Authenticity

Young people long for authenticity. They express it in the music they listen to, the movies they watch and the clothes they wear. Culture as a whole, often takes these expressions born of freedom and creates their own inauthentic ‘group’ look with them; thus, defying the young person’s attempt to be an individual and be authentic. It doesn’t change the desire and longing to search for authenticity, it just perverts it (Heike).

Young people look for authenticity in other people. Particularly in their role models. Are they hypocrites? Do their actions follow their words? Can a person ever be excused for behaving differently to how they speak and believe? Is the individual fake? Recently, Britney Spears has been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Yahoo music news columnist Ben Gilbert writes, “Some fans say the star's been replaced by a male body double…” The source of this rumor is Britney’s new video “Till the world ends.” The uproar is because people obviously expect better. They expect Britney to dance, sing and act in her own videos. Who doesn't!

Why bring this up? In a media saturated world where role models are as much a creation of the Simon Cowell’s of this world, as they are the embodiment of persons’ hopes and dreams, young people have become jaded by the inauthentic. Susan Boyle on “The View” ) received both support and outrage from fans when she stopped her song “Holy Night”, half way through a live performance (Shepherd). The outrage came from fans, who felt cheated, the support from those who breathed a sigh of relief that Susan Boyle really sang the song!

What does this have to do with you youth work? Young people see enough of others who lack authenticity. They don’t want to see it in their youth worker. I think that youth leaders sometimes put themselves on pedestals. I know I certainly have in the past. I don’t mean that we think we’re perfect or better than others, but we feel a pressure to present a more perfect image of ourselves than is actual reality. We may not change our clothes to present a false identity, but we espouse Biblical and cultural truths without talking through our own personal struggles with these truths.

It is one thing to know that God hates lies; it’s another to explain how we may have stumbled in this area recently. It is quite another thing entirely to take a young person on a physical journey with you so that they are standing right next to you when the chance to lie arises. What will you do? How will you act? You talk about using your money to glorify God, how do you spend it? Why do you spend it that way? Is loving others something you’re paid to talk about or do you really love your wife and kids? When you go to the mall or Best Buy what do you browse through? There will always be some doubt about you in the mind of a young person, until they have seen your life through your eyes; warts, failings and all.

Works Cited

Jenß, Heike. "Dressed in History: Retro Styles and the Construction of Authenticity in Youth Culture."Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture 8.4 (2004): 387-403. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 15 Apr. 2011.

Gilbert, Ben. “How New tunes, this weeks hottest tracks” Is Britney a Man. 8 Apr. 2011. Web.

Shepherd, Sherri, “Susan Boyle 'View' performance of 'O Holy Night' cut short when singer chokes mid-song” New York Times. 30 Nov. 2010. Print.

Pace of Life

"There is a time for everything..." So says the writer of Ecclesiastes.

Why is it then that so many people today say a variation of, "I don't have time for this." We have successfully created some of the most busy lives in history. Yes we accomplish so much more, we can look at our achievements and think: what a great society we live in. Yet, we so often miss the point, or so I feel.

When we make ourselves so busy that we suddenly lack the time to build meaningful relationships, or our business takes us outside of community, or we even lack the time to listen each morning for God's simple, "I love you." Then what we have really done is filled the time we do have with meaningless clutter. Which is perhaps what the writer of Ecclesiastes had in mind when he also wrote, "Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless."

I have a simple question today: How meaningless is your life? What has made it so?

Every Page needs a Schmidt

Sergey Brin and Larry Page. You may not recognize the names but you will definitely recognize their company. Google.com . Yet arguably, Google would not be what it is today without another man, named Schmidt. Schmidt became the CEO for Google when it started out. Why? Page and Brin had the youthful enthusiasm and energy to help drive it forward, Schmidt had the wisdom and acumen of an accomplished business man from Silicon valley. In many ways Schmidt became their mentor.

In youth ministry we often think of mentoring as a time where we sit down with one of our students and input into them. We ask them how they're doing, or we enter their world and sit down with them at lunch, or we help them discover how to study the Bible. All good things, but not the method that helped Schmidt, help Google.

I'm sure Schmidt had times where he sat down with Sergey and Larry and gave them input and advice. In the book "Google Speaks" he refers to the many arguments they used to have. I am also equally sure that the true depth of wisdom in their relationship was the fact that Schmidt didn't just enter Page and Brin's life, he let them enter his. Brin and Page were considered genius' with amazing ideas, but Schmidt had worked and earned a living in Silicon valley and Google would rise or fall on Silicon Valley. They had to learn from Schmidt.

In our own mentoring the easy thing to do is do nothing at all. The good thing to do is to step into our students worlds. Go eat lunch with them at school, watch them play base ball etc. The great thing to do is to let them enter our world. Take them with you when you go shopping. Let them see how you make your life changing decisions. Mentoring is more than just telling, it's showing, and being.

Jesus took his disciples everywhere with him. They saw how he ate, how he spoke to women, children, and religious leaders. They saw how he prayed, how he worked out, where he spent his money. Jesus was constantly being with them. It cost him. He was rarely alone; he had to rise early in the morning and go to a lonely place to pray. It was worth it. Those disciples sparked off a movement that 'turned the world upside down.'

So I have a few questions:

1. Do you mentor anyone?
2. How are you at being with them?
3. If you have been mentored by someone - what made the biggest difference? How were they at being with you?

Michael

Dnow09 fall_retreat

~Video footage can be found on Facebook at the Pais Pantego group~

I just returned from our student ministry event dnow09! It was all about discovering more of our story. As people we tend to let our story become very self focussed. I firmly believe each student has an absolutely incredible story to tell, God created each person so uniquely that it's impossible not to have a story that is amazing. How amazing, is in part, up to us. Yet we often make our story so focussed on our self that the incredibleness of it all becomes mundane. Mundane because we take out the creator. Without a creator we lack the uniqueness of his creativity. We lack the hugeness of his story, the tapestry that weaves us all together.

Our story is big because He is big. Our story matters because He makes it matter. It's powerful because it has the creators handwriting all over it. Many of our students realized that this weekend, yet how many will remember in one week?

My hope is that they all will. My belief is that many will, but some won't. Jesus tells the parable of the soil. Some words land on good soil. People who get it and stick with it and let it change them. Then there are those who receive the word, it changes them for a time, but it's just surface change, the pressures of school or family or just peer pressure, creep in and steal the truth from them. Finally there are those that don't even receive the word, because they weren't listening, their focus was not on the message or the challenge and opportunity. Their focus from the beginning was on other people.

I pray that those who attended make their focus the creator, let him write the next part of their story and have an amazing time connecting their story to others so that these others can also be connected to God's.

Mike

#Saveballoonboy

I think this story emphasizes the true strengths, and weaknesses of twitter.

My friend twittered about a kid stuck in a flying saucer type balloon. I was intrigued, I logged on to twitter and found everyone was raving about this boy. Within a minute I had the general idea of the story. One minute later I found it on yahoo and read through a more detailed article. Essentially a 6 year old had climbed into a balloon at the back of his house and it had gone up into the air and, (At the time of this blog) no one knows where it is.

Back to twitter: whole communities of people are currently searching the above # and #balloonboy and #breakingnews in an effort to find out what has happened, as well as sending the family their good thoughts.

Strength: Instant news, instant communication, instant information.

Weakness: How to validate? Lack of depth.

Neutral: National trend/craze/frenzy instantly.

Twitter #Saveballoonboy and #balloonboy to see what I mean:)

Mike

I wonder why the U.K goverment missed its target!

I read this exert in an article today:  

"Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed there were 7.8 conceptions per 1,000 girls aged under 16 in 2006, rising to 8.3 per 1,000 girls in 2007. The actual number of pregnancies in girls aged under 16 increased from 7,826 in 2006 to 8,196 in 2007. Nearly three-quarters of these pregnancies were in 15-year-old girls. And the overall pregnancy rate among under-18s in England and Wales has risen for the first time since 2002. The under-18 conception rate increased from 40.9 per 1,000 women in 2006 to 41.9 in 2007. The Government has pledged to halve teenage pregnancy rates among girls under 18 by half by next year but is widely expected to miss that target."  

What's changed in the last few years? Well the government decided to teach oral sex as a safe alternative to full sexual intercourse, then they added teaching about gay sex, and then they claim that the reason pregnancies have increased is because of a lack of teaching on contraceptive use. I don't know about your own experience but I know that when I graduated high school every student in my class had been taught how to use a condom - surely it's impossible to claim they don't know how?

I wonder if the actual reason for the increase in teenage pregnancy is the increase in teaching about sex in all it's various forms? Could this be the case? Maybe instead of teaching about the freedom of sex we should talk about the responsibilities and consequences, of sex instead?

Michael

Social Networking Sites

I have a few minutes to spare and so I thought I might write something about Social Networking Sites. Recently I was introduced to 'Twitter.' I thought it sounded a little weird when I first signed up for it but my friend Tiffani Barnes insisted it was the new up and coming site and that it would help the both of us keep in touch. Being what I call a "Blue" - meaning I love connecting with people and often re-charge myself by being connected with friends - I signed up. I am also involved with Facebook. My Myspace is out of date.

For those who don't know about Twitter:: Twitter lets you leave update messages of up to 140 characters - just like a text message. You can send them online, via an instant message device or by twitters very own "tweet deck." Once I sign up others can choose to 'follow me'. If they choose to do this they will then receive an update every time I leave a message. Now that I am 'Following" Tiffani, if Tiff leaves a message, I receive it. What I really like about it is that if Tiffani travels back to Texas and puts it on Twitter I am instantly aware that she will be in Texas in the next few days and can arrange a visit from that point on!

Since signing up for Twitter I've managed to find out that several of my favourite political radio hosts are also a part of it. It seems that Barack Obama used Twitter and Facebook as a means to pass his campaign message quickly around the youth who supported him. I know for Pais we use Facebook to send out messages to all current, past, and future apprentices. It also allows us to advertise and connect with youth. One would think that it has to be a good thing! Right?

My Fiancee (Soon to be wife) Heather, just concluded a study on cell phones and their use in social interaction. Heather concluded that often those who frequently text people still felt a distinct loss of social connection. Now the study was specifically about texting, but I wonder if it were broadened to include Social Net Working sites if it would offer the same results. That those who frequently used Social Net Working as a means to connect, were in fact, disconnected.

One would think the technology simply made connection easier.

I wonder if it's to do with how social networking sites are used. I put forward that the way older people and younger people use these sites and these technologies differ. I just received a "Twitter" from someone wondering why many people didn't have biographies on their "Twitter" profile. They wanted these people to "stand" for something - an insight into the man's mind. The reason I could find so many of my favourite political radio hosts on "Twitter" is because they want to use it for political means. Not a bad idea - but definitely not the main idea behind why most young people use it!

Youth and young adults use such sites to 'chat' and 'splurge'. They blog to let out their emtions and clarify their thoughts. They "Tweet"( Yes it sounds wierd) because it's "the thing to do" or because they want everyone to know about them. They Facebook for both of these reasons. Their agenda is to simply "Let people know about them." Many others tend to have the agenda of "Getting out the word about such and such." The two definitely overlap at times but they're very different.

Since those who want to use it for political ends don't use it just to inform about themselves they pour more effort into their 'real life' relationships, whether that be family, work or friends. Perhaps the reason so many young people feel so disconnected is because their social energy is poured into 'internet connections' which therefore leaves them wanting in the face to face arena.

And such are the ponderings of Me:)

Michael