1. The Prodigal Sona. Helmut Thielicke's The Waiting Father.
b. Kenneth Bailey's The Pursuing Father.
2. Pioneers in Reclaiming Prodigals
a. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
b. Dorothea Dix
c. Father Don Bosco
d. George Mueller
e. Rabindranath Tagore
f. Jane Addams
g. August Aichorn's Wayward Youth
h. Youth Aliyah
i. Janusz Korczak
3. On Mentoring
a. Mentoring: A Synthesis of P/PV Research: 1988 - 1995
THOUGHT A. One of the statements which really stood out to me in this chapter was that: "Children who are spiritually empty cannot stand the quiet because they do not want to be alone with their thoughts. They attempt to cover the emptiness with noise and wild celebration." (p.16)
While I think this is a profound statement, I also find it quite provoking - especially when I think of the amount of Christian kids who are at-risk. Maybe this is because their 'spirituality' is more a form of empty, inherited religion? Would this be why so many at-risk pastor's/officer's kids seek to fill the void with 'noise and wild celebration?'
THOUGHT B. "Is reclaiming really possible with today's violent youth? Are there some children who are just beyond hope? Are there issues unique to this generation of young people when compared to those of earlier days? Are there tangible steps that we as caregivers, parents, teachers, clergy, social workers, juvenile justice officials, and concerned citizens can take to help turn the tide of juvenile crime and delinquency?" (p.22)
I think these questions are worth asking. When you look at the role models (both Christian and non-Christian alike) throughout history who have chosen to do something to engage at-risk youth, it seems the common denominator in all these situations is someone who is willing to lay their lives on the line to help such youth. Are you willing to do that with your life? What is your calling? What is your purpose? What is your passion?
Maybe we are all called to be fathers and mothers waiting for their prodigal sons and daughters of this generation?
What are your thoughts?
9 comments:
Hi Lourdes,
These are great comments! It's evident that they come from the heart! Especially when you think of the kids those of us at 117 have been working with for the past couple of weeks!
I am wondering though - Do you think it's healthy to perceive of ourselves (youthworkers) as surrogate parents? Our we helping or hindering by fulfilling this role? Are we called to replace this role... or are we called to be advocates for reconciliation between the child and their actual parents?
Thoughts everyone/anyone?
Steve
(BTW - You don't have to be a youthworker and you don't have to have read the book to comment - unless you're a 117 student!)
steve-
to reply to your q?s,
i don't think we should consider ourselves as surrogate parents to our kids, that would be elivating ourselves to a position not easily or deservedly attained. but i do believe that we can take the role of a nurturing care giver. (i probably shouldn't say this but..) where we can show conditional love, with boundaries. the tough love kind of thing. "i love you, but you can't do that." not "i love you, do what ever you want." kind of attitude. not to say that parents in general do that. but we should show love and care for them but also distinct borderlines. i do believe that to some extent or other we should be advocates for the reconciliation between parent and child. that we should make effort to guide families in the act of being family. but i don't believe that everytime we see a broken family that we should take it upon ourselves to reunite the family and then push the kid away to be on their own. we need to show support for as long as possible. something like pervenient grace?
-jenn
Hi Jenn,
Great comments. I think the idea of caregiver is an intersting model to think about the role of the youthworker.
What concerns me about this term, is that careGIVER can easily shift into careTAKER - reducing the relationship of youthworker to youth to simply a functional relationship (give the kids something to do, speak to them like cattle etc. etc.) The tough love approach must focus more on LOVE and TOUGH in my opinion...
When we think of the Newark example, those kids knew that Vangi loves them - because she put in the time day-in/day-out to build the relationship strong enough to fulfill this guardian-like role. To apply that methodology without the relational investment she has made could shift the caregiver into the caretaker model... Which is NOT an effective model.
I appreciate your putting this term into the mix. I think there's a lot to think about in this regard.
Thoughts?
Steve
Hi Magrizzle,
Thanks for your comments. I think that the Officer kid scenario is an interesting one - being one myself! I think a genuine encounter demarcates the difference between inherited and personal religious experience. It makes all the difference between perceiving sprituality as a formalized-task, and spirituality as meaningful/purposeful.
Good point on being the mentor - not the savior. This is another great model to understand our role!
How can we most effectively help O.Ks experience such a genuine encounter? Is it going to be through big, glitzy programs or something else?
Steve
About whether or not we should become surrogate parents - whether we set out to do this or not, if we are truly effective in our ministry, we will become surrogate parents. I know from personal experience that youth leaders become Mom and Dad. I actually just wrote an email to my former youth pastor the other day thanking "Mama Tara" for all the love and support she showed me. There were a couple of times that I went to her to talk about difficult things that had happened in my life, that I couldn't bring up to my own mother (who I was and still am very close to and can talk to about almost anything).
Having said that, though, it then becomes our responsibility to encourage the youth to create a similar connection with their own parents. That may be as simple as saying, "You should talk to your mom about this. Here's how you can bring it up..." or it can take a lot of time and effort in which you work on building a relationship yourself with the youth's parents, thus creating a safe atmosphere in which the parent will not feel as though you are stealing their child away from them. In one of the situations that I talked to Mama Tara, but couldn't talk to my mom, what gave me the opportunity to talk to my mother, was Tara showed up with a cappuccino for me while I was working in the law office where my mother works, and my mom realized something was up, so she came to find out what it was. This doesn't work for everyone, but it is one example.
As for kids needing noise compared to silence...I'm thinking back to all my textbooks in grade school and how they fed me information, but never caused me to think. I took for granted that everything that was told to me was true. My teachers probably could have told me that the Earth was flat, and I would have believed them. If today's kids are growing up in a world that spoon feeds them everything that there is in life to experience, of course they will be terrified to start thinking their own thoughts.
Someone told me recently that the reason classrooms are painted that dull tannish color is in order to dull the student's creativity...in other words, keep them from thinking outside the box. (This is an interesting point, because I am currently in the P117 classroom, with its tannish colored walls!) But it could possibly be true.
So, if the same mentality is taken in regards to religion, why are we even surprised? Here we are, spoonfeeding children in their early years all that they "need to know about Christ." When do they get to start thinking critically, or intelligently about it? When does it actually become their ideals about religion? If never stimulated, then they will never truly come to know what it means to be a member of their religion. If they don't study their holy writings, how will they ever understand the context of words that have been spoken to them? I think it becomes our responsibility to engage the youth in critical discussions that will help them to better understand what it is to believe, let alone what they actually believe.
Yeah, I'm taking too long now, but that's what you get for bugging me several times in one day Steve! Just joking!
Hi Scott,
Thanks for your comments. The idea of spiritual emptiness and the resultant "filling the void with noise and wild celebration" is a statement of Mueller's which I find somewhat disturbing.
Why? Because these conclusive statements are being made on profoundly vague assumptions. Part of me that noise and wild celebration are not obvious effects of spiritual emptiness - in fact they could possibly be the effects of spiritual fullness!
I like your reference to nothing being sacred anymore, but I wonder if this is due to the accelerated culture we live in or whether this is because of our inability to contextualize our expression of church?
What do you think?
Steve
Hi Pratik,
Thanks for your posting. Just a note - When referencing youth, make sure you keep this anonymous. This is really important when referencing experiences.
I think that your comments reinforce the need for a ministry strategy that works with families as opposed to just isolated youth. Ours is largely a ministry of reconciliation.
How would you engage a parent/child relationship where there's verbal abuse?
Steve
Thanks for the posting Melissa - and it wasn't too long! :)
I'm interested in your take on the surrogate parent. I do think that we play a role as a counter-authority figure during the transition from childhood to adulthood (aka adolescence). When kids are rejecting authority figures in their life, a youthworker can serve as a second line of defense through providing mentoring, a listening ear, a safe person to navigate through the challenges of teen identity construction(s)/autonomy.
This emphasizes the need for this type of relationship to not be co-dependent though. This type of relationship can't be about satisfying the need to be wanted in the youthworker - because the goal needs to be reconciling the relationship of parent and child. How can we ensure that this takes place?
Check out this interesting article on mentoring:
http://www.ppv.org/ppv/publications/assets/40_publication.pdf
Regarding the tan colored walls - Why do you think I have class at my house??? ;)
Steve
I totally agree that youth workers need to take on the mentor role, but if we do our job well, a connection will be built in which we, as youth workers, become similar to second mothers and fathers. I'm not saying that we should be encouraging this, because the child needs to build a strong relationship with his/her parent(s) first. Speaking from my own experience, I had a great relationship with my parents, I still do. I can talk to them about almost anything, and I have had it proven to me that they will love me no matter what I do in life, or however bad I mess up. My mom actually told me that if I murdered someone she would still love me, she would turn me in to the cops, but she wanted me to understand that she would be doing it out of love! That being said, Mama Tara (my youth pastor) started out as a mentor in my life (and the lives of most of my close friends) and became so much more through time. I think if the child has a strong relationship with his or her parents, though, times still get tough, especially through the adolescent years. There are times when you just can't talk to your family. Adolescents are trying to become independent, and find their place in the world, but, for the most part, parents forget what it was like to be that age. They still see their teen at age 4 and age 10, the "innocent years." It can become difficult for the parent to reconcile their child at those early ages with their child at young adulthood. Parents can sometimes still feel the need to coddle their child, but can also expect a lot from their child as well. So, this pushing and pulling, and major contradiction can become too much for the teen. This is where we come in. It is not our job to be a parent, but rather to be a mentor. Having said that, if we do our mentoring well during this stage, the teen could later look back on us and think of us as a parental figure. I never thought of Tara as Mama Tara until I started my first year of college. This was the year that I really started to reflect back on my life (I know, some of you older readers are saying, didn't take long, did it?) and I realized just how influential Tara was to me. It also helped that her daughter (who is nine years younger than me) became like a little sister to me. Now that I think about it, I kind of took on a mentoring role with her daughter...I never thought about it like that...but she would come to me for advice, she was excited when I began working at the after-school program she was going to (mainly because her mother told me about a position open there!) and much more. Hmmm...see, sometimes we don't even realize we're mentoring! Okay, that's enough. I gotta go. By the way Steve, are the swords on your walls meant to stimulate, or intimidate? =)
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