a practitioner) about how they design their tools.

Hopefully, something in this mix interests you! It's been exciting so far. I almost (ALMOST) can't wait to get back to work!

Stripping the Ship: Calling A vs. Calling B

Sometime ago I sat with a colleague who was concerned that as we build a different model of our youth ministry that we were neglecting too much of our existing ministry. We discussed that we were doing a bit less communication and that things were more rushed in general. To be honest, he was right.

In order to build a jobs based youth ministry on the side of our standard youth ministry we had been starving our existing ministry a bit. I told him he was right and that we were taking a calculated risk in order to reach out to a section of the community that we would never otherwise reach.  I appreciated my friend's concern for both our jobs and for my longevity (he was partly worried that I might burn out).

The thing I learned about innovation and change a few years back is that it is impossible to implement any change without sacrificing something. Usually one of the difficulties is that part of what you will have to sacrifice is part of your current picture of success. In order to change anything you are going to have to do a portion of what you currently do well...a little less well. I have come to believe that if we can't/won't take that risk, than any kind of innovation is impossible.

I have begun to refer to this process as "Stripping the Ship". If you have tracked this blog at all you will find that I tend to use nautical imagery to describe the journey I am on and the model I am pursuing. Stripping the ship refers to the intentional process of stripping down your existing model of ministry to its barest components that you regard as essential in order to free up as much capacity as possible to explore your secondary and nascent idea or model.

Sailors throughout history, for various reasons, have had to toss things overboard in order to lighten their load. The might need speed, there could be an emergency on board, or the conditions of the see and the conditions of their boat and its load do not mach well. Generally these objects overboard are referred to as flotsam, jetsam, and lagan. People do this same sort of thingall the time when they move from a larger home into a smaller home. They go through the process of sorting and tossing. There is almost always pain, grief, and satisfaction in this process. And part of this process is really helpful because it helps us define what is really important in our ministries and lives. Some things we don't get rid of entirely, we just get more efficient at them. These days I often find that I have found small ways and spaces of time to get things done that used to take me twice as long.

Stripping the ship often feels scary. You often wonder when you are going to throw some sacred object overboard that is the final straw for someone. You wonder if you are really just sinking your ship rather than stripping it down to make it lighter and faster. What ultimately makes the process worthwhile is if the ministry that you accomplish as a result seems more life giving and honoring to the Kingdom of God than what you were doing before. The difficulty though is that you won't know that until you actually test it all out for a substantial amount of time.  That is always scary.

As I have worked through this process I am learning a few simple things that I have helped me think and pray my way through this process.

1. Ask Lots of Questions and Invite Review- Try to ask your co-workers, leaders, personnel team, parents, students, etc. etc. periodic questions about whether or not they think you are still doing a good job at your primary calling/function. Their voice matters. You don't have to ask it that directly. There are loads of questions that you might ask to gauge how things are going.

2. Be Patient- You may not have had enough time to build up the rapport that you need to take the risk you want to take. Ask  yourself: "How much leadership capital do I have?" You might estimate internally or with others how many months you can sail like this before you need to restock the ship in some way.

3. Be Suspicious...of yourself- Remember that you might not be able to be honest with yourself about how things are going because you could have become so attached to the new ministry idea that you are pursuing.

4. Take an Emotional Review- Pay attention to your emotional sense of how you are doing. As much as you know that taking this risk will be scary, you should pay attention to when you feel like you are cheating calling A to serve calling B. I often use the Ignatian Examen as a way to figure out what the Spirit is telling me about how I am feeling. It is not always good to sacrifice your current picture of success to get to a new one. We should not idolize innovation or risk.

5. Catalogue Your Stories- As you go about your new ministry make mental note of every time that you encounter the fruit off this new way of doing things. Chances are that you are going to need that story to help other see what is happening. They may want to push or pull you back to the old way of doing things. I often tell a story of one of our students in our programs that we have built and ask them whether we should be pouring more resources into those outsider kids or into our church kids? I don't do that smugly (that would be unwise). I invite them into the tension that I feel every day. I am genuinely asking, "Jesus, who do you want me to minister to?" Often, they don't fully emotionally agree, but it always makes them stop and think about our priorities as a body. It also has a funny way of inviting them on the adventure when you do it right.

Blessings on your risks and innovations.

May you carefully strip your ship, so that in a streamline and sleek state, God might enable you to sail into new oceans, dangers, and Kingdom possibilities! Pray for wisdom often and be careful you don't throw anything overboard that is essential to the gospel or to your ability to stay afloat!

How do I Fund My Philanthropic/Social Enterprise Idea?

Fairly frequently these days, people from different places will reach out to me as they are trying to launch their local social enterprise or missional idea. Some people want to make profit as a for profit. Some people are simply launching a charity. Others want to generate net profit, but run as a non profit simply by directing their profits back into the mission of the overall organization. What many of them struggle with is trying to raise the initial funds to get started.

When I began my landscaping company and my non profit I had no idea where the money would come from. I didn't even know how much money I would need. What I did know was that our mission was worth doing and that I was called to do this work. I have learned a lot in the last few years on how to get up and running. Over the past 3 years I have raised about 125k in funding for my organization and I have done that while working a full time job and doing my enterprise on the side.Here is how you might get started.

1.) Your Personal Funds- I know you don't have any, but bear with me. When I started my own enterprise I had to put up about 5k of my own funds. Later I invested much more than that. Your funds matter because unless you are willing to risk for this enterprise you are starting you may not have an idea that is worth pursuing in earnest. Second, when you risk, others believe that their risk might be worth while. You cannot expect others to sacrifice what they have earned if you are not willing to do so yourself. Watch it here though! You do not want to be the only one risking for your idea and if you have means you do not want to fund your idea to the point that it becomes to reliant upon you or your funding stream. That kind of dependency can lead your organization and mission to fold if you step out of the frame or if your personal funding picture should change in some significant way.

2.) Friend Funds- No matter what you do, you are probably going to need to raise funds from those around you. They might be friends or they might be folks that come out of the woodwork as they hear about your ideas. They might also be folks on your board or team that you have assembled. I have been struck at how often folks have emerged with dollars when they have heard about what we are doing. I have also had to learn to make a pitch and ask. This has been a difficult task for me as I don't love talking about money and cannot stand asking for it, but if the mission is good, I will do what I have to in order to forward it. Again, this is a great test for the quality of your idea. If folks aren't interested in funding it then it might not have what it takes to move forward.

3. Grants- You will definitely have to mine local foundation and granting agencies. Just do some Google research and talk, talk, talk to folks about what you are up to. There are loads of sources of funding that your network of folks knows about that you don't. For profits can sometimes get loans from foundations or important advice from them about funding. They can also connect you with people who know the industry that you are about to launch into. Don't underestimate the value of such advice and connection points!!!! Just don't expect those foundations to perpetually fund your dream. They often want to see if you have a plan and have what it takes to hang around for a few years on your own. Their funding will only last a couple of years, so they want to know that you can sustain yourself without their perpetual help.

4. Awards-  Along the way I have won three awards for our work with Mowtown and the Forge. Periodically you just come across these things. Some of the awards are small (1-3k), but some might be larger (5-20k). I also won these awards as a for profit.  I had to pay taxes on those awards, but it was still very much worth it.  They are a nice boost to your bottom line and another sign that you might be headed in the right direction.

5. Denominational Sources- I work in the church world, so I have some connections through institutional networks. I found funding though my local region as well as through a national source that is seeking to launch new ministries around the nation. Sometimes these gifts will require various forms of reporting and accountability that might seem bureaucratic, but there is no source of revenue that has no accountability or strings attached to it.

6. Private Investment- Admittedly, this is the area that I know the least about. My enterprise was built with my own money and a few awards. I was able to do this because my particular industry (lawn care and landscaping) has a fairly low barrier to entry. But, if your idea is larger or more expensive to get off the ground you might need to take out a loan or seek out investors who are going to want return on their cash investment. It's possible that they may take a lower rate of return than is normal based on the fact that your project is socially engaged.

All I can say is that this is going to be a lot of work.  Don't expect anyone to make this thing happen for you. It's going to take some sweat to make this work! I mean that in terms of sweat of your brow as well as anxious sweating it out as you figure out how to fund the next turn in the road. Blessings as you dream and launch!

Windshield Conversations...

I have written several posts about how one of the biggest surprises about how we have tried to do youth ministry and social enterprise at my church (other than how hard it is!) is the impact I think it is having on adults. I have felt that doing a mentoring and business based model of youth ministry has drawn out the gifts of numerous adults in my church who probably would not have had anything to do with youth ministry previously. This sense has been affirmed over the last few weeks in particular.

A few weeks back I was in a parking lot in my truck when one of my mentors called. They wanted to clarify a few things about their student and also check in on their paperwork status. While I was trying to make it into my next appointment I found myself getting the chance to do what I enjoy most: Coaching someone in how to do ministry with teenagers. But, really I was coaching them in how to do ministry with their fellow human being. We talked about listening well and about the unique personality of their particular assigned student. We talked about what to do if any particular crisis issue came up and we revisited our abuse prevention protocols. I also assured them that I was just a phone call away.

The best part about the conversation was that this adult had no business doing ministry with teenagers, and I don't mean because of relative age. I have always used older adults more than younger ones in youth ministry. Age is somewhat irrelevant. What I mean is that this particular adult, while a WONDERFUL human being, just doesn't strike you as somebody you would expect to be hanging out with a teenager. They would be one of the last sort of folks I might recruit for a number of the normal elements that make up a youth ministry. This of course is probably more of an indictment of youth ministry than it is a characterization of the individual. The fact that our models couldn't accommodate the gifts and talents of this individual is egregiously bad. When it comes to youth ministry the hand has often been saying to the foot, "I don't need you."

And then this experience with this one adult seemed to repeat itself another three times in the next week.

What had happened in part was that in the 4th year of our program we doubled in size. We now have 23 students in the program and that has meant pulling from a wider crop of adults from our church and beyond for the first time. During the first three years we mostly had adults that had a good deal of experience with teens from our ministry community. They entered the program with a certain sense of confidence and veterancy in what they were doing. But, this year is requiring more encouragement, coaching, and listening. And it's a ton of fun. In many ways, I feel like I am doing exactly what I ought to be doing most of the time.

When we built the initial landscaping company, one of the things we talked about was "windshield time". We meant that while we were driving around we wanted to take advantage of conversations that would happen along the road with students. But, as it turns out adults need windshield time too. They want to help students. They want to do ministry. But, they just need somebody as a kind of reflective backstop. It's funny at times because I am coaching people who are nearly twice my age. In a lot of ways their nervousness reminds me of my experiences of doing hospital chaplaincy in my early 20's. I remember vividly feeling like I didn't know what to say, what to do, or whether I was going to really screw somebody up through ignorance and the sugary additive of good intentions. It's not a fun feeling, but it is a necessary stage of ministry.

This is what my adult mentors are learning.

1. Most of life's problems are not solvable by human beings. They are knots that are just too hard to untangle. This is partially why relationship with God is so powerful. God does the work we cannot. And while that can make us feel futile at times as servants of our neighbors it's also kind of a relief to know that we don't have to solve problems.

2. Ministry and service to one's neighbor always involve getting involved in someone's mess. When you really engage ministry you find out how most of our forms of service are actually designed to keep us distant from the recipient. We serve at arm's length in most contexts. it's safer that way. Real face to face ministry in which you actually have to just listen and walk with somebody through their crap is often messy. You are invited into the story of a neighbor and that is inherently risky. It might cost you some sleep, some money, time, and probably part of your heart.

3. You don't know your neighbor or their experience until you know them. When you engage ministry you quickly find that you don't have clue about other people's experiences. Most of what we live on in life are assumptions about others from a safe distance. Ministry has a way of disrupting our stereotypes and assumptions about people from the outside because it invites you into the inside of their lives. You end up in conversations, homes, and at tables that teach us just how ignorant we are. It's embarrassing and awkward, but it's good work and it is never finished. You are never done learning about the folks to which you minister.

4. Good listening is the best skill you have. People often get frustrated with how church folk and others will offer all kinds of platitudes to people in crisis ("God doesn't give you more than you can handle."). Often they do this because platitudes actually kind of work...when you keep your distance from your neighbor. They make you feel that you have helped your neighbor when in fact they mostly have just reinforced your distance from them. It's only actual ministry that exposes them for what they are: manure. Actual ministry, wading into the life of my neighbor reveals that reflective listening is the best, and often the only, balm we have. Good listening and good questions are the first tool in a pretty limited actual ministry tool bag.

In any event, these conversations have been fun. It's nice to be doing what you are supposed to be doing. It's nice to invite others into the holy mess that God invited me into some years ago.