A program-less youth ministry

Adam over at Pomomusings has invited dialogue on program-less youth ministry.

here's my response to his question.
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lots of thoughts on this man.

1. I love the heart of this.
2. I'm guessing you know more about this than I do.
3. I might ask the question a bit differently. The way the question is inherently retributive in nature, it's the like the kid who is growing up asking who will I become, as long as it's not like dad. The question contains barriers the possibilities are you hoping for. The goal isn't program-less ym so much as it is, what are the possiblities for great ministry to/with/for/from youth and their families. Or perhaps better than that is a series of questions for each community to answer like:

What might community look like in our context?
What is the role of a pastor in a community?
What is the role of a community member, and how well am I (as a member) contributing to youth and children?
How important are youth to me as a community member and what kind of commitment am I willing to make to kids here?
What rhythms and activities in my life (as a community member) encourage and interfere with our hopes for community and spiritual formation for youth?
Are youth important to us as a community, and in what way have we lived this out?

It seems to me that how a church answers these questions will lead them to answer yours. To declare youth ministry be program-less is actually another subtly colonial leadership style to impose on people in a church. The vision of program-less youth ministry then becomes one more way in which a leader declares what they think is best and attempts to align people with their program. buy in or ownership in this circumstance will likely not happen on a meaningful scale, because it is essential the same thing as program driven youth ministry, just a different means. A leader trying to leverage influence to minister to youth.

the question then is, instead of how do I as a leader, or resident expert try to create a program-less youth ministry that I believe in, it becomes, what environment do I need to create to enable the congregation to care for youth in a way that is meaningful, healthy, and faithful to them.

Just a thought or two.

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I think this is true for any area of ministry actually.

What do you think?

We See What We Look For

Watch this Video

We see what we are looking for, don't we. Whether it be in presidential candidates or each other. It's more convenient to see people how we want to, rather than see what's actually there.

Andy has caught on

My friend Wade went to Catalyst this past October and sent me the following notes from Andy Stanley's talk to pastors in the room. It's nice to hear people like Andy catch on to systems thinking, or at least to finally be talking publically about it. This was Andy's final address to the people of Catalyst.

Here are the notes:

Liberating Your Organization – Creating a Leadership-Friendly Culture.

The bottom line … it’s all about developing, implementing, and improving systems to affect change in your organization. Here’s much of the content from Andy’s discussion:

Introduction

1. There are organizational systems that are conducive to ministry and organizational systems that impede ministry.

2. There are organizational systems that free leaders to lead and organizational systems that obstruct leaders.

3. Defined: Systems are your organization’s approach to getting things done.

I. Systems create behaviors.

A. Examples: Family vs. Student Ministry, Marriage vs. Marriage Series, Western vs. Middle Eastern

B. The systems you inherit, adopt, or create will eventually impact what staff and volunteers do.

C. Examples: Anytime you hear, “Well, our people just won’t …” you are listening to someone who doesn’t understand the influence and importance of systems.

D. Components of a system: 1) Expectations/Rules, 2) Rewards (or lack of), 3) Consequences (or lack of), 4) Communication (content and style), 5) Behavior or Behavior Patterns (of those in charge)

E. Systems have a greater impact on organizational culture than do mission statements. This principle explains why it is so difficult to transition an organization. If a new leader casts a new vision and never addresses old systems, nothing changes.

II. The NT does not present us with a comprehensive system or model.

A. In the NT we discover what the early church did. The NT does not lay out a comprehensive plan instructing church leaders what to do.

B. Always differentiate between what is pre-scripture and what is de-scriptive.

C. The NT and OT do offer some principles that should be integrated into our systems. 1)Delegation: Acts 6/Exodus 18, 2) Accountability: Acts 15, 3) Authority: Romans 13, 4) Interdependence: Paul’s discussion of spiritual gifts, 5) Point Leadership: Modeled in OT and NT, 6) Seeking council: Proverbs, Acts 15

III. Systems Imperatives

A. Your system should allow you to involve and hire the best person for the job.

B. Your system should provide you with the flexibility to get the right people to the table to make a decision.

C. Your system should allow you to make complex decisions within the context of a small group of empowered individuals.

D. Your system should ensure that only one person answers to “they.”

Andy concluded with a recommendation to:
1. List the 3 behaviors you want from your staff.
2. List what you're doing to encourage these behaviors.
3. List what you're doing to encourage the opposite of these behaviors.

Systems thinking … it’s the key to improving the effectiveness of your ministry.

The Hidden Secrets to Dialogue and her strange cousins:. Part 4

The Grand-daddy named Generative

Remember Advocacy and Inquiry are the keys to dialogue.

Before I explain what a Generative Dialogue looks like, It's helpful to know that each of us have a natural way in which we engage in conversation. These are the ways in which we have learned to engage the world around us. Observing, Telling, and Asking are all natural means by which different personality types flow, but Generative dialogue is a skill.

1. Politicking: Every cousin has it's dysfunctional side. Politicking is the act of giving the impression of balancing advocacy and inquiry, while being close-minded.

2. Skillful discussion - Balancing advocacy and inquiry really well. (close to dialogue, but not quite) The Skillful discussion participant is genuinely curious about what others think and their reasoning, while also clearly articulating their personal reason explicit. What makes this person great is that they begin to unearth the other persons assumptions without being critical or accusing. This person asks questions and inquires to get at the foundational work done in the other persons mind, not simply for information, but for better understanding.

3. Drumroll please. Finally, it's Dialogue!

Dialogue suspends all assumptions creating a container in which collective thinking can emerge. A dialogue does not mean I give up on all my ideas, opinions and thoughts, but that I'm able to suspend those ideas and the assumptions that support them so that I can engage in collective thinking. Collective thinking is the ability for a group to have a growing conversations that moves all of it's participants forward. It is generative. It is free from agenda, other than the teams purposes. It's free of people simply observing, telling or asking.
It's the wonderful blend of advocacy and inquiry.

The Hidden Secrets to Dialogue and her strange cousins:. Part 3

The Cousin with Big Ears

Remember that true dialogue is a unique blend of high support and advocacy with a high level of inquiry.

We've talked about the ugly cousin who observes while remaining silent, withdrawn, bystanding and sensing. This is low support and low inquiry.

We talked about the tall cousin who tells everyone what they think via dictating, asserting or explaining. This is high support, but low inquiry.

The Cousin with big ears is an ASKER.
The ASKER has a high level of inquiry as you can imagine. But they aren't really all that supportive. Have you ever encountered the ASKER?

The ASKER takes three main forms.

1. Interogating - "Why can't you see that your point of view is wrong?" This person inquires about your thoughts, but not for support. The interogator asks questions to debunk your thoughts and ideas. These folks are often wise enough to know better than not to ask questions, but hidden, sometimes masterfully, under the surface is an agenda. This is dysfunctional inquiry and is the ugliest forms of the ASKER.

2. Clarifying- "What is the question we are trying to answer?" This is sometimes a very helpful kind of conversation that has lost it's course, but when it occurs within a dialogue it actually deters the team from moving forward in the purposes of the group. Notice that this is not a supportive question either.

3. Interviewing - Exploring others' points of views and the reasons behind them. This might sound like a pretty nice option to some of my readers. It's not often someone actually asks you enough questions to get more than a bullet point or condensed version of your idea out and on the table. When someone interviews you it feels wonderful, but in a pure interview there is no advocacy or support for your ideas. The Interviewer remains objective leaving your ideas just laying there on the table with no legs. Interviews without advocacy and support there is no dialogue.


Tomorrow... we talk about actual dialogue.

Is this helpful? With no comments on this series, I'm wondering if anyone is reading them...

The Hidden Secrets to Dialogue and her strange cousins:. Part 2

The Tall Cousin: Telling

In the staff meeting, someone comes up with an idea for the service next month. conversation starts... It's an opportunity for dialogue. Some will observe (see part 1), others will engage the conversation in their quest for dialogue by telling everyone what they think. In fact, Telling is a pretty common phenomenon within some church staffs. It's the time when the usual suspects tell everyone what they think they need to hear. You know you are a Teller, you often think of something to say while someone else is talking and you get frustrated because they keep talking and you are forced to remember your new idea.

Telling is the Tall cousin. It is highly supportive response to engaging, but ranks low when it comes to exploring the ideas of others.

Telling manifests itself in three ways:
1. Asserting - "Here's what I have to say, and here's why I say it!"

2. Explaining - " Here's how the world works and why I can see it so clearly."

3. Dictating - "Here's what I have to say, and nevermind why."

Asserting, Explaining and Dictating are all one way communcation.

Chances are you fall into this. And your staff team.

The secret here is that even though you might feel like you are in dialogue, you really aren't, because you are busy telling everyone what you think, or thinking of the next thing you want to say. A group of tellers often miscommunicate and rarely ever really understand what the other folks are saying. This leads to distrust, alienation and isolation.

If you are on staff with a Teller, there are ways to subvert this pattern, but it takes a lot of patience and discipline.

Part 4 will tell you how, so be patient, we'll get there soon enough.

Tomorrow: Part 3 - The cousin with big ears.

The Hidden Secrets to Dialogue and her strange cousins:. Part 1

Youth Pastors, Emerging types, and leaders from various aspects of the world we live in are often in a quest for dialogue. Dialogue is actually such a rare thing with in church staffs, or business meetings, or "brainstorm" sessions that when it happens it's almost miraculous.

In this series I'll be taking us on the road to dialogue and the sad reality that we all fall into when it comes to working together. The launching point for these is based on the work of Diana McLain Smith.

The setting, unless otherwise stated is a staff meeting. (aw, the wonderful times in staff meetings!) Think about a problem that arises and the team is trying to solve it. (more on this later)

A couple quick prep statements:
Dialogue is about Exploration and Supportiveness.

Exploration is the ability to legitimately explore the ideas of others with an open mind and without judgment.

Supportiveness is the the ability to support the ideas of the person you are talking to.


Ok. Let's get started. But be careful, you'll see yourself in some of these.

The Sick cousin of Dialogue is Observing.
In case you didn't know, observation is not dialogue. It truly is it's sick cousin.

Observation is marked by low levels of exploration and supportiveness.

In a staff meeting this takes three forms:
1. Bystanding: The bystander might talk, but his/her comments pertain to the group process, but not the goal or content of the conversation.

The Bystander sees it as his responsibility to comment on how the conversation is going, how different people are engaging and how it could be better a "conversation." This is pretend dialogue, it often makes the rest of the staff feel like crap, and think that the bystander is an arrogant jerk.

The bystander isn't on the team, they are in the stands. No desire for exploration of the ideas people are contributing, nor are they supportive of what others are saying. They instead choose to talk about something else.

2. Sensing: The Sensor is the person in the staff meeting taking it all in. They see everything. But they don't contribute. They might feel supportive of someone in the group, but because they never express it, they really aren't. They definitely are not exploring the ideas of others.

Sensors won't share the risk of the conversation, so they short circuit dialogue. They kill teams. Sadly these are often nice people.

3. Withdrawing: The person who withdraws from the conversation is dysfunctional. In youth ministry, these are the people who are near the end of the time with a church. Their body may be in staff meeting, but their mind is somewhere else. They have checked-out. This is the ugliest of the sick cousin.

The is no secret: You can't really understand people simply by observing and you can't move forward together by bystanding, sensing or withdrawing.

In your quest for dialogue, you have to find ways within you to inquire about what other people really mean. The inquiring is as good for them as it is for you. You (we) also need to champion the ideas of others even if we think we will ultimately disagree.

Tomorrow we discuss the the tall cousin of dialogue in Part 2.

The Secrets to Dialogue and her strange cousins

I'm going to start a series later this morning on the hidden secrets of dialogue.
This will not be a how to series, but rather a description of the different ways we communicate (or lack there of) and how it effects our ministries.

If you are a youth pastor and you want to learn something super important about what people actually think in your church this is a series for you.

If you are a part of any organization or relationship where you work interdependently you will find something for you here.

I'm attempting to take some of the systems thinking stuff and make it a bit more practical for you the honored guest of the Riddle Group blog.

So we'll dive into the Secrets of dialogue and her strange cousins in a few hours.

Advice to Church Consultants

I'm getting a lot of folks calling me these days talking about wanting to be youth ministry consultants. I suppose there has always been a steady stream of folks who have emailed or called me over the past two years asking me if I was hiring youth ministry consultants. Often after talking to these folks they start their own consulting business, which I'm all for by the way. (If they are helpful to the local church) I'm going to share a few thoughts over the next few months that I've learned about consulting (esp. youth ministry consulting) over the past two years while I'm doing this. I'm not sure how qualified I am to give this advice, but I hope it will be helpful.

Principle One:

The more a church needs your services, the less likely they will actually benefit from them.

It's seems a bit backwards, but the churches I work with have great, gifted, insightful leadership. All of them are smarter than I am. All of them have more experience than I do. All of them, however are learners and it's because they are so good at what they do that makes them open to bringing a consultant in to work alongside their leadership. Certainly there are things you as the consultant know and see that will be really helpful to church leaders, but often this is only part of the reason you are brought in.


The church leaders who most need the services the most are less likely to invite you behind the curtain to see the inner workings of their church. Further, they are much less likely to take your advice, even though the church's youth ministry is in "critical condition".

I suppose the reason for this is habit.

We do what we've always done.

My friend Sarah consistently dates guys that mistreat her which often leads to abuse. She knows she needs to pick a new kind of guy, but struggles to do so because everything in her naturally picks the wrong guy. It's simply easier to pick the wrong guy.

First Church has had 15 youth pastors in 15 years. They are in a bad rhythm. They need to take a break and work thru some things to reach youth in healthy ways. When given the option to be coached through a year long process with a youth ministry consultant or hire a mom with no youth ministry experience, but who is available right now, they choose a the mom. It's not a financial decision, both cost the same. It's not whether they would benefit, clearly this church has something to gain by having some outside eyes walk with them for a year to break some bad habits they have in their youth ministry. They need it more than most of the churches I work with. It's simply easier for this chruch to keep hiring youth pastors and wounding their students.

A message for the United Methodist Church Planting Movement

Here's a article that might help illustrate some things.

First I'm all for the UMC planting more churches. I think church planting may be the single greatest leverage the UM might have at "turning the tide" of decline.
If you are United Methodist, it's worth a read. There are a few Walls this movement to plant hundreds of churches in the US each year will engage


- WALL #1: The Rule that UM churches must be geographically spaced apart with significant distance between each of them. They each get their own territory.
---- the problem with this wall is that MOST UM churches aren't growing, reaching people or reaching new people at all. So by geographically separating themselves from each other, they are simply insuring that they are not reaching people within existing church territories.

- WALL #2: The Rule that UM churches must get land is born from the territorial issue above. If you have a territory, then you'd better get some land in that territory before it all disappears.
---- the problem with this wall is obvious. The unchurched people you are hoping to reach are generally not big givers and it's an assumption to believe that they even want a building at all.

- WALL #3: The Leadership Wall: The UM will likely plant churches with existing pastors within the UMC. If I could be so bold as to suggest that this will be a significant problem. There are some great leaders within the UMC who will make great church planters. But I'm not sure there are hundreds per year. At least not initially. Most of the church planter type folks left the UMC long ago because of the denominations assumptions about leadership and church planting from the past. Turning the Tide will mean the UMC needs to actively pursue church leaders at every level who are gifted at starting new churches. I've simply been to too many UM church plants that are as irrelevant as the um church down the street... Its just that they have a newer building.

Barriers

Barriers have come up a few times in conversation over the past few weeks.

Often what keeps us from changing or doing something in our lives/ministries better is because of a wall in the way.

Sometimes the walls are real. Some rule, some person, some program, some thing in the way that will not let change happen.

Sometimes the walls are in our mind. It's our imagination working against us. These walls are assumptions we carry about new realities or expectations we place upon ourselves that create a wall in mind keeping us from moving forward.

My wife won't call the doctor because she says she knows everything the doctor will say or have her do.

My son won't go outside when our 11 year old arthritic lab is outside because he's afraid of what the dog might do to him.

A pastor in a church with 2 adults under 70 won't invite his friends in town who go to different very large church to join him in a new adventure of missional living. He doesn't want to "steal sheep" even though he's friends with the other church's pastor and none of his friends will ever be in a seat of leadership in the other mega church.

A youth pastor search team won't do the work of preparing for a new youth pastor because they think the congregation won't want to change.

What are the walls in your life? Are they real? If not, make a change. If so, walk around them.
A pastor

Cell Phone on our Mind- and church planting

The next 2-4 weeks will provide a fish bowl for us all to observe and learn something that only happens every few years.

The iPhone buzz apple is creating will benefit all cell phone companies. Big time. The iPhone has put cell phones in the minds of people. Many will not buy an iPhone, but a lot will buy a blackberry, a treo, or another new cell phone.

iPhone means business for everyone in the cell phone business, because people are thinking about cell phones. They've had a date in the mind.

June 29th.

Some are on the fence about a first generation phone.
Some are on the fence about an Apple phone.
Some are on the fence about AT&T/Cingular.
Some are on the fence about the price.

There are a lot of people on the fence and they are waiting.

They are waiting to see if people like their iPhone.
How the battery life is.
Some will want to touch and use one before buying.

Other will not buy an iPhone, but they will buy a cell phone.
The iPhone is an opportunity for all cell phone companies. I'm not sure all the cell companies are ready. If you are Sprint, June 29th, you should double your staff. Be ready, because they will be coming.

This happened 10 years ago when Krispy Kreme came to Tulsa. Opening week, you couldn't find a donut in any store anywhere in tulsa. People had donuts on their mind.

There is a similar phenomenon that occurs with church planting. New churches create energy and they get people thinking about church who haven't been in a long time or ever.

They might attend the new church, but land somewhere else.

This is why most churches should embrace church planting in their communities and not see them as competition. Church plants get people thinking about being a part of a church and it's an opportunity for every church in the area. Sadly, few churches are ready.

Assumptions on Motives

In a recent post on Priorities an anonymous commenter said,

"One should never assume he knows the questioner's motive by the content of the question."

To which i replied in the next comment, "Fair enough."

After some additional thought I'm adding a bit to my response.

Fair enough. However it's good to keep in mind that Everyone Always assumes he knows the questioners motive, not matter the content of the question.

There is always an assumption. It might be more or less correct. It might be way off-base. But there is always an assumption.

We may assume the motives of someone speaking to us are benign, or we may assume that the speaker is "on our side", but there is always an assumption.

Assumptions aren't absolutely evil and neither are those who make them. We make assumptions to survive. For better or for worse, assumptions are always with us.

Double Loop Learning and the Emerging Church

The emerging church's is a good start on Double Loop learning.
Folks associated with the conversation are often very good at questioning the Governing Values / Variables of the church. However, they are not as good about building action and strategy around those governing values.

Viewing from afar Doug Pagitt seems to have intuitively been able to connect a new set of Governing Values to New Action / Practices.

For example, his book on Preaching is a questioning of what most people consider a a standard normal practice in church. Then he takes something of a new action in it's place.

In my experience most churches who call themselves emerging are simply changing the strategy /action plan, by adding the infamous coffee and candles for their emergent service. this is fine, but it's very different from what Doug is doing.

I'm really curious if I'm making sense?
This is applicable to all organizations by the way, not just churches.
What's clear? What's fuzzy? Do you even care about such things?

Change in Organizations - Part 3

Here's a visual.

So our day to day decisions are born from governing values /variables that are things we take to be normal. These generally are not questioned. Personally or organizationally.

Some folks in the church implement change, but the only thing they really change is the strategy. This is single loop learning. When they change it assumes a certain foundation of understanding.

So a private high school is training teachers about how to create an environment conducive for learning. They might: teach teachers to greet students with a hand shake and eye contact rather than working at the teachers desk as students arrive. These actions are attempts at single loop changes. They may or may not work.

But when a teacher says, "Since we all know that studies show that high schoolers learn best after 9:30 in the morning, maybe we should arrange the schedule of the day?" That teacher is looked at funny because what he is voicing is in direct contradiction to the basic understanding of normal expectations. In other words, it goes against the governing values /variables of the people in leadership.

In a double loop learning environment, the question about the school day schedule can be questioned and even changed. Which in effect changes the action plan and strategy.

Is this making sense?

Change in Organizations - Part 1 - Some Groundwork

I'm pretty excited about this series. It might be a bit hard to wade thru in the beginning, but bare with me... I think it will be helpful.

While some churches aren't committed to change, there is a growing number of churches who are. Some folks have called these churches "traditional" churches. These are churches who, by and large, are committed to do things how they have always been done.

The past 40 years have seen churches who pride themselves on not saying, "I've always done it this way." These churches were more often than not, church plants, but we have all heard stories of "transitioned" churches. These churches are more self aware than their unchanging counterparts. There are two kinds of churches who fit this catagory and I'll delineate them first by their commitment and level of permission.

Since I'm sorta making this up as I go I don't have cool names for these two kinds of churches. At this point I'll use Chris Argyris's terminology, of "Single Loop" and "Double Loop."

Single Loop churches are committed to change and connecting to their culture, but there is a refusal to to permit those within the organization to question or change the terms on which they will do it.

Double Loop churches are committed to change and connecting to their culture, and they give permission to question the terms they hold to and even change them.

Does your Church have a Learning Disability?

Wikipedia definition:

Learning disability (U.S.) -- In the U.S., the term is used to refer to a learning difficulty that is unexpected given the general intelligence of the affected individual. That is, the academic performance of the affected person is much lower than the individual's general intelligence would predict.


For a variety of reasons church leaders tend to to think of themselves as static organizations with hard and fast rules not only for developing dogma in the minutia of life, but also in their organization.

The world is changing. How a Church engages it must change.

If this is so true, then why is it so hard to move your service time from 9:30am to 9:45 without their being an uproar?

Because change means we might lose something and church is the place people go to keep from grieving.

What I'm talking about here is the ability for the church organization (organism) to learn. Not only learning from successes and failures, but also identifying assumption your church holds to that were often solidified from past experiences.

Most churches simply do not learn about why they are they way they are. They do not look to see how their practices, behaviors, programs, communication, staff, expectations and theology all teach and move us toward action that generally doesn't work. But they still do it. over and over.

This is the essence of a learning disability in churches.

The Youth Ministry Vacuum

It happens too often. I visit a local church or ministry and there is an issue that someone (or a group of someones) wants to deal with.


Inevitably someone says one of these things:

"I don't have any kids in the youth ministry, but I can tell it's struggling. Attendance is low and it needs to be like it was when my kids were teens. What is the youth pastor going to do about this?

or

"We have plenty of children in early elementary, why don't we have more kids in the youth group?"

or

"Our kids aren't committed to the church. How can we get the kids to be more committed to coming to youth group?"

or

"We need more adult leaders in the youth ministry. The youth pastor needs to do a better job of recruiting volunteers to take care of these kids. Why won't she do it?"

All questions (or varients of them) that I hear often.

Here are some questions I ask instead:
Is it possible the fact that the Pastor and Youth Pastor who left to start our church taking 80% of the families with teens has had an impact on our current situation and that it has little to do with our current youth pastor's performance?

How does this church show that it values teenagers?

Why would a youth want to come to this particular church?

Does the fact that the average age of the congregation and it's leadership is over 65 years of age have anything to do with the youth ministry? If so what?



Youth ministry doesn't exist in a vacuum. In fact, I'd suggest that in most cases it is a prime way gauge the temperature of a congregation.

Everything decision in the church has in impact on the Youth ministry in one way or another. It can never be a department on its own, youth ministry must be a concerted effort on behalf of the whole congregation. Often the problems that arise from within a youth ministry are symptoms of a church issue.

So the next time you point at a problem within your churches, take a step back and see if what might be a few of the contributing factors to making it that way.

By the way, this is not a ticket for youth pastors to whine or complain about why their church sucks and is keeping the youth pastor from accomplishing great things. Don't be a victim. As the youth pastor, your job is to lead the congregation to understand the impact of it's decisions upon the youth ministry.

Not one Solution

If someone tells you they have a plan that will fix all of your problems or a single solution to involved parents in all churches... they don't. Pay attention to them.. learn something... then remember there is no universal solution no matter what color it is or how organized it is.

Solutions are always contextual.

The best solutions are discovered by critical thinking and understand your own unique situation. That's where there truly good news is.

Mixed Messages Part 2

In Part 1 of my three part series I discussed the mixed messages we get from schools. In this post I will discuss the mixed messages we give as churches working with kids.


I wonder if many churches actually rely on parents not being involved, no matter how much they encourage participation?

I wonder what we mean when we say we want parents to be involved?

Here's my guess:

1. Involvement means you show up to parents and information meetings.

2. Involvement means volunteer for security, cooking at youth events, organizing fundraisers. You know... the non-spiritual stuff.

3. Involvement means getting your kid to you on time and picking them up on time.

4. Involvement means paying for all the events, t-shirts, candy we sell, camps and missions trips we decide are good for your kids.


1. Involvement does not mean that you have input into what the church or youth program actually looks like and how our program is run. After all we are the experts.

2. Involvement does not mean helping shape the how we define success.

3. Involvement depends on keeping parents uninformed on information that might frustrate them or lead them to believe they are not responsible for their kids.

4. Involvement means the same things it means for our kids. Fall in line. Do it our way. You have no alternative. The youth leaders know best.


On one hand, come help us.. be responsible parents.
On the other hand, we are the experts and we know what your child needs better than you do.