Last night I met with my discipleship group (or d-group). I had not been able to come for various reasons over the past few weeks so it was sooo good to be back with those women and catch up. We’ve been reading through some of the stories in Genesis – first reading them in the Jesus Storybook Bible then in the scriptures. It’s been a really neat way to study some of the bible stories I’ve known for a long time but seeing them in a new light.  Last night we read the story of Jacob, Rachel & Leah. This story is not new to most people. Jacob is fleeing the his homeland and the conflict he has with his brother so he goes to live with his uncle Laban. Jacob wants to marry his cousin Rachel so his Uncle says “Work for me for 7 years and I’ll let you marry Rachel” So he does but Laban does the whole bait and switch and Jacob actually ends up marrying Leah instead.  So Jacob has to work another 7 years to be able to marry Rachel. For my whole life I’ve thought of this story being about the relationship between Jacob and Laban and how horrible it must have been for Jacob. Oh no no no. This isn’t about that at all.

One really cool thing about the Jesus Storybook Bible is how every story brings to light the Gospel and how God was writing his plan and showing us His love for us even from Genesis! Every story whispers his name. And this story is NO exception. This story is about Leah and how even though Jacob her husband may not have loved her like he should have. The Lord had a bigger plan for Leah and for His children. This is a quote from the end of this story. It’s so beautiful.

Mom’s Surgery – Praise the Lord! My mom’s surgery on March 26th was extremely successful. The doctor was pleased with the surgery and was able to shave off the part of her disc that was herniated and pinching nerves in her neck. My time taking care of her was good. The Lord taught me a lot about myself during that time as I cared for my mom. We are both alive and well and still love each other! Please continue to pray for her recovery. She is doing really well but still has a ways to go.

Upcoming Plans

Come May 1st I’ll be taking a vacation with my family! We are all really excited about this trip and spending time together. When I get back that I’ll be in working on final plans our GYFM team retreat and for all the events we have going on this summer.

Speaking of the summer I have some exciting plans this summer! You may remember last year I spent the summer in New York City leading the youth program for MTW’s Cross Cultural Ministry Internship. It was a great summer and I really enjoyed being there. Well, this summer is looking a little different. I’ll be heading back to Ridge Haven in North Carolina for MTW’s Re-Entry and Summer Conference at the beginning of July. I’m really looking forward to being back there and catching up with all the missionaries that are on Home Ministry Assignment. A few days after I get back from North Carolina I’ll be heading to Mexico!  YUP…you read that correctly. I’ll be heading to Progreso, Mexico to lead a short-term team from New Jersey who will be working with a church there. After the team leaves I will be staying in Progreso for the rest of the summer. This summer GYFM has it’s very first group of interns! We have 2 guys and 2 girls that will be living in Progreso for the summer and serving the church in Progreso, working specifically with the youth ministry there.  I will be mentoring the girl interns, for the first part of the summer over skype then for the rest of the summer in person in Progreso. I’m really excited to be a part of this program and to walk along side these interns as they serve in Mexico. This is not what I expected my summer to look like AT ALL but I’m really looking forward to it. There are definitely some nerves thrown into the mix but I am confident this is what the Lord wants me to do this summer. Please be praying for me as I prepare for the summer and for the interns!

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Thank you all for your prayers for me, my family and the Global Youth & Family Ministries!

By His Mercy,
Ruthanne

Ever look back on a month of your life and wonder what just happened…? March was fast-paced and filled with evidence of God’s faithfulness…

…To the Nations
Andrew took a short-term trip to Colombia with a partnering church from Chapel Hill at the beginning of the month. The Lord answered your prayers for this trip, as it was fruitful on all levels. Not only was the group able to participate in some of the long-term ministries of the church planting team there, but Andrew was able to spend quality time with our growing team in Bogotá and check out housing options for what will soon be our home. Andrew heard incredible stories, dialogued with students about the Gospel, and previewed several future ministry opportunities. Check out photos and highlights of the trip here, as well as other recent events.

…To Our Ministry
The Lord is definitely at work among the next generation in Colombia and we can’t wait to be a part of it. God has blessed us as we prepare to minister in Latin America. We are thankful that Andrew was officially ordained on March 18th at his home church in Waynesville, NC. For the first time, we are transitioning into a season of sharing our passion for this ministry and building our support team on a full-time basis. We would love to visit or Skype with you or your church during the next few months.

…In Our Family
We were blessed with a much-needed family vacation at the beach after Andrew returned from Colombia. Fox continues to bring us great joy. Right now we’re working on sleeping through the night, rolling over, and long division. This morning he gave us his first laugh as we danced and sang to the Beach Boy’s Barbara Ann. Heart-melting.

Prayer Requests:

-That God would continue to grow our support team and provide the resources needed to get to the field this fall.
-For wisdom and energy as we raise Fox, and that the Lord would capture his heart from an early age.
-For MTW youth and their families across Latin America, that they would grow in their faith amid the challenges of living cross-culturally.

I lost the game.

If you know what I’m talking about, you’ve lost the game, too. For those of you who don’t know what the rest of us are sharing in, let me inform you, so that you, too, may lose. The game is an ironic meme first circulated in the late 90s and then on the internet in 2002. It is a ‘game’ only in the broadest sense – normally it is more than a joke than anything. The rules are simple: if you know about the game, you are playing. The object of the game is to not think about the game. If you think about the game, you must declare to those around you “I lost the game”, at which point they will either look at you with confusion (at which point you share with them the game so that they might lose) or anger (because, they, too, will have just lost the game). Because you are all now playing, you may thank me later for ruining your perfect records in the game, for you have all now lost.

Confused? So was I when my best friend introduced me to the game in 2005. It has become our inside joke – most of the time I don’t think about the game unless I’m around him. But as we move into the final few weeks of our series of reflections on youth ministry, culture, and the systems which dictate student interaction and marginalization, the game illustrates a specific application.

In the game, everyone who knows about it is playing, whether they want to or not. For those of you who did our mapping exercise last week, I am almost certain that there is one subcultural group in your student ministry you did not put on your map:

You.

Even when we think of the subcultural system that comprises our student ministries and we begin to wrap our minds around the new paradigm that sees student interaction as a product of multiple systematic forces and not simply individual action, we fail to include ourselves in the process. The truth is,  as youth ministers we are also a part of our youth’s system – a huge part, in fact. Owing to our position of authority, we are often culturally dominant by nature, in a unique role which gives us an unexpected power to influence student preference and belief. Yet we rarely think about how we use this power! There are two major applications of this role:

First, we have to think about what we have brought to the system. Because of our cultural power, we bring our own preferences to our youth ministries – what type of music we listen to/worship with, what our sense of aesthetic values is (everything from dress codes/fashion to the layout of the youth room), and what we like to do with others for entertainment. There is nothing wrong with this – we are holistic beings as humans, and we cannot be expected to keep from influencing our ministries in this way. But we must be acutely aware of how we are influencing our ministries, because our preferences are not without consequence. For example, think of a youth pastor who loves indie music. He plays indie music in the youth room, he finds a worship leader to play indie-style hymns during their mid-week meetings, and he exposes his students to the best new indie bands whenever he can. There is nothing wrong with this. Yet some people (including me) don’t ‘get’ indie music. Some of his youth will not get it. This youth pastor needs to be careful, because his preferences have set up a dominant cultural value which often the dominant groups within the system will gravitate to, leaving others out. Paul famously speaks of being “all things to all people” in order to reach people for Christ. This does not mean that Paul literally should be a blank slate, or someone fake without personal preference. Rather, it means that Paul is aware of the impact which his personal preferences will have upon the communities he ministers in, and without being ‘inauthentic’ or manipulative, he is able to use his preferences, whether he emphasizes them or downplays them, to do contextual ministry. In the same way, as we become aware of who we are and what influences we bring to our systems, we are able to do ministry well, and avoid some marginalization we otherwise would be complicit in.

At  the same time, because we are also players in our youth ministry systems, we are not only influencers, but are influenced by the system. Remember, hegemony is the effect of the dominant cultures within a system establishing the status quo over the other members in the system without those other members perceiving the influencing effect. Thus, youth pastors are also affected by hegemony. It is very easy to be influenced by the preferences/spiritual temperature/temperament/schooling options/spiritual maturity/insert-anything-else-you-want-here of the dominant groups within a ministry. Think about your own ministry – who defines ‘cool’ in your context? Not what – things like media or sports – but who, the kids who establish the types of music people should be listening to, the clothing worn, and the popular sports teams or video games. Do you ever catch yourself trying to raise your ‘coolness’ factor based on these values? I have. Because these values can be hegemonic, they can marginalize kids who aren’t whatever the dominant group deems acceptable. And we can catch ourselves wishing to gain relevance/’cred’ with these groups by buying into their definitions in such a way as to participate in the ways they marginalize kids. Some examples:

• The dominant group in Church A is WAY into video games. While it is a great idea to do contextual ministry with them (video game nights, tournaments, etc.), if video-gaming becomes THE value by which you speak from (illustrations, programming, etc.), you have bought into the dominant value, and marginalize all kids without such knowledge/preferences. You unconsciously communicate that they are ‘less’ (not ‘in the loop’) by not branching out. You may catch yourself egging on those who are not as capable at the specific game, or realizing you are being more competitive than pastoral when you play to stroke your own ego. You also introduce other marginalizing elements, like how impoverished youth may not be able to afford the $400+ investment to participate in gaming, or whether or not you should make such investments personally or for the ministry.

• Church B has a famous history of pranking on their youth retreats. It is a culture where the older kids pass down the traditional pranks to younger kids, first through performing pranks on them, and then by incorporating them as     accomplices for some of the more epic pranks. The younger kids likewise begin pranking each other early. No one complains – people even make videos and photo albums about the best ones. Entering into this system would take a deep analysis of why pranks are done, perhaps how they can be done without hurting others, and questioning why those who would complain seem to never stick around, wondering how the prank-culture of the youth ministry may have marginalized many in the past. Yet the pressure is there to instead prank with the best of them, to establish your own legacy and traditions. Unfortunately, this second route is taken much more often – the issue is seen as insignificant because of a lack of self-knowledge and systems knowledge. The youth pastor feels drawn to the instant popularity boost and acceptance  coming with participating in the unhealthy system, and the system feels bound together in community and does not perceive how they over time have built something which marginalizes others. Instead, they simply dismiss such charges by saying ‘they simply didn’t fit in with us.’

At the end of the day, today’s catch word is AWARENESS. Simply do the brainstorming – think about how your kids affect you, how you affect them, and how those interactions produce both positive contextual ministry and pockets of marginalization. Our next post will get even more practical as we think through the implications of some of the programmatic pockets of marginalization hinted at by these examples.

• history and the military
• integrity and survival
• how to engage with people struggling

• How does this story relate to WW2?
• Do you think it is appropriate to fight back? Why or why not?
• How can emotions get out of control when you rise to defend? Do you think Marvel killing Clove is an example of this? Why or why not? Is it right when this happens? Does it mean that you are doomed to continue along that path? Did Marvel? Does it mean that the action will cause evil to win? Why or why not?
• Where do you see the non-career tributes training? Is this the same thing as the training that the careers had? What is important to keep in mind as we engage in the fight against evil?
• What can you do if you find yourself unable to control yourself?
• Perhaps, discuss the recent current events in Afghanistan with the soldier killing 17 civilians.

• Discuss Gale’s quote: “What if no one watched?” When is it appropriate to address evil by simply refusing to take part in it? Are there limits to this? What are signs that more should be done?
• Discuss Gale’s quote: “It’s just hunting.” Katniss responds by thinking, “The awful thing is that if I can forget that they’re people, it will be no difference at all.” What does this mean? Why is it easier to hurt others when we don’t see them as human? How do you see that in everyday life? What does it mean to view another person as “human”? What does it mean to be human?
• Discuss Peeta’s quote: “I’m not going to win!” Why had Peeta even been trying: to encourage Katniss? to help Katniss? Why is it important to try your best even if you won’t be the best? How can you see this in your life now? Are there additional reasons to do this as a Christian?
• Discuss Peeta’s quote: “If I’m gonna die, I wanna still be me.” How can you lose by winning? How did the movie show this during the opening promotion video showing a murder while a narrator says, “We will never forget when a tribute becomes a victor.” What was won? What was lost? Discuss how this relates to Matthew 16:26 “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?….” What are good things you may have to give up? Why? What is lost by gaining them?
• Discuss Katniss’ response: “I just can’t afford to think like that. … I’ve got Prim.” How does being a “control freak” and feeling ultimately responsible for an outcome make us vulnerable to sin? Is there someone whose opinion, feelings, or success is so important to you? Have you ever been tempted to do something wrong to protect or help them? How can trusting God with their life help us?
• Discuss President Snow’s quote: “Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear.” Where does a Christian find hope? How? Do you know any verses?
• Discuss Hammitch’s quote: “Face the probability of your imminent death, and know in your heart that there’s absolutely nothing I can do to help you.” What were possible causes of his cynicism: personal guilt from his “victory,” 23 years of helping people only to see them die, too daunted by the difficulty? Which can you identify with the most? What negative ways was this demonstrated in Hammitch’s character? Could you see a change in him? How? Why?

• Discuss the phrase “Happy Hunger Games.” Jeremiah 6:14 states, “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” In the capitol, tributes are congratulated on their bravery. Do you feel like difficulties you face are trivialized by others? Do you try to always show people “the bright side” of things? Why is it easy to do this? What is true courage? What is real bravery? Are the “victorious” tributes really brave, courageous?
• Discuss: “May the odds be ever in your favor.” What is ironic in telling a group of people set against each other that you hope the odds will be in their favor? Does life only have one winner? Can the odds be in two people’s favor at one time? in the hunger games? in life?
• Discuss Katniss’ mom crying. We don’t want others to trivialize our struggle but we also don’t want them to collapse under the weight we carry. How do people do this?
• Discuss Effie’s quote: “Manners.” Sometimes, when discussing painful things, we don’t always express it the best way. People can often focus on the surface behavior rather than the heart and what is being said? How do adults do this with kids? How do kids do this with each other?
• Discuss Cinna’s dialogue with Katniss:

• How does Cinna’s response show a balance between empathy and hope? What response did that generate in Katniss? If we want to engage with others similarly, what things will we do/ think/ etc? Can you think of an example?

Is the movie The Hunger  Games really about what you think it is?  Need help talking to your kids about it?  The church youth group? Teens in the neighborhood?

Click here for a downloadable discussion guide in PDF format that you can fold as a handy brochure and share with others. If you have friends who would find the guide useful, please pass this post along to them.

Thank you for your partnership in Reaching the Nations and the Next Generation!

Prepare your stashes of Crayola products (literally) – we’re about to get practical. After striving through weeks of theory and a short digression into the biblical picture of marginalization and redemption, we are ready to actually DO the type of analysis we’ve been talking about. In Tina Fey’s hilarious yet scarily accurate parody/portrayal of teen culture, Mean Girls, an early scene finds the main character (tellingly the daughter of missionaries to Africa) being given a map of the lunchroom on a piece of notebook paper, outlining the social layout of their lunch period.

Compare this to a quote from Chap Clark’s Hurt we looked at earlier:

“…individuals within clusters may develop a hostile view toward those in clusters with different social views. I observed definite rules and boundaries between cousin clusters [what Clark calls clusters which are similar and may share ideologies] evidenced by such things as where students hung out before school, whom they sat with at lunch, which hallways they walked down, whom they talked to in class, and even what events they attended. Some students can overcome the social barriers that separate students from different clusters by ‘being friends’ in a specific and ordered context {such as on a sports team). But the majority of the time, clusters set up extremely subtle but clearly delineated ‘demilitarized zones’, and all parties tacitly understand that they will not get involved with one another. There is on every high school campus in the United States that I have investigated through this and other studies an undercurrent of stratification and even the implied threat of violence (even if only emotional violence) between various clusters and cousin clusters” (84-85).

What is interesting is that the ‘map’ Clark observes (together with his politicized and militaristic language) can be drawn by any teen, if they put their mind to naming that which they are already unconsciously aware of. No doubt some of them, like the fictional outcasts in Fey’s film, have one somewhere in a journal or notebook. Our challenge as youth workers is to gain access to this underground awareness, to understand the politically charged world they live in, and to apply the findings to how we do ministry.

RECIPE FOR A CULTURAL META-MAP

What you’ll need:
- a large think to write on (large piece of paper, whiteboard, small piece of paper with incredibly small handwriting, etc.)
- things to write with in multiple colors (whiteboard markers, crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc.)
- some way to record this (especially if you’re doing this on a whiteboard – we want to be able to refer back to this later) like a digital camera

Step One

Somewhere other than on your map, list out all the students in your ministry. Yes. All of them. This may take some time if you have a youth group of 40+, but it is important not to forget anyone. The line of ‘who do I include’ is always arbitrary, and is being debated even now in current youth ministry books like Kara Powell’s Sticky Faith: Youth Worker Edition. Powell simplifies the discussion by simply calling these kids ‘ours’. Whoever comes enough, or doesn’t come enough but they have a place in your heart anyway, or anywhere in between, whoever is a part of the family that is your youth ministry, is on this list.

Why list everyone? Because as we have been discussing, the fabric of competing subcultures BY NATURE marginalizes people and consolidates power in various dominant subcultures, and in certain individuals within those subcultures. This status quo affects us so much that if we don’t work at it, we can even give into the marginalization, and forget some kids are ours.

Step Two

Then, on your actual writing surface, begin to group these names together, according to ideological/sociocultural subgroup. Leave some space between groupings, as you will need this space later. This may feel stereotypical, but actually in educational theory, the act of naming has great power to bring out truth. Thus, your perceptions of where the culture of your youth group is are valuable. Keep putting names in groups, creating as many groups as necessary. There will be some outliers who don’t fit into a group. Also, in our postmodern age, many kids may be in more than one system. Others may quickly switch groups as easily as they buy new clothes or begin to listen to a different radio station. All these things are okay – they are messy, which is how real life works.

Eventually, when you think you have all your names placed, draw circles around the groupings. Again, these are not overly solid – this is your map, and it can and will change as your students change. Yet it visually represents what we have been discussing all along: there ARE barriers which are set up between groups within a system. Naming why these solid lines exist is where we go next.

Step Three

Before putting anything to paper, think about what you are looking at. Imagine these groups not as names on a page, but kids sitting in a youth room. For some of you, you may have unconsciously painted a seating chart for your students! Think about how these groups interact – specific moments like fights, specific descriptors like ‘these two groups sit as far away as possible’, general statements like ‘these kids are never picked first for anything’, as well as connections like who is dating whom, who is related to whom, etc. Then begin to visually show this on your map. Use words and symbols, describing how ‘this group’ relates to ‘that group’. Are they friends/allies? Do group members support one another? Do two groups deeply dislike another group? Eventually, patterns will emerge.

For me, a previous youth ministry I was a part of had a group of popular middle schoolers – athletic, ‘cool’, with parents who helped run the church. We also had a group of lower income kids who were also fairly popular. These two groups were often in tension for dominance. Yet both of them both quietly and explicitly marginalized a third group of loosely bound kids who ‘didn’t fit in’, were socially awkward and not athletically talented. With squiggles for names, here is a picture of what this simple map could look like:

RED – Popular middle schoolers
BLUE – Lower income popular kids
GREEN – Marginalized kids

This can be MUCH more complex – I can cite specific dates, trips when the green group was marginalized, times where the red group looked down on the blue group for their clothes, the fact that they walked to church, etc. Of course, my chart for that youth group is larger, with more circles. The chart is different for year one of my ministry than for year two (comparing these changes is one of the reasons to save these activities, and to do them regularly).

Step Four

Finally, I want you to mark a few things. Highlight somehow the ‘leaders’ of each group, those who set the tone and identity for those clusters. Also, mark the dominant and marginalized groups. If you have a chart of ten circles, mark the few who hold hegemony, who define what the status quo is for everyone else. Also mark the ones who are marginalized – maybe both those who are most completely marginalized, and those who set up their own ‘counter-dominant groups’, who know they are not cool, and take a reverse pride in that marginalization.
This is a quick sketch of a larger one, using lines for names and just a few symbols in the place of more detail. Yet even here we can begin to understand the story of this ministry – how unsafe it would be for a ‘red’ person in this map to come to the group for the first time, or why ‘orange’ kids seem to mediate ‘green’ and ‘blue’ kids, or what would happen if a new dominate ‘purple’ kid joined the ministry… any number of questions can be asked.

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE

The last few weeks of this series will talk about the immediate and long-term applications of having this type of awareness. We are going to ask these maps questions, throw wrenches into them, and look at how to rethink how we do ministry based on the relationships now in front of us. I keep coming back to that kid who walks into my ministry for the first time. They are walking into this, and I am going to shepherd them in that mess. Let’s commit, with the power of the Holy Spirit, to do that shepherding well.

Heart and Soul Cafe Update:
Our team in Japan is hard at work to get our cafe space ready for it’s opening on the weekend of April 14th.  Here are some pictures of the progress that has been made.

Please continue to pray for the team as we prepare for and advertise two evangelistic outreaches in this space: mom and kids time and english classes.

Broader Asia Update:
I can’t believe it, but in just two short weeks, Riva and I (along with GYFM associate Robbie Sweet) will be in “East Asia” facilitating a time of rest and spiritual renewal for missionary kids whose families are serving in that country (April 2-9).  We’ll be worshipping together, playing games, having small group discussions, and talking about developing a personal and ongoing relationship with Jesus.  Many of these kids are struggling with school, friends, and upcoming transitions to college.  Please pray for spiritual growth, good times of fellowship, and much needed encouragement for these students and their families.  Pray also for us as we fight jet lag.

On The Home Front: 
The Lord is continuing to grow our support base as we share with others the mission to which he has called us.  We had a great time in Greenwood, SC sharing our hearts with friends there and the Lord used that time to really encourage us.  We were also able to meet with two churches last month whom we know are praying for us and we hope will join our support team in the coming weeks.  The numbers still aren’t in yet, but it looks like we are well over the 25% mark at this point.  Thank you!  Please continue to pray that the Lord will raise up people like yourselves who will support us through prayer and finances.

We love you so much!  Words cannot express how thankful we are for you!
-Brooks and Riva

Prayer Requests

1. Retreat in East Asia -  Please pray that Jesus will be exalted as we lead activities, talks, and worship services.  Please also pray for safe travels for us and all missionaries on the trip. Also pray that this retreat will provide rest and encouragement for the students and families.
2. Opening of the Heart and Soul Cafe in Nagoya on April 14 -   Please pray as our team makes final preparations to ready the facility, and for the hearts of the students he will bring.
3. Brooks’ ordination exam – Please pray for wisdom and diligence as I study to take my written exams for ordination by March 28. Please also pray for my oral exams before the committee on April 11th and before Presbytery on May 5th.
4. Riva’s licensure in counseling – Please pray for Riva as she works toward licensure in counseling. While she has been encouraged with the increase in client contact hours she still is having a difficult time hearing back from the licensing board in Virginia. Pray for patience and wisdom as she continues to pursue this.

I feel like I went to bed yesterday and it was the beginning of February and
there was still a chill in the air. Then I woke up and it was the end of
March, it’s 85 degrees outside and my car is cover in pollen! Where did the
time go! The Lord has been doing some awesome things lately and I’m excited to tell you about them! Buckle up!

Make sure you scroll down for a special note/need for prayer for my family.
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How’d it go?
Youth World Awareness Weekend (YoWAW) – My time at YoWAW went really well.  I did my seminar 3 times over the course of the weekend and got some good feedback from people that where there.  Thank you so much for praying! I’m excited to be part of this retreat and hope to have more involvement in it next year.

Briarwood Missions Conference – What a sweet time of reunion! I had such a good time catching up with old friends and co-workers from my time at Briarwood. Briarwood’s missions conference is known for having a packed out schedule for the missionaries who are participating and my schedule did not disappoint. I spoke 19 times over 4 days! It was so fun to share with the
folks there my story, the vision of GYFM and what God is doing in and
through our ministry. Thanks for praying for my time there. The Lord was
good and I left encouraged.

Covenant College Weekend - Right after the missions conference I hopped in my car and headed up I-59 to Chattanooga just in time to have lunch with
team members Eric, Jonathan and the Wilkins before Eric & Jonathan headed out of town! The Wilkins and I then hosted some college-aged MKs for some ice-cream sundaes and games. It was a fun evening and proved to be a needed study break for many of the students. It was fun to catch up with some of the students before they headed out on Spring Break.

Interview & Orientation – I had a week back in the office then we were off
and running for Interview & Orientation (I&O)! I helped lead worship during
this particular I&O and that was so much fun. I love that the Lord has
brought drumming back into my life and I am able to use it to lead people in
worship! And that that is part of my job is even better! I had a great time
talking with the missionaries that were going through I&O and sharing with
them what it’s like to grow up as a missionary kid. I especially enjoyed
getting to talk to a family who will be headed to Australia!  It was so fun
to reminisce with them and share with them my experience about growing up in that country. During I&O team-mates Eric, Jonathan & John where here and we had some strategy, vision and goal setting conversations. We did a lot of thinking and discussing what GYFM will be involved in in the future and what the rest of 2012 will look like for us.  It was also fun to just have them
in the office! Please continue to pray for us as a team as we discern where
the Lord wants us to go, be and do. Also pray for all of us as we continue
to raise support.
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Family Matters
While all this has been going on the Burch family has been having a bit of a
rough patch. My mom has 2 bulging and one herniated discs in her neck. These
have been extremely painful for her and have been at times debilitating. She
has had to cancel many commitments in the past 3 months because of this
issue. Physical therapy, 3 rounds of cortisone shots, rest and medication
have been of little help to her. So after almost 4 months of this going on
you can imagine it has been hard road for her and my dad, sister and I as we
care for her. She met with a surgeon just yesterday and he recommended
surgery to repair her herniated disc which he believes is causing the
problem. The surgery is scheduled for this coming Monday (March 26). Would
you please pray for my mom? Please pray for healing through this surgery.
Pray for the doctors who will be performing the surgery and for a quick
recovery. My dad will be traveling to Hong Kong to speak at a retreat just a
week after my Mom’s surgery and I will be working from their house so I can
care for her. Would you pray for me during that time too? That I would love
and care for my mom well and that my Dad would not worry while he is away.

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Coming Up
The next month doesn’t have any travel on the schedule but it will be busy.
I’ll be continuing to work on plans for the missions trip to Progreso, planning our GYFM team retreat at the end of May and working towards many of the events we have coming up this summer. I’d appreciate prayers that I would be able to keep all the details in order for these events.
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Thank you all for your prayers for me, my family and the Global Youth &
Family Ministries!

By His Mercy,
Ruthanne

Dal Segno: Our Story

In musical composition, ‘dal segno’ comes from the Italian meaning ‘from the sign’. It is a special type of repeat sign, showing that a portion of music should be replayed – however, depending on its use, this portion may have different features than when it was played the first time. Our ‘first time playing’ our discussion on youth ministry, systems, and cultural/political theory was quite dark, painting a picture of youth manipulation, power struggle, marginalization, and control, and our ignorance and/or impotence as leaders to do anything about it. And yet: dal segno.

As Christians, our ‘sign’ is the Bible. For those who know me (and as many of you have probably already guessed), I am the first to stand up for the common grace of God that has blessed us with many things with which to understand our world – philosophy, history, sociology, developmental physiology, educational pedagogy, and cultural studies are only some of the spaces that influence youth ministry. Yet there is a sense in which you can get bogged down in them, that you can keep looking at their truth without checking it against the special revelation found in our Scriptures. Sometimes, you go back to the Bible and find that you have been studying something that doesn’t jive with the faith. Other times, you return to the Scriptures and find your studies reinforced, or even commented upon by the revelation of God. It is to these latter functions that we turn to our ‘sign’ – the story of God.

Following its beautiful creation story, the Bible becomes a tangled book, revealing to us the God we love while at the same time being an almost systematic discussion of the continual fall of mankind into horrific depravity. From the blaming of Genesis 3:12-13 to the jealousy and murder of Genesis 4:5-24 to the likely marginalization of the few remaining people of God in Genesis 6 as they build an ark, the biblical story reinforces what we have already discussed about humanity having an underlying lust for power and control as it plays itself out in families and (later) among nations. This is not limited to unbelievers, either – though the people of God from their inception in the story as the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob experience the cultural marginalization of being a small family later betrayed and thrust into slavery, the biblical record shows that Israel did not faithfully hold up to their calling to stand with the hurting, the marginalized, the sick, the sojourner, and the lonely. Rather, the lack of this stance eventually provides the prophets with evidence to point towards the fall of the people of God despite the upkeep of the sacrificial and political systems.

In the same way, we want to believe that our students represent the body of Christ. In fact, they are – yet this means that they are the people of God in the same way Israel was the people of God. They maintain systems of sacrifice and politics in their worship, in their attendance of small groups and large rallies. in their laughter while playing games, in their Sunday School answers, and yet they also fail to be the body of Christ in carrying out what Christ was sent to do on earth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). If we look at our youth ministries through our sign, Scripture, we see that they are truly the people of God, now, and not sometime in the future. Yet this means they too are defined by that which has defined the people of God since Genesis 3 – our fallenness, and our inability to follow the mission of God. Theologically, our students are exactly where the Bible says they are. But this is the very dark place which we have been placing them in, which Gramsci and Clark have been placing them in, which they place each other in.

But there is the sign. Scripture does not leave the body of Christ in the place of doomed Israel. Scripture doesn’t even leave Israel there. The beauty of the biblical story is that a New Covenant is promised, and with it the reality that the mission of the people of God to bring the marginalized into the fold will be accomplished:

“For thus says the LORD: “Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, ‘O LORD, save your people, the remnant of Israel.’ Behold, I will bring them from the north country and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, the pregnant woman and she who is in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here. With weeping they shall come, and with pleas for mercy I will lead them back, I will make them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble, for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.” (Jeremiah 31:7-9)

Further, these ideas are not only promised – they begin to occur with the work of Christ and His establishment of the church. In His inauguration of the kingdom of God, Jesus begins a part of history where the people of God are renewed and empowered specifically by the Holy Spirit to carry out redemptive acts in preparation for the final Day of the Lord.

So our students are both incredibly dark, broken humans, and the redeemed, empowered, and promised people of God. Some Reformed theologians call this the ‘already-not yet’, or the ‘time between the ages’. For many of you, this theological concept is nothing new – it is a bedrock stone of your theology that we are holistic beings, the fallen-yet-being-redeemed. But as we journey through this trajectory that makes our kids seem darker than we ever realized, and as we prepare to uncover new corners of brokenness and marginalization in our own ministries and lives, we need to hear that this is nothing new to God. We have not happened upon something which scares God, which challenges his Word to us, which threatens the church. What we are discussing is language, a way of naming problems, a ‘lifting of the veil’ if you will. In the coming weeks we will be working on building our ‘maps’ of youth cultures in our ministry-systems (get your markers ready!), and then teasing out a number of applications that will be both wonderful and painful to see. But it is helpful for us to pause today and see that God knows, and that it will be okay.

Already.

Not yet.

Dal segno.

You Say You Want a Revolution? Well, You Know…

Educators tell us that the act of ‘naming’ things is a way of structuring our thoughts communally, a way of understanding things and then talking about them. I was reminded this week that whatever analysis we do of our ministries, it is not for the sake of our ‘grand explanations’ of students’ behaviors. Rather, it is something to be shared, perhaps even to be done together.

I bring this up because today, we look over this idea of a systematic approach to our youth ministries where groups of kids struggle in their brokenness with and against each other in both conscious and unconscious ways, and we begin to name things. Rather, we are first going to look at how someone else has named them, and then move from there. At this point, I think it is important to thank God for his grace for all of us – he has gifted even those who themselves stand against Christianity in ways that can teach the church. I thank God for Antonio Gramsci.

Antonio Gramsci was an early 20th century political philosopher in pre-WWII Italy. He was a ‘neo-Marxist’, which meant he held to but adapted the theories of Karl Marx, the 19th century philosopher who established socialism/communism as a driving force in the world. A Marx primer: Karl Marx believed that all history was based on a foundation of economics, that essentially everything boils down to how humanity survives – that nothing matters if you can’t eat, and everything you do ultimately centers around getting enough power to meet your ever-evolving needs. It’s bleak. Marx famously discounted religion as ‘the opiate of the masses’, and had similar thoughts on culture, political structures, etc. Gramsci believed Marx, but he also saw that cultural structures, or ‘ideologies’, had real value. People would die for
ideologies. They would at least define their base needs in these ideologies. To discount them as simplistic attempts to control power and production is to discount the complex, important articulations of ’needs’ that such ideologies represent. This is why many of Gramsci’s writings have been the basis for the modern development of the field of cultural theory within sociology.
For our purposes, Gramsci’s work has two primary applications. First, Gramsci looked at many different systems, and the various sub-groups within those systems, and realized that like nations, the systems didn’t show a group of equals perpetually going against each other as if they were NBA basketball teams. Instead, over time, some groups rose to the top, and they defined the system to the extent that other groups were pushed down. He named groups that had power as ‘dominant’, and those pushed to the edges of acceptable society as ‘marginalized’ or ‘oppressed’. If we look at the ‘maps’ of our youth groups, and how various clusters interact together, we will see this dominance and marginalization at work. We simplistically sometimes call it ‘popularity’, but it’s more than that. Gramsci coined a word for this, too – he called it ‘hegemony’. For me, this second concept has changed everything.

The best way to define hegemony is to tell you a story about the Nation of Purple, where the Red
People and the Blue People live. In the Nation of Purple, the Red people would probably be called the popular group. All the movie stars who win awards at the yearly Roscoe awards (complete with metallic-red statues) are Red people. All the artists on the Fire Engine Hot 100 music charts are Red people. All the best athletes are Red people and wear Sike-Red shoes and drink cherry Laterade. One would think that (as Marx did) the Blue people would hate the Red people, that they would be competing with the Red people at every turn, making Blue movies and training Blue sports teams and listening to the Blues. But you and I both know that this is not the way popularity works. Instead, the Blue people read about the Red people in magazines. They watch Red people on TV, and cheer against one another at the yearly Blood vs. Rose football game, and dream about becoming Red. Even though the existence of the Red people in the Nation of Purple keeps the Blue people from having power, few Blue people dislike the Reds. They want to be Red, too.

Hegemony asks the question ‘why is popular popular?’ It asks us why the dominant groups within a system are dominant, how they got there, and how they keep their power. And the answer is that the dominant groups, consciously and unconsciously, establish the status quo of society. They establish definitions for ‘fun’, ‘cool’, ‘exciting’, ‘beautiful’, and on and on. Sometimes, the marginalized groupstry to come up with alternative definitions for these things, and create their own sub-society of popularity (this phenomenon is called ‘counter-hegemony’), but most of the time, they remain captivated by the very definitions of power which repress them. They lose because they are not defining the rules of the game.
Hegemony leads us into many of the applications of thinking about our ministries from a systems-perspective, because it acknowledges that the way the system ‘is’ is not how it must be. It highlights how certain strands of brokenness in students affect others, causing other broken reactions to follow. Here’s an example: In many youth groups around the country, teens are getting up in front of their
peers and leading worship (almost always code-speak for ‘singing with a guitar and/or drums’). Have you ever noticed who is up front? Among these worship leading students, there is an overwhelming
population of people whom the greater culture would judge as ‘pretty’ or ‘talented’. Why? Do pretty people make good worship leaders? No (despite what a quick look at most Christian CD covers would tell you). But in our systems, there are cultural norms about people who are talented and confident and can lead – norms that help dictate who is listened to, who is followed, who can aid in worship as opposed to distract from it. This unconsciously influences who is picked to lead worship, who volunteers for tryouts, which youth groups have ‘successful’ or supported worship bands, etc. And instead of helping out students challenge these norms, we (again unconsciously) give into them when we accept those who volunteer for our worship ministries. We think these volunteers represent an ‘equal sampling’, and are unaware that the system itself has already picked them and rooted out those it will not accept.

Even writing these examples depresses me, because I have names and faces that go with them – a girl who wanted to sing in a worship band, but who would never be listened to in the same way as the popular girl who she replaced, or a boy who wanted to do announcements, but his boneheaded youth director (me) picked a popular boy with a more confident voice instead. Next week, I want to look at the biblical response to  Gramsci’s dominant/marginalized model, and the idea of hegemony. Something I heard a pastor say recently sums up that trajectory: “The only way to love is the way down.”