Why Teenagers?

It seems like a little bit of an odd thing to do, after all. Teenagers don't have the resources that adults do. They don't have the influence, or the respect of society. Even in pure numbers, they are massively overshadowed by the baby boomers.

But, at the same time, things will not always be the way that they are now. Someday, these teenagers will grow into the generation that is running our country and our society. Someday, the generation that can not remember a time before youtube, will be making policies that will shape the world.

But, long before someday, an understanding of justice is important for teenagers now.

Injustice doesn't need to be explained. They see it in their schools, during extracurricular activities, and sometimes even at church. They know wrong when they see it.

What they need is a chance to see what could be right.

Pulling out for a month will give them a chance to find their passions and their voice, to begin to understand what it might mean to right some of the injustices in their world (whether that means in the halls of their school or across the globe).

Teenagers might not have the resources that adults have, but youth carries with it a passion for change that can be a powerful tool. There is a reason that the Bible is so full of stories of God using teenagers to accomplish His will.

Why the Focus Month

Why try to gather a group of teenagers and preteens and remove them for a month from everything that normally makes up their world?

I mean, after all, aren't there a thousand other ways to make a difference in the world, ways that might even have better long term results?

Service projects are easier to arrange, and it's hard enough to ask someone to give up part of a weekend. Americans are busy. No one would begin to argue with the fact that we have responsibilities and commitments coming out our ears -- even more so in the middle of the school year. We work hard to carve out time for church and youth group, because they are priorities.

But, maybe that's the problem.

When Jesus was on the earth, He gathered a group of young men (most of them probably teenagers) by simply telling them to "follow."

As a parent, what would you do if your sixteen-year-old son or daughter left their job mid-shift in order to follow Jesus? As a teenager, what would you do if He came into your school and simply said, "Follow"?

What would you do when it became clear that following was going to cost you everything?

Not four hours on Sunday and three more on Wednesday night; not twenty minutes a day to read from the One Year Bible; but everything.

I can't explain the logic of the Focus Month perfectly, although, over the next few days, I will give it my best shot. But, I know that He told me to follow, and I know that there are others who hear that same voice.

Why take a group of teenagers and preteens away from everything that they know as normal?

Because, for some of them, that is what it means to follow.

Do One Thing

I've kind of dropped the ball on this one, and this month's challenge actually has more to do with next month. The only things you need for this month's challenge are a pencil and a calendar. How simple is that?

Seriously.

Turn to Friday, September 10th and mark off the evening as reserved for a Night of Nets.

My mom is working through World Vision to put on an event that will raise awareness -- and funds -- for efforts in malaria prevention and eradication. 2,000 children a night die from mosquito bites. By blocking out a few hours of your evening, you can save some of their lives.

Do one thing. Write "Night of Nets" on your calendar.

50 Ways to Become an Answer to Prayer

Yes. I shamelessly ripped this off from the Simple Way's site. But, I thought it was good enough to share. Some of them are short term actions. Some are long term commitments. All of them are worth taking a moment to consider.

1. Fast for the 2 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.
2. Contact your local crisis pregnancy center and invite a pregnant woman to live with your family.
3. Ask your pastor if someone on your church’s sick list would like a visit.
4. Join an open AA meeting and befriend someone there.
5. Adopt a child.
6. Mow your neighbor’s grass.
7. Volunteer to tutor a kid at your local elementary school. (Try to get to know the kid’s family.)
8. Grow your own tomatoes—and share them.
9. Ask a small group in your community to meet regularly for intercessory prayer.
10. Build a wheel chair ramp for someone who is homebound.
11. Read the newspaper to someone at your local nursing home.
12. Plant a tree.
13. Look up the closest registered sex offender in your neighborhood and try to befriend him.
14. Throw a birthday party for a prostitute.
15. When you pay your water bill, pay your neighbor’s too (they’ll let you… really).
16. Invest money in a micro-lending bank.
17. Ask the next person who asks you to spare some change to join you for dinner.
18. Leave a random tip for someone who’s cleaning the streets or a public restroom.
19. Write one CEO a month this year. Affirm or critique the ethics of their company (you may need to do a little research first).
20. Start tithing (giving 10%) of all your income directly to the poor.
21. Connect with a group of migrant workers or farmers who grow your food and visit their farm. Maybe even pick some veggies with them. Ask what they get paid.
22. Give your winter coat away to someone who is colder than you and go to a thrift store to get a new one.
23. Write only paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or who you should say “I’m sorry” to.
24. Go TV free for a year. Or turn your TV into a pot where flowers grow.
25. Laugh at advertisements, especially ones that teach you that you can by happiness.
26. Organize a prayer vigil for peace outside a weapons manufacturer such as Lockheed Martin. Read the Sermon on the Mount out loud. For extra credit, do it every week for a year.
27. Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.
28. Write to one social justice organizer or leader each month just to encourage them.
29. Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of the clothing being sold.
30. Experiment with creation-care by going fuel free for a week – ride a bike, carpool, or walk.
31. Try only reading books written by females or people of color for a year.
32. Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don’t get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read the bible together, or play board games.
33. Track to its source one item of food you eat regularly. Then, each time you eat that food, pray for those folks who helped make it possible for you to eat it.
34. Create a Jubilee fund in your Church congregation, matching dollar for dollar every dollar you spend internally with a dollar externally. If you have a building fund, create a fund to match it to give away and by mosquito nets or dig wells for folks dying in poverty.
35. Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.
36. Give your car away to a stranger.
37. Convert your car to run off waste vegetable oil.
38. Try recycling your water from the washer or sink to flush your toilet. Remember the 1.2 billion folks who don’t have clean water.
39. Wash your clothes by hand, or dry them by hanging to remember those without electricity or running water. Remember the 1.6 billion people who do not have electricity.
40. Buy only used clothes for a year.
41. Cover up all brand names, or at least the ones that do not reflect the upside-down economics of God’s Kingdom. Commit to only being branded by the cross.
42. Learn to sew or start making your own clothes to remember the invisible faces behind what we wear. Take your kids to pick cotton so they can see what that is like (and then read James).
43. Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week to remember those who do that for most of their life (take a multivitamin). Remember the 30,000 people who die each day of poverty and malnutrition.
44. Begin creating a scholarship fund so that for every one of your own children you send to college you can create a scholarship for an at-risk youth. Get to know their family and learn from each other.
45. Visit a worship service where you will be a minority. Invite someone to dinner at your house or have dinner with someone there if they invite you.
46. Help your church congregation create a Peacemaker Scholarship and give it away to a young person trying to avoid the economic draft, who would like to go to college but sees no other way than the military.
47. Eat with someone who does not look like you. Learn from them.
48. Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask them to pray for you.
49. Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back and eat or sleep in the shelter and allow yourself to be served.
50. Join a Yokefellows ministry at a prison close to you. Remember that Jesus said he would meet you there (Matt. 25).

No More Homework No More Books...

Okay. I like the books. The books can stay, not the homework, though.

Almost exactly three years after I left for school, the last homework assignment has been turned in, the last class was sat through, and the last work study hours have been logged. I am DONE.

My class leaves in a few hours for our grad retreat (there are benefits to having a class of twenty), my family comes on Thursday to check out the city a little, Saturday afternoon I will finally get my BA, and, by Sunday night, I will be home!

It has definitely been an interesting experience all told, but I'll take a sixteen month internship over sitting in a classroom any day, so it was worth it.

That kind of freedom in learning = happiness in Jessica land. Seriously. You want to learn about early childhood education? Go work on a preschool curriculum. You want to study comparative religions? Go have a conversation with your Muslim neighbor. You want to study a new language? Walk outside. No textbooks required. Plenty of learning guaranteed.

Outside of any classrooms or teachers, we all learned how to pluck chickens, build desks, plan and carry out the painting of giant murals, help lead short term teams, wash clothes by hand, teach cross culturally, design costumes, recognize the signs of malaria, run medical clinics, and appreciate American ice cream.

Plus, I am sure, a billion other things that I don't remember right now.

FAQ

Q: Do you realize how long a month is?

A: Yep. It's four to five times the length of an average ministry trip or church camp, BUT, if you count every moment of that month (waking, sleeping, eating, blinking, every moment of it), you only get up to about half the number of hours that the average American spends watching TV over the course of a year.

Q: How much does it cost?

A: Nothing. Bring your passions and your willingness to learn, but, if you are participating in the Focus Month, you can leave your wallet at home.

Q: That is a lot of school to make up, isn't it?

A: Yes and no. If your educational objectives do not include working all of the way through a specific set of textbooks, then the entire month will be school. If your goals include specific books or class credits, they will need to be made up afterward, because we will all be working through a unified curriculum.

I will be more than willing to tutor students or otherwise help with catch-up work after the Focus Month, if that is needed in order for someone to join us.

Q: Is this only for home schooled students?

A: Nope. Although, students will likely have to temporarily withdraw from the school system in order to get the time off. I would love to help you figure out how to make it work as a public or private school student (and my mom is the home school resource guru!). :)

Q: What if I'm at CBC/in my senior year of HS/etc?

A: Again, if you want to make it work, we can make it work. Educational schedules are more flexible than we think they are, and, many times, required classes can be postponed for a quarter or semester without throwing off graduation requirements.

Q: Will I see my family? We will be in town, right?

A: Depending on how God leads, yes, you will definitely see your family. My dream would be to see families involved in a hands on way at least once a week.

Q: I am not able to participate as a student; how can I help?

A: There are several ways to help out. Thanks for asking!

1. PRAY – pray that the right people would jump on board, that God would light passions and give peace, and that the Lord would orchestrate situations and conversations

2. TEACH – if you have experience in the area of social justice and would like to share some of those passions with us, get a hold of me, and I would love to get you plugged into a teaching time that fits with your schedule

3. GIVE – if you have some fresh veggies you want to unload on us, $5 you want to send our way to help cover food costs, or a vehicle we can borrow for the course of the month, we would love to partner with you to see this project have a greater impact on the Body of Christ

4. SHARE – tell your friends, your friends' kids, or your friends' friends' kids about the project. The more people hear about it, the greater impact it will have

A Prayer for You

I pray that you would know the greatness of God's love and that His passion would wrap itself around you, as strength in your place of weakness. I pray that you would learn from every trial that you face and allow them to shape you into one who seeks the face of God in all of its forms. I pray that your heart would be lit with a fire for justice and that your spirit would be soothed by His peace, knowing that He is with you.

-- Anonymous

Every Problem is a Knowledge of God Problem

One of my professors likes to say that, "Every problem is a knowledge of God problem."

He means that, at the root of every issue or annoyance in our lives there is a basic misunderstanding of some facet of God's character. If we are anxious, it might be that we don't truly understand God's peace, that we are afraid to trust Him because we don't really understand that He is good, or any number of other reasons, but, somewhere, there is something about God that we do not understand.

The fact that our youth group or church is dull or listless is a knowledge of God problem. The fact that we are afraid when we think of loosing our job or getting sick is a knowledge of God problem. The fact that our spouse/child/sibling/parent/friend irritates us to the point of anger or frustration is a knowledge of God problem.

So often, what we need is not a better solution or a different plan. What we need is an encounter with God and His glory.

The glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. (Isaiah 58:8)

God promises us that His glory will follow us, steady, constant, and comforting, if we act in the name of His justice. It is that simple (and the complicated). We act in the way that He would if He were here in the flesh, and He follows us with His protective glory.

God comes in His glory to places where His justice is lived out through human lives, and that glory brings a greater knowledge of Him.

If every problem really is a knowledge of God problem, then justice is just as much an act of self preservation as an act of compassion. And, that is okay. God designed it that way, so that justice for the poor could be justice for the rich as well. We don't seek justice out of pity for anyone. We seek justice because our God is just.

Random catch up

Two more weeks of class and then our senior year ends (and I'll be about a week after that). Of course, the professors and work study supervisors would never want the last few weeks to be boring...or for there to be much room left for breathing...so, in between many, many papers that have still to be written, and plenty of work to do, we're all running around like chickens with our heads cut off, trying to line up housing, vehicles, and jobs for our post BCOM life.

Of course, this being the decade that it is, running around like a chicken with your head cut off tends to look a little more like disappearing behind a computer screen, with a couple dozen tabs open, and sifting through search results until your eyeballs are ready to pop out of your head. I'm not really sure if it counts as running per-say, if the only things that are doing the running are your fingers...

Every once in a while we still find a boring moment at work, and then things like this happen...the individual roasting of every mini marshmallow on top of the s'mores bars that we served for dinner that night.

Not that we would ever find an excuse to play with fire at work...
We did manage to make it to a Paper Tongues concert in between serving at a missionary barbecue and waking up early the next morning morning to watch MKs. Because, some things, like hearing a friend's brother play on tour, are worth not sleeping.


And, so long as you can have enough energy to chase them through a zoo/lake/library/Mall of America/etc and act as a human jungle gym all day, who really cares how much sleep you got. Right?

Our final "outing" before their parents finished up furlough seminar was a trip to the free zoo, where my girls were thorough uninterested in seeing the Asian animals, thought the flamingos were cool, loved the seals, and were disappointed not to see the polar bear.

We did, however, determine that we could not hold our breath for anywhere near as long as a polar bear, learn that newborn polar bear cubs are tiny, and chase a family of ducks back into their fenced in lake. (The fact that all three girls knew how to herd a duck exactly where they wanted it to go seemed a little telling of the fact that they have not grown up in urban America.)

One of my classmates decided part way through the first week that, based on his observations, "95% of MKs have dark hair." In my world, two out of fifteen being blond doesn't equal out to 5%, but, close enough. :)

His

Haha. I feel a little like a door to door salesperson lately, always trying to jump into the shoes of the one "selling" the Focus Month project to people that I talk to. At which point, the Lord always manages to give a reminder, sometimes more firmly than others, that the project is not mine to sell, and never has been.

None of this belongs to me.

The idea was not mine to begin with, but His. The timing of putting it all together is not mine, but His. The people who will be involved with the project are most emphatically not mine, but His. The glory that is intended to come is not mine, but His.

Really, I have everything to gain and nothing to lose, because all that I am doing is jumping on board with what He is already carrying out. With or without me, His purposes will be fulfilled.

In some ways, it reminds me of a poem that I had to memorize my Sophomore (??) year of high school. (Yes, Mom. I do still remember some of those, even with the apparent lack of effort put into working on them.) Martha Snell Nicholson wrote the following:

When I stand at the judgment seat of Christ
And He shows me His plan for me,
The Plan of my life as it might have been
Had He had His way, and I see

How I blocked Him here, and I checked Him there,
And I would not yield my will --
Will there be grief in my Savior's eyes,
Grief, though He loves me still?

He would have me rich, and I stand there poor,
Stripped of all but His grace,
While memory runs like a hunted thing
Down the paths I cannot retrace.

Then my desolate heart will well-nigh break
With the tears that I cannot shed;
I shall cover my face with my empty hands,
I shall bow my uncrowned head...

Lord of the years that are left to me,
I give them to Thy hand;
Take me and break me, mould me to
The pattern Thou hast planned!

Redefining Normal

As I've been searching for materials to use during the Focus Month, one of the goals has been to incorporate things from a variety of sources, with a variety of backgrounds and worldviews.

Politics are different, strategies are different, but, at the core, everyone wants to do one thing. Human beings seem to know innately that there is something not right about the way that things are, that things are not the way that they should be, but, we also seem to be under the impression that by simply redefining the way that we respond to our world, we will be able to change it.

Everyone is trying to redefine normal.

What if? What if I could talk or type enough words to redefine normal, to create a world where it wasn't a frightening thought to let your teenager do something for a month outside of your direct supervision? What if I could redefine normal to the point where injustices, as we know them now, were no longer a part of our world?

Would I really be fixing the world's problems, or just changing them?

I'm all for questioning the way that things are, in fact, I hugely encourage it, but we can "redefine" until we are blue in the face, and still find that there is no way to define willful human behavior out of the equation.

Still, that doesn't mean that we stop trying.

Normal states that my body uses up calories and I get hungry, but that doesn't stop me from trying to redefine normal three times a day by putting in more food and masking the "normal" of hunger. Normal states that burning calories makes my body tired, but that doesn't stop me from using sleep to try and redefine the "normal" of tiredness.

Normal states that humans will care for their own needs, even if it leaves others in want, but that doesn't stop me from giving, from using my resources to try to redefine that "normal." And, normal states that those in power will abuse it, but that doesn't stop me from acting justly.

Think about it. How many times a day do you redefine the "normal" of a fallen world?