Community 4:12

Just don't give up . . .

One of my great joys this year has been leading two Enrichment Groups at Bardwell Elementary School on Mondays ---one for 6 third graders from Brian's class and one for 5 fourth graders from Erik's class.  We have done everything from writing a short story to submit to a Scholastic Book competition to learning about web search engines and internet research to studying endangered animals and historical people, places, and events.   It has been a real thrill for me to watch young minds expand over the year.

To wrap up the year, the kids in both groups really wanted to take an educational field trip somewhere.  Not being an official teacher of the school, getting transportation and approval to take the kids out of the building was a challenge, so I decided to bring the field trip to them instead.  So today, children's author and illustrater, Kevin Luthardt, came and did a two hour workshop for the 11 children I have been working with all year.  He talked about the process of writing a picture book from idea to publishing, and he shared some of his own story of becoming a writer (he even pulled out a big stack of rejection letters that he got before publishing his first book).  He taught the kids how to draw a cartoon elephant and then asked each of them to start a story by using the "story board" process.

All of the kids did a great job, but there are a couple in the group that I see brimming with potential to be writers or artists or both.  I can only pray that they are going to have some strong people in their lives encouraging them them not to give up . . . because sometimes all it takes is a couple of rejection letters or comments and potential never becomes anything more than that.

All Kids Are Our Kids

Have been reading this fascinating book.  My friend (I think I can call him that) and innovative real estate developer, Perry Bigelow gave me this book and said it would be foundational as we think about creating a community center for youth.  I think he may be right.  I'm not far into it, but it has already got me thinking about a lot of things . . . both from a ministry standpoint AND a parenting perspective.   It reveals the 40 Developmental Assets  all kids need (according to Search Institute findings) in order to thrive and be able to resist the barage of peer pressure to engage in "high risk" behaviors such as sex, drugs, alcohol, and crime.

Many of the 40 are things I would have predicted, or at least expected based on my psychology background.  But there are two so far that have really struck me.  The first is that all young people should have a regular, positive and supportive relationship with at least three adults outside of their parents.  And these relationships should be long-term.  That of course screams for the need for more mentoring programs in at-risk communities.   But, it also got me thinking about whether my own kids have that.  Since we've moved to Aurora, we spend so much of our time trying to provide that "positive adult influence" for kids in the neighborhood.  And of course our boys are involved in all those things, but that's not doing much to foster relationships with OTHER adults!  It is not as easy or automatic to find those influences in our neighborhood.  Maybe we better find some mentors for our own kids!

The second asset that struck me was that youth should be involved in 3 or more hours/week of Creative (arts, music, drama, etc.) practice or activity.  Search has also found that of the 40 developmental assets, this is the one that the highest percentage of kids lack.  That just totally reinforces my feeling that we have to get some School for the Arts programming going around here, because the kids around here are certainly not getting that at school or through private lessons!

If you work with youth, or have kids of your own, I would highly recommend this book!

Looking at Jesus

Read this great meditation by Claudia Mauir Burney in "Justice in the Burbs" today . .

Jesus lives next door.  He's an eight year old girl and her three year old brother.  The Son of Man looks like those starving Ethiopian children.  He only gets breakfast and lunch at school, when he makes it.  His mama is a crack whore.  Nobody knows where his daddy is.  I heard his mama lets her "Johns" do things to him.

Poor King of Kings.

Jesus is two houses down and has six children.  Now he's pregnant with the seventh.  I don't know if he hasn't figured out what birth control is, or what, but how does he expect his husband to feed all those babies on that salary?  And you know with all those kids the Lord of Lords can't work.  That means hardworking taxpayers' money has to go for Christ's food stamps?

He needs to get fixed.

The Lord is a crazy man---paranoid schizophrenic.  If he doesn't take his medication, he walks up and down the street, cussing and spitting on everybody he passes.  He's homeless.  Nobody knows where his family is--if he's got one.  Digs out of the trash cans for food.  Somebody ought to get him off the street.

Jesus is nothing but a nuisance.

I'm starting to see the Son of God everywhere I go.  He's always crying or begging or looking pitiful.  Why doesn't he pull himself up by his bootstraps?  This is America!  Makes me mad.  He's ruining our neighborhood.

Somebody ought to do something about him.

Somebody.

Justice in the Burbs

I'm reading a great book .  . . Justice in the Burbs.  Here's a thought for the day from it . . . Perhaps this is a definition of faithfulness:  allowing one's dreams to be interrupted.

Want to Join us in East Aurora?

"There is a time for 'in-you-face' approaches to mission, but there is also a time to simply become part of the very fabric of a community and to engage in the humanity of it all.   Furthermore . . . [you give] the implied message that God actually likes them."  Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways.

Order This Now!

I have never recommended a book as much as I have Robert Lupton's "And You Call Yourself a Christian," affectionately known by us in C412 as "the little red book."  It is the most concise and powerful book on Christian Community Development I've read.  Well, it went out of print several months ago and has just been re-released in this updated and expanded version and renamed "Compassion, Justice, and the Christian Life:  Rethinking Ministry to the Poor."  That's a much better title and totally explains what the book is about.  I just ordered this new version and can't wait to read it.  If you are doing anything in this arena, you should order it, too.  Click here.  Click here now!

Missions on Your Doorstep

• Had the terrific opportunity today to attend and present a workshop at the Missions on Your Doorstep Conference sponsored by World Relief and Wheaton BIble Church.  The focus of the conference was on the Externally Focused Church, and co-author of the book, Eric Swanson, was the keynote speaker.  I loved the book when I read it a couple years ago, so it was great to hear Eric in person.  And I was honored to be able to talk about the community development model CCC is creating through our work in Aurora.  The workshop seemed to be very well received and we had some great discussion around the four questions I posed in the workshop: 
• How do you get a white, affluent congregation to open their eyes to local poverty and respond to it?
• How does a white, affluent church address poverty in a neighboring community without coming in as the "great white savior?"
• How do you apply the principals of community development to the suburban church that isn't located in a poor community, but that does have an under-resourced community close by?
• What role does multi-church collaboration play in community development in the suburban church?

I met some terrific people all grappling with similar questions at their own suburban churches and I look very forward to spending lots more time with these guys!

Get The Big Idea

I can't believe what a cool church I get to be a part of.  I've been attending CCC for seven years, and I have been on staff for three.  Every week my husband and I experience the Big Idea in the adult service and my kids experience a simplified version of it in Kids' City.  Every week I attend a staff meeting where we evaluate how well we executed and communicated the Big Idea in the previous weekend's services.  I see various meetings going on all week long--teaching team, arts team, Kids' City, StuCo, etc. to plan the Big Idea.  I have even occassionally been a part of planning a component of the Big Idea or writing the Big Idea Discussion Guide.  So, I would say that I am more familiar than the general CCC attender with the Big Idea process.  But, I have to say, I was totally blown away when I read Dave, Jon, and Eric's hot-off-the-press new book, The Big Idea.  To learn all the nitty-gritty, behind the scenes stuff that goes into planning each and every Big Idea series made me appreciate the staff I work with even more.  The process they use is downright brilliant and is based on umpteen levels of cooperation and collaboration.  When you think about how many different minds go into creating one weekend's services, it is pretty incredible.  If you attend CCC, you have to read this book to learn more about how and why we do what we do.  If you don't attend CCC, you have to read this book so you can help your church implement something similar.  I can't imagine a more powerful way to help entire families walk away from church every weekend with a clear, simple Jesus lesson and challenge.  And there are some really great stories in the book, too---including one about my kids and how the Big Idea impacted them!  So, click here now, to get your copy, and click here to check out the new Big Idea blog.  Congrats, Eric, Jon, and Dave!  We are really proud of you!

In a Pit With a Lion

A friend recently recommended this book, "In a Pit With a Lion On a Snowy Day," by Mark Batterson.  I am only a couple chapters into it, but I have to say it is speaking to me in a big way.  Here's something I read today, "Whenever I counsel someone who is wrestling with discerning the will of God, I remind them of this simple truth:  God wants you to get where God wants you to go more than you want to get where God wants you to go . . . If you keep in step wiht the Spirit, God is going to make sure you get where He wants you to go.  He is always working behind the scenes, engineering our circumstances and setting us up for success."

I needed to read that today.  Scott took our boys to Bardwell with him this week so they could spend a day in his class and hopefully take some of the "unknown" out of our "missional" move to East Aurora.  They had a great time and even made some friends.  They said it definitely made them more excited for our "family adventure" as we have been calling it.  Okay, so now everybody is ready to go, but our house is not selling.  We are so excited to get to the place that we have felt God is calling us to so we can do incarnational ministry.  This was just a reminder that He wants us to get there even more than we want to get there.  But, He knows the process we need to go through to get there much better than we do.

The sub-headline of the book is, "How to survive and thrive when opportunity roars."  It is based on the premise that the church focuses too much on sins of "commission," and not enough on sins of "omission"---a regret of inaction, of not responding when God presents an opportunity.  If you feel God might be asking you to take a next step that feels scary or unknown or even impossible, you need to click on that link above and buy this book now!

Activity and Time

Continuing on with the cultural lenses Patty Lane talks about in her book referenced yesterday, two of the big ones I struggle with embracing are different ways of viewing Activity and Time.  In general, cultures tend to be either Being Cultures or Doing Cultures.  No big surprise which one America is, and I am all American when it comes to getting things done.  My middle name is Beaver.  Theoretically I admire the concept of "being" rather than "doing," but it is as foreign to me as this Spanish language I have been trying so hard to learn.  As is the concept of time being Abundant & Historical rather than Limited & Evolving.  When you believe that time is abundant, then it makes sense that there is plenty of time to "be."  But when life feels, like it does in America, that it is a race against the clock, then of course we are going to get all stressed out when people are late for meetings because they are focused on "being" instead of "doing".  The lenses many other cultures view the world through really are so much more appealing than the American lenses.  So why do I hold on so tightly to those American lenses?  Being in Rwanda this summer allowed me to live in the world of "abundant time."  Surprisingly, it didn't stress me out.  But, I find I do get frustrated here when my Latino friends don't watch the clock as closely as I do.  Maybe I need to spend some more time in Africa!