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Emmanuel Research Review

Resources for the urban pastor and community leader
published by Emmanuel Gospel Center, Boston
Issue No. 15 — March 2006

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The Emmanuel Research Review is a publication of the Emmanuel Gospel Center. The Review features articles, papers, resources, and information that we believe are helpful and relevant to urban pastors, leaders, and community members in their efforts to serve their communities effectively.

In this issue: Wisdom for Urban Youth Ministry

Introduction

by Jeffrey Bass
Executive Director
Emmanuel Gospel Center

On February 3, 2006, a Youth Worker Summit was held at Trinity Church in Copley Square. The Summit grew out of a vision that Chris Sumner (Exec. Dir., Boston TenPoint Coalition) had about bringing current youth workers and their spouses together into a relaxed environment where they could get to know senior youth workers and pastors.

The Youth Worker Summit was sponsored by the Boston Center for Youth Studies (BCYS), in partnership with Vision New England’s Congress 2006 event. BCYS is an emerging partnership that so far includes the Emmanuel Gospel Center, the Boston TenPoint Coalition, the Black Ministerial Alliance, the Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME), The Center for Youth Studies, and the Boston Urban Youth Foundation. We are currently considering how we can best work together to support urban youth workers, particularly those in churches and Christian ministries.

Dubbed “An Evening with Wisdom,” the Summit featured seven individuals or couples who took ten minutes each to discuss the question, “What have you learned from your years in youth ministry that you’d like to pass on to younger youth workers.”

The Panelists:

Rev. Dean and Gail Borgman, Center for Youth Studies with the Urban Workers Institute
Chris Troy, President of the Boston Urban Youth Foundation
Minister Harold Sparrow, Executive Director of the Black Ministerial Alliance
Rev. Chris and Katani Sumner, Chris is Executive Director of the Boston TenPoint Coalition
Revs. Roberto and Mercedes Miranda of Congregación León de Judá
Revs. Bruce and Karin Wall of Global Outreach Ministries and Bruce Wall Ministries
Revs. Ray and Gloria Hammond of Bethel AME Church
Rev. Zina Jacque moderated the evening.

(The Hammonds were not able to be at the summit due to a family emergency, but we caught up with them later and added their wisdom to our collection.)

In this issue of the Emmanuel Research Review, we have compiled audio files, transcriptions, images, bios, and links for each speaker, enabling you to read or listen to the wisdom which was shared at the summit as if you were there that evening. We have also included an annotated list of links to selected youth ministry organizations in Boston, and across the U.S. on a separate webpage. As always, your feedback is appreciated!

Wisdom for Urban Youth Ministry

Seasoned youth ministers advise younger youth workers at a panel discussion in Boston on February 3, 2006, answering the question: “What have you learned from your years in youth ministry that you’d like to pass on to younger youth workers?” The complete comments from each panelist are transcribed below, but are also available in an MP3 audio file. Click on bio to learn more about each speaker.

Gail Borgman: listen | bio

[Audio starts with emcee Zina Jacque introducing the speakers.]

Hi! I’m Gail Borgman and I think I have been doing youth work for close to forty years. Dean and I met through Young Life. That was an exciting time back in the late 60s when he was doing youth work down on the Lower East Side of New York. He needed some folks to help start an Urban Training Institute up in Yonkers, and I had just finished at Fordham University in social work. So he was encouraging some volunteers to come to Yonkers. And that is how we started out. It was a fun and challenging time. Eventually, we came to Gordon-Conwell and became involved in Boston.

I’m trying to think of what I would say to encourage someone involved in youth work. What comes to me is that it’s an ongoing journey. You keep on going. It’s not something you should see as stepping stone to becoming the minister or whatever beyond. Because I think our lives have been involved with young people from the very beginning. We have six grandchildren and we are still doing youth work! It’s been exciting. These days it seems especially important to encourage leaders these days who work with young people here and overseas.

We’ve been privileged to teach youth classes over in Kenya at Daystar University. It’s been a blessing getting to know young folks and being a part of their lives. Going back and forth to Kenya has been a privilege for us. I think what would be my main encouragement to you folks is to know that this can be a lifelong vocation. Don’t just see it as a stepping stone. For some folks that’s fine, but I think for many it’s an ongoing journey that’s never dull, where you’re always challenged and encouraged. So, I would just encourage you to keep on moving.

As a counselor I’ve realized the privilege and importance of hearing unique stories from many young persons. Our experience with young foster children years ago to recent mission trips has shown us how young people need a safe place to tell their stories. So, I encourage you to take time to hear their stories and respond with Christ’s love and compassion.

Dean Borgman: listen | bio

Thank you, Gail. I think God really wants us to have fun here tonight. I think He brought us here for a special time of fun and there may also be some inspiration. I’m so proud of Gail as well as thankful for her. She had a root canal that’s she’s been struggling with and she went back to get the old cracked wisdom tooth out this afternoon. She’s still got gauze in her mouth, she's not, uhh… [laughter, Gail responds] Anyway, she’s here and I’m so thankful for Gail and all she means to me and others.

I thought that I’d reflect in a series of words that come to me as I look back over some fifty-some years of youth work.

First: hustle! I think we go 3 to 13 kids in Montgomery, Illinois, out of a population of 400. Then Bridgeport, Connecticut, a little group that was getting up to 100 then 200, and then it started pushing 300. I think the first thing I learned was “crazy-hustle.” In youth ministry, you’ve got to be crazy and hustle. That was the first thing I learned.

Gradually, I learned the word relationships, the power of relationships. Kids are looking at you closer than you think.

Cross-cultural comes to me, because God took me from middleclass Bridgeport, a mixed kind of population, to New Canaan, Connecticut, where I had to get used to rich folks who I never had been too comfortable with, down to New Canaan. Then I went from there to Manhattan’s Lower East Side and learned the lessons of my life in New York City: socially, theologically, cross-culturally. Then I was off to Liberia in the middle of that. God taught me so much.

Most recently, I’ve been learning one word: collaboration. That word is just sinking into me. All kinds of strong things about it. It comes to me in the words of a country song. I listen to Hip-Hop, though classical and R&B and jazz are my favorites. I listen to Hip-Hop and try to keep up with it. Then once in a while I take a break and go back to Country. I know that is not going to be the most popular kind of music here tonight. But one phrase from that song: “Nobody wants to play rhythm guitar behind Jesus. Everybody wants to be the lead singer of the band.” I almost want to sing it. [He sings the line from the song.]

And so, that’s what I want to give the last of the days that are waiting for me. God’s drawn me back into Boston and some other cities. I can’t understand it, and He’s blessing me. I just want to collaborate and I want to support those who collaborate. I just want to talk to those who want to be the lead singer in the band and sort of calm 'em down a little bit. Because, that’s where I was for years. I never thought about collaboration when I was young. Just hustle and get it done. I didn’t care what anybody else was doing. Our thing was growing! And so I want to give myself to collaboration. And that’s it! That's all I've got!

Chris Troy: listen | bio

The wisdom for the evening has ended right there. [That’s] a hard act to follow. I think I should have gone first. Very tough. Bad choice. It is humbling to go after Dean. You’ve been a blessing in my life. You’ve been a blessing in a lot of people’s lives in urban youth ministry.

For those who don’t know me, my name is Chris Troy, the Director of the Urban Boston Youth Foundation. I’ve been here for twenty-one years here in Boston, and doing ministry for the last twenty-seven years. I feel old. I’ve been very blessed by it. I have a personal mission statement that I have had for a little over twenty years, “To influence individuals, communities, and societal systems on behalf of and towards the kingdom of God.” And I have tried to integrate my personal mission statement with the mission of our ministry, which is, “To help young people develop spiritually, emotionally, academically and economically.” I try to integrate both of those with what God wants us to do in urban ministry.

The thing I have learned is no matter what I’m doing or how God is using me to be salt and light, I don’t get to move to the next lesson until I master the one God’s trying to teach me. Because, no matter how quickly I want to move to the next lesson, God will just continue to use a different method on me until I get it.

What that’s done is that it has helped me to be better in touch with the brokenness of others and my own. I think that has driven me to be a more prayerful person and hopefully a more obedient person and helped me be more loving to young people, try to instill hope and vision in the lives of others, while at the same time trying to buildl them up to see what their true capacity as young people is, as someone created by God to do great things in their lives. That has been a blessing for me, because I have probably received more from that than any of the young people that I have had the honor to serve.

I think that the temptation that I try to steer away from in my own life, and I hope that we all would [steer away from], is in the scripture where Satan gets Jesus to the pinnacle and says, “Just jump off and the angels will come and rescue you.” And to resist being spectacular, and having things focused on myself, versus doing something substantive that really touches people’s hearts and really ministers to them. Focus on those things that do that versus focus on things that might stroke my ego or make me look good, which is very tough to do, but to try to focus in on those things instead of those that are spectacular or egocentric. Those are my ramblings.

Harold Sparrow: listen | bio

In terms of lessons learned, I think about key words. I think, to be leader, first of all you have to be resilient. It means you have to bounce back in a bunch of different situations. I would say mentally, intellectually, emotionally, verbally and spiritually. If you’re going to lead, people will let you down, situations will change, you will get your feelings hurt and you will be betrayed. That just comes with the package. I would say it was Rev. [?] who talked to me about the Jerusalem attitude of Christ. On Sunday, He was cheered and on Good Friday He was cheered. All the people that were there for him on Sunday were boo-ing and cursing Him, beating Him and stoning Him on Friday. It’s part of the leadership package. So I think that you have to be resilient if you want to succeed.

My second point would be the weight of responsibility. Often times we see leaders in the community in the newspapers, or on TV receiving an award and they say great and wonderful things and folks say, “Gee, that’s really good. That’s nice. I want to be like that.” But what they don’t really understand is the weight of responsibility that comes with it. It’s like being an iceberg. You see the tip but below that there are people’s lives that depend on you. People that look to you for a paycheck, folks that look for you for emotional support, spiritual support and strength. Others that really want you to help them through their situations. As a leader you have to lead and make a decision. And I think it’s really hard to make a decision. If you’re a leader, whatever decision you make, some people are going to like it and others won’t like it. So, whatever decision you make, somebody’s not happy. It just comes with being a leader.

I also think that forgiveness is very important in being a leader, because people will let you down. Folks that you love will hurt you and betray you. So, when the ones that love you hurt you the most, it’s not like you stop loving them, you just hurt, and that can be very difficult to work though. Personally, I had a friend of mine that betrayed me about 20 years ago. It was a betrayal where he lied on me. I was excommunicated by my group of friends who believed the lie. I was hurt. Bishop Thompson, who was at church prayed for forgiveness and I prayed to forgive them. Eventually, about fifteen or eighteen years later, I ran into his wife and we had a conversation and she just started to cry, and then I started to cry. We never really talked about what happened, but forgiveness was there. A year later, we met for dinner and she met my kids and I met her family. And then two months after that, she died. So, I really thought that was God’s gift to me on forgiveness. Because, I prayed for the Lord to help me forgive him and I have. But you know as a person and a leader, it happens all the time. People will let you down and they will hurt you.

I think the last thing is, if you’re going be a leader, and you’re going to leave a legacy, then you have to understand youth and that things just change. Kids are there for a bunch of different reasons. I remember one time I was working with a bunch of kids. I was trying to teach them something. This one kid wasn’t getting it and I was getting really frustrated. So I asked her, “Why are you here?” And she said, “Because my friends go.” I started thinking about it. I don’t know why people come to do this youth work. Not everybody comes with your intent in mind. They might be there for a bunch of different reasons. So you really have to be flexible to understand what these young people want and what they need to do.

And last of all, I would say, if you’re going to be a leader you have to have a heart to serve first… servant leadership. And three, you have to be submissive to authority. There is always somebody above you, somebody to the side of you, and somebody below you. So you need to learn how to manage up, to the side, and also those who report to you. But you have to be submitted to those that are above you, even if you don’t agree with what they have to say. You have to pray for them and to ask for God’s wisdom and direction upon your life; and trust that He has put you in a place that will really lead to His glory. Because, it’s not about us. Rick Warren in his book, Purpose Driven Life, says this, “It’s not all about you.” To me that was like the most powerful opening sentence in any book I’ve read in such a long time. God has a plan and a purpose for my life and it’s not about me, it’s about His purpose. So those are some of the key words that I will share with you.

Katani Sumner: listen | bio

Hello. We are the Sumners tag team. He let me go first and I’m so happy. Because at the table I knew he was going to steal my stuff. That's alright.

For me, what’s most important in youth ministry, that I have learned, relationship is key. And that is, understanding the value of relationships, nurturing those that are healthy for you, and realizing there are some that are toxic that you have to let go… to move forward. Forgiving, but moving forward and going toward what God has called you to do. I can elaborate on that some.

My husband and I, we’ve have been involved with youth since before we were married. We met when we were eighteen. We really approached youth ministry holistically, we like to think, in that we really try to have a relationship with teenagers and allow the ministry to come through the relationship. Because, I think that those are most of the most meaningful experiences and encounters they have with God. You don’t have to hit them over the head with the Bible. You can come out and play basketball with us. We’re both musicians. We’re both athletes. And we’ve found that those are the most impactful situations of relationship.

The second most important thing for me has been the value of balance. I like the image of being of being in the airplane and the oxygen masks drop and the first thing you should do is put on your own mask. Often, we don’t think to make sure we’re healthy before we try to minister to others. It’s really crucial. Young people, they’re all about keeping it real. I say, “If your life is whack, you don’t need to minister to young people, because they’re going to see right through that.” Make sure you’re healthy. Make sure you’re balanced. Take a holistic approach. Minister to every element of this person. How are they doing physically?

I am an educator. I tell other teachers, “Don’t try to make this kid learn multiplication if they don’t feel safe in this classroom. Don’t try and make them learn something complex, if they don’t trust you. If they think you’re out to get them, you better deal with them in a holistic relationship. Have a relationship first, before you try to put something in them.”

So relationship and balance. Here comes the big guy.

Chris Sumner: listen | bio

I think that one of the things I have learned over the last twenty years is that there is no conspiracy to destroy my leadership. [laughter] Whether I came to this by accident or by God’s design, the theory that the leadership above me is trying to destroy my passion and my vision. I found that it was liberating when I found that people were giving me sound advice about going back to school, [saying] “no you can’t do this,” or “think about safety,” were actually in good leadership positions.

The other thing, if I could steal this statement from my wife, I’m not sure if she came up with this or not, is, “Rules without relationship lead to rebellion.” So, for me over the years, I have learned from young people to be a student and allow young people to lead me. We come to the table in relationship and allow them to be the expert. And at our table, one of the sisters here was talking about learning how to listen. I think that thing has just benefited me greatly. You know, often times in youth ministry, I get more than I give. The principle is that young people have a certain level of expertise and once that trust is established, we tend to learn a whole lot. Because, to young people we represent to them authority, rules and regulations, until you establish the kind of relationship where kids can come from a home where there isn’t any rules, where there isn’t any regulation. And so, it’s good to hear their hearts. For me this has been beneficial to be a student.

Mercedes Miranda: listen | bio

[audio starts with comments from the emcee]

The sister at the beginning of the evening was mentioning the four elephant’s feet and they are the ones who support this building. What I’ve learned in ministry is that you need to have a very strong foundation and that foundation is at home. Your marriage is your relationship at home. You need to invest time in that.

Ministry can take away time, resources, and energy from you. We need to be renewed in this area that is so important. If those elephant legs are not there holding that building, if your home life is not built on a solid rock, which we know ultimately is Jesus Christ, but it’s also one another, [because] we cannot do ministry alone. It is impossible to do ministry unless you have a strong marriage and a healthy marriage.

And one thing I discovered is that most people (I do pre-marital counseling) most couples that come to us, they say, “I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never seen a marriage that works. My parents didn’t work. I have a distant cousin that maybe their marriage works.” So, all of us are living models, living testimonies that this does work, that there is a purpose of marriage and that marriage is a beautiful thing and we need to model that in everything we do. Somebody said earlier that they want to see a real life, not something that you’re faking in front of them. That’s how youth learn what a strong and healthy marriage is. That it’s possible and that it’s a great thing and that children are a wonderful thing.

How many comments do we hear about children not being a blessing and that we need to limit them, maybe have one or even zero. Even as pastors, sometimes, we accept those things. They need to come into our lives and see that it works, and [that] it’s a beautiful thing that God modeled for us. That it’s one of the best ways we can share a healthy outlook in life and what the true meaning of being a believer is. It’s in the home. I encourage you to invest all you can in your home and in your marriage and in your partner.

Roberto Miranda: listen | bio

She was complaining she didn’t have a lot to say! [Laughter] Yes, I would like to add, again using these metaphors about the elephant legs. I have developed a love for structural things because the Lord has had me doing building renovations for the past twelve or thirteen years. Every time I see these kinds of things, I immediately know what you’re talking about. As a matter of fact, we’re involved now in doing a basement. It’s a five floor structure but we’re doing the basement, so I know exactly what it’s about.

When you look at this beautiful space [in this church], and a while ago it was filled with rats and dirt, but now you see beauty, I immediately think of architects. And when I think of architects, I think of vision. You see there had to be somebody who conceived of what this place could be and have the power to foresee it, and to envision it, and to actually almost even touch it, and then proceed to design it, and then proceed further to execute it, until it becomes this. But, it began in a vision. With the passing of time in ministry, I’ve become more and more aware of the importance of cultivating a vision and living life and ministry according to a vision.

And vision presupposes a whole lot of things… One thing is taking time to envision, to rest, to lay at the feet of the Lord, to pray, and to bring that vision into being, slowly, as God speaks to you. That vision comes into formation through a process that you participated in, but also God participated in.

Another thing related to that is, resisting the drive to action, to act, act, act. Ministry sucks every minute of your time if you let it. You have to very deliberately take time to rest, to envision, to not do, in order to get that seminal image that will serve as a blueprint for ministry.

Vision has such power. As you envision things, as you make visions specific, and you write it down, it’s so important to write visions down. As you take time to cultivate visions, write down what the Lord is saying to you. Dream big. Cultivate big visions. Don’t be timid. Isaiah 54 offers itself as a paradigm, do not be timid, conceive great visions in the Lord and dare to dream big and then proceed to execute.

Do not remain just in the visionary stage, but let the vision guide you. Once you have conceived it, align your life, your actions, your time, your relationships, your moves in ministry to that vision. Remain as faithful as you can to that vision, because that vision will become, with the passing of time, a powerful force that will guide you magnetically to its realization. If it’s aligned with God’s values, and you dare to believe, and you take steps of faith toward that vision, believing that God gave it to you, and that you are honoring God as you pursue that vision, the vision will come into realization. The whole area of envisioning things and celebrating it by faith, and cultivating it and just seeing it with the eye of your mind is so crucial to the success of the ministry.

Karin Wall: listen | bio

My thoughts about leadership. Much of which has been said already, particularly much of what Harold said, really resonates with me. My thoughts are bullet points around leadership and just thinking about the importance of personal development with regard to developing yourself as a leader, and really having a good sense of yourself as you develop as a leader, and not undervaluing the intense work that it is to really know yourself, and to know for sure that you’re called. I know it kind of seems like a no-brainer. I remember Christians used to have this saying that ministry is not the kind of a thing you go to a job fair and raise your hand and go like, “I will, I will!” But ministry, even as Gail said, youth ministry, is not necessarily a stepping stone to something else. It’s not something you do on your way to someplace else or while you’re waiting for what you really want to happen to come along. There’s great value and there’s great investment in it. It kind of amazes me how in a church it’s not always recognized as that. I come at youth ministry a little bit differently than probably quite a few people. Because, I’m probably one of the only youth worker types that would say, “I don’t particularly like working with youth.” (Laughter) I thought I’d say that upfront. But, what I like to see is healthy adults. And so, I recognize that the way to get there is to invest in young people. The high energy, no! The crazy, no! But, what I like to see is the healthy adults. Because healthy adults make healthy families and healthy families make healthy communities. And so therefore, I understand the importance of that.

Explore and develop your gifts. The reason why God made us not to be alone in this Christian walk, and the reason why he stresses the importance of being in community, and having an interdependent existence, is because not all of us are going to have all the gifts that we need to get the job done. And that’s why Paul uses the metaphor about being part of the body of Christ. So recognize that your part is important. Yes your part might even be more prominent or visible than someone else’s but it really isn’t more important than the next person in terms of forwarding God’s agenda and getting His things accomplished. But, if you don’t know, and you don’t explore, and obviously sometimes we’re busy coveting other people’s gifts and talents, you’re never really going to explore and find out what part of the body you really are.

Develop a thick skin. You know, there’s not much more to say about that. Because, as Harold said, you will be disappointed, people aren’t perfect, we disappoint people, people will betray you, you know, stuff happens. And in the process of that, one of the most important things that God’s taught me—and yes He will let you learn that lesson and yes He will let you stay stuck in that lesson until you get it. Okay… how many times do you want to do this Karin? When I tell people I’m from New York they just go immediately to someplace else like, “Oh yeah, we knew that.” Anyway, one of the things I’ve learned is that with God, just because you know something doesn’t mean you have to say it. And many times He will give you insight about things to pray about it, to sit on it, he’ll show you when, and if you’re supposed to speak on it. But also in the course of developing thick skin and in the course of dealing with disappointments in ministry, one of the easiest things for us to do is to go at it and defend ourselves. And I learned a while ago, and I’m very grateful for having learned that lesson, if you’re still, if you’re quiet, He really will fight your battles for you. And you don’t have to expend so much energy on defending yourself. God will reveal the truth and you’ll have to use very little energy, because, that stuff takes away from what you’re trying to do, from the focus you’re trying to have. It saps your strength. It saps your energy and it makes you mentally tired, spiritually tired and everything else. What God wants to come out, he’ll have it come out. And you just really need not worry about it.

Never stop learning. No matter where we get in life. I hope that… we never get to the place where we think we’ve arrived and we just kind of coast the rest of the way. My mom is a great example of that to me. She is 80 years old, and she is about to have hip replacement surgery. She had her first hip removed seven years ago. She had both her knees replaced three years ago, and she swore she’d never go back for this again. But now, she’s having her second hip replaced, and so we tease her. My sister and I tell her, “Mom you’re going to have all new parts. This is going to be wonderful. You’re going to get to start all over again.” Up until her hips and knees really started to bother her, she played tennis three days a week, and she swam the other three, and she went to church on Sunday. So, as she was preparing for this surgery, she was a little down, because she can’t quite do some of the things that she wants to do or she used to do, because she’s not as active as she used to be. So I asked her, “Mom how are you dealing with this surgery?” She said, “I’m fine. I’m envisioning myself on the courts in June again.” And I said there is a lesson to that; there really is a lesson to that. She hasn’t given up. There’s always something for her to learn. She informed me she’s going to be taking Spanish. Now that she’s learned a little bit about the computers, she’s twisting our arms, my sister and myself, for a laptop. Other presents, a gift certificate to the spa used to be good enough for her, now she wants a laptop. But in that is just her drive to keep learning. I hope that I’ve inherited that from her amongst other things.

The importance of relationships. Katani touched on this just a little bit. And I just want to underscore it. Some advice that I was given very early on when I first started working, and I try to pass this on to other people that I come in contact with, as it relates to ministry, jobs, anything, somebody said to me once, “Treat every job as if its your last, as if its your dream job, as if it’s the one you absolutely want to retire and go to heaven from.” That way when you leave it, leave it so you can come back to it, iIf you need to. Leave it so that people are sorry to see you go, instead of can’t wait for you to leave. And put into it everything that you would put into it, if it was your dream job. Because, everything is a stepping stone to someplace else. Sometimes, we’re so focused on where we want to be. So, we don’t pay much attention to the becoming, the process of becoming. Because, we’ve got our sites set on someplace else so we think we can treat this piece here any old way. You never know. Don’t burn bridges, you never know who you’re going to meet coming around. So, for no other reason than that, don’t burn bridges.

Finally, a very valuable lesson I have learned, you will have all kinds of relationships in the course of ministry. Some of them are meant to be friendships, some of them are casual, some are for a season, some people’s seasons in your lives or theirs are shorter or longer than others and sometimes they’re ministry relationships and don’t confuse the two. I tell people I’m everybody’s pastor, but I’m not everybody’s friend. And you have to be okay with that, because for whatever reason, when you have some level of visibility, people will pull on you for all kind of relationships to meet their needs and not only should you not do it for them because its not necessarily what they need but you need to be clear on why God has put that person in your life. So if it a ministry relationship there’s certain boundaries. If I’m mentoring somebody I don’t tell them my business they’re not my friends, they’re not my peer. Just like if someone’s mentoring me I assume there is a certain amount of respect, and there is a certain amount of defference I have to them because they have something. I want and I respect that and I appreciate but I’m not their girl, I’m not all casual with them. That’s important, because ministry is so relational, sometimes, we cross those boundaries and everybody becomes a hang-out buddy, NO. So just be clear about the kind of relationships God is bringing into your life.

Bruce Wall: listen | bio

Second Corinthians 5:17 says that when anyone is joined together with Christ they become a new creation, the old is gone and the new has come. Although the old is gone—supposedly gone—I feel at age fifty-seven that the old wants to trap me. God called me into ministry in 1965, and one of the thoughts that I will leave with you is that as men and women of God who are working with young people, walk with integrity. Be honest. Live the life that you’re teaching and singing about before these young people and their parents. I can’t tell you how many young people have come back to me after thirty and twenty-five years of ministry with young people and they tell me the stories of their youth pastor, or their pastor, or people in leadership at their church, who took advantage of them while they were involved in the youth program. Walk with integrity. And one way of walking with integrity is learning how to be accountable, which means open your life to somebody. Not just the part of your life that you’re proud of, but open the part of that old stuff that wants to take you down. Tell people, “Here’s a sign that I’m in trouble, do what you need to do, don’t let me down.”

And then the last thing that I would say, those who are working with young people never use young people for your own personal needs. Never use their wanting to hang on to your every word. Never use their wanting to lean on your breast. Never use their desire to be with you 24/7 to meet your needs. By you letting them meet your needs you destroy the people that God has called you to reach for Him. Those are my few words.

(Hammond Interviews: The interviews with Ray Hammond and Gloria White-Hammond were conducted several days after the panel discussion, by Emmanuel Research Review’s Managing Editor, Brian Corcoran. The full transcripts to these interviews are located on a separate webpage. The opening comments from each of them follows:)

Ray Hammond : listen | bio | full transcript

Two things that stand out, because I’m sure that the other people speaking touched on a lot of the issues I’d love to second, and reiterate, and give my own stories about. So, maybe two aspects I would like to highlight are 1) the youth minister as a reconciler/bridge builder and 2) the youth minister as a model.

And in the first instance, one of the big challenges that I find is, often in youth ministry we don’t have as critical a sense of the responsibility we have to minister to adults. And the fact we really can, and have to serve a really critical role in bridging what is often, quite frankly, a developmental gap. That is on one level normal, but that’s also dangerous if it is not, in effect, ministered to. That’s a period in where young people are trying to develop their own identity, which they must, trying to develop their own sense of faith, which they have to, but it’s also a time when they need to be able to do that in the context of a whole series of other relationships around them including family and other adults in the community around them. Typically, there are not a lot of people who can help to keep those [relational] ties there. And I think it is one of the most important things that youth ministers can do. And unfortunately, because of the pressure of time, and programs that they have to do, or sometimes feeling marginalized themselves, they end up not [bridging those relational ties].

We are in the process of circulating this job description [in which] we said, we need this youth pastor to be as involved in teaching parents how to understand and connect with their own kids as they do in talking with young people [about] themselves. We [also] need to have them help young people understand how to understand your parents and where they are coming from, and operating under and that sort of thing. We need the whole. We need them to ministering to the whole church and understanding the fact that youth ministry is not an adjunct, or an add on, or a holding pen until people grow up and mature, and then can make a contribution to the Kingdom of God. But that it is at the very heart of what the church has got to be about. And this is the kind of ambassadorial role, bridge building, reconciling role that I think youth ministers can and have to do.

And we learned, [while working] with “at risk” kids, that it’s great for us to minister to the kids. But, if I can’t speak to the judge who’s going to determine their sentence, if I can’t talk to the teacher who may make a difference in whether they are expelled and they get another opportunity, if I can’t help their parents to know how to help them, if I can’t speak to the local business person who may be wanting to take a chance on giving them a job, [then] I haven’t done that kid a whole lot of favor, in giving them the kind of help they need.

So that’s one [way] I would really encourage people to see themselves. An ancillary benefit from that, I think is that, more youth ministry would get more support, volunteer support, financial support, and involvement in the ministry in the life of the church, rather than, unfortunately, as it is sometimes as being, pushed to the margin. So, that’s one thing I would really commend to people.

And the second piece is that issue of modeling… more

Gloria White-Hammond : listen | bio | full transcript

Well I’m a physician as well as a minister. I’m a pediatrician. So in a sense, I minister to youth and families. I not only get paid to do that as a pediatrician, I get rewarded in other ways as a minister. So lessons learned along the way, and I’ll just kind of randomly think about this.

One of the key lessons I have learned is the importance of just showing up. In 1994, even before that, I hope I can do this succinctly, you can do it succinctly, I was practicing—I have been doing medicine for almost 25 years now, and in about 1992-93, I was really in a crisis mode. Because, I had gone into medicine and that was going to be my vehicle to change the world, and to make the world a better place, and all of that.

I practiced in the South End with patients who largely, at that point, were welfare dependant. And so, I was taking care of families who so often suffered the brunt of the injustices in this system. And while many of them did well and still do well, a few don’t. And obviously in ministry, we operate on the premise that a few lost kids is a few too many.

At that point, about 65-70% of the OB practice, the obstetrics practice at the clinic, were young girls under the age of 18. Most of them would not finish school. And by then, I had been practicing for 15 years. I started to see some of my boys doing the juvenile detention system and getting into trouble, and becoming drug dealers and drug addicts. I was at a real low point in the practice. I was depressed about how little difference I was making. And it’s one thing to be depressed, but I was also depressing. So if you sort of asked me how it was going, I sort of got going on this whole laundry list of how difficult it was, and how the kids that weren’t doing this, and the families that weren’t doing that.

And I had one kid that really shook me. He was a kid who had come from a troubled family. His father was away wherever they go when they drop out of their kids’ lives. His mother had Lupus and even though she was a youngish woman in her mid-thirties, she had a severe case of Lupus. She was oxygen dependant at that young age. But he was a bright kid who was always in trouble, and the school could never figure out how to address his needs.

We would go to meeting after meeting with the school department and even though you would know what he needed, the way the school department worked is you would have to go to the next level, and try that out for a year, and if that didn’t work you would have to go to the next level, when it was so obvious that what he really needed was a residential placement. He just needed a totally restricted environment. But we had to go through all of these stages.

And after years of not being served, he was placed in a facility in a New Hampshire, residential. I then lost track of him and his mother for several years, eventually I heard that his mother had died of Lupus and that this boy, Sean, was in jail. Who knew why, right? They are never guilty when they are in jail.

One afternoon, it was probably in August of 1993, late on a Friday afternoon, I went in to see my last patient who was Sean. Obviously, that’s a really unusual thing for a kid, a black [male] teenage kid to come to see a female pediatrician. He was there obviously because there was a connection.

And we did talk about his mother dying. He had been in jail for several years, and we talked about the whole notion of the cloud of witnesses, and when people die their spirits are still with us to cheer us on, encourage us to do our best. And he agreed that his mother was in this cloud of witnesses.

After I examined him, I then went on to talk about blood work; quite frankly I was interested in doing an HIV test. He said he could not stay, and the reason he could not stay was because that day was his eighteenth birthday and he had come to spend it with us. And he was going to celebrate, and he promised he would come back another day, and he didn’t.

Sunday night he was killed. He was shot while riding his bicycle down Mass Avenue. It was one of those drug deals gone bad, kind of thing. And that was so discouraging. Again, I had already had had enough bad experiences. And that just seemed like the worst. Here’s a kid that I had worked with for years. And now he was dead. And there was just another sense of, “Girl, you just can’t get this thing together. You're failing at this, you’ve got to figure out something else.” As I was lamenting it, I just had this sense that Sean had joined my cloud of witnesses. And he was saying, “Get up and do something, and do something different and stop whining and complaining about it.”

And that was a real pivotal point for me. So, in January of 1994, a few months later, I started this wonderful ministry that I love, called, “Do the Write Thing", spelled w-r-i-t-e. We started with 6 girls in the conference room upstairs. The idea was to use writing as a vehicle to express themselves… more

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Questions For Conversation

Following the presentations by the speakers, questions emerged from the group and several conversations were set in motion, once again setting off an additional sharing of wisdom. We have not written down a transcript of the questions and conversation, but you may listen to the MP3 file, and use the index below.

00:00-01:18 Trying lying
01:19-02:29 Promises & problems
02:30-03:18 Young in ministry
03:19-04:37 Bended knees
04:38-05:00 Accountability
05:01-07:13 Power of principle
07:14-08:00 Not feeling effective
08:01-09:24 No boxes
09:25-11:11 Relationships & rudiments
11:12-11:48 Seasons
11:49-13:00 Resting radical
13:01-15:43 Roller rink
15:44-17:11 Originality & essentials
17:12-20:10 Cross-cultural collaboration
20:11-23:10 Collaboration has begun

A separate MP3 file was made of the closing of The Boston Youth Summit.

00:00-05:47 Song, prayer, & announcements listen

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Emmanuel Research Review, copyright © 2006, Emmanuel Gospel Center. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint any or all of this newsletter, contact mailto:rmitchell@egc.org by email or write:

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