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Methodism

Youth Ministry & a Daily Bread

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I stumbled upon this website which had some compiled data / comparisons of the average salary of a job position in an area. I was reminded that my corner of the world doesn’t do to well at taking care of their ministers.

I chose in this captured instance to look at the average salary of a ‘Director of Youth Ministries’ in part because my United Methodist tribe seems to like that title over Youth Pastor or Minister. My best guess on that reasoning is that we have a lengthy ordination process and some might see the ‘pastor’ title as not quite earned by some youth leader. A ‘youth worker’ made significantly less than either a Youth Pastor or Director of Youth Ministries. Not sure why that would be except maybe it averages in some other non-profits.

I was payed pretty well as I considered it at my last church position. Sobering thought however was that many of our pest control employees made more than me for work that had less responsibility. What might be even more sad, I know some of our ordained clergy (and to be ordained you’ve gone through at least masters level divinity education) made less than I did.

Where these wandering thoughts had me going was, how do we provide for our leaders ‘daily bread?’ Now, I am well aware that making more than a dollar a day is richer than some 80% of the worlds population. But in the United States of America those can be some really struggling numbers to make housing, transportation, food/health, debt (M.Div is the worst investment from financial perspective ever), etc. It is probably a shallow reasoning to, but depending on the church you serve you have to ‘keep up with the Jones’s.’ It’s true, if you work in a affluent church, chances are you’d feel some pressures to dress to that culture. Sure it is shallow consumerism, but just because it is that doesn’t mean that it is very real.

So 1) this was kind of a fun site to play around with, so have fun there. 2) and most importantly, can we look at how we as a church are taking care of our people who we claim responsibility for as an employer and ask if it is really something they can provide their daily bread with. Even if the answer is ‘no’ and ‘we cannot do anything more’ at least it helps to acknowledge the value of a person until a church can.

My White Suburbanite Self Ain’t the Future

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Recent statistics from the Pew Research group, culled from the 2010 census, are showing that the growing population is not like me..

Racial and ethnic minorities accounted for 91.7% of the nation’s growth over the decade; non-Hispanic whites accounted for the remaining 8.3%.

Problem is, my Christian church, is mostly speaking to and programming for me (or the white European descent population, however you want to describe it). I will give my UMC credit, that it does try to be diverse in its efforts, but many times it is just tokenism. You do have to start somewhere.

How radical do we need to become to start to speak with and minister with ethnic cultures that are different from us?

Sure our white population still dominates a majority, but that might soon wash with emerging youth generations as they become more and more multicultural in their own make up.

America’s child population grew more far diverse over the past decade as a decline in the ranks of white children was offset by surging growth of Asians and Hispanics.

…

The number of non-Hispanic whites fell in 46 states and 86 of the 100 largest metropolitan areas. In 10 states, white children are now a minority among their peers, including six that tipped between 2000 and 2010. Others will follow soon: In 23 states, minorities make up more than 40% of the child population.

The number of black and Native American children declined as well, but by a far smaller degree than whites, according to an analysis of 2010 Census data to be released Wednesday by the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank in Washington. The Census Bureau released the first results of its once-a-decade head count of U.S. residents, regardless of citizenship, late last year; over subsequent months, Census released state and local data.

from WSJ

As we many churches look at their “vital” congregations and programs for renewal of others then we might want to bring to light that a white euro programming / worship context is not our future. Assuming that a multicultural child/family would be up for assimilating into what we have historically presented as “how it is done” could be completely disingenuous and fatal to the future life of the denominational church.

 

Does the UMC really want us to disengage? #umclead

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In pondering the whole “Call to Action” and my thoughts yesterday on “Poking the Church” it had me wondering. Why don’t more people get involved and take on their communities and their faith.. What is the one thing? Are we all just to lazy? or maybe we claim to be to ‘busy?’

Maybe, as Dave Meslin puts in this short talk, its more a web of things that compound. He’s talking up a civic cultural apathy. But this in many ways translates into our church cultures. Especially found his framework of intentional exclusion very insightful.

Poke the Church! #umclead

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Last week I spent a good part of a day listening and communicating with a number of folks during my UMC’s global Leadership Summit webcast. It was a good time to be a twitter native. Our community of folks were not intentionally courted for the webcast, but we sure did have our own little conference. Jeremy has a great run down of all that fun.

The main focus of the summit was content that is held within this “Call to Action” a document created for the church that tells us stuff we’ve all pretty much known. The United Methodist Church is dying (at least in the USA) & there are some basic tenants of vibrant growing church communities to refract off of.

My problem engaging the Call to Action as I did with the ReThink Church campaign is simple. We are still doing a bunch of talking..

Recently read “Poke the Box” by Seth Godin. Like most Godin books he beats his themes like a roadkill on the interstate. Poke the Box is this.. Get out there, stop talking and do something..

Our church hierarchy needs to stop being a talking head and get out and do something if they expect to bring change to the denomination that has offered a living. Are our bishops actually helping to lead change hands on? Probably not, because that task might seem gigantic. But if you can do that for one or two and find some successes then the credibility and branding of that change agent carries greater than saying the right things.

Agency heads and employees need to stop seeing their work as some given a career but a passionate mission that takes immersion into where they need to be. It is my observation that agency work is about meetings after meetings to know what is the right thing.. Who needs right all the time when constantly worried about being right leads to an eventual death?

I don’t care about people who want to talk change. I want to see and know people who are doing change. That is exciting to me and worth a global conversation.

in my opinion..

Why YouthWorker Circuit?

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In the past year I’ve been getting a number of questions asking, “What are you up to these days?” It has been a rather loaded question as I’ve been leading up to this point. I’ve been doing some side work, which has been fun and viable, but all the while wanting to put something like YouthWorker Circuit together. But why YouthWorker Circuit?

Well…

We believe that youth ministry is a calling.

We also believe that youth workers don’t have time to do it all and are probably distracted from the parts of youth ministry that they love by the parts that they don’t. And that good youthworkers walk away from their calling every day because they feel under-resourced, over-tasked, and alone.

So we thought..

What if there was a place where you could have instant access to quality Wesleyan curriculum and program ideas? What if there was a resource that prompted you with inventive organizational ideas, guiding you toward better, more personal ministry?

What if there was an opportunity to regularly share genuine, live conversation in community with likeminded youthworkers from across the country?

So we have done..