note to wife and kids: christmas is quickly approaching, and daddy thinks a sky car would be a really neat gift. it’s only a TINY bit over two million dollars, so if you kids save your allowance, i’ll give you a ride in it!

saturday, during a break at the junior high believe event in nashville, i was trying to find a friend who was there with his youth group. he’s a shaved head, cap wearing, gotee-sporting, white male youth worker.

i tapped on the shoulder of two other guys, and didn’t find him (until later). it’s hard to find a particular shaved head, cap wearing, gotee-sporting, white male youth worker in a room with lots of youth workers.

bob carlton has a fantastic post today about exuberance. an excerpt:

exuberance

n 1: joyful enthusiasm 2: overflowing with enthusiasm

For me, the exuberance embargo is particularly hard. I have an almost genetic predisposition towards enthusiasm. Years of therapy have taught me its limitations, but I still love nothing more than to give myself over to (often times irrational) exuberance, the (re)discovered enthusiasm for an idea, a person or a thing.

The source of the word enthusiasm is the Greek enthousiasmos, which ultimately comes from the adjective entheos, “having the god within,” formed from en, “in, within,” and theos, “god.” Over time the meaning of enthusiasm became extended to “rapturous inspiration like that caused by a god” to “an overly confident or delusory belief that one is inspired by God,” to “ill-regulated religious fervor, religious extremism,” and eventually to the familiar sense “craze, excitement, strong liking for something.”

i especially loved a quote and a graphic he posted, from a post by kathy sierra about exuberance in the workplace. the quote:

If you knock out exuberance, you knock out curiosity, and curiosity is the single most important attribute in a world that requires continuous learning and unlearning just to keep up. If we knock out their exuberance, we’ve also killed their desire to learn, grow, adapt, innovate, and care.

the graphic:

looking at this graphic during our convention season, when i have a hightened amount of contact with living, breathing youth workers (as opposed to emailing youth workers, who are living and breathing in some other time zone), i’m quickly struck by how this applies to churches and youth workers. the “what churches SAY they want” and “what churches ACTUALLY want” seems to me to be the primary rub in the ongoing tension and firing and relational distance and stiff-arming and relegating and slaughtering of youth pastors. (i’ve had an uncommonly high number of these stories come to me in the past 30 days, so i’m a bit tender about it.)

i’m not saying youth pastors bear no responsibility. i’ve said this before, that we need to own up to our collective immaturity and the role it plays in all of this crud.

but i have a couple random thoughts here:

first, i think the gap between what churches SAY they want in a paid youth worker, and what they ACTUALLY want (and likely haven’t even expressed to themselves) is the primary source of youth worker failure and youth worker vs. church (senior pastor, board, parents, whatever) tension. this has implications for churches and youth workers. churches need to do a much more thorough job of defining what they want in a youth worker. ultimately, this is a theological question. and, i believe, many churches could really use some outside help in this process (which is why ys is launching a consulting group — more on that later). but i also think youth workers considering roles in churches need to learn how to be much more proactive in discerning what the truth is behind the “we love your energy and that you like teenagers” front.

second, i think this little graphic and this little truth could become a starting point for conversations between senior pastors and youth workers who are experiencing tension. this would need to be done carefully and humbly, of course — not in an arrogant way (tossing the graphic on a senior pastor’s desk and saying “this is what we need to talk about — i’m not your freakin’ robot!”). but to start a conversation about the difference between “what i thought i heard when you hired me” and “what the realities seem to be” — with a curious, exploratory perspective — could be very helpful.

third, i have a hunch that exuberance IS actually wanted in youth workers. but some of the regular and apparently normal tension is connected to a question of the focus of that exuberance. or the implications of that exuberance. for instance, i think most senior pastors and church boards would contend that they DO actually want a youth worker who is exuberant about teenagers. and most youth workers (especially during the hiring process!) would hold to that. but for most youth workers, exuberance about teenagers means (for example) actually hanging out with teenagers — away from the church. but for some senior pastors and boards, exuberance for teenagers might mean (for example) putting in the office hours necessary to run a nifty and well-administrated program for those teenagers. enter: rub.

for more on exuberance, read the book , by kay redfield jamison . here’s my short review of it.

.

.

.

man, a chapter is closing: cbgb’s closes their doors this weekend. cbgb’s is the birthplace of punk the u.s. it’s a hole-in-the-wall kind of place (in new york), but had such a huge impact on the american music scene over the last three decades. i visited this last january, and bought the obligatory shirt.

what’s next, the break-up of the clash? oh, wait…

i overheard a hilarious conversation on the escalators this weekend, surrounded by a hundred junior highers. One boy starting going down the up escalator.

Youthworker: Brian! Brian! Brian!

Brian, back on the down escalator: but it’s more funner!

Youthworker: but it’s not wise.

Brian, quietly, defeated: yes, sir.

Youthworker: it wasn’t wise, was it brian?

Brian: but we’re junior highers. We’re NOT WISE!

i’m in nashville, speaking at the first of the junior high believe events (there are three this fall, of which i’m doing two, and 8 more next winter/spring, of which i’m doing six). it’s a very cool event, just for young teens.

but i mispoke on stage tonite. i meant to say “i peed” at the end of a story about getting scared, and instead sayed “i pissed myself” — which is substantially more crude. i think the organizers will end up hearing from some rattled youth worker!

heard a funny story tonite, though. i had dinner with some guys, and one of them told of a time he’d called a junior high volunteer up to the front of the stage for some reason or another when he was speaking. then, when he told the kid he could sit down, the kid just stayed there staring at him. he told him he could sit down a second time, and the kid didn’t move. the third time he did one of those “i can’t believe he said that” things we’ve all done: he said, “what are you, deaf?” the kid turned around and shrugged his shoulders to his interpreter who signed the message to him.

not just for girls, this would be good for guys also:

(ht to think christian)

i loaded akismet (an anti-spam and spam-trackback for wordpress) software onto my blog two weeks ago today, and my pain with spam trackbacks has almost ceased. i’ve had to tag a handful that slipped through, but akismet has caught over 5500 spam and spam trackbacks in those two weeks, and not one of them was a real comment that shouldn’t have been caught. so i’ve turned back on the ’show trackbacks and pingbacks’ feature on my blog, and removed the ‘commenter must have a previously approved comment’ hurdle.

jackson pollock is one of my favorite modern artists. i have this beautiful “summertime” painting in my office. it’s not quite the size of the original, which i’ve sat and stared at in the tate modern in london. the original is about 20 feet long — mine is about 5 feet long. anyhow, i absolutely loved this jackson pollock dribble painting site. fun, fun, fun!

(ht to bob carlton)

oh, and this face-maker is a fun time-killer also.

so, i grew up in detroit, and was a nominal detroit tigers fan as a kid. as much as anyone would have been, i guess. but, to be honest, i’m not a big baseball guy. i enjoy watching live games, but games on tv kinda bore me. i’ve been a nominal san diego padres fan since living in sd.

but now that the tigers are kicking some serious butt, it seems like a good time to revive my childhood nominal tigers fan status.

go tigers!