Broken Watches

I wear a watch pretty much every day. I have a lovely watch that Scott gifted me for some holy day, which replaced the one he gave me on our wedding day. I have worn watches forever, I think- I remember I got  my first watch when I was just in kindergarten, it had a red alligator strap and gave me a rash, so my Mom painted the back of the watch (not the strap part...) with clear nail polish so I could wear it.
My current watch has a near-dead battery, and that means I've not been able to wear it for a week. I miss it! I can't tell you how many times I have looked at my naked wrist throughout the day. The other day while I was on my drive to work I thought about how weird I feel without a watch on and thought "I guess I could still wear it..." 
And I was struck by the silliness of that thought and thought "there's no point in wearing a broken watch." Of course there's no point! But it's tempting to wear it, useless as it is, because it's comfortable, it's what I'm used to. Even if it can't tell me the time, it at least would give me something to look at every time I hold my wrist up in front of my face... 
Really, it made me think of ministry (what doesn't?) and how we hang on to things that have become useless in our ministries. We know these things have long since lost their charm, relevance, ability to do what we want them to do, but we are comfortable with them. They fill space in our programs so that we can say "see, we're busy! We're doing something!"  Sure, we may say, hardly anyone continues with the Church after they're confirmed, but we have a busy program and they come to that consistently... until they are done.  They don't like it... but if it's there, it must be doing something-  no need to change it. 
I think it's a necessary skill for a minister to stop wearing broken watches. But not just a skill, it's... bravery. We need to step away from our comfortable, busy-looking, unproductive programs and try something new. If/when the new watch breaks, we change again. There's really no point in wearing a broken watch. 

In My Own Horrifying Words

In my parents' move from their home to "The Home" (an apartment in a senior living community, really, not a HOME. But that's what they call it, affectionately). I was given boxes of my stuff that had languished in their basement for years.
We have no room in our house now for anything. Seriously, we are full-up. The process of claiming or reclaiming things from their home was fraught and difficult, with worries about hurting feelings, and actual hurting of feelings, and JUST TRYING TO GET THE DAMNED HOUSE CLEANED OUT FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, I'LL TAKE IT AND THROW IT AWAY AT A REST AREA ON THE WAY HOME IF WE CAN JUST KEEP MOVING... that kind of thing. Anyway, now it's done and everyone has a few (or, many many) extra boxes of things in their houses.
I was given a passel of my old diaries from high school and college, and this Summer I've read through them. Some of it is so fun to revisit, and some of it is so horrifying. It's a funny thing to see how dramatic I was, how typical-teen I was, how... (how to say this? I'll just say it) ...randy I was. I hope to God my mother and father never read these journals, for their sake. As for me, as an adult and as someone who has worked with kids for so long, some of it was horrifying to read, and it was about me! Ay.
I was telling a friend about how alarming my relationships back then were to me, reading them now. I want to go find my former self and give her a shake, tell her she can do better, tell her to play it COOL every once in a while for crying out loud. I want to tell her she's better than waiting for a boy to call, and that the boy is just messing with her head and probably could use a good therapist! (I'm not even being specific to a boy now, they all messed with my head and all could have used a good therapist, and I could have used that shake for letting them mess with my head.)
I told my friend that I wished someone had told me this stuff. My friend (who always asks me great questions!) asked, "who should have said that to you? Who would you have heard it from?" and that is a (see?) great question. It wouldn't have been my mother... in my reading I saw with 20/20 hindsight  some of the opportunities that my parents missed, to help me. I'm not sure my Mother could have done much right in my opinion by then, but I do think she blew some chances to be supportive and uplifting. 
I don't know if my siblings could have helped, either. The me writing those journals felt very much in control of the situation. The thing about being in a bad relationship (I remember well) is that you work so hard to make the world think you're doing just fine, and you convince yourself, in order to convince them. These relationships weren't abusive, I should clearly state here. They just weren't healthy, and didn't honor who I was. It was a pattern I lived over and over again, until I met my husband. By the time I met him, I was sick and tired of bad boyfriends, and was rewarded for my new strength with a prince. (cue: Awww.)
Anyway, I think that if I could have heard the advice, taken the shaking, it might have been from adult leaders in youth ministry. I had some great relationships with people through YM, and they really honored who I was. I think it was this genuine respect for me, in these wonderful God-loving people, that gave them the kind of credibility that I respected, that I might have listened to. 
We can't re-write our youth, and as it turned out I learned a whole heck of a lot from all those bad relationships and here I am alive and a-love to blog about it. I hope all those boys have found great therapists and mates who don't let them mess with their heads. I am at peace with the fact that my parents did the best they could, and I am so thankful to my YM leaders for showing me what was valuable in me, so long ago. All this makes me want to be a better minister to young women, and to be bold in reminding them that things can be different. They don't have to live like they've lived. And they are worthy of good boys.

Who Do I Say That I Am?

When I was in High School, I received My Calling... to you Youth Ministry. Of course, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, answering that call. My life now does not match my vision back then, of where I'd be and what I'd be doing. But I'm still answering that call, in new ways and new directions all the time. My call has evolved and so have I.
I never dreamed I'd NOT be a Youth Ministry coordinator, but here I am, the Chief Evangelization Officer at a parish that does Total Community Catechesis and working with people through the lifespan- really now from birth to death. I've fallen in tortured love with faith formation, found my spot, at least for now. I have (as of next Monday) a freakin' MASTERS DEGREE in religious education! Really, Go figure.
Last week at the conference I attended (seriously, go join NCCL right now), I decided to join a committee, and had my choice of many, including a Youth Ministry subcommittee, an adult faith formation committee, a "practical and theoretical foundations" committee, among others. I found myself wondering where I fit in. It was like one of those youth group "forced choice" activities. Pick one and defend it. You can't stand in the middle of the room pointing at all the corners, you just have to GO. Choose. But for me, it was about identity, in a real way. Who am I now, in this Church? A faith formation person, yes. But, still a Youth Minister? An Adult Faith Formation person? An academic?
I joined the Evangelization committee, and found my people. These are faith formation professionals with an eye trained on the horizon of evangelization. I think it was a good choice. Meanwhile, at home, we're being encouraged to be certified as Pastoral Associates, that nebulous title that means... whatever the hiring pastor wants it to mean. Should I add this title to my list? I'm not sure.
I never would have guessed that accepting a call really meant accepting a life of accepting calls.

Let's go!

Well, here I am crying at my desk. It has been a stressful time, but I just ran across this video of Mike Yaconelli, and it's given me goosebumps. Remember this stuff? Remember this feeling? When I started in youth ministry, we were all so brave, and full of excitement. We were on fire for kids, and for God and for the Church and we were so ready to make things happen. At that time, we hadn't even imagined anything like the sex abuse scandal, and the time of paranoia that has followed. We hadn't tasted the kind of fear we know today, and we were able to say "I love teenagers!!!" without some tiny percent of ourselves whispering "oh, does that sound wrong? Creepy? Can I say that? What will people think?"

I wonder what Mike would say about the state we find ourselves in today, suddenly facing a time when we'll be competing with the far to few of us that there are for the jobs in this archdiocese that only ever paid enough for someone to live very simply, or be married to someone with a "real job" anyway. We're looking ahead at a time of taking on the difficult task of trying to hang on to people, forget reaching out to people. We're starting to see a future of traveling between three or four church buildings to try and bring unity among three or four communities, even while realizing that we left our laptop at the other church. Our pensions may be gone, and that matters. Our diocesan offices are decimated, and limping. There is competitiveness and suspicion between the employees of this organization. We are in survival mode.

So when I stumbled across this video today it stirred something inside my too afraid, too academic, too safe, too lazy soul. I want this energy again. I want to say the things Mike says here, I want to go full tilt bore into brave, courageous ministry that begets brave, courageous future ministers. Who's with me?

Youth Minister to Coordinator

I spoke to a Youth Minister friend this week who shared that she is struggling, is feeling frustrated and burned out. This morning as I was on my way in to work, I was thinking about her situation and thinking... maybe when we reach this level of burnout, it's because it's time to change the kind of ministers that we are/have been. This can be a great opportunity to change our way of working from being Youth Ministers to being Coordinators of Youth Ministry.
Here's a way to think about the difference between the two: what if we went into every YM job planning to leave after about 4 years? How would our priorities, planning, and strategies be different? To me, this is a big difference in thinking than I did in my first YM position. I planned to be there forever, and each year I would think about doing things differently next year. But if I were only planning to stay for four years, I'd be thinking much more about establishing a very solid foundation for ministry that could carry on beyond my time.
I'd be focused on getting leadership in place, on making sure there were a lot of adults empowered to minister, in a lot of different ways. I'd be trying to establish traditions of great service, retreats, and other programs that could be run by someone else besides me. I'd be concentrating on forming a vision for the parish, and transmitting that to important people.
Because, after all, four years is not that much time for this kind of leadership. It's a lot to accomplish or at least to get started. But four years is a really long time if you're trying to find your way one day at a time, and are trying to do everything yourself.
I think our souls have ways of telling us when God is calling us to make changes. We start to feel uneasy, tired, not excited by what used to excite us. And when we're stressed out, it's easy to think in terms of stay or go, but often, it's just time to reframe. My prayers tonight are for all the burned out Youth Ministers out there. I've been there! Don't forget to breathe, and hang in there.