Youthblog

I caught part of a Philosophy programme t'other evening that I thought was on radio 4 but I am unable to track down now. It was looking at 'experimental philosophy' and how environment affected moral decision making. It had some resonances with theology and living a life of contemplative discipleship that interested me.

The central tenet was that moral behaviour could not be neatly accounted for by a theoretical philosophical position, that is notions of gaining good moral judgment. That this did not take account how much external stimuli could change things for the better or for the worse.

The first experiment cited was with a bunch of trainee ministers who'd been set the task of studying "The Good Samaritan' narrative and preparing a sermon on it. The experimenters then concocted a highly plausible mix up with the ministers whereby some were individually told they were late to preach their sermon and some were not. Just off the path to the church, someone was placed who was clearly in distress. Even though the ministers had been musing on the story, only those who didn't think they were late stopped to talk/help. (It was pointed out that this experiment was slightly flawed as the minister would also be considering a congregation that they didn't want to let down).

Other experiments were even more fascinating such as the leaving of a coin in a phone box. People leaving the booth would be more likely to help if they had been in the group for whom a coin had been planted. Even more bizarrely people were more willing to give outside of the bakery where the smell of fresh bread was in the air, than outside a shop of neutral or no smell.

I wish I'd heard the whole programme. I was enjoying the discussion as to whether this was really philosophy or in fact 'behavioural science.' I thought this akin to the breaking down of theology as a academic discipline and realising that theological thinking must involve those who are experiencing it, 'liberation theology' etc

But it also made me think about the parable of the Good Samaritan and realise that living a life of thanks (experiencing the positives without finding a coin or a bread shop) that in these experiment more naturally engenders a compassionate response is vital, as is living a life with balance so that hurry doesn't preclude a human to human response.

Thinking out loud as usual so may be just rabbitting. Wondering about what it means for the discipleship of young people? Wondering about experimental theology?

In my work with Churches there's one particular phrase that makes me shudder in the way that otherwise only nails across a blackboard can achieve. Its when *cringe* I hear people talk about, "holding on to young people!" *shudder* My first inclination is to beat them with a large copy of the King James Bible (you see I can find a use for all translations)! Now I know it often comes from a well meaning sentiment but it's so depressing and in fact diametrically opposite to the gospel. Why would we hold on to young people? Will they eventually say, "Hey I've been here for long enough now, I no longer know any different, I guess I might as well stay?" Is that want we want?
I believe in the Church, I believe in the faith community! I believe that youth ministry is a whole church endeavour (where youth leaders play an important part) of discipleship, listening and enabling!
I believe that Young People need to discover a faith (with thanks to Mr Yaconelli) of Dangerous Wonder, Risky Curiosity, Wild Abandon, Daring Playfulness, Wide-eyed listening, Irresponsible Passion, Happy Terror, Naive Grace and Childlike Faith AND for their discoveries to help form the changing life of the Church. Working with young people must not be a war of attrition where they eventually conform to a inheritted religiousity!
Here endeth the first rant. Please turn to the paragraph on page 11 and join in the responses in bold:

Discipleship is about enabling young people to taste the Kingdom
We will not just hold on

Amen

Any sense of deja vu while reading this post may be because this post has been (in line with the environmental values of Youthblog) re-cycled from 2005

I had a very interesting meeting this morning with Ann Memmott who is our Diocesan adviser on Autism. We had a useful discussion on the issues and challenges faced by those on the Autistic Spectrum in their encounters with church.

Ann has written an excellent paper on working with people with ASD and you'll find it here. I'm reproducing with her permission though the excellent summary as I know a lot of our groups/projects involve young people with Autism or Aspergers.

"Almost 35,000 people in Oxford Diocese are on the autism spectrum, people of every age and background and intelligence level.

10. Support: Find a quiet caring person to be aware of us, someone ready to lend a little assistance if we need it - but within safe guidelines, especially if one of us also has Vulnerable Adult status"

Youth work specifics that we talked about included:

i. Meeting earlier in the day is better than later
ii. Flag up what you are about to do/change
iii. Know that young people with Autism experience a high level of bullying
iv. Socially, ASD young people will be a considerable way behind their peers

and lastly

v. Support the whole family

Additional: Ann has done a piece of work where she has looked at some teaching material and noted what would and wouldn't work with an ASD young person, makes for an interesting guide if anyone would like to know more about this.

I loved this! Great article from the BBC relating to the 30th anniversary of the iconic Walkman. A teenager is given one to use for a week in place of his usual ipod. Made me laugh, made me feel old.

Captains Log supplemental: This post seems to be leading to a bit of a nostalgia-fest (always a good thing). I thought this picture might be a useful fusion of old and new:

I'm still working away at the Garden and hope to complete the second piece of decking before I disappear off to Taize. I've been gathering material for the supports of this new section, a bit of skip-surfing has produced some bricks and some really great metal mesh that'll make creating a concrete barrier much easier, nice!

I'm also really chuffed with the planting table that enjoyed a previous career as a Pallet.

We have an old parasol base that has ceased to function properly. It's one of the plastic ones that you fill with water to act as a weight, however it's so cracked that the water just escapes. So, last night I poured some quick setting concrete powder into it and it is now useable again.

(Best bit of recycling though has been discovering a broken marquee is a skip that was the same design as the one we use for Yellow Braces. I thus gleened some useful spares)

I greatly fear I am turning into an amalgam of a Womble and Bob the Builder!

My weekend started off with visiting a Youth drop-in which was fun. Much silliness and good conversation while munching through a box quantity of ice-lollies from a well known frozen food store that we worked out cost 4.2p each! A spontaneous game emerged too which involved trying to throw Jenga pieces onto the top of the giant Jenga stack in such a way that it knocked your opponents pieces off, while they were also attempting this. (Not very successful!)

From there I went onto an inter-church Youth evening in Reading called "Raw Worship!" It was great to catch up with a few folk over a burger and listen to the bands warm up. Sadly didn't get to stay for the acts as I'd taken my eldest along on the basis it was the sort of thing he loves, but it turned out if wasn't. He went and stood by the car and refused to budge as it was too loud.

Sunday morning was a home match and I was roped in to doing some 'magic' at Sunday School. I'm hoping there is no come back from one of the "DO NOT try this at home" type tricks :-)

Sunday evening saw me up in rural Oxfordshire playing rounders on the grounds behind the community hall. The church in the village has an excellent relationship with a great bunch of young people but was struggling to find enough volunteers to keep the work going. They put together an advert for a sessional worker though and found someone local who is GREAT. So, the evening was a chance for the young people to 'interview' the worker and begin a conversation about how September onward could be shaped.

Picked this up from Chris's site, this is the coolest Gymnastics/Free Running I have ever seen. Somewhere beyond astounding!

I couldn't believe it when I heard this morning that Michael Jackson had died. I'm currently working from 'my' coffee shop where his Music is playing and much of the conversation is about his life and music. I feel a greater sadness than I would have expected, something that seems to be echoed in overheard snippets around me.

His music was rarely far away from the charts in my teenage years, while his dancing was what I secretly aspired (utterly unrealistically) to.

Michael Jackson it seemed spent his life searching for the childhood he never had and longing to be accepted, leading to the very public mess of the last few years. His death though will draw a media line over this aspect of his life I hope, and he will be remembered as an extraordinarily talented entertainer who not only sold sixty five million copies of one album, but still had sufficient clout to sell a fifty night residency in the hope of seeing what he did best, great, great, feel-good high-energy pop music!

" ....... Gotta Hide Your Inhibitions
Gotta Let That Fool Loose Deep Inside Your Soul
Want To See An Exhibition
Better Do It Now Before You Get To Old
'Cause We're The Party People Night And Day
Livin' Crazy That's The Only Way

So Tonight Gotta Leave That Nine To Five
Upon The Shelf And Just
Enjoy Ourselves/Yourself C'mon And Groove (Yeah)
Let The Madness In The Music Get To You
Life Ain't So Bad At All
If You Live It Off The Wall Life
Ain't So Bad At All (Live Life Off The Wall)
Live Your Life Off The Wall (Live It Off The Wall) ....."

I guess quite a few people will know that CYM* have had a major reduction in the places it has to offer next year. Until yesterday though I had not comprehended the scale and implications of this (both for CYM specifically and for university places in general).

Nationally the government has reduced the money it pays per student by 10% and even more seriously, capped the number of students each university can take, with severe financial penalties if this number is exceeded. This is a dramatic shift from the policy of increasing the number of young people who go to university. A policy which the universities have been investing in and gearing up to.

For CYM as an external provider linked to a university that has to make job and course cuts, their resultant number cap has been more dramatic. CYM will not be able to offer places to those who last year would have sailed in, also churches that have advertised and only now found a potential worker/student no longer have a course for them to go to.

On the basis of the very streamlined intake CYM will, I should think, have to radically re-engineer, in the medium term, to continue.

Looking wider as well though, August and September could be really tough for those who get their A level results with significantly less university places, and in some cases, courses that no longer exist. The clearing process may have very little to offer this year.

Young people are already bearing the brunt of growing unemployment, this dramatic change of policy is only going to make that worse!

*Centre for Youth Ministry

I forgot to pick my daughter up from youth group prompting a call from the youth worker.

The circle is now complete, the one time youth worker who is now the parent that drove the youth worker mad!

Cue: Elton John singing the Circle of Life

I thought I had invented a word today but sadly not! I came up with 'Miscontent' to explore a particular idea but it is Googlable, however only as an alternative rendering of discontent.

The context was wanting to do a piece of reflective work with Youth workers of the Diocese. Steve Tilley had recently flagged up a quote that has been on my mind for a few days, axiomatically observing that,

"In churches there is not a culture of being critical about things you are enjoying!"

It struck me that this was a useful truism and wondered about how critique could therefore be encouraged of that which wasn't bad, failing or un-enjoyable. Thus 'miscontent' was born. The idea was trying to identiify events or situations that you were not discontent with, but somewhere on the margins of your thoughts or feelings there was a mis-content, a feeling that, as good as it was, there was a need for re-examination or change.

Given the number of events, organisations and strategies that carry on until the point where they don't work, I think the quote and the idea of mis-contentment is really interesting.

We had a good conversation around this. I still don't know if it's useful but hey I'm going to play with this idea and be critically thinking about various projects over the holidays (or, I guess therefore, my summer of miscontent)